This was a bad idea. I don’t know what I was thinking. We shouldn’t be doing this.
I slowly set my phone back on the table after reading his text. I’m abruptly so mad, I could spit, and deeply insulted, though this turn of mood shouldn’t be a surprise. Though he can be charming when he wants to be, his default mode is Hate Megan.
“Tough. I’m here, you’re here, I’ve got food coming, and I’m hungry. You can go back to hating me after I eat.”
He exhales. Even that sounds aggravated. He starts to type something into his phone, but I cut him off before he gets two words in.
“Don’t bother, Theo. If you want to leave, go right ahead, but my butt is parked in this chair for the foreseeable future.”
He looks at me. I refuse to look back at him, so then he’s staring at my profile. After a moment, almost imperceptibly, he leans toward me. Then I could swear I hear him quietly inhale.
Is he smelling me?
The waitress arrives with two plates. She sets one in front of me, the other in front of Theo. Both plates hold Denver omelets with extra bacon on the side.
“Wait, this is a mistake,” I tell her, gesturing at the food. “We only ordered one omelet. You actually forgot to take his order.”
The waitress looks panicked. Wringing her hands, she looks at Theo. “You didn’t want your usual order, sir? I’m so sorry, I just assumed. That’s what you always get. That and the key lime pie. Every time you’re here, at least as long as I’ve worked here. But I can certainly take it back and bring you a menu…”
She continues to blather on nervously, but I’m not listening anymore. I’m looking at Theo. I’m looking at his face. At his eyes.
His beautiful, haunted, secretive eyes, which stare back at me with all that horrible anguish and longing.
10
Theo grabs his fork, tears a gash into the side of the omelet with it, and stuffs a huge chunk into his mouth. He chews exactly twice, swallows the whole mouthful in one go, then stabs into the omelet again, as violently as if it’s the belly of his worst enemy, his fork clattering against the plate. He wolfs down that bite too.
The waitress decides Theo seems satisfied with his food, sends me a relieved smile, then clears out as fast as she can.
“I know the Heimlich maneuver if all that angry chewing makes a hunk of ham lodge in your throat.”
Theo stops chewing long enough to glare at me, but he should know by now that I don’t back down when he’s making his trademark serial killer face.
“So this is interesting,” I say calmly. “I think I’ve discovered the root cause of your mysterious problem with me.”
He falls so still, it appears he’s not even breathing.
I point at his plate. “Denver omelet with extra bacon on the side, and key lime pie. It’s what I ordered the first night I got to town, when you were sitting in the booth behind me at the diner. You remember?”
His face drains of color.
I cannot for the life of me understand what is wrong with this man.
“You were mad because I copied your order, right?”
Looking startled, Theo blinks. I can’t tell if I’ve caught him off guard because I’m right, or my statement is so far out of left field, he’s still trying to process what the hell I’m talking about. So of course I commence Verbal Diarrhea Mode, which never in the history of ever has solved anything, but we’re all stuck with our stupid personality traits.
“I mean, if this is what you always get here, it’s probably what you always get every time you go out to eat. It makes sense. I do the same thing. Hell, I love Denver omelets and key lime pie! Strangely enough, they’re my two favorite foods! So you overheard me ordering what you’d ordered, and you…I don’t know, maybe you thought I was mocking you?”
His expression is a study in confusion.
“You’re right, that can’t be it. You didn’t have a plate in front of you when I arrived, so I couldn’t have known what you had. Hmm. So maybe you just can’t stand it that someone else in the world likes the same two foods you like? Considering your general aversion for the human race, that is. Or maybe strange coincidences make you as nutty as they make me because you know there’s no such thing as causal connections between anything, but the dumb part of you refuses to believe it?”
I run out of breath, and theories.
Theo stares at me for a long time, his gaze searching my face, his body still as a statue’s. Then he carefully sets his fork down, picks up his phone, and starts typing. He doesn’t even bother to send it, he just holds up his phone so I can see what he’s written.