“Really.”
He sighed. “Well, I like it.”
“Someone has to.”
“Ouch,” he said, but smiled anyway.
He set his drink down and glanced at his laptop when a ping sounded. I would know that ping from anywhere. It was an instant message, or an IM. Fang and I had used IMs often in the past. The big blond writer ignored the IM. On impulse, I reached out with my mind to see if I could get a read on him and was surprised that he was completely closed off to me. Another immortal? Interesting, as only immortals were closed off to me.
He nodded after a moment and said, “Yeah, you seem familiar. Actually, you seem really, really familiar.”
“I bet you say that to all the girls.”
“No,” he said. “Just the ones who sit across from me at Starbucks and who look so damn familiar that it’s driving me crazy.” He paused and pretended to think about it. “So, I guess maybe once a day.”
I laughed. No, I snorted, which made him laugh. I heard Tammy giggling behind us. My telepathic daughter would be picking all of this up. Yes, my kids are weird. And, no, I wouldn’t trade them for the world.
“Did I used to date you?” I suddenly asked.
He laughed some more and looked me over again. To the betterment of his health, he didn’t linger on my boobs this time. Good boy. Someone raised him well. He said, “Oh, I would remember if I used to date you.”
“Is that a compliment?” I asked
“Very much so.”
“Good, then I won’t have to give you a public nugie.”
“A public nugie?”
“Yeah, you want one after all?”
He raised his hand and laughed hard. Easy to get along with. Effortless familiarity. God, I knew him from somewhere. I tried again to penetrate his thoughts. No luck. An immortal? Geez, he didn’t seem immortal. He seemed very normal. Too normal.
When he was done laughing, he said, “You sound kind of badass.”
“I have to be.”
“And why’s that?”
“I’ve got two kids.”
He nodded. “Mad mom in minivan and all that?”
“Close,” I said, thinking of my minivan parked just outside the doors here, a minivan with a fresh dent along the passenger side fender, a dent that was the result of me backing into a shopping cart. Lord knows my inner warning system goes haywire when someone has ill intentions for me, but far be it to alert me when I’m about to put a $700 dent in my van.
Stupid warning system.
I studied him some more. The beard. The blue eyes. The chipped front teeth. The overbite. Jesus, this was driving me crazy.
“It’s driving you crazy, isn’t it?” he asked, grinning. He seemed to be enjoying this a hell of a lot more than I was. The bastard.
“Bonkers,” I said. I chewed my lip. Tapped my nails on the circular, slightly scarred table. I asked him where he went to high school. He told me. No dice. But his high school hadn’t been very far, just a city away.
“What year did you graduate?” he asked.
I told him. He shook his head, reached for his iced coffee. When he was done sipping from it, he set it back into the wet ring. Bullseye.
We next went through friends, jobs, boyfriends, and girlfriends. There was no connection anywhere. No friends of friends. Nothing. His name, I learned, was Jon.