She squirmed in the barstool. Her thoughts raised. Her hands trembled as she reached for her wine glass.
What was she doing? She wondered. Not for the first time. Not for the thousandth time. But here she was, as inevitably as water running downhill.
A man sat in the stool beside her. Her breath caught, heart threatening to burst from her chest. Was it . . .?
It was not. She deflated, with an ache only she could feel. The man smiled, noticing her gaze.
“Buy you a drink?” Too smooth for complete sentences, this one. She raised her wine glass at him, marveling to realize it was mostly empty.
“Why not?” The man smiled a little wider, eagerly flagging down the bartender for more.
“What do you do?” He turned to face her.
“I sit at the bar, and I wait.” She sat facing the bar still, her heart daring her to keep waiting.
“Waiting for a guy like me to buy you a drink?” She smirked at the way his words brought up butterflies in her stomach. The bad kind. The aching, longing kind.
“What kind of guy are you?”