Put Me Back Together(12)

“Is this how you live?” I asked, fixing him with a horrified look.

“What? Did I spill?” he said checking the front of his shirt for stains, as I glanced back around the room with lowered lids. Now those same female eyes were looking at me instead. Middle-aged ladies and teenage girls and soccer moms. A skinny girl with long brown hair stared daggers at me. Apparently it didn’t really matter if we were on campus or off. Lucas caused a stir everywhere he went.

I took a breath, detesting the feeling of being stared at. I remembered that feeling. Like everyone knew something about you. All of them pitying you. And then, later, like everyone was wondering what the hell was wrong with you.

I felt rather than saw Lucas leaning toward me over the table, my eyes glued to the wooden surface.

“They wouldn’t be staring if you weren’t so beautiful,” he whispered.

What?

I gulped my drink, burning my tongue and getting whipped cream all over my nose and upper lip, which I wiped off with amazing speed, though I was pretty sure he’d seen it. I couldn’t be certain, because I still hadn’t looked him in the eye.

“Uh,” I muttered as I squeezed my napkin into a ball in my fist. “That’s just so…completely not…whatever.”

He kept quiet—though I was pretty sure he was laughing at me under his breath—until I calmed down enough to look up at him. In what seemed to be his typical fashion, he was sitting back in his chair, completely at ease.

“How can you be so okay with all of…this?” I blurted, gesturing at the room at large. “How can you stand being stared at and talked about and stalked by random girls? Don’t you ever get sick of being Lucas Matthews?”

I bit my lips hard, realizing I’d probably way overstepped my bounds. As Em would have said, You really should have backed the truck up there, Katie. I’d basically implied I would hate myself if I were him. And just ten seconds after he’d called me beautiful.

Nice.

But Lucas didn’t look particularly insulted. Instead, he was looking thoughtfully out the window.

“Do I ever get sick of being Lucas Matthews?” he said to his own reflection. Then he looked at me again, his expression melancholic. “All the time,” he said.

Never in a million years would I have thought that Lucas and I would have a single thing in common, let alone two things in one day. Maybe I would have something to tell Em when I got home after all.

Shaking away the gloom, Lucas set his elbows on the table and crossed his arms like he meant business.

“So, Katie,” he said. “Your turn. Tell me something about you.”

I busied myself with taking another abnormally long sip of my drink. Uh-oh. He wanted to do the whole ‘getting to know you’ thing. I heard mayday cries blaring in my ears. Luckily, I’d spent years learning evasive tactics for just this situation.

“I really love this drink!” I said happily, holding it up for him to see.

He nodded at me as if agreeing and then his nodding turned to head shaking. “Really?” he said with some amusement. “That’s all you’re going to give me? You love chocolate?”

“But I really do,” I said seriously.

A mischievous grin spread over his face as the girl who’d taken our drink orders came over to us with a plate in her hand. She set it down on the table and batted her eyelashes at Lucas as he thanked her. I tried not to roll my eyes in return, but did not succeed.

On the plate now sitting between us was a warm and delicious looking brownie so thick and glistening with chocolaty goodness that my mouth started watering just looking at it. Then Lucas took his fork and cut it in half and the thick, fudgy insides began to flow out onto the plate, like some kind of volcanic eruption of chocolate delight.

I looked up at Lucas, my mouth still hanging partly open.

“I want that,” I said.

Lucas smiled even wider, holding the fork out of my reach. “Well I was going to just share it with you,” he said, “but now I have a better idea. Let’s call this our official Getting To Know Katie brownie. For every bite you take you have to answer a question about yourself. No answers, no brownie.”

“Every bite!” I said, gazing hopelessly at the treat and trying to count the number of bites with my eyes. There were ten bites there at least, unless I made them really big, which I imagined he wouldn’t let me.

Ten questions. I could do that…couldn’t I?

“What do you say?” Lucas said.

“Fine,” I said crossly, snatching the fork out of his hand. He didn’t put up much of a fight. “But I get the first bite for free. I need to make sure it’s worth it.”

Lucas nodded in agreement, his eyes twinkling. He said, “What the lady wants, the lady gets.”

Pulling the plate toward me, I cut the brownie into ten equal bites, letting the molten insides ooze out everywhere.

“You’re making a mess,” Lucas commented.

“Hush, you!” I said.

I dragged my fork through the chocolate sauce, then scooped up the first bite of brownie and brought it to my lips, inhaling that freshly baked smell before putting it into my mouth. It tasted so good I had to close my eyes as I chewed. I liked to worship my desserts in private.

When I looked up at Lucas again his eyes were so dilated they looked black.