Well, well, well…how about that.

I cleared my throat—loudly—and he shook himself. He blinked, glanced around the restaurant, his eyebrows furrowed, and he gathered a deep breath.

“So, um….” He swallowed and said no more.

I took pity on him, though my heart was victory dancing like an obnoxious football player after scoring a game-winning touchdown.

“Can I ask you about the Patels? How you came to work for them?”

He seemed to consider this, weighing the request even as he spoke. “There’s not much to tell. The Patels knew me when I was little; my mother worked for them. Shirra is their daughter; we used to play together. I had to leave when I was little, but I remembered them. It’s one of my few memories of my mother. When I got out of prison, they were the only people I could think of who might be willing to help me.”

Now my heart hurt.

“No other family—aunts, uncles, cousins?”

He cleared his throat and placed the garlic bread he’d been holding on his plate. “No. There is no one.”

The way he held my gaze told me that he didn’t wish to continue this conversation. I decided to yield, for now.

“Can I ask you more questions about your favorite things? I assume your favorite color is black.” I let my eyes move over his usual black attire. If I ever saw him in something other than black, I might not recognize him. “What about movies?”

“Yes, feel free to ask me about movies.” Alex’s mouth hooked to the side. I took it as a positive sign.

“No, doofus, I just asked you. What are your favorite movies?”

His eyes flashed at my usage of the word doofus, and I couldn’t tell if it bothered him or not. “What are your favorite movies?”

“You aren’t going to tell me first?”

“No. But I will tell you that black isn’t my favorite color. Green is.”

I allowed my surprise to register on my face paired with a small smile. “Green? What shade of green? There are so many greens. I don’t want to knit you a foam green scarf if sea green is your favorite. Although, you strike me as an olive green kind of guy.”

“What color are your eyes?”

I had the abrupt sensation of falling, lost my breath, worried briefly that I’d never catch it again. The more we were together, the further and faster I fell. His gaze was steady yet scorching—which explained why I was melting beneath it.

I tried to swallow and only half managed. “Uh, they’ve been called leaf green.”

“Not malachite green?”

“No. I’m not even sure what malachite is. The color has also been described as forest green.”

“You don’t remind me of a plant.”

“Not even a flower?”

“No. Flowers are temporary. I think your eyes are closer to emerald or jade.”

“So I’m a gemstone?”

His mouth curved as he thought about the comparison. At length, he nodded. “In so many ways, yes.”

My voice was breathy when I responded; for once, it was not purposeful. “But not a lush green rainforest?”

“No. Rainforests are fragile. Emerald green is my favorite color.”

I considered him for a moment, with my emerald green eyes, and he considered me right back. If we kept this up much longer, I was going to rip his clothes off and man-eat him in Manny’s Deep Dish Pizza Shoppe.

The waitress brought our pizza, which served to delay my response and prolong the moment. When she departed, I couldn’t think of anything to say.

So I blurted, “Star Wars.”

“What?”

“Star Wars is my favorite movie—actually, the Star Wars trilogy, starting with A New Hope and ending with Return of the Jedi.” I served him a piece of pizza then grabbed one for myself. I tried to ignore the fact that the cheese and sauce burned the roof of my mouth.

“I see, hence Cloud City.” His eyes narrowed. “Why do you like Star Wars movies so much?”

I mirrored his look and thought about how silly the question was. “Haven’t you ever seen them?”

“Yes. I’ve seen them. They play old movies at Grant Park over the summer. I saw them last year for the first time. I heard you talking about them with one of your dates…” He hadn’t taken a bite of his pizza yet. Like the smarty-pants he was, he let it cool first. Apparently, as he’d mentioned in previous conversations, he didn’t mind waiting. His self-control irked me. “But why do you like them? Why are they your favorite movies?”

“Because…because….” I looked to the ceiling. It was like trying to find the words to describe why chocolate tasted better than vanilla. In the end, I stopped thinking and just said what I felt. “Because it’s the story about a man who has all this power, just a crazy amount of innate talent and power, and how seductive and easy it is for him to be drawn away from what he knows is right. It would be so easy to use superpowers for evil, and hard to use them exclusively for good. As a cautionary tale, there isn’t a better one. And love saves him in the end—not Luke’s love for him, but Darth Vader’s love for Luke, for Leia, and their mother. That’s what saves him.”

He lifted his eyebrows, the left higher than the right, “Do you always use your talents for good?”

I started, surprised by the question. Something in his gaze felt abrupt and disconcerting. I became very, very still. “What do you mean?”

“Your superpower; do you use it exclusively for good?”

“What superpower?”

“Manipulating people.”

“What?” My single-word response was sharp because his question felt like a slap.

He grimaced, though it looked like a stubborn, impatient grimace. “Sandra, I’m not insulting you.”

“Really? You just told me I’m manipulative. That sounded a lot like an insult.”

“It wasn’t.”

“I don’t manipulate people.”

“Yes. Yes you do.” His eyes held mine ensnared, daring me to look away, and his tone was low, challenging, and argumentative. “You manipulate people into talking about themselves. Then you manipulate them into seeking the treatment they need. You hide your own reactions to what they say so completely that they trust you implicitly. And you do all of this because you sincerely want to help them.”

My neck became hot, and I knew I was blushing. This annoyed me; I didn’t know if I were blushing because I was offended, impressed, or flattered.

His expression tempered and, after a prolonged moment, he almost looked contrite. “I’ve only seen you use your talents for good.”

I didn’t respond. He was right, of course. I felt the veracity of his words, though my brain still fought against the label of manipulative. To be seen so completely by another person was…disorienting.

He offered a belated and apprehensive, “Sorry.”

I studied him. “No you’re not.”

“I’m sorry if I upset you.” He said the words as though they were meant to clarify his earlier apology.

I thought about that statement. Once again, I understood the nuance behind his words. “You’re sorry if you upset me, but you’re not sorry you said it.”

A phantom smile claimed his features, and I couldn’t help it. I inwardly laughed at this moment of déjà vu. We were back in the Chase Auditorium, and he’d just forced me to cop a feel. It was BonerGate all over again, only this time I was blushing because he saw me for who I was.

I didn’t know if I used my talents exclusively for good. I hoped that I did. But I did know that I’d never met someone so infuriatingly good at flustering me. It was, indeed, his superpower. I wondered if I could trust him to use it exclusively for good.

Alex took a bite of his pizza, though he continued to survey me from behind his glasses, phantom smile in place.

I decided to change the subject back to Star Wars since I didn’t know how to answer his original question. “I had custom T-shirts made for watching each of the movies.”

“Really?” he said, looking somewhat surprised yet admiring that I would go to such lengths in pursuit of total fandom. “What do the T-shirts say?”

“The first one says I’ve been looking for love in Alderan places, so now I’m going to search for A New Hope. The second one says Flying Solo only gets you frozen in carbonite. The third one, for Jedi, says You go outside. I’m going to stay Endor and watch Return of the Jedi.”

Alex’s smile grew with each of my T-shirt puns, but then he looked concerned and asked, “What about episodes one through three? Do you have T-shirts for those?”

“Yes, just one. It’s a picture of Admiral Ackbar with the words Aaacckbar! It’s a Trap! because I never watch the first three.”

He laughed then, a full-on belly laugh, and said, “Oh my God, I love you.”

Oh sigh and shitzterhozen.

As a way to cover the unsteadiness of my voice and hands, I made a light sound of amusement and reached for my pizza; I took a bite. It had cooled to a reasonable temperature, though the damage had already been done. I’d been burned.

I knew he didn’t love love me, but hearing the words from his mouth even as a figure of speech did things to me like his letter did things to me. And his laugh, and his kiss, and his crazy smarts, and his weirdness, and his intensity, and how he liked to fluster the brains out of me—all that did so many wonderful things to me.