Devil’s in the Details (15 page)

I set my bag next to me and began fidgeting with the placemat with presidents on it, in hopes of preventing from looking or staring at the blonde. When that didn’t work, I ended up roaming my eyes over the tacky Americana décor. There were pictures of presidents and monuments plastered over the walls and faded by the sun. I let out a slow nervous breath, catching a hint of a delicate perfume coming from her side of the booth. God, Victoria even smelled good and it was stewing up more feelings in my stomach towards my lunch companion. I quickly grabbed two menus, setting one in front of her, "The Jefferson corned beef sandwich is the best I have ever had, next to that is the double bacon club sandwich. Also known as the Reagan club special."

Victoria nodded, scanning over the menu before setting it down as a middle aged waitress waltzed over to take our order. "What can I get yous twos today?"

I grinned at her thick New York accent, trying not to laugh at how ridiculously thick it was for the area we were in. I set the menu down, "I will have the Jefferson corned beef sandwich, with fries and a large sweet tea. Please and thank you."

The waitress scribbled on her pad, "How's about you sweetheart?" She waved her double chin in Victoria's direction.

Victoria smirked, catching my eyes and giving me a look, "I will have the Reagan club special with coleslaw and a large coke. Please." She picked up my menu, handing both over to the waitress, who snatched them up and waddled away. Mumbling that our order would be ready in a flash.

"Is that accent real or just for show?" Victoria set her sunglasses down with her phone before looking up at me questioningly.

I chuckled, "It's real. The owner is from Brooklyn and I think that's his wife, or daughter. I can't really remember. The last time I was here, it was dollar pitcher night and I had just passed my finals." I leaned back against the booth, "So, needless to say, I don't remember much from that entire week."

The blonde nodded, looking down at the table top, she began playing with the red, white, and blue plastic tablecloth. The poor woman was terrible at hiding her nerves.

Cluing me in that I would have to be the ice breaker no matter how nervous I also was. I waited until the waitress dropped off our drinks before pulling out the icebreakers. "I liked Casino Royale, but I think To Live and Let Die is my favorite Bond book."

I watched as Victoria looked up at me with wide curious eyes. I pointed at her bag, "You were reading Casino Royale when I walked up." Squeezing the lemon into my tea, I sat forward, "My mom's longtime boyfriend had all of the books when I was growing up. I ended up reading them out of curiosity and attempt to get to know him better. I do like the lengthy card game scenes in Casino Royale and how Bond feels borderline deviant."

Victoria sighed, laughing quietly, "That's because he is borderline deviant. It's why I prefer the books to the movies. The books always give the impression that Bond could just let go one day and turn to the wrong side of life. While the movies do their best to creatively turn Bond into the dashing white knight." She picked up her coke, sipping some of it, "You are quiet observant, Alex."

"It comes with the job. As a nurse I have to be the first set of eyes for the doctor, and in most cases, I have to be the doctor's eyes when their arrogance blinds them." I let out a short breath, Victoria was beginning to physically ease up. "I will admit that the doctors down here are far more arrogant than the ones in New York. Maybe because the hospital I work at treats most of the nation’s politicians who work down in the capitol building. They think they are gods for treating the government. That maybe in a way they are the ones keeping the country running." I rolled my eyes, reaching for another lemon.

"The city in general is laden with arrogance and self-entitlement." Victoria's voice had a tone to it that told me that she had firsthand experience in those two personality traits. She cleared her throat, "Why a nurse and why come back to the nation's capital?" She suddenly turned to look out the window, "I'm sorry if that's a little personal for a first question."

I shook my head, "It's not. It's the standard starting a new friendship question." Good god was Victoria adorable right now. This hero worship I felt for the woman was turning into one hell of a tempest of attraction for her. I would have to sort out the feelings conjuring in me before I could attempt a friendship, especially when I looked at her hands and wanted nothing more than to hold them. I bit my bottom lip, pretending to think of a grand answer to her question. "Why a nurse? Hmm, I don't have some life changing story sized answer to that. I've always wanted to be a nurse since I was a kid. Maybe it was the soap opera my mom watched about the one hospital were nurses filled the screen and saved the drama of the day. Or maybe, it was that nurses were the ones always giving me candy when the doctor wasn't looking, or something else. Either way, I was drawn to it, and to be honest, I am really good at it."

I smiled a bit wider when I looked up to see Victoria's grey eyes staring intently in mine. She was actively listening and that was a rarity in the world, especially in my world.

I held her eyes for a second before continuing on, "As for the why I came home, it was simply that. I wanted to come home and maybe settle down. My mom is getting older and I missed seeing her whenever the mood struck. That, and New York can wear a person down to the nubs if you let it. It almost wore me down to the nub and beyond. I was an emergency room nurse at Bellevue and then at Mt. Sinai." I shrugged, "I became burned out and wanted a slower pace."

Victoria raised an eyebrow, "And so you come home to work at George Washington Hospital, with one of the busiest emergency rooms in the city?"

I laughed, "It’s far slower than Bellevue. Trust me." I picked up my tea, taking a large sip as the waitress dropped off the mountains of meat, cheese, and bread. I grinned watching Victoria's eyes widen at the sheer size of her sandwich. "Yep, the portions are still the same."

"This is quite possibly the biggest sandwich I have ever come across." Victoria picked up her napkin, laying it across her lap, trying to figure out where to start. I watched her, noting how carefully she moved no matter what she did. Whether it was holding my arm to steady me, picking up a piece of paper, holding a pen with precision, or try to size up how to lift the pile of food in front of her, Victoria was exact as well as precise and it was endearing to me.

"Ever? Even in your time in the Navy? There wasn't a port down in Italy or Alabama that had baby sized sandwiches?" I picked at my sandwich separating the halves into smaller chunks. "And by the way, why the Navy? Why a teacher?"

Victoria looked up, catching my sandwich strategy and mimicking it, "Why the Navy? Simple reason, the Naval Academy offered me a full scholarship when my ACT and SAT scores were released in my senior year of high school. They won me over with the incredible educational program and the offer of having a job the day I graduated was too hard to pass up. I took it, and since my family didn't have the means to pay for college, it seemed to be a perfect match." I waited for Victoria to take her first bite of the Reagan club, watching as she quickly smiled around a messy mouthful at how good the sandwich was. She covered her mouth with a napkin, "This is exceptional!"

I laughed, picking up my first chunk, "Surprisingly good isn't it?" I wanted to make a political joke, but held back. Remembering the cardinal rules of topics to avoid when meeting someone. Politics, religion, number of sexual partners.

Victoria nodded, chewing fully before setting the food down, "To answer the second part, why a teacher? I fell into it. As my time with the Navy came to an end, I was offered a teaching position since I had minored in military history. I took it. Again, the attraction of having a job the same day I was discharged was too hard to ignore."

I watched Victoria sigh and turn back out the window, pausing for a moment, her eyes fluttering around the traffic as it drove by.

When she turned back to me, looking dead in my eyes as she spoke, I saw that she was telling me something she probably never told anyone. "I missed the innocence of my days at the Naval Academy. Going back gave me an opportunity to teach the next generation of officers to learn from history's mistakes. Then take those mistakes to heart and learn to avoid making mistakes that would cost them so much if they allowed it."

Something in her words told me she was speaking from personal experience, and it made me curious, "Did you serve in the war, Victoria?" I bit into my arm sized pickle. It was a run of the mill question that anyone would ask anyone who was in today's military. In this day and age, it felt like every soldier had been to the desert and back.

Her slate grey eyes turned cloudy, a far cry from the soft and kind ones I had enjoyed since the moment we sat down. The blonde nodded once, "Yes, but I left right after the fall of Baghdad." Victoria cleared her throat, picking up her sandwich, "Your turn, Alex. What's your favorite old movie?"

I watched the tiny clouds swarm around the woman as she kept her head down and focused on the wads of bacon in her grips. I smiled, taking the obvious change in topic, "I would have to say my all-time favorite old movie has to be
Bringing Up Baby
. I had one fierce crush on Katherine Hepburn when I was younger. I even asked for a tiger for one Christmas. Didn't get it, but I did get my own copy of the movie on VHS to watch endlessly."

In that small sentence, the clouds around the blonde that I was developing a mighty crush on, disappeared. Victoria raised her head up to meet my eyes with clear and sparkling ones. A smirk pulling at the far corner of her mouth, "That is one of my favorite movies ever." She then set her own giant pickle on my plate, “I hate pickles.”

And with that revelation, the ice and tension melted away. Victoria became a different person wholly. Warm, open, wickedly intelligent, and funny. She continued to relax around me and our conversation turned from forced and struggled, to easy and never ending. I told her how my mother gave me the middle name Ava, in honor of Ava Gardner. Then how I was still a New York Giants fan living in a city where the Redskins were the only football team in the world, and would proudly wear my Giants shirt to any Redskins home game.

Victoria in turn told me about how she would write pop quizzes that had patterned answer keys to trip up her students, hoping that at least one would notice that all of the answers were A's or B's in a multiple choice offering. She divulged how envious she was of her neighbor’s expansive flower garden and that she was determined to one day have at least one flower bloom in her yard, come hell or high water.

Through it all, the silly tidbits and the short stories of growing up as awkward teens in high school, I could see Victoria was sharing things she rarely did, but at the edges I could see she was still holding back.

That mysterious effect of hers coming into play. It was as if she was living a double life and had to be careful not to reveal her second identity. It was all intriguing and I played it off as her being nervous and awkward in a first impression setting. I also shoved it down because of what I was starting to feel more and more for this woman. Wanting the mysterious to stay a mystery for a little longer.

We sat and talked for hours. Victoria kept her full attention on me, only breaking once or twice when she received a phone call that made her smile weaken, but she ignored those calls and kept her focus on whatever nonsense I was rambling about.

When the bill came, Victoria snatched it away before I could look to see what my half was, saying that the next lunch would be on me. She then helped me up to leave when the waitress threw us evil looks for taking up a booth for most of the day when the tourists began to pour in. Victoria continued to hold on to my elbow without me ever suggesting I needed the steadying, which I really didn't, but who was I to refuse the kindness of a beautiful stranger. By the time she held the door open for me, I was beyond smitten with this woman and it excited me as much as it confused me.

Standing back out on the street, I looked up in the sky before looking at the giant street clock a few blocks down. "Wow, it's almost six in the afternoon. Talk about a long lunch." I smiled looking over at Victoria, catching her looking at me in a way that told me that she was clearly checking me out.

She turned away, her cheeks turning a soft pink, "It was an enjoyable long lunch." She shifted the bag on her shoulder nervously, "Can I walk you to your car?" Victoria turned back to me, spotting the small frown on my face that the day was coming to an end, "I'm sorry Alex, I really did enjoy today. This. It was, needed." She smiled the widest I had ever seen her, "Thank you for stalking me and cornering me in my office."

I couldn't hold back the shy laughter, "I didn't stalk you, but I did corner you." I leaned into her arm, hearing her gasp softly, "I should thank you for calling me, even though I waltzed into your office like a crazy person." I sighed at how happy I suddenly felt in this moment. Standing next to my new friend, one that I was starting to think about what it would be like to kiss her. "This was also needed, I needed to spend time with a non-work friend."

I couldn't stifle the yawn before it escaped, I was tired. Exhausted. This was the most I had been out and about in over a week since leaving the hospital. Moving a still healing body and being void of painkillers or even aspirin, my body was starting to protest and hint that it was time to go home, lie down and take a nap while passing out with the television on. Victoria laughed, patting my arm, "You look like you could use a rest." She pushed on her sunglasses to block out the bright, low hanging, afternoon sun, "Where did you park?"