But I shrugged it off and had to get back to work. I never got so flushed from any of those other guys in the other towns… it was like this guy could see my thoughts and read my feelings. He looked at me with a soft smile, but went back to his business as soon as I caught on that he was smiling at me: like he was caught doing something he shouldn't have been doing.

He sat down at one of my tables and I felt an excited shiver run through me, followed by anxiety and acute fear. These emotions were all usually "buy one get one free", but with this man at my corner table, they were all over, mixed and matched to make my stomach a burning, queasy mess. Before taking his order, I rushed to the bathroom, half expecting to be sick. Pushing through the swinging doors, moving like my feet were going faster than I was, I stopped when I hit the mirrored counter and fumbled to turn on the sink. Glancing up into the mirror, I caught myself and stopped, chastising myself.

"Stop it, Jess. This is ridiculous. He can't be different, they're all the same. Just stop. You're acting so stupid…" But as I continued, I kind of gave up, my voice losing it's authority and actually giving up: I couldn't deny it, he made me feel different than anyone else, and all he did so far was smile at me.

"But those eyes, and he's just…he's not from around here, that's for certain. The jeans and the boots look kind of back-woods to me, but the hair tells me city… Oh, stop making excuses, he's interesting. There's no mistaking that. Just get out there, and prove to yourself that there is nothing new here, nothing to get all worked up about." I ran my hands under the water, splashing some onto my face and freshening up. Drying my hands off on the little apron I wore, I pushed through the swinging doors of the restroom and walked back to my tables, getting out my checkpad.

As I neared his table, I could feel something different. Comfort? No, it couldn't be. Familiarity? Who knew? Either way, I stopped at his table and asked him, "What can I get you?" I avoided looking at him, God only knows what I would have done if I looked right into his eyes again… another trip to the bathroom would have been in order, that was for certain.

"I'll just have a cheeseburger and some fries… medium well, please," he spoke. I felt my face flush again: he had some kind of accent, a very soft one. Not even accent, really. More of a way of speaking than an actual accent: like a drawl, a soft, slow cadence that just dripped with honey. I pictured a sun-drenched field of grass, just laying in the carpet of wet green waves, hearing that voice from my side as I looked over in relaxation and mellow happiness.

But all the while, I kept the same professional-waitress look of serious thought and concern I'd perfected (and had as my own normal everyday face) as I wrote down his order and focused on the task at hand. "Drink?" I couldn't even form full sentences now. Great.

"Can I just have some coffee, please? Decaf, I want to be able to sleep tonight," he laughed softly, almost to himself as he looked up and I looked down. Our eyes met and it was nothing else. The rest of the room faded away and I felt the breeze of that field I was daydreaming about seconds ago. I could smell the grass, I could even hear his voice speaking to me in love and lazy dozing in the sun…For some reason, it was like I knew he heard the wind rustling the trees behind us too. He saw the dew on the grass tangling in our hair and felt the warmth of the sunshine on our faces.

His jaw was open, but he wasn't speaking. I heard a dish fall to the floor behind me and jumped, breaking out of the little trance we were in with a gasp. He held out his hands as I looked behind me and instinctively bent down to start cleaning it up, desperate for a distraction. I had to stop thinking about those things, they weren't right.

In my daze, I must have forgotten that I wasn't immune to sharp slivers of ceramic plate and sliced my hand wide open, gasping at the sudden shock of pain it sent through me. The customer who'd dropped the plate had bent down to clean as well, and my mystery customer stood up behind me as I cried out in pain. I fell back to kneel, resting on my heels and cradling one wounded hand in the other, the blood beginning to seep out through my fingers.

Voices of the manager, the customer, polite chatter, and I realize that I'm suddenly standing at the door to the kitchen, my mystery customer resting his hands on my shoulders, waiting for the manager to come back out with the dustpan so he can corner him and tell him to pay attention to his employee here, she's hurt, Mister…I hear him speaking, but it's all a blur: his hands are resting on my shoulders and that's all I feel. Not even the pain of a gouge in my hand can detract from the electric shocks that are being sent through my skin. I begin to feel light headed and look around me for a place to sit as the room begins to spin: the loss of blood was starting to get significant. I begin to sit, whether there's a chair under me or not, I have no idea. But as I do, I realize that I'm sitting down back against my customer, nearly into his lap. And for the first time in almost 7 years, I'm not scared or anxious or anything.

Normally, I would have jumped back up, come to my senses and run to the bathroom to wash and change my clothes (since I'd always carried an extra set of clothes just in case of emergencies like this), thinking, irrationally, that there may have been a chance that he could have some kind of contamination…

Nothing. There was nothing. I just stopped, apologized in mumbles, and found a chair to sit in, resting my head on my free hand, steadying the world and my head. I couldn't tell if it was the wooziness from his touch or the loss of blood, but I was losing it, and fast.

I heard the manager say something about "She'll be fine, just go back to your meal, everything is okay…" and then another, rougher set of hands on my shoulders. The manager, Don. He helps me up and I realize: I'm still at work, I have to jut go and make my money, do my job, that's the end of that.

So I stood up and looked back at my customer, who was watching me carefully and eyeing Don, who was walking away with his drink in his hand, mumbling about "losses".

"All he cares about is money, huh?" he asks me incredulously.

I walk away before I realize what I'm doing and shrug, saying, "It's business, I guess."

**

Cut to later on that night, I'm sitting in my customer's truck, leaning my head back against the window, holding my bleeding hand up over my heart as my customer had suggested. (I'm still calling him "my customer" because up till this point, we hadn't been properly introduced.) Here's how I got here:

Don had given me the rest of the night off shortly after the plate incident, partly because of my condition, but mostly because a few customers had threatened to leave if he didn't take care of my hand, saying it was "Bad for business to have a wounded waitress". God forbid.

My customer had offered, as soon as Don gave me the night off and after he used the restroom quickly, to take me to the hospital to get my hand stitched up, and I agreed. I had no way of getting to the hospital, if I even knew where it was in the first place.

"It's the least I can do…" he said, trailing off, meaning I was to give him my name.

"Jessica" I said, wincing as I sat in the passenger's seat, using my wounded hand absent-mindedly helping myself up.

"Oh, careful, sit with your hand up over your heart, it'll stop the bleeding quicker," he gushed as he helped buckle my seatbelt, grazing over my thighs. I looked on as the electric shocks went through me again at his touch, and again marveled at how it was of no importance that he touched me there.

On any other day, if it were any other guy, I would have to go change my clothes and take a shower just like I would have if I'd sat down on his lap by accident like that before. But it just felt good this time, no anxiety attached.

As he closed my door and rushed over to the driver's side, climbing in, he continued from before, "Jessica, huh? That's a beautiful name." He started the truck and pulled out of the parking lot, looking over at me and smiling kindly before pulling onto the highway. "I'm Vann."

So here I am, back at the beginning. I closed my eyes and rested my head against the window behind me, repeating his name, as if testing out the water of a swimming pool. "That's very interesting… is it short for something?" I made small talk, immediately feeling at ease, but still fluttery as I had before. Images of our field and whiffs of our breezes wafted by me as we drove.

I heard a clunk and looked up to see Vann tossing a small flask onto the dashboard in front of me, onto a pile of papers and other odds and ends. "Anything good?" I asked, just passing time and trying not to let it out that I wanted to share all my dreams with him, that I'd seen him before in a dream and knew that we were pre-ordained to do all this: but instead I concentrated on his flask. Wrong move.

It put him into a panic almost immediately. "Nothing, nothing at all, actually, let me get that back," he said in a rush as he leaned over and took it back, as if he reconsidered something at the last minute. I chalked it up to my being woozy from the injury and just shrugged and rested again.

Two hours later and I'm stitched up, back in Vann's truck and relaxed even more from the Percoset they prescribed me at the emergency room. That was how we met.