Free I See Me by Meghan Ciana Doidge

quarter of that distance in the rain. TripAdvisor had asserted that the place was open nightly until 2:00 a.m., and the chalkboard sign in the window confirmed it.
    By the raindrops that still glistened from his cheekbones, the guy had gotten caught in the downpour for longer than I had. I felt a terribly weird impulse to pull my sleeves down over my hands and dry the rain from his face. I gripped my mug harder, as if to stop my hands from reaching for him without my permission.
    “I … I …” He stumbled over the words. “I thought with the tattoos … and I scented …”
    “Are you crazy?” I resisted the urge to tug the sleeves of my hoodie down over my arms for a completely different reason now. “Because I have enough crazy already going on in my head. I don’t need yours.”
    He hunched his shoulders as if the rain was still pouring down on him. I felt bad for snapping at him. For dumping my issues at his feet and expecting him to just deal or walk away.
    Yeah, I expected him to just walk away now.  
    He didn’t.
    “No,” he said. “I’m not crazy.”
    I risked a glance at his eyes. They were a startling blue-green — a deep aquamarine. I’d expected them to be brown by his skin tone. He was mixed race then, and more the gorgeous for it. Not that I could say the same … for some reason, whatever-kind-of-Asian-I-was mixed with whatever-kind-of-Caucasian-I-was didn’t come with the prettiest-bits-of-both-races results.
    I returned my gaze to my coffee.
    Silence stretched between us, but again he didn’t leave. I could actually hear water dripping off him. He was probably creating a pool at his feet. The waitress would come back from the kitchen and have a mess to mop up.
    “Can I buy you a piece of pie?” he asked.
    “Can you afford it?”
    “Just.”
    I nodded. I still needed to eat after all. “I like apple.”
    “With ice cream?”
    “No.”
    He stepped to the long counter that divided the seating area from the kitchen, leaned past the powder-blue vinyl-topped stools bolted there, and called into the back through the half-open swing doors. “Um, hello?”
    The waitress had served me coffee with minimal chatter immediately after I sat down. I appreciated the brief interaction, even though I’d come to the diner seeking human contact. She’d returned to texting and chatting quietly to whoever was in the kitchen. She was about the same age as me. I guess the graveyard shift fell to the youngest employee.  
    “Two pieces of apple pie, please,” he called. “One with ice cream.”
    I heard her sigh. Then she poked her head out through the swing doors and saw him. She missed her apron pocket and dropped her phone on the floor instead. Yeah, even soaking wet and — judging by his worn clothing — downtrodden, he was that beautiful.
    “Pie?” he asked again.
    The waitress glanced toward me, still dumbstruck, and then nodded. I could feel her disbelief from where I sat, but she didn’t hold my interest for more than a second.
    I studied him while his back was turned. He was wearing black-and-white Converse runners that looked vaguely new.   His hair was clipped short against his head. I wondered if it would be curly if it was longer. It was even darker than mine, and I dyed mine as black as I could get it. His accent was southern-U.S. of some kind, but I didn’t know the distinct differences. He was in his early twenties at the most.
    He turned back to the booth so quickly that he caught me looking at him.
    I didn’t look away this time. I’d said the thing about being crazy and he hadn’t laughed like I was joking. He also hadn’t walked away.
    He smiled at me. Not at the waitress, who was scrambling on the floor for her phone now. It was an easygoing, playful smile. My stomach … squirmed … or flipped … curled. I’d never felt anything like it.
    “Sit then,” I said, more gruffly than I’d intended. But then I was covering for whatever was going on with my silly