The Watcher

6. Sweet Tooth

I swatted him with the cloth he'd discarded, the fabric lightly hitting him with a satisfying thwack. "Less sass, more scrubbing."

"I think they're more cantaloupes than tangerines," Emma said innocently as she stared at my chest.

"Emma!" I gasped with a smile, wrapping my arms around my torso.

I took a fleeting look at the bar, making sure the other customers hadn't somehow heard our conversation. It was unlikely given the din of chatter.

As my eyes briefly flashed across the room, I caught Book Boy watching us with a grin at the far side of the bar. The second our eyes met, he dropped his gaze back to the black book in front of him. If it wasn't for the fact there was no way he could hear us from that side of the bar, I could have sworn he had been listening.

Since that interaction, I watched him, and it was odd the things I learnt. When he wasn't writing in his book, he was reading it. Not in the way people read a novel or a magazine, casually flicking through pages. He read it like it a person read a textbook, or a scientific journal. It was like he dissected every word.

He seldom left his seat, despite sitting in it for up to eight hours a day. On the rare occasion he did, he always took his book with him, yet left his expensive phone unattended. Either he placed sentimental value above material worth, or he trusted those around him not to steal but not to sneak a peek at what he'd written.

Then there were the sweets. I had never really paid attention to how much he ate. It wasn't an easy thing to do somewhere like this. Each of us would refill the bowls or clear the empties, so it was difficult to pick out if a person was a gobbler or a grazer. Now I watched him, and made an effort to pay attention, I noticed Book Boy was most definitely a gobbler. A greedy one.

By Friday I'd lost track of how many bowls of sweets he'd ploughed through, but as I delivered a bowl of ready salted crisps on his table, I was shocked to see he didn't reach for them straight away.

He was lounging back in the chair, with his legs extended out in front of him, but he looked up when I spoke.

"Not hungry?" I asked.

He cast a glance at the bowl I'd put down.

"Have you got any Skittles?" he asked as he looked at the crisps with disgust.

"What's wrong with crisps?" I bit back, offended that he had the gall request a different kind of free snack. Kelly tried to preach that the customer was always right, but I'd yet to be converted.

"They're not Skittles," he said with a lopsided smile, a light dancing in his eyes in a way I hadn't seen before. He always smiled, but it never really reached his eyes like it did now. That glimmer made the bright blue sparkle like the sun bouncing off an ocean.

"They're free," I pushed, exasperated.

He blinked at me.

I looked at the shiny phone on the tabletop, and the fine navy jumper that clad his toned torso. As I did, I decided that there was another reason why he left his phone on the table but not his book. It was more than the fact he valued sentimentality above material worth. He just didn't seem to value expensive things, probably because he had no concept of what money was worth. To him the fact he was getting something for free was no different to if he had paid through the nose for it.

With that realisation fresh in my head, I looked at him, and it was like looking back at my past life. The memories it brought made my hand clench at my side.

"Order something and I'll think about bringing out a bowl of Skittles," I snapped, resting my hand on my hip.

He wasn't fazed by my change of mood.