Page 6 of Veiled in Brick

“Uh huh,” he brought his glass to his lips and set it back down promptly.

“I do work at the yellow store—Zest.”

“You like it?”

I did like my job, but I knew that the nature of it was less than entertaining, so I shrugged.

“It’s retail.”

“Yeah,” he replied, “it is.”

“Does that make me sound too young?” I ventured the question as it popped into my mind. “The fact that I work in retail?”

“Nah.” He shook his head quickly and began to trace the rim of his glass with his index finger.

“What about your job?” I asked. “What does James do on a day-to-day basis?”

“You don’t know what I do?”

“Er…” I took a wild guess off of any context clues that I had picked up from passing conversations at Henry’s, “Numbers?”

James laughed. “Numbers?”

“You do numbers.”

“Financial modeling,” he corrected me.

“That makes you sound…”

My words drifted off as I pondered the end of the sentence that I was intending, and James pressed with a chuckle, “Makes me sound what?”

“Old,” I responded. “It makes you sound old.”

“I hate to tell you that you’re robbing the grave,” he replied with his signature crooked smile as he took another sip of his drink. “But you are.”

I snorted. “I was just joking; I don’t think you’re old.”

“I’m thirty-one, Zoey,” he told me, and then restated, “ah—thirty, actually…give me a few weeks.”

“You’re five years older than me,” I commented on our age difference, announcing aloud what we already knew. “I’m hardly robbing the grave.”

“That’s sixteen percent of my life, and twenty percent of yours.”

“Numbers,” I mocked. “Hot.”

James pressed his lips together. “I, ah, had a long day at work.” He moved his head from side to side once more. “I know that’s not exactly sexy; that, um, that shit’s hard to turn off.”

His uncharacteristic stammering left me with the urge to reassure him with a slight deviation of topic, and I remarked, “Are you a freak in the spreadsheets, Jay?”

His eyes danced at my words and he replied, “You…do not want to take a ride on the Excel pun train with me. Ticket to admission doesn’t guarantee that you’ll be allowed out of the cabin.”

“You’ll…what,” I snickered, “torture me with bad jokes all day?” He nodded emphatically, and I responded, “That doesn’t sound so bad. I’d only understand a few of them, anyway.”

“Don’t test me.” His gaze shifted up to the waitress who had returned with the bill, and he reached for the black booklet as he thanked her. James opened it, quickly scribbled his signature, and drained the remainder of his glass. He stowed his credit card in his wallet. “You wanna get out of here?”

I gave him a smile and nodded. “Mhm.”

We stood and he led me out of the restaurant by the hand. I followed behind him, unable to tear my eyes off of the way that his dark jeans moved when he walked—or the gathering of grey fabric just above his elbow that led to his bicep straining against the material—or the way the muscles underneath the black ink on his forearms moved when he gripped my hand tighter. It made me almost disappointed when we began to walk to his car and he dropped my hand altogether. I say almost because he then moved his hand to my lower back as we walked, and I could nearly feel the heat from his fingertips radiating into my skin.

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