I look…respectable. Maybe even hot, especially if I toss my hair over my shoulder and slick on some nude lip gloss. I hope he’ll take me seriously and want to bone me at the same time.
I make some last minute adjustments, ignore the texts coming in from Nicola and Stephanie and Bram who are all wishing me luck (and therefore making this out to be a bigger deal than it actually is), and make my way across the streetcar tracks to the ferry building.
Blue Bottle Coffee is an SF institution and kind of a hipster mecca, and just as I suspected, there’s a giant line snaking out into the building’s airy hall. The café attached has limited seating, but I was hoping that once we got our coffees we could go outside and stare at the ferries and the Bay Bridge. I mean, pretend to stare at the ferries and the Bay Bridge, while I’ll be scoping out his ass. Thank god for dark sunglasses.
But for the life of me, I don’t see Lachlan anywhere.
I casually fish my phone out of my purse to check, but there’s nothing on the screen except for my Orphan Black wallpaper. I get in line for coffee instead and hope that I’m not being stood up.
I’m almost at the cashier—five minutes have crawled by and I want to stab everyone in the line with a stir stick—when I feel a presence to the side of me. It’s more than a presence. I feel eclipsed.
“Kayla?” Just one rough, Scotch-soaked word and I’m dessert all over again.
Play it cool, play it cool.
I turn to face him. I look up. And up. And I give him the biggest grin in the world. I’m surprised my tongue doesn’t loll out of my mouth.
“Oh, hi!” I say, way too enthusiastically. “Lachlan, right?”
He frowns. Obviously not endeared by my raging awkwardness.
“Uh, yeah. Sorry I’m late. Still finding my way around.”
I know I should look away. Say something else, even. Maybe, “It’s not a problem, what would you like to drink?”
But I can’t. I am rendered speechless by this man. I am Jell-O, putty, and other soft, moldable substances. I am anything but Kayla Moore when I am around Lachlan McGregor.
So I stare at him. Black jeans, nicely fitted, a dark grey flannel shirt that looks cozy enough to sleep in and plays up the breadth of his chest and shoulders. In the natural light of the ferry building, his eyes are lighter, leaning more towards grey-green, like the water of San Francisco Bay. The more he frowns at me, his lightly tanned forehead scrunching together into deep, craggy lines, the more I like it. I feel like I’m being examined. Scrutinized. And he looks rough. Dangerous. I want him to spill all his secrets.
“Miss?”
I barely hear the words uttered from behind me. Lachlan looks over my shoulder, then tilts his head at me.
“You’re wanted,” he says in his thick brogue.
“Oh?” I ask coyly.
He jerks his chin at the barista at the counter. “It’s your turn.”
Right. That. I smile again and I know it reads pure goof. So much for being sexy. Or even tolerable.
I turn and give the barista my attention. I quickly order an almond milk latte for myself.
“What would you like?” I ask Lachlan.
“Tea, black,” he answers.
“Oooh, black tea, living dangerously,” I tease him.
He doesn’t smile back. He just stares at me, brow furrowed, like I’m too stupid to live.
Well isn’t this going just great? I remind myself that I’m not here to win Lachlan over, to be sexy, cute, funny, or anything that I normally am. I’m here to write about Bram’s stupid charity. I find myself cursing the Scot once again.
I pay and then step off to the side while we wait for our drinks.
Lachlan reaches into his jeans and pulls out two rumpled dollar bills, holding it out for me.
“What’s this?” I ask.
“For the tea,” he says gruffly and shakes it at me.
“Thanks,” I tell him, “but it’s on me. Don’t worry.”
He grunts something then reaches over to the counter and sticks the money in the tip jar, which gets an appreciative thank you from the overworked barista.
Thankfully he gets his tea right away and my latte doesn’t take long either, so we don’t have to stand around awkwardly while I think of things to say. I spent all morning going over questions I was going to ask him, but now that he’s here, standing in front of me, I can barely remember where I work.
“So,” I say to him, wishing I had wrote my questions down on my phone instead of on the notepad. That I forgot at the office. Of course. “Do you want to take a stroll outside?”
He nods, taking a sip of his tea, his eyes darting everywhere else except at me.
I clear my throat and we walk away from the coffee shop and past the shops. It’s actually a good place to meet someone you don’t know—there’s lots to look at.
But of course all I want to do is look at him, even though I get the feeling that my eyes constantly roving all over him isn’t that appreciated. It’s just that it’s hard when you’re walking beside a beast of a man. I feel so tiny in his shadow.
“Have you done interviews before?” I ask.
He gives me a sidelong glance. “Have you?”
I grimace, feeling sheepish. “Uh, well, not really. This is my first one. I mean, legitimately. In university I wrote for the school paper, but that was a fucking long time ago.”
He nods. Another sip of tea. “Bram mentioned that.”