Chapter 21: Pick Your Face

On day fifty-eight, Asher put a coffee in front of me at the café.

Then he sat down across from me.

It was my order, with the cinnamon.

"You remembered," I said.

"I've been practicing. The barista keeps a score."

He turned his own cup in a slow circle, which was how I knew he had a speech.

"I told Caleb on day two that I'd stop asking you out," he said.

"You did?"

"I waited until now to tell you. I wanted to do it without sulking."

"How's that going?"

"I'm sulking a little."

"That's allowed."

"You asked me to ask you one thing you didn't already know." He looked up. "I asked, and your answer wasn't about me."

"Asher."

"It was about somebody who keeps showing up with a thermometer."

"I'm not done. I like you. I like the coffee thing and the knuckle thing."

His mouth tipped.

"I'd still bite anyone who made you cry. But I know whose face you look for when you walk into a room."

I couldn't answer that.

He drank his coffee in four swallows and left a large tip.

Then he kissed the top of my head.

At the door he turned.

"For the record," he said, "I can stand you."

"Understood," I said, and my eyes were wet.

In the seminar that afternoon, Elliott and Valerie sat side by side in the third row.

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