Perfect Fifths_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [35]
Jessica spots the neon sign for the Hwy. 9 Bar & Grille, pauses, almost turns toward it, then reconsiders. She doesn’t want to drink in front of Marcus. She doesn’t want alcohol to lower her defenses, loosen her tongue, lull her into saying things she doesn’t want to say. She’s not sure what she wants to say to Marcus. She wonders how long she could get away with not saying anything at all. Marcus has already tested his own mettle in this regard, having famously embarked on a silent meditation that lasted his twenty-second year. She doesn’t doubt that he could outlast her in a silent battle of wits by disarming her with a quarter-smile.
Jessica isn’t moving, so Marcus stops, too. He takes this moment of stillness to look at her, to confirm yet again that it really is her. She really is here. He contemplates her profile and notes that there is a sprinkle clinging to her jaw, a tiny pink speck desperately holding on for dear life. The sight of it makes him grin, but it’s his own laughable personification of and identification with the sprinkle that makes him snort out loud.
“What’s so funny?” Jessica asks. Her tone is more cautious than caustic.
All of this, thinks Marcus. Not ha-ha funny but strange funny. The Queens warning, hearing your name, getting run over, stalking you from afar, almost getting hauled off for loitering, being rescued by you, Jessica Darling, standing inches away from me with a pink sprinkle dangling from your pale cheek, an innocent patch of skin that I’m not allowed to reach out and touch …
“What?!”
He is standing there, staring at the sprinkle, forgetting to speak. “There’s a sprinkle stuck to your face,” he finally says.
“There is?” she says, frantically wiping all around her face with her hand, yet still missing the spot. “Where?”
He wants to free the sprinkle with his fingertip but thinks better of it. He points to the same spot on his own jaw and rubs. She mimics the gesture, and the sprinkle falls to the floor.
“There also appears to be a smudge of frosting in the corner of your mouth.”
“What?” she yelps, licking all around her mouth like a slobbery pup. “I can’t believe Sylvia didn’t tell me!”
“Who’s Sylvia?”
“The Clear Sky customer service representative,” Jessica quickly answers. “I was talking to her for, like, ten minutes, and she didn’t bother to tell me I had food all over my face.”
“And,” Marcus says, directing her attention downward to the rubber tip of her Converse sneaker, “on your shoe.”
Jessica looks down, stomps her foot and grunts. Powerless to resist the overwhelming paranoia about her deteriorating appearance, she must make an immediate detour to the nearby bathroom. “I need to use the ladies’ room. Can you wait?”
“Wait is a synonym for ‘loiter,’” Marcus replies, making Jessica smile, if not with her mouth, then with her eyes. “I’ve already set a precedent.”
“What I mean is, I don’t know what your travel plans are, if you have to be anywhere else—”
“I don’t have to be anywhere else.” Marcus waves her concerns away with his palms. “I’ve got time.”
“Are you sure?” she says in a rush as she frisks into the bathroom, not waiting to hear the answer.
“As long as it takes,” Marcus says when she’s out of earshot. “I can wait.”
eighteen
The donut, it seems, was the least of Jessica’s problems.
“Oh my God,” she groans, shivering at her cadaverous complexion in the bathroom