AVERY

"Penny for your thoughts?"

I blinked, only now noticing that Mariah had placed a cup of coffee on the table in front of me.

"Thanks." I beamed at her, before dropping the pen I was holding and picking up the cup.

I held the cup with my two hands, spanning the width with my fingers so that the heat from the coffee would warm my chilled fingers.

"Sure." Mariah took her seat on the other side of the table, taking a sip of her coffee. "What were you thinking about? "

"Nothing."

"Are you sure?" She cocked a brow, "You looked like you were concentrating really hard."

I sighed, my shoulders dropping. I had never been able to keep anything from her.

"I've been thinking about this guy..."

Her eyes widened and she almost spat out the coffee in her mouth. She hurriedly swallowed it so that she could speak.

"Woah. A guy?!"

I cringed. "Well, yeah."

To say that I hadn't been able to stop thinking about that man that came to the bar yesterday would be a huge understatement. He hadn't left my mind once. And I didn't know why! It was so frustrating.

"That's so strange. You never think about guys. Ever. They don't even get to you. Sometimes, I think you don't even see them."

"Jesus. Stop overreacting." I glanced around, "And bring your voice down, will you?"

"I wasn't shouting!" She huffed, "And don't even try to change the topic. You know I'm right."

She was actually. I could count on one hand the number of times guys had managed to grab my attention so completely that I couldn't stop thinking about them for longer than five hours. Twice.

The first was when I met my first crush in high school, the second was my physics lecturer. He had given me a D on a course that I busted my ass off for. It pissed me off that all my efforts had been wasted and I couldn't stop thinking about it until the next semester.

The man from yesterday was the third. And he seemed to be winning, because, hell, I couldn't focus on anything else.

I stared at the book in front of me glumly.

"Tell me about him." Mariah's voice dragged me out of my thoughts.

"There's nothing to tell." I shrugged. "I only met him yesterday."

She threw her pen at me and I caught it before it could bounce on the wooden table and hit the floor.

"I'm talking about his looks, height, build. Does he have dark hair? Is he tan with blue eyes? Does he have scars?" She demonstrated wildly as she spoke. "You know what I mean!"

I bit back my laugh. It was really funny seeing Mariah like this.

"Well, if you must know, he is pretty tall." I said, remembering his obscene height, "Very tall." I added. "With very pretty light grey eyes, dark hair, and a square jaw. You know, like those models we see in magazines."

Her jaw almost hit the ground.

"Did he have a tan?"

"Yes. He has considerably dark skin."

"Did he have scars?"

I shook my head. "He doesn't and I don't care much about that anyway. You're the one who finds scars on guys attractive."

"Because they're everything!"

"If you say so." I shrugged, then remembered one detail, "He had tattoos though."

"Really?" She was downright drooling at this point. "Where?"

"He had some on his neck, just close to his collar line, but that was the most I could see because he was wearing a long-sleeved shirt."

"Wow." She breathed. "I can understand why you can't stop thinking about him now." She sipped her coffee. "I have this picture of him in my head now and he better meets up to it."

I shook my head. That was so Mariah of her.

"So like, what's the issue? What happened?"

I brought my coffee to mg lips and sipped from it. It was starting to grow cold.

"Nothing happened. That's the problem. For once in my life I was willing to give a guy the green light but he didn't even ask for my number." I sighed, "He didn't even ask for my name."

Mariah reached for my hand across the table and gave me a consoling squeeze, "So let me get this straight. He didn't ask for your number at all?"

"No."

"Tell me exactly what happened."

"He came to the bar to get a drink, kept on staring at me, almost as if he couldn't help himself and I thought the attraction was two-sided. " I paused, "It definitely seemed like that yesterday. But then he took his drink, finished it, paid, then left."

Mariah scrunched up her face. "That's so weird. Why make it known that he is interested in you, and then not do anything about it?"

"Right?" I agreed, "He also paid for my drink."

"He bought you a drink?"

I shook my head, explaining to her how I had accidentally emptied the contents of the expensive drink because my attention had been divided. When I was done, she was trying to hold back her laugh.

"Don't even dare." I warned. "I wanted to die."

She burst out laughing at this point and her laughter was so contagious that I found myself laughing along with her.

"Girl, was he that good looking?"

"Yes!"

But that wasn't the only thing that had made me stare. There had been something about him that pulled me. I just wasn't sure what.

"Okay so, you poured the drink-and he saw the whole thing, mind you." She stopped when she saw my glare. "So he volunteered to pay for it?"

"No. He didn't even say anything about it. After I gave him his drink, I left to attend to another customer and by the time I came back, he wasn't there anymore. Just left a three hundred dollars underneath his glass."

"Three hundred what?!"

That had been my reaction yesterday!

"I know, right? The drink costs two hundred and his drink wasn't even up to twenty dollars. That means he gave me an eighty dollar tip!"

"Fucking hell." She exclaimed, "He has to be rich as hell."

"I bet he is. His outfit looked expensive."

"But like how did you know that the money was for the drink? What if he left it all to you?"

"There was a note with it."

A note I still had in my backpack up until this moment.

"Wow. This is a lot to process."

"Tell me about it."

"It feels like something out of a movie."

"Tell me about it."

"I skip work for one day and the hottest guy on the planet comes to the bar?!"

"Tell me about it."

"Shut up." She glared at me.

"Zipped." I mimed pulling a zipper over my lips, locking it and throwing the key away.

"No, don't zip." She pulled my hand. "Talk. Do you think he's going to back? Did he look like he had plans of coming back?!"

"How does someone who has plans of coming back look, Mariah?"

"Stop being a smart-ass."

I laughed and then sighed again because I was just as beat up about the whole thing as she was. I couldn't stop thinking about him, and I didn't think I would.

I really really wanted him to come back.

Who knows? Maybe I'd actually summon the courage to start a conversation with him by then.

Or maybe he would and I wouldn't have to.

Either way, what mattered was him coming for the second time. And I didn't know whether he would.

"Say, for instance, he comes to the bar again and asks for your number with the intention of taking things forward, would you give it to him?"

I seemed to have a problem with every guy that showed interest in me. It was either they came on too strong, were too weak, too short or too tall. There was always something I found off-puttinv about them. It took me until high school before I could develop crush on a guy and even when I did, he always did something to annoy me. After the sex, I broke up with him completely. Not that anything had happened, but I just couldn't be with him anymore.

But would I be willing to take things further with a guy I met only yesterday-who hadn't even had a single conversation with me?!

"Hell yes."

Her eyes widened. "Okay, wow, that's settled then. I guess what we have to worry about now is that he actually comes."

"Yeah."

She raised her cup in the air and after a while, I realized she wanted us to toast. To what?

"Here's to hoping he'll come back." She clarified.

"Fingers crossed." I told her, hitting our cups together.

We went back to studying almost immediately and I tried my best to push him out of my mind and focus. I had finals in three months. I needed to sign out with a bang.

"And Avery?"

I paused, lifting my head to look at Mariah.

"When he does, don't fuck it up."

I grabbed my cup of coffee silently and touched it to hers before taking a sip.

This one was to hoping I didn't.