Page 5 of Love Bound

"I brought coffee too," she adds, handing me the plate, then leaning over and grabbing two giant mismatched mugs from the metal lawn table by the front door. "It's black, but I can run over and get cream and sugar if you need it."

Another second goes by and we are bound by this food thing. I'm holding the plate and she's got the coffee.

As she pushes her way inside, she keeps talking. "I looked at your truck and figured you probably drank it black."

For some reason, this makes me laugh. There is something about my dad's truck, maybe how beat-up it is helping her guess I liked strong coffee, that's charming. She obviously anticipated my inability to cook anything with no food in the place.

"I'm surprised the electricity's on," she continues.

"Yeah, I am too. I had to keep calling. It took a while for the power company to come check out—"

She's nodding and moving toward the front of the dining area. "That'd be Noland. He's like a hundred."

"Yeah. And five feet tall. The guy's a midget."

"You mean a little person." She smiles. I can tell she's smiling even with her back to me. There’s a curve to her cheek when she turns to wipe dust off a table with her arm. "When I was a kid I thought he was an elf because of his ears." She sets the mugs down and turns to look at me.

I can't remember the guy's ears. "All I know is he decided the place wouldn’t go up in flames."

"Always a good thing," she says, then frowns. "So, you're not an electrician?"

"Hell no. I can wire a light with dimmers, but I'll have to get someone else in here to do the sprinkler system."

Stepping toward the windows facing the shore, she rubs one of the little squares layered twelve-over-twelve in dust with a finger and peers out.

"Do you know this place?”

"Here," she says, turning back to the plate of muffins. "Eat. Drink. Yeah, I do." She pauses for a sip of coffee. "I grew up around here."

There's something so familiar about her standing right in front of me, her hip out a little, arm wrapped around her stomach, the other bent and holding the hot coffee like we've chatted like this before.

She smiled. “I mean, most people have. This is not the land of transplants, like a lot of Maine.”

The coffee is good. And hot. My stomach rumbles. She hands me a muffin and goes on.

"This is a place where a lot of people never leave and families go back generations."

"Wow. So, I'm going to be an outsider forever," I say.

"Yep," she says and smiles again.

And I think: Perfect. I don't want to belong.

Instead, I bury that shit and say, "Well, guess I better make the best of it. Good to know though, not to invest too much effort."

"Well you won’t be here that long," she adds.

I can't make sense of that one. Seems a little rude after her muffins and coffee debut. I notice how the morning sunlight catches her blond hair. There are highlights in there too, really golden, and a few small curls around her face.

"Let me wipe down the booth," I say and duck in the kitchen for a second. The towel is still damp from last night's sponge bath. A single twenty-foot long booth seat tucks under those long windows. Five square Formica tables punctuate the span with three chairs each. The rest of the dining area has round tables, some turned over, some broken, with most of the chairs stacked in the far corner.

She gestures to the booth as I finish wiping down the black little spindly chair.

"Thanks. So where do you live?" She leans against the table. It scoots suddenly and she starts to fall backward, but I grab her by the arm. "Whoa. These used to be bolted to the floor," she says.

At once, I see her slightly unhinged, a little out of her element. Something just happened that she had no control over. Nothing she could anticipate, and it threw her.

I know a lot about anticipation and control. I used to get paid a lot of money to do both.