She looked over at him. "I've got room," he said. He said it the same way he'd said everything to her 3 nights ago. Not warm, exactly, but not cold. Just present.
Just honest. She came and sat. They went through the same mechanic. He ordered for her. She started to protest.
He didn't engage with the protest. And while they waited for the food, she wrapped both hands around the glass of water the niece had brought and looked at the table. "You come here a lot?" she asked. "After late shifts, yeah."
"It's a good place," she said. "Loretta makes the best cornbread in Atlanta," Marcus said. "Don't tell the other spots I said that." That almost smile again. He watched her for a moment.
Then carefully, the way you lay a tool on a workbench, when you want to see how someone reacts to it. "What's your name?" "Eve," she said. He nodded slowly. "Marcus."
"I know," she said. He went very still. "Your shirt," she said quickly, gesturing toward the name stitched above his pocket. "Sorry, your name's on your shirt." He looked down.
"Carter." "Right. Right," he said. But he had seen it the microsecond of alarm in her face when she said, "I know." The flash of someone who'd said something slightly too automatic before she caught it.
And the way she'd recovered fast. Very fast. The way someone recovers when they're practiced at it. "You from Atlanta?" he asked.
"Originally, yeah," she said. "I've been away. I'm back now, trying to reconnect with the city, understand it better." "What part of it?" She looked at him.
"All of it," she said. "The parts that don't usually get looked at." The food came, she ate. He thought about what she'd said. The parts that don't usually get looked at.