"I knew your mother, you know."
And just like that, my mood goes sour. I don't want to talk about my damn parents. "Everybody knows everybody here."
"When you were a kid, you and I had a run-in," Opal recalls.
"What?" I don't remember ever meeting Opal.
"You were a teenager, not really a kid, I guess," she elaborates. "My neighbor's son was Joe Martin."
I stare at her blankly. I don't know what the hell she's talking about, or what the hell the point of this conversation is. "I've been away from West Bend a long time."
"That's right. You might not remember him. It was probably nothing to you, but Joe was a good kid – ended up going off to college and studying aerospace something-or-other. I don't know what it is exactly, but his mother says he's a rocket scientist."
"Huh."
"I do have a point, sugar," Opal promises. "He was bullied a lot back in school – this would have been ninth grade or so, I think – and I walked out my door to see a fight between him and three other guys."
I remember this – two asshole juniors were giving this nerdy kid hell – and I was walking by and jumped in. I didn’t know the kid, but if there's one thing I've never been able to stand, it's a bully. We got pushed around enough by my father when we were growing up. I was beating on the two guys who jumped him when this woman ran out of her house, brandishing a baseball bat and yelling at us to leave him alone. I took off when they scattered. The last thing I needed was word getting back to my father that I was in a brawl; I knew what kind of hell I'd pay.
"I ran you off, but Joe told me it was you who jumped in to save him."
"That's a long time ago, Opal," I say with a shrug. Why in the world is she dredging up old memories?
"My point is that you were a good kid who grew up into a good man. A little rough around the edges, but that's nothing."
I clear my throat, shuffling awkwardly. What the hell do I say to that? No one has ever just up and called me a good man. "Thanks."
"When Lily gets involved with someone, it should be someone solid. Someone who's going to stick around." She says it casually, like she's talking about the weather and not about a relationship with Lily. I've never been a relationship kind of guy. If Opal is so sensitive to who she thinks I am, how does she not get that?
The bell on the door jingles and a customer walks in. I take that as my cue to get the hell away from this conversation before it gets even weirder.
When Lily walks through the door a few minutes later, her eyes meet mine and she pauses for a second. My cock twitches, pressing against the zipper of my jeans at the mere sight of her. I can taste her on my lips, and I swear I'm salivating at the mere thought of tasting her again.
She's wearing sandals and a skirt like I asked her to wear. It's a purple and black floral thing that skims over her hips and down past her knees, an appropriate length for the store, yet all I can think about is doing very inappropriate things to her. A purple t-shirt clings to her breasts, and her hair is pulled back into a ponytail, the same way she wears it every day. And I'm the only one in this place who knows how she moans when I pull her hair.
"Mr. Saint," she says when she reaches the table, her tone crisp and business-like, as if I'm just another customer.
Except that I'm the customer whose face was buried between her legs yesterday.
"Ms. – I don't even know your last name," I realize. Her face colors, and I know immediately what she's thinking – she's thinking that she came on me and I don't know her last name and that means something bad about her.
"Grant." She gives me a small smile before turning around to head straight for the front counter.
Fuck. She's skittish. And now she feels badly about what happened.
When she returns, she sets the glass of iced coffee on my table wordlessly, her eyes meeting mine only when I brush my fingers along the back of her hand. She does that thing where she bites her lip and she clears her throat again. "I have to work," she whispers.
I'm not sure if she's warning me to leave or telling me to follow her to the kitchen. She sets the cream and sugar on the table and turns, placing the tray on the front counter before disappearing behind the kitchen door.
I give her a minute before I follow her. Fuck it; even if she's working, watching the girl work is a thousand times better than anything else I was going to do today. She's not inside the kitchen. I find her in her office, filling out paperwork.