More Than This: Contemporary Christian Romance Novel

by Stallings, Staci

  That feeling. He looked up and caught her watching again. It jump-started his heart. “What?” Somehow he got the word out before she managed to get back to her reading.

  “Nothing.” And just like that, she was reading again.

  He puzzled over her for another long moment and then went back to his story.

  … the humidity. That word was underlined in red as were so many others on his screen, but he pressed on. Jasmine slipped out of her jeans and let them where they landed. She had just slid her top over her head when a blaring noise rattled her frazzled nerves. “What now?”

  If he did it on purpose or if he had felt her watching again, Jake wasn’t sure, but when he glanced up, her eyes were right there. He sighed and leaned back in his chair. “You know, you can ask more questions without saying a word than anyone I’ve ever met.”

  Her face creased. “Sorry.” She put her head down. “I’m reading. I’ll be good. I promise.”

  Jake realized then that they only had a precious few minutes anyway. Did he really want to spend it in some fantasy world? Granted fantasy had always worked out so much better than reality, but it was rude to ask her over and then to completely ignore her. He crossed his arms, feeling the heaviness of the black wool coat. “So, tell me about college.”

  When she looked up, it was as if she had no clue who he was speaking to. “C-college? Um. I don’t know. What do you want to know?”

  He wasn’t sure he’d known he would have to be specific. Pulling forward on his elbows, he put his chin on his hands. “I don’t know. What’s your major?”

  “My— um. English. Literature. Writing. That kind of thing.” She swiveled her head around as if afraid she would be caught talking to him. “Uh.” With that half-syllable, she stood. “Break’s over. I’d better let you get back to your—” Her gaze slipped from his to his computer and back again. “—shapes.” She smiled, kind of and then jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “I’d better get back. Thanks for…” But even she had a hard time finding something to be thankful for.

  “Thank you,” he said, and strangely, he found he meant it. “Maybe we could do it again some time.”

  And stranger still, she smiled and nodded. “I’d like that.”

  It was the oddest feeling in the world. They hadn’t said ten words to each other in her time of sitting there, and yet, Liz couldn’t quite get the spell of him to let her go. It took a tug of her willpower to get her moving again. She looked down at his empty coffee cup. “Would you like a refill?”

  He followed her gaze. “You know where I could get one?”

  This time her smile was bright. “I do. Wait right there. Don’t move.” She took her book with her over to the counter and stowed it. Knowing Mia would give her the third degree or worse if she stopped, she didn’t. Instead, she grabbed up the coffee pot and headed right back.

  At his table, she picked up the cup and filled it, still wondering as she had the entire time she sat with him what he was working on. He wasn’t working now. He was watching her with those eyes that assessed her to the point they made her hands shake dangerously.

  She set the cup down with care and slid it across to him. “Do you need anything else?”

  The thought drifted through Jake that she really shouldn’t ask that question. “No. I’m fine. But thanks. And thanks again for before.” He took a sip, but when he set the cup down, his heart took over for his brain. “I’m sorry I’m not very good company.”

  “Oh, that’s fine. I’m sure you weren’t counting on someone intruding on your quiet time. Believe me, I totally understand.”

  “Oh, yeah?” He took another sip, liking it when she talked. It filled the silent corners of his soul that he tried very hard not to think about. “You like quiet time too, huh?”

  “Yeah. It’s kind of hard to read Shakespeare with scream-rock playing at mind-numbing volume downstairs.”

  “Shakespeare, huh?”

  “English.”

  It was amazing how relaxed she made him feel. “Oh. Yeah. English. So, are you a freshman? Sophomore?”

  “About to graduate. In May.”

  “Really? And then what?”

  “Graduate school, I hope. That’s the plan anyway.”

  The bells on the door jangled, and Liz jerked around. Jake followed her gaze, knowing she needed to go, but really wishing she wouldn’t.

  She turned back to him. “Um.”

  “Yeah.” He simply nodded to put a stamp on what he knew she wasn’t saying.

  Liz really wanted to tell him not to leave, that she would be back, that he should wait until after work. But all of those were stupid to say and even stupider to think. “I’d better get back to work.”

  “Looks that way.”

  She looked back at him, wishing he would find a reason she didn’t have to. “Do you need anything else?”

  “No. I’m fine.”

  Lands! That was not what she needed for him to say. Had truer words ever been spoken? “Okay.”

  Why was walking away from that table always so very hard? He was just a customer. A customer who would be gone in an hour and who might not ever even come back. “I guess I’ll see you later.”

  “Yeah.”

  And she spent the rest of the night rationalizing the irrational.

  As Jake walked home alone later, he went through all the reasons that going down the road of her would never work out. She was in college for one. College. That said things to him and about him that he really didn’t want to hear, but he knew it was impossible not to face the facts. College was out of his reach. He had known that before the guidance counselor in high school had even told him so.

  Class. School. It wasn’t his forte. Never had been. He went through all the reasons for that in his head as he did every single time the thought of college came up in his spirit, which was far too often for him. The cons lined up on the list like they had it memorized as well as he did. He couldn’t read. Okay. He could read, but it was slow going even on the best of days. Math was another challenge, but it was nothing compared with trying to put his thoughts into coherent words on a page.

  True, he thought with a hard snort, the dichotomy of that and what he was trying to do now made no sense. But that was his life. It made no sense. He had long ago stopped trying to make it to. He disappeared into the alley, liking the way the darkness swallowed him up.

  Putting a hand up on the railing, he climbed it with nearly no effort. Tomorrow was his first day off in two weeks, and he planned to get some much needed sleep. So it was good that she had cut the coffee off after her visit to his table. His blood ran hot, making the coat much too warm as he thought about her. Her. Liz. The waitress from the coffee shop on the corner.

  The one he might as well forget about ever having an interest in. Once she understood the confusing state of his pathetic life, she would run the other direction. That was sad and maybe somewhat melodramatic, but he had lived the scenario enough times to know each twist and turn, and they always wound up leading him to one place— right into the brick wall of heartache.

  He flopped into bed without bothering to undress. Laying back, he put his wrist on his forehead and stared up at the black ceiling somewhere above him. Why did life have to be so unfair? He just wanted a break. One. That’s all he asked. But what was the point of even asking? All that did was make him angrier when it didn’t work out. He sighed and blinked back the tears that made him even madder at himself. He was so weak and laughably stupid.

  No. He wouldn’t go back for her sake if nothing else. She didn’t need the millstone of his life hanging around her neck.

  As he fell asleep, he thought for one moment how pretty her neck was, and even that one thought of her settled his swirling spirit.

  Liz spent Saturday studying for her upcoming graduate entrance exam. Her roommate, Becca, had thankfully gone home for the weekend. That meant Liz had the whole apartment to herself. Well, except for her neighbors above, below, and aroun
d. Rock music blared from somewhere down the hallway. It was just enough to let her hear the beat but not enough to hear the words or other instruments.

  When the thump, thump, thump was a half-inch from driving her completely insane, she resorted to her headphones. She hated them, mostly because they made her feel cut off from the world, but her only other option was to go tell them to turn it off or down. Her mind drifted precariously over the time sometime after she had arrived that she had actually done that. It only took once.

  She knew now it was better to deal with the annoyance quietly and peacefully in her own little way. So she stuck the headphones in her ears, clicked the little iPod on, and went back to studying.

  The saxophone music filled her being, and she swayed back and forth as if pushed into motion by some unseen hand. She loved this song. It was one they played on the rotation at The Grind. That thought snagged on another, less wanted one. She wouldn’t be in today or tomorrow, and she wondered if he would. He. The stranger she didn’t even have a name for. Sitting in the corner working on his shapes. Of course, she knew he wasn’t working on shapes, but she smiled at that thought anyway. He was such an enigma. First he asked her to join him, and then he hardly talked, save for when she was about to leave.

  What did that mean anyway? That he wanted to sit with her but then got nervous? Or had he not actually wanted to sit with her but felt pressured into it? She hoped it wasn’t that though she always had such a hard time telling. Her track record spoke loudly of the fact that she was a horrible judge of guys and their intentions. Most likely she had messed up any chance she had with the stranger from the corner. Then her brain asked a most logical question: Did she want a chance with him? She didn’t even know him. And what did that even mean to want a chance? Did she? Should she?

  “Ugh! Liz! Stop it already.” She slammed her pen down onto her paper. “Shut up and get something productive done.”

  The little pep talk didn’t help, but she felt better for having given it. At least all of her would no longer be fishing in the pond called “ridiculous.”

  Jake had never been to the coffee shop on a Saturday, but his steps took him there just the same. The bright sunshine should have been warm and welcoming; however, he was much too nervous to notice. He checked his outfit such that it was in the reflection on the window. Black jeans. Not new but no obvious holes. Gray T-shirt under a short-sleeved beige unbuttoned button down with tiny red lines that made a nice grid of squares. The shoes were a problem, but they were the only ones he owned. Black clunky things that he’d bought at the second hand store for five bucks. Thankfully only he knew about the small hole underneath the toe.

  Steeling his breath and nerves, he yanked the door open, and hated how much he liked those bells. “Stay cool, Jake. Just stay cool.”

  A quick scan of the establishment told him she wasn’t on the floor or at the counter, but then again, sometimes she wasn’t. Sometimes she came in later than he got there. Maybe she was in the back, or maybe she had already been in and had left. Anxiety slithered over him as he headed over to his corner in the back. For the first time ever he almost didn’t sit there. What if he did and she didn’t see him?

  That was being completely ridiculous of course, so he slid onto the chair holding onto cool with both sweaty palms. This was going to work. It had to though he had no clue how to make it. He opened his laptop, and reality crashed in on him. It wasn’t that he wasn’t long since used to all of the red lines, but they did things to his spirit that he would never get used to.

  Quickly he read back over the previous two paragraphs. With a sigh, he realized it was worse even than he had thought. Jasmine was fighting the flames in the hotel, but it was much more like he was reading it than living it with her, through her, and that annoyed him. Why was it so clear in his head and so very, very fuzzy when he got it onto the ether?

  “Can I get you something, baby?”

  Jake’s gaze jerked up to the waitress, and he recognized her from before. She was brash, dark all over, and she had a way about her that unnerved him. “Oh. Uh. Just… coffee. Black. That’s all.”

  “Coffee. Black. Got it. Be right back.”

  “Thanks.” He pulled his gaze back to the cursor that blinked at him. Off. On. Off. On. What comes next? What word captures Jasmine’s fear without saying she was afraid? He searched, typed in one word, didn’t like that, and erased it. He was still thinking when she came back.

  She set the cup on the table and poured him some of the black pick-me-up. “Can I get you something else?”

  Somewhere between reality and fantasy Jake looked past her into the soft yellow light of the room. “You here by yourself tonight?”

  The waitress, Mia or Mai, he couldn’t quite tell looked behind her. “Oh, Heather is supposed to be in later.”

  Jake picked up the cup and took a sip. “Heather, huh? Liz isn’t coming in?” He saw but tried not to the look that crossed the waitress’s face. It held interest and a question.

  “Oh. No. Liz is off on Saturdays.”

  He nodded as his heart fell. “Of course. Can’t work all the time, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  Wanting out of the humiliating conversation, he put his gaze on his computer and tapped a button to get the shapes that now reminded him so much of her to stop sliding across his screen.

  “Well, I’d better let you get back to it,” she said with something of a nod that he returned.

  “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  The cell phone next to Liz’s computer vibrated to life, and she grabbed it up and clicked it on without bothering to see who it was. “Hell-o.”

  “Liz-bet.” Mia’s breathless greeting sat Liz upright.

  “Mi, what’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. Listen. I can’t talk long, but I thought you should know Mystery Guy is back, and he’s asking about you.”

  “What?” Surprise and excitement surged followed by futility and hopelessness. “But I’m not supposed to come in tonight.”

  “Hello. Then make something up! You forgot a book. You need your paycheck. Dang, girl, get creative if you have to.” She stopped short. “Gotta go, but get your cute little self over here now.”

  And she was gone. Liz pulled the phone from her ear and looked at it. She crooked her face thinking through the brief conversation. Mia wasn’t supposed to be using the phone for personal calls. That was against company policy. Then Liz looked at the information and realized it was worse than that. She had used her own cell phone. People got fired for that.

  Liz shook her head. “Mi, you shouldn’t be putting yourself on the line like that. You’ve got babies to think about, girl.” With a small clunk, Liz dropped the phone onto her desk. Go in? It was crazy to even think about doing that. She had studying to do. Besides, just because he asked about her didn’t mean he wanted to see her.

  Worse, it really depended on how he asked about her. Was it, “Hey, where’s your friend?” Or was it more like, “So, is your psychotic friend off tonight or what?” Mia would make no real distinction. To her a guy asking was a guy asking. But that information could mean so many, many things. The sigh escaped as Liz thought through all of the possibilities. She put her hand up to her head. Did he really want to see her? And even if he did, did that mean she should go?

  She looked down at herself and hopelessness drilled into her. She looked like she’d been through the carwash without the car. Hair up in something resembling a twisted ponytail, lounge clothes, and no make-up, it would take her an hour to get ready at least. What if she got over there and he had already left? Maybe it was best to just stay here. She could always tell Mia she was too busy to come. Granted, the lecture that would surely follow that declaration would be the longest of her life, but it might be preferable to the humiliation of showing up with no invitation to see a guy who had no real interest in her at all. He would think she was insane.

  No. If she went, she would have to t
hink up an excuse that made sense. The paycheck thing could work except that it was the 8th. Nobody got paid on the 8th. Maybe she could act like she’d just come from the movies. That was more believable as long as you didn’t know she never went to the movies. Especially not by herself. Sure, there was that one Becca had dragged her to a year ago— on the blind, double date from Hades.

  Liz let the battle wage in her heart and mind as she sat there. It was easier than making a decision. Then again, what had they been talking about in Contemporary Philosophy but how the not making of decisions was actually making a decision? Strange how she had thought that an odd concept at the time. Now that she was in the middle of it, it didn’t seem nearly so strange.

  “Fine. I’ll go. But it’s just to see Mia. If someone else happens to be there, okay.”

  The words were once again caught in the tangled dam behind his consciousness. How or why that happened, Jake never could tell. The pictures were right there in full-living color, but the words swam one way and then the other making no sense at all. He glanced over to his cup. It was empty again, but he really didn’t need any more. He’d already had four cups, and the sad fact was that his fantasy about her coming in was just that— a fantasy. It annoyed him that even his fantasies no longer worked out. He couldn’t get them right on paper. He couldn’t get them right in real life. So what good were they anyway?

  He put his hand to his head and closed his eyes, pushing the depressing thoughts back deep into his skull. There was no point in dwelling on them. They would just take him places he had sworn he would never again go. Maybe he should leave. He was getting nothing done here anyway. Unfortunately the sun hadn’t even gone down yet. That meant going back to his apartment and sitting there for hours on end, watching someone else’s dreams come to life on television. He shook his head. Life was so pointless.