II

“Johnny was about your height,” Grace began. “But he had a slight beer belly, and he wasn’t, uh, fit like you are. He had brown eyes and bleached blond hair and lots of facial piercings. His tattoos were all pretty heinous. He was from England somewhere, and went back. I think he was running from the cops.”

Kit decided she was finished speaking. Her eyes were focused on a band flyer high above his head. He looked at Jill. She rolled her eyes and said, “He sounds lovely, Honey.”

“Yeah, doesn’t he? Oh shoot, a customer!” She got up, but Jill reminded her that Grace had dealt with the last customer, so she sat back down.

“Do you hate Johnny Lubbock?” Kit asked, joining her in studying the band flyer.

“No, I don’t hate Johnny Lubbock.”

He stood up. “Hey, I’ll see you around, ok, Honey?”

“My name is Grace, only Jill calls me that.”

He laughed. “I know, but I like it, it’s cute.”

“Can I call you Kitty then?” Grace asked.

“Sure! I love nicknames.”

“Ok,” she looked at him strangely. She hadn’t expected him to acquiesce, but his mellowness was refreshing. She didn’t know why she expected everyone to act as brusque as Johnny. Johnny would have said “No.” And she would have said, “Ok.” It was odd that she hadn’t cared how much of a jerk he was. Everyone had their faults, and maybe his was being rude. Ok, she sounded like a masochist, even to herself.

“Yeah, see you.”

It had been a little more than a year since Johnny returned to wherever he came from.

She sighed and thought back to their first meeting.

Her coffee shop was open 24 hours, and although her bosses did everything in their power to prevent a girl from working alone late at night, everyone seemed to get ill at once. Everyone except for Gracie and the girl who single-handedly worked the day shift. At first the graveyard shift was exciting, but after a week or so she became inured to both its charm and its shortcomings.

Generally students came in droves until about midnight, and then business was really slow. They studied and read and fell asleep and wrote papers and procrastinated on the free wi-fi all night long, but very rarely had the financial means to buy another beverage or pastry after their initial purchase. Having cleaned the interior of the building, she had ventured unwisely out of doors to throw away the trash on the tables in front of the building.

The cafe wasn't situated in a terrible neighborhood, but it wasn’t quite the same at three in the morning.

As she grabbed the abandoned cups and plates and napkins, a hand snatched her arm and roughly jerked her around, spilling the garbage onto the floor and covering her mouth.

An average sized man held her arms in an iron grip, and snickering, asked his two uninterested and unamused companions what should be done with her.

The largest of these, a huge pierced up blond man, hesitated, and then spoke.

“I suggest you let her go her way if you don’t want to invovle the fuzz.” His voice was scratchy, from smoking, no doubt, and held a distinctly British accent.

“What?! What the hell does—”

He was cut off forcibly by the tall blond man’s fist in his face.

“Why would you do that?” the other hitherto silent man asked in a silky voice that made Grace shiver.

“He bothers the hell out of me. I prefer him unconscious. And don’t you threaten me,” he returned coldly, pulling out a cigarette. The man nodded, and kicked the man on the ground lightly in the back.

“Another time then, Lubbock,” and walked away.

The tall man also walked away, until Grace called him back.

“Do you—thanks? Can you take his body away? Should I call the police?”

He had ignored her voice, but halted at this and turned around and came quickly back.

“I didn’t do it for you,” he pointed out. “Don’t call the cops.” And he picked his acquaintance up effortlessly, slung him over his shoulder and walked into the night.

She didn’t.

Mostly because the cops in town were jerks and after telling them her account of what happened, they were more likely to arrest every blond man they could get their hands on than even look for people who fit her description of the average-sized man, or the creepy voice man. They didn’t have the best record, and they weren’t trusted by the most of the average law-abiding citizens.

The fire department, however, was friendly and efficient, and regularly visited the elementary schools and did birthday parties. Was it really so hard to find decent policemen?

She ran into him again three nights later during the same shift. He came in to buy a 20oz hammerhead with no room for cream. She cringed as she poured the espresso shots into the darkest coffee they had and handed it to him. She could have sworn she saw the faintest glimmer of a smile in his brown eyes, but when she shyly smiled herself he abruptly turned and walked away.

He was going through what looked like a lot of paperwork, and came up for refills several times. Around four am, as she was making the rounds and asking if she could throw away people’s trash, she found him with his forehead resting peacefully on the table. She absolutely hated waking people up, because she hated being woken up, but she felt like he probably needed to finish what he was doing. She reached tentatively for his shoulder, and without opening his eyes even, his hand shot out and caught around her wrist.

She stood there, feeling stupid, as he groggily raised his head and stared at her in cold expectation.

“Um, you fell asleep.”

“And you woke me up,” he said. He released her hand and turned his attention back to his work.

“Did you want me to let you sleep?” she asked.

“Why do you ask?” he finally returned, leafing through his papers.

“Because if it happens again I can wake you up. Not that I’ll come near you next time, I’ll just peg you with something from a couple of feet away.”

He yawned, and covered his mouth, afraid of letting his twitching lips smile like they wanted to. “If you wouldn’t mind,” he said.

“I love throwing things at people.” She walked to couch a few feet away. She was also to wake up the pre-med student, who regularly studied late into the night. But unlike the huge blond man, he was an extremely heavy sleeper.

“Jacob,” she shook him, “Jacob, wake up. It’s time to study to become a doctor.”

“Don’ wanna,” he mumbled, turning his head away from her.

Suddenly a pencil flew out of nowhere and clocked him in the forehead.

“Hey!” he sat up.

They both looked around, but nobody was paying any attention to them.

“Anyway, I don’t think you should study on the couch anymore tonight.”

“Yeah,” he stifled a yawn. “You’re right. So, hey, Gracie, I have this formal dinner I have to go to, for the donors of the new med building, and I need a date. Do you wanna come with me?”

She ran through her mental list of non-offensive turn downs, but couldn’t come up with one quickly. She opened her mouth to agree to go when Jacob got thwacked in the face with a pen cap.

“Ouch! Who the hell is throwing stuff at me?” he looked around angrily.

Suddenly Grace knew it was the blond man. He was facing away from them, so he would have had to throw blindly over his shoulder, but she knew something of his ridiculous reflexes already. Would it be possible, to be able to tell where Jacob was by the direction from which his voice was coming? She stared in amazement at his motionless back.

“Seriously, this isn’t grade school,” the pre-med muttered angrily.

“Jacob,” she asked, picking up the pencil and pen cap and putting them in her apron pocket, “When is it?”

“Next Saturday, can you make it?”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said with as much sincerity as she could muster. “I’m going to a concert with a friend of mine who’s coming from out of town.” That much was mostly true. Her friend Jill was coming home for Thanksgiving. Jill didn’t know they were going to a show; she didn’t even like the same kind of music that Grace did, but they were one of her favorite bands, and she wasn’t going to miss it. But maybe Jill would want to go with Jacob. She liked pre-meds.

As she went around the room performing various duties, her stomach fluttered a bit, as she wondered why on earth the blond man would throw things at Jacob? While trying to give off an “I don’t do nothing’ for nobody” air, he had already potentially saved her life and a Saturday.

She made her way back to his table before she realized what she was about. Once there, she was amused by the way he didn’t acknowledge her presence for several moments.

“Yes?”

“Thanks for buying me time,” she said lowly.

“I don’t know what you’re speaking of,” he briskly replied.

She took the projectiles from her pocket and sat down at his table, to which he accidentally looked up in surprise.

She grinned at this. “So,” she whispered, so as not to be overheard by Jacob the pre-med. “Do you want to go to a Spinto Band show with me next Saturday? I’m going to set up my friend from out of town with the pre-med.”

“So why do I have to go?”

“Because you’re charming,” she retorted.

And he laughed.

She stared in amazement as his face transformed before her eyes. He looked years younger, carefree, un-burdened. She wondered what had happened to him.

“You’re good at punching people that attack me,” she added persuasively.

“Ok,” he said.

“Ok?’

“Yes,” he smiled slightly, but she could tell he had finished speaking.

“What’s your name then?” she asked after another five minutes of silence.

“Johnny.”

“Last name Lubbock, right? Sounds fake.”

He looked up at her coldly.

“Ha ha? I was kidding! I’m going to wash dishes now.” And she fled to the kitchen for the next forty minutes.

He was so frightening when he was angry.

She had never asked any one out before, and surely that hadn’t really qualified. She just needed someone to go with so Jill could go out with Jacob.

After Jill had arrived and eagerly accepted the invitation of the pre-med, Grace met up with Johnny and they went to the show. She had been right to take him. No one messed with the huge, huge man covered in tattoos and piercings, or the significantly shorter girl that he had come with. He wasn’t ridiculously good-looking; his nose had been broken a time or two and he had little facial definition, but there was something about him that she found extremely attractive. For some reason (that made no sense to her or Jill, who had hated him immediately for being unfriendly), she didn’t believe that the way he acted was really him. Johnny didn’t understand it either.

Unbeknownst to her, he tried everything in his power to remain cold and distant, but he thought she was beautiful when he first saw her, and couldn’t help but go to her café whenever he had the chance. His business in town was not that which would allow having a girlfriend, and especially not a nice one. He knew he was acting stupid, and selfish, and he was frustrated with himself.

But he really hadn’t thought she would return the interest.

Everything about her was surprising, except her sympathy, which he came to expect. Some days she was shy and easily overpowered by his incivility, but other days she easily coaxed him out of pretending to be angry. It was a stupid and dangerous game he was playing, but the return seemed higher than the risk.