Breakfast on Tuesday

8. Damaged girl

After offering to rock my world, Dante summoned Annabella over to our table as if this was an ordinary Tuesday morning. Maybe it was for him but it certainly wasn't for me.

This was the first time I found myself sitting across a devilishly handsome man in a fancy restaurant while he watched me eat. My movements were slower, calculated as I tried not to make a mess or any piggy chewing noises.

"I'd like a cup of coffee, black with two sugars," he said when Annabella approached our table.

"Please?"

His eyes narrowed a fraction. "Please."

Annabella nodded and for the first time, I noticed the row of earings climbing up and even piercing through the cartilage of her right ear where she had her long black hair tucked behind it.

"And a stack of pancakes?" she asked. "They're your favorite." She smiled sweetly at Dante.

So he loved pancakes? Cool. File that under solving the mystery of Dante 101.

Dante's eyes softened, and, oh my, it was a drastic change compared to the Arctic blocks of ice with bone freezing capabilities I usually saw floating behind his hard gaze whenever he looked at me.

"They're your favorites too, Anna. If you're craving them, all you had to do was make some, or ask me to make some for you."

"Didn't have much of an appetite, first day and all. But the scent of the French toast left a gaping hole in my stomach. I could swallow all the trees in the world right now and still not be full."

That couldn't possibly be a good thing. Maybe Anna had a worm or a parasite she didn't know about. Imagine eating pancakes on a regular while still looking like a top model. There had to be some form of parasitic activity at play here.

I stared between Anna and Dante, still trying to figure out what their relationship was to one another. It wasn't exactly the romantic kind, but they were unquestionably close.

Dante ran his fingers through his hair, casually, something he did as naturally as breathing. How could a movement so small and so meaningless cause my heart to malfunction like traffic lights at a busy intersection?

Naturally, after such an unusual spectacle, chaos ensued. But instead of cars crashing into each other, my heart slammed against my ribs with enough force to kill an elephant.

Goodness gracious, I had to get it together! This fixation with every move Dante made couldn't be a good thing.

Was it like that for other people when they felt intense attraction for someone else? Did he feel the same way I did? Did he notice the way I blinked like Bambi in his presence and bit my lip whenever he said something out of bounds?

No one ever told me being attracted to a man was this exhausting.

Dante's voice broke through my wandering thoughts, the vibrations of his words begging for my attention.

"Thank you, Anna. I'm sorry our first day isn't what you envisioned. You must be bored out of your mind."

"It's the snow," she said. "That's why they're not coming. The news said this is the heaviest snowfall Barcelona has seen in over a decade. Some are even calling it a snowstorm."

I looked outside and to my surprise, the snow was already ten centimeters high, and more kept on falling from the sky. I had never seen anything so beautiful in my life! The tree branches were painted white and all the roofs and balconies had a layer of snow covering them just like in a snow globe. The handlebars and the seat of my bike were covered with snow as well.