Love Beyond Words (City Lights, #1)(18)

He released her chin with a pat on the cheek and left her standing alone behind the register. She jumped when a customer approached, bumbled their order, and spilled their coffee when she set it down.

#

After four years, Natalie thought she had the holidays pretty well in hand. Or as well as could be expected. Thanksgiving wasn’t that difficult. Only one day and generally celebrated behind closed doors. Natalie worked from eight in the morning until eight at night (Niko refused to allow regular hours if she insisted on working on a day he normally would have closed up shop). There were few customers. Julian didn’t show up—a fact that was equal parts relief and disappointment. She wondered where he was, with whom he was dining. His family? A lover? No one?

Natalie closed the cafe, went upstairs, and fired up a microwave dinner. Both Liberty and Marshall called and left careful messages on her machine that she erased the moment they finished playing. She watched Manhattan Murder Mystery on her tiny TV and when it was over, picked up Rafael Mendón’s poetry collection, Starshine. She cried a bit—but not too much—and went to bed. All in all, she considered it a pretty successful Thanksgiving.

Christmas and Hanukkah were worse, however. They were inescapable. Television commercials were an assault on her grief, with their endless portrayals of the family unit, either madcap or sentimental. Natalie shut off her TV and left it off for the entire month of December. School came to an unmerciful break and she worked her six double shifts per week—three more than Niko was comfortable with—letting the hours pile up, putting one day after the next. Julian still came to the café three or four times a week in the evenings, though Natalie never let on that she had been there all day and would be there the next. Never let on that she was struggling hard to make it out of this tunnel, to the innocuous dazzle of New Year’s.

One night, they sat together under the paper cut-out snowflakes the day baristas had made. They twisted in the soft currents of the café. Julian remarked about how tired she looked.

“It’s been a long day,” she said.

“Yes, this time of year can be exhausting,” he said. “Christmas is coming. Or…Hanukkah?”

“Both,” Natalie said, her stomach clenching. “Hanukkah from my mom, Christmas from my dad.”

“You must be leaving soon? To visit them?”

Here it was. She sat back in her chair, thinking how to navigate away from the question. Instead, she heard herself blurt, “They’re gone.”

She watched his face as he made the same inevitable calculations everyone else did: it was the holidays, no family, she would be alone. She braced herself for chafing platitudes of pity but instead he said, “I was in this area yesterday morning. I saw you here, behind the counter.”

“Niko needs the help and I could use the money.”

Julian said nothing. He ran his finger along the rim of his cup.

“Don’t feel bad for me,” Natalie told him. “It happened a long time ago and I don’t want to talk about it.”

He met her eyes. “I know the feeling.”

“Which feeling?” Natalie demanded. “There are so many, I hardly know where to start.”

“All of them. They’re undoubtedly of different tones and tenors, but I’m amazed at how many events in our life are striking the same chords.”

There was a silence then, and Natalie heard her words rush out. “My parents are dead. Car accident. Four years ago,” she said in single bursts, like a machine gun. Her eyes were full and challenging as they bored into his. He accepted.

“My father when I was ten, as I told you. My mother eight years later. Heart attack and cancer. One fast, like lightning. One slow, like a merciless poison.”

“Mine were both fast, like lightning.” Natalie could hardly whisper the words. “Which one is easier?”

He cocked his head and smiled sadly. “Which one do you think?”

“Neither.”

He nodded.

“I’m sorry,” she said, wiping her cheek.

“Me too.”

They sat in silence under the snowflakes that hung above them, twisting lazily but never falling.

#

Niko had insisted that the café would be closed on Christmas Day but the Barbos family was in Key West for the holiday and Natalie had the key. She didn’t mark her time card, but opened up at eight a.m. and by noon had served only three people—each amazed at their luck on finding something open. No one came in for hours after that and Natalie began to wither. Her book couldn’t hold her; the pastries and coffees were stale with familiarity. It was ridiculous to stay but she couldn’t go back to her empty apartment either. The silence would be too much to take.

“I miss them,” she told the empty room, and soldiered on.

At two o’clock, the door chimed. Her book nearly slipped out of her hands as Julian walked in.

“I had thought the café would be closed,” he said. “But I also guessed it wouldn’t.”

The quiet of the café had been on the verge of unbearable. His voice was music and the beauty of him like a vibrant painting after staring at gray walls. Natalie valiantly fought against the tears of relief that threatened to flood her. “What are you doing here?”

“I was coming by your apartment. I thought maybe you’d like to go somewhere with me. I’m not sure what might be open,” he said, wearing that shy smile that still had the power to disarm her. “I didn’t think anything through.”