“They’re regulars, and you see that little one in the pink dress and her braids in Minnie Mouse ears? It’s her birthday, and she specifically requested to come eat here. We’ve got a wait time of about forty-five minutes, and her mom was saying they might just have to go somewhere else because the kid is hungry and grumpy. There’s a man sitting at a four-person table who was going to have the food I just put in front of him wrapped up so he could give them his table, but I felt bad. I asked him if he’d be willing to share with someone who probably wouldn’t even notice him, and he was game. So…could I set him up next to you? I’ll give you a complimentary drink.”

Cosima smiled. This was one of the reasons she loved family-run establishments. Jules took giving good customer service very seriously and always did her best to go above and beyond for their regulars.

“You know you don’t have to give me a complimentary anything,” she said. “I don’t mind at all. Besides, you're right about me not even noticing him for how good this damn book is.”

Jules flashed her a grateful smile before moving to the other end of the restaurant. The man was sitting with his back turned, so she couldn’t decipher much about him other than he was Black and that his hair was cut into a low fade. Cosima turned her attention back to her book, picking up where she’d left off in the middle of a heated fight between the lead characters. She hadn’t been lying when she told Jules she probably wouldn’t even notice her prospective tablemate for how captivated she was by the book.

She was, however, dead wrong. It seemed like all she could do was notice the man. She became hyperaware of his presence right away. His cologne was citrusy, topped off with bold, spicy notes that floated across her senses, causing her to lift her eyes from her e-reader to be met with… Wow. She had to command her eyes to move away from the man who stood at the table dressed in a red sweater that she briefly and immediately imagined peeling off him. He was skinnier than the men she usually went for, but the magnetic pull she felt for him had her remembering when Audrey teased that skinny guys were skinny because all their weight went to one place and one place only.