6:49 pm
He wasn't particularly famous, but in Branchside Heights, he might as well have been.
The usual, conspicuous hush overwhelmed Bentley's as soon as he stalked inside, setting off the little brass bell that hung on the door frame. Except, as he took what had become his usual seat in the little corner booth by the window, the quiet seemed especially obvious; this was the third time that he had visited Bentley's that week.
Undeniably, Bentley's little bistro depended on the patronization of locals and regulars, but regulars to Bentley's were the working men and schoolkids that had lived in Branchside their entire lives, not famous YouTubers having an early-onset midlife crisis.
When I expressed this to Georgie, she smacked me in the shoulder.
"It is not a midlife crisis, Nova," she whispered harshly at me, stuffing her orders pad back into her apron. "He needs a break. And he deserves one too. He explained it in the video."
I propped my elbows on the counter and and cast my eyes toward his corner. He had his gaze trained on his mobile, per usual, and David drifted over to serve him.
I said, "You know I haven't watched that video."
"Well you should," Georgie told me. She tugged a cleaning rag out of her belt loop and began to wipe down the granite counter-top, bumping my elbows out of the way as she did. "Everyone in town's seen it. It's only courteous of you to watch it."
I snorted, shocked. "Courteous of me? Courteous of me to spend my time watching an eight minute video in which a British YouTuber attempts to justify why he won't be working for the next three months?--"
"Shh!" Georgie snapped, her little pale hands flashing up to clasp around my wrists. Wisps of her curly, ginger hair slipped free from the bun she'd knotted on the top of her head and her restless, brown eyes narrowed at me reproachfully. "Honestly, Nova, you know nothing about him. You don't have to be so rude."
"Georgie, you know nothing about him either," I whispered back. "You weren't even subscribed to him until he declared his little vacation and popped up here in the middle of nowhere."
"My brothers have watched his videos for years, actually."
"Yes, your bratty teenaged brothers who have a thing for hitting on me and taunting stray cats with Nerf guns. Doesn't that say a lot about him?"
I looked down at Georgie as she cast her eyes over at him, his attention still given solely to his phone. David had taken his order and was refilling the coffee cups of a couple seated a few booths over. She said, "He didn't teach them to be idiots. They just are."
Before I could say anything, Georgie turned back round to me and continued. "And you don't know him at all, anyway, Nova, I've just said this. It isn't fair of you to even try to judge him. If he's come all the way to Branchside, you know he needed this."
That was true. Branchside was arguably the smallest of small towns; the definition of the narrow line that exists between rural society and contemporary suburbia. In fact, with the new stranger's presence, Bentley's was busier than it had ever been before, with nearly thirteen of the fifteen tables full of chattering diners. I wasn't complaining; all of the foot-traffic was tip money in my pocket.
I was saving up to get the hell out of there.
"Should've stayed in London," I muttered. "There's nothing for him here."
"Maybe nothing is what he needs for a little while."
My gaze found his body once more. The orange light of the afternoon skies silhouetted him against the window. From the talk I'd heard in the town, which came mainly from the elementary kids up to those who attended my community college, he'd been a lot of places and done a lot of things. I'd come to know who his closest friends were and how popular he was and the uproar that had come from the announcement of his hiatus. Surely there was a lot on his mind. So maybe, for once, Georgie McAnderson was right about something. Maybe "nothing" was exactly what he needed.
And if that was the case, Branchside Heights was perfect for him.
"So... is there a reason that my entire staff is huddled up in the corner gossiping?" David approached us with a friendly grin on his face like always. He set the empty coffee carafe on the counter beside us.
"Dammit, David, I just wiped that." Georgie plucked the carafe off of the granite as soon as David had set it down, grimacing at the coffee stain ring it'd left on the surface.
David chuckled airily. Everything David seemed to do was heedless and light. He said, "Wipe it again, then. And then pick up the orders that Jeffrey's making in the kitchen. These people want their meals hot, you know."
I raised an eyebrow and glanced down innocently at my sneakers. "But these people aren't really here for the meals, are they?"
David paused, looked at me and then at the corner booth. Then he said to me, "As long as they're coming in, I don't give a damn what they're here for. But I do know that you're here to work. So go fill up the ice water pitcher and top off, please."
I locked my eyes with David's brown ones, sunk deep into his face beneath fifty-year-old wrinkles and unkempt eyebrows. And with a too-sweet-to-be-serious smile and a sarcastic salute, I chorused, "Yes, sir."
I slinked around the counter to grab a clear pitcher from the sink, scooping ice cubes into the glass before adding water from the purifier faucet. Georgie picked up some plates for table seven--my fifteen-year-old neighbor and a couple of his friends--and I followed her out onto the floor, stuffing napkins and ketchup packets into the pockets of my apron as I went.
Filling up water glasses was easy work. You just smiled, excused your reach, and pretended to be interested in the small talk your neighbors attempted to make. "Oh Nova, how's your mother?" Just fine, thanks. "Good afternoon, love. School's going well?" As well as it could go, I suppose. "So has living on your own gotten to be too much yet, kiddo?" Well, you know, Mr. Braxton, I'm getting by!
And then I got to table fifteen. His table.
At first I hadn't seen a water glass on the table before him, so I'd nearly turned to go back to the counter. But risking a glance up at his face, I realized that it was in his hand, resting against his lips. So, awkwardly, I approached the back corner booth--the booth typically avoided by the regulars because of its tendency to attract cobwebs. But Branchside's newest celebrity didn't seem to mind.
I came up beside him slowly, then stopped when I'd reached the table. He didn't look up at me. One of his hands held his glass to his face, and the other held his phone, into which he was unshakably absorbed. And I used the frozen moments to get a good look at his face for the first time. Blue eyes, blonde hair, unshaven skin. I rested the water pitcher on the table, and at once, appearing violently torn from his reverie, he looked up at me.
"Water?" I asked benignly.
He brought his glass down onto the wooden table surface, muttered, "Sure."
Pouring water into a glass had never been such a big deal, but in that instance, it felt like the weight of the world weighed down on my shoulders. It must've been the way that this man had done, had seen, had lived everything I aspired to live. He had seen the world the way I wanted to see it, and it was imperative that I didn't corrupt any aspect of what he was, even if that only meant not spilling a single drop of water on his hand or on the table.
It felt like I was standing there filling his glass for an eternity. I felt the burn of his gaze on me the entire time.
It was almost like he knew.
But what was there to know?
It struck me as incredulous that I seemed to be the only resident in Branchside Heights that hated actually being a resident in Brachside Heights. Everyone else living in town was too happy-go-lucky, too okay with the idea that their kids would be friends with their neighbor's kids, and their kids' kids would be the same way. But I didn't want my legacy rooted into the gravel roads of boring old Branchside, where the biggest news was only ever the lottery and town elections. And as if my innermost thoughts had been invaded, the British stranger seated at the back booth in the bistro that I'd worked at since I was seventeen stared into me like he knew exactly how I felt. He knew I needed to escape.
And the fact that only a semi-celebrity from across the ocean could understand my predicament reiterated to me that the world was far bigger than freaking Branchside.
I finished filling his glass and began to step away from the booth. At last, he looked away from me, exhaled something that sounded like "thank you." And without even telling him that he was welcome, I drifted dazedly away from the table.
+
[A/n: Yes, lovelies. Interesting developments... I didn't want to throw you into the story without a little background on our protagonists. Real action to come ;) ]