Great Big Beautiful Life(18)

Hayden tosses another quick look my way.

“I can be,” I promise, flipping open the proportionally gigantic menu.

“Egg whites, wheat toast, and the seasonal fruit, please,” he tells her, and her large brown eyes swivel to me next.

“Peaches and cream French toast,” I tell her.

“Have that right out for ya.” She walks away.

“Did you notice she never starts speaking at the beginning of the sentence?” he asks, ducking his head and dropping his voice.

I mirror his posture. “How many times did you get the corner booth, Hayden?”

His lips twitch downward. “If you want to move tables—”

“Oh, I don’t want to move tables,” I say. “I’m just fascinated by the way you see the world.”

He leans back against the shiny pink banquette. “It’s the most protected seat in the house. You have a view of every entrance and exit.”

“You’re by the toilets,” I add.

“You can see the server, anywhere in the restaurant, if you need to flag them down.”

“You’re by the toilets,” I say.

“Or alternately, if I sat where you’re sitting, no one would be able to see my face without trying pretty hard,” he says.

“You’re by the toilets,” I say, “and also, are you on the run?”

“I’m private,” he says.

“And I’m the one with the idiosyncrasies,” I tease.

One of his brows arches upward. He opens his mouth to retort, then shuts it again as our server reappears, flipping our mugs right side up and filling them from the steaming pot in her hand.

“Thank you,” Hayden says stiffly.

“?’S no problem at all, sweetie.” She retreats again, pausing at the counter to top off the bearded man’s mug.

Hayden hesitates, considering something for a while, and I fight every impulse to rush him. He really does remind me of some huge, wild animal. Not dangerous, but skittish.

“I grew up in a sort of…public family,” he settles on.

Now I can’t help it: I lean forward eagerly. “Please tell me the Andersons had a reality show.”

He cracks a smile. At least I think it’s a smile. It could also be a wince. “Not that public. My dad was the mayor.”

“The mayor,” I repeat. “The mayor of Indiana!”

“Well, since states don’t have mayors,” he says, “no. But the mayor of a small town in Indiana, yeah.”

I scoot to the edge of my seat, only to remember that our combined height makes such an arrangement inadvisable. Instead, I pull my legs up onto the bench and sit cross-legged, as far forward against the table as I can. “So you learned to be private from them?”

“No,” he says. “I learned to be perfect from them.”

I must be making a face—probably another is this a surprise party, just for me? smile of delight, because what he’s just said is so utterly ridiculous.

“I didn’t say I still do it,” he says.

I stifle a laugh.

“Oh, come on.” He scoots forward now, our knees knocking even with my adjusted posture. “I’m not so bad that you can’t imagine me making a good impression.”

“I didn’t say you were bad at all!” I cry. “But no one’s perfect.”

“Oh, trust me,” he says. “My dad is. And my brother.”

“Is your brother the mayor now?” I ask.

“Worse,” Hayden tells me. “Louis is the local pediatrician. And his wife is the head of the school board.”

Another cackle of delight escapes me.

“Unless I joined the Peace Corps,” he says, “I was never going to live up to that.”

“Okay, well, one,” I begin, holding up a finger, “you won a fucking Pulitzer. I doubt they’re wringing their hands over how to shepherd the Anderson family black sheep back onto the right path.”

“Maybe not now,” he allows, “but for the ten years prior, yeah, I’m pretty sure they were.”

“And two,” I cut in, “that’s pretty much a perfect segue into the fact that my sister actually, literally is in the Peace Corps.”

He stares at me. “You’re kidding.”

Another round of exhausted giggles ripples through me. “I’m not. She’s, like, helping combat food shortages in another country right now, and I’m—to quote my mother—‘still doing that celeb gossip stuff.’?”

His forehead wrinkles. “But you don’t write celebrity gossip.”

“Right, but what I do write is close enough that I can assure you, my mother will never feel a pressing need to understand the difference.”

He shakes his head, evidently confused. “But she reads your work.”

Inside my chest, it feels like a pinprick puncturing a balloon. “No, not really. I mean, the first couple pieces when I got the job, yeah. But it’s just ‘not really her thing.’ And I get it. I mean, I’d actually probably prefer she not read it, rather than force herself to and then pretend, badly, that she liked it.”

“The Scratch is a prestigious outlet,” he says. “They pay well and have great subscription numbers.”