Page 38 of Midnight Valentine
She continues to blather on nervously, but I’m not listening anymore. I’m looking at Theo. I’m looking at his face. At his eyes.
His beautiful, haunted, secretive eyes, which stare back at me with all that horrible anguish and longing.
10
Theo grabs his fork, tears a gash into the side of the omelet with it, and stuffs a huge chunk into his mouth. He chews exactly twice, swallows the whole mouthful in one go, then stabs into the omelet again, as violently as if it’s the belly of his worst enemy, his fork clattering against the plate. He wolfs down that bite too.
The waitress decides Theo seems satisfied with his food, sends me a relieved smile, then clears out as fast as she can.
“I know the Heimlich maneuver if all that angry chewing makes a hunk of ham lodge in your throat.”
Theo stops chewing long enough to glare at me, but he should know by now that I don’t back down when he’s making his trademark serial killer face.
“So this is interesting,” I say calmly. “I think I’ve discovered the root cause of your mysterious problem with me.”
He falls so still, it appears he’s not even breathing.
I point at his plate. “Denver omelet with extra bacon on the side, and key lime pie. It’s what I ordered the first night I got to town, when you were sitting in the booth behind me at the diner. You remember?”
His face drains of color.
I cannot for the life of me understand what is wrong with this man.
“You were mad because I copied your order, right?”
Looking startled, Theo blinks. I can’t tell if I’ve caught him off guard because I’m right, or my statement is so far out of left field, he’s still trying to process what the hell I’m talking about. So of course I commence Verbal Diarrhea Mode, which never in the history of ever has solved anything, but we’re all stuck with our stupid personality traits.
“I mean, if this is what you always get here, it’s probably what you always get every time you go out to eat. It makes sense. I do the same thing. Hell, I love Denver omelets and key lime pie! Strangely enough, they’re my two favorite foods! So you overheard me ordering what you’d ordered, and you…I don’t know, maybe you thought I was mocking you?”
His expression is a study in confusion.
“You’re right, that can’t be it. You didn’t have a plate in front of you when I arrived, so I couldn’t have known what you had. Hmm. So maybe you just can’t stand it that someone else in the world likes the same two foods you like? Considering your general aversion for the human race, that is. Or maybe strange coincidences make you as nutty as they make me because you know there’s no such thing as causal connections between anything, but the dumb part of you refuses to believe it?”
I run out of breath, and theories.
Theo stares at me for a long time, his gaze searching my face, his body still as a statue’s. Then he carefully sets his fork down, picks up his phone, and starts typing. He doesn’t even bother to send it, he just holds up his phone so I can see what he’s written.
You don’t have a future as a detective.
I send him my sweetest smile, which could cause cavities, it’s so saccharine. “And you, Sunshine, don’t have a future as a clown. So here we are, two people not doing jobs they’d suck at, eating omelets together on a Monday morning and irritating the shit out of each other, though only one of them knows why. Ain’t life grand?”
I pick up my fork and proceed to dig into my breakfast.
After a moment, Theo types into his phone and holds it out for me to see.
For someone who doesn’t curse,
you sure curse a lot.
I look at him. He lifts a shoulder, like, Just sayin’. Then I start to laugh, because it’s either that or start crying.
“You’re seriously killing me here, you know that? I’ve encountered hyperbolic geometry problems less incomprehensible than you.”
Hyperbolic geometry? Is that your way of
letting me know you’ve got a big brain?
With a roll of my eyes, I push his phone away from my face. “Sunshine, my brain is so big, it’s almost the size of your bad attitude.”
