Read Hot Little Hands for Free Online

top twelve.”
    “Americano for George. Why do you even care? Why are you even checking my MySpace?”
    “It’s bookmarked on my computer.”
    “So un-bookmark it.”
    “Fine,” I say.
    “Fine.” He glares down at me over the row of glasses and mugs on top of the machine. I glare right back. “I created a new espresso blend,” he says. “A Colombian microlot and a Cup of Excellence from Brazil. Ripe cherry acidity with a maple syrup finish. Really sweet.”
    “What’s it called?”
    “Straight Shooter. Wanna try it?”
    “Sure.”
    —
    On his break we go into the green bean room. I sit on a sack of Santa Isabel. He leans back on a stack of Bolivians. It’s cooler in here than the rest of the café; the beans absorb the heat.
I’m pregnant,
I think, looking him up and down. But it’s not the baby that’s making my stomach churn. He’s wearing his tight black jeans and a very low-necked white T-shirt, and an open gray-and-blue cowboy shirt with the sleeves rolled up. His hair is messy, his eyes bright blue, and he’s got a few days’ worth of stubble on his face. I can see three of his tattoos: the EKG squiggles over his heart, the vintage gun on his right wrist, and the numbered lines on the inside of his left arm:

    “It’s where I write my to-do list,” he said last June on our first date, as we sat spinning right-to-left-and-back on barstools at the Dovre Club. Then he took out a pen and scrawled my name on all three lines, then again and again, all the way down his arm— CLAIRE CLAIRE CLAIRE CLAIRE —before dropping the biro on the floor and reaching for me. His teeth pressed against my lower lip drew blood, and when I climbed onto his lap and wrapped my legs around him, the bartender told us we had to leave. He rode with me on the handlebars of his fixed-gear to his apartment on Harrison, and I forgot we weren’t using anything until he pulled out of me, wrapped a fist around himself, and came into his hand.
    “Hey, thanks for not knocking me up,” I said, reaching across the floor for my cigarettes.
    “Of course,” he said, wiping his palm on the sheet, on the part of the bed closest to the wall. “I’m nothing if not a gentleman.”
    Today, in here, the sight of him, both put-together and disheveled, and the smell, that deep, sweet, caramel scent of roasting coffee that sticks to his clothes, his skin, his hair—that scent that is so strongly linked to him in my mind that some mornings just walking past a Starbucks on my way to class and inhaling is enough to get me wet inside my underwear—it all almost makes me forget the fifth, sixth, and seventh months of our relationship. For a moment I want to turn and lock the door, and walk the few steps it would take for my hip bones to be pressed against his jeans. I want to stand on my tiptoes till my face can reach his face. And as if he’s thinking the same thing, he clears his throat and says, “What are you wearing under that blazer?”
    “Nothing.”
    “No skirt?”
    “Nup.”
    “What about under the tights?” he asks.
    I smile up at him.
    Then he says, “Why are you dressed so sexy? Do you have a date? Are you seeing someone else already? Do I mean so little to you?” And I remember the fifth, sixth, and seventh months of our relationship. So I leave the door unlocked and try to breathe through my mouth. I stare at the floor, scattered with unroasted beans, and I tell him, “I’m pregnant.”
    The first thing he does is slap a palm to his forehead in a cartoonish gesture of shock that almost makes me laugh. His fingers are brown with coffee stains. “Is it mine?” he asks.
    “What kind of a—” I try to look hurt and insulted like women do in the movies when men ask them this, but I can’t maintain it for long. “Yes,” I say. “You’re the only person I’ve slept with since we broke up.”
    There’s a knock on the door, and Katie pokes her head in. “Luke—oh hey, Claire—are you almost done in here?