New Fic-Wishful thinking -2

I turned on the overhead light in the pantry, looking over my shoulder as if I had something to hide. Dad had shoved his cardboard box into my hands, telling me to take it back here, to the closest thing the restaurant had to a private space.

Sighing, I pried open the flaps of the box. Crumpled newspaper nestled around a gleam of metal. Puzzled, I lifted out a brass lamp. Its sides swelled gently, tarnished in the light from the bare bulb. The spout was delicate, almost fragile. I held the oil lamp above my head, looking for some mark, some explanation, some reason that my father would have given me such a gift.

Before I could find anything, though, the door to the pantry opened. Without conscious thought, I shoved the lamp onto a high shelf, hiding it behind a row of industrial-size canisters of salt.

Rob ducked in. "Oh," he said.

Trust me. He's usually much wittier.

"Hi," I said, suddenly feeling like we were back at the eighth grade Harvest Dance. Except I didn't have braces. And he had grown into his comically huge puppy-dog hands and feet. And there was something wrong, something way beyond typical tween embarrassment.

"Your father sent me to get a bottle of Grey Goose."

I wrinkled my nose, more at my father's interference than at Rob's gullibility. "This is a hamburger joint," I pointed out. "Dad doesn't stock Grey Goose."

Nevertheless, Rob seemed determined to find the vodka on the shelves. He looked intently at every horizontal surface in the pantry. Looked intently, in fact, at everything but me.

I stepped toward him and settled my fingers on his wrist. Maybe it was my imagination, but his pulse leaped like a team of wild horses. "Hey," I said, forcing myself to smile. "It's okay. Whatever's wrong, it's me you're talking to."

"That's the problem," he said, and he didn't need to use his superb acting ability to convey the fact that he was miserable. Honestly, totally miserable.

A shiver crept down my spine, as if someone had opened the door to our first Minnesota blizzard of the season. "Rob, are you all right?"

"I'm fine," he said immediately, with the same gruff disregard for his own well-being that had served him so well in our high school production of South Pacific. He had played Emile de Becque (with a lot of makeup.) I had played Nellie Forbush.

"What's going on, then?" I forced myself to sound like the incarnation of reason.

"Kelly." He finally met my eyes for the first time. "I am so sorry." He raised a hand to my cheek. I knew what his palm would feel like against my skin. I knew exactly how he would cup my face, just before he leaned in for a kiss. He shook his head, though, and backed away, dropping his hand awkwardly to his side. "You're going to hate me for what I have to say."