Setting Me On Fire

14

Cafe

Outside The Plaza Hotel, it began drizzling and Alexander and I stood on the sidewalk. George stood beside me with an umbrella. 

A couple of other limos drove up, taking Christopher's guests away and into the night. "Tonight was fun," Alexander says and I look up at him. "You know, I haven't thanked you for helping us out with our plans to start a soccer team."

I shrug. "I'll do anything for Marco."

He nods a small smile on his face. "I see, and I think that's sweet." I don't know why I was just standing there, but something told me he wasn't going to get into our limo.

"Are you taking a taxi?" I ask, and he nods. "I'll wait with you." I don't know why I decided on this, but there I was doing just that. Maybe I felt like I owed it to him for comforting me on the roof. That was a side of him, I'd never seen. It was a good change. Real.

"Thanks," he says. "Where are the girls?"

I look at George, he nods over to the car. I nod, and look back at Alexander, he looks back at me. I felt bad for leaving the girls inside alone. I sort of forgot about them during the moments between the stairs and roof. 

Alexander's taxi appeared a few minutes later, he looks at it, puts a finger up, and looks at me. "Would you like to grab some coffee with me, as friends?"

I just stare at him, and he nods. "Take care of yourself, Margo." And then he was in the car. I reached forward, and tapped the window after a second of thought, as it rolled down his face came into view, I said, "Two o'clock works for me."

We agreed to meet at Cafe Carlyle on 35th East 76th Street, at two, so I got there at one fifty-eight and sat at our reserved table. I placed my napkin on my lap, and watched two old men, one played the acoustic guitar while the other played the Piccolo.

Suddenly, Alexander plunges into the chair across from me and gives me a big smile, that I'm convinced was laced with some kind of contagious spark because I smiled back.

I wasn't surprised he arrived a few minutes late, New Yorkers are naturally tardy for everything, even with their every effort not to be. It took a lot, to arrive on time.

Not me, though, I had a policy against arriving late myself. So when I do, I find myself self-sabotaging my peace of mind. Which is a habit I find myself trying to work on most of the day.

"Sorry, I'm late," he says as he puts his napkin on his lap. "The traffic here is insane."

I take in how well put he looks in his black button-down, with a black topcoat over it, which he took off when he arrived and placed on his chair. He looked good with black on, it was his color. I wore a velvet blazer that went down to my thigh right above my knee, a white shirt underneath, with matching velvet pants. Over the blazer I have a black belt, so you could barely see the white shirt, completed with rag and bone black Shiloh high boots.

I flip my hair over my shoulder. "No, don't worry about it, you came just on time."

A waitress appears beside us and sets tall cups filled with water in front of us, and then the menus. She looks at me and smiles. It was clear she recognized me. I give her a smile in return. "I'll give you two time to figure out what you want." 

When she walks away, I open my menu. They had many tea options, but I wasn't a tea person. I preferred coffee or Wine. 

"I think I'll just have wine," I say and place the menu down. "And stake." Before he can speak, the waitress returns. 

"Ready to order?" She looks at us with a pad in hand, and a pen in the other.

"I'll have wine with a stake." She nods and jots it down, then turns to Alexander.

I looked at him, he says hardly glancing at the waitress, "I'll have the same thing as her." His attention was focused exclusively on me, as usual. A chill permeates through me, I grab my water and take a sip, feeling my throat dry up.

The waitress says something but it was distant, clouded away. Then she was walking away, and I cleared my throat. A silence stretched out around us like a rubber band, any second it'll snap. 

"Tell me," he says, in a husky voice. He clears his throat. "What do you do when you aren't contributing to the fashion world."

As I sat there thinking of an answer, and silence followed, it occurred to me that I wasn't very interesting. "I read." 

"What do you read?"

I look at him, he's already looking at me with intense laser focus, I look down at my water. "Romantics, sometimes a mystery book."

I glance up, his eyebrows are raised, and a smirk sits on his face. "That's the most ironic thing I've heard, Margo."

I take a sip from my drink. "I mean, you're scared of love, but you read about it."

The truth was, romance was better when it came from a story that never actually occurred in real life. I liked living within a book, getting lost in someone else's love life. Even if it wasn't real, that was the best part.

I glance up at him, distant voices and music float around us as we stare at each other. Another silence surrounds us. I couldn't seem to pull my gaze away from his like we were glued together, or a magnetic force pulled us close.

When I'm lost in his eyes everything slows down.

Mentally he was standing behind a door I'm not sure I should open, or keep locked. 

I tamp down my feelings and divert my eyes to the two old men playing their rightful instruments. How long have I been staring into his eyes? I didn't understand how it felt comfortable with him, when I was with Liam, I felt okay but it always felt unreal. Like we were putting on a show for everyone, or maybe that was just me. After all, I couldn't even say I love you to him. It was always stuck in my throat.

So what made Alexander any different? Everything. 

There was just something about him that pulled me in. Every time I tell myself to stay away, the universe either pulls us back in the middle, or I break down my resistant walls to run right into his arms.

The waitress places our plates down, and then our wine glasses. We say our thanks, and she walks away.

If I knew that Alexander was going to walk into my life and change everything, I would've worn a shield. But like everything else that enters my life, he came at me with full force. 

Alexander broke down my walls.