New York: Allie's War, Early Years

While we watched, he picked up his glass of milk.

Inserting a finger into the contents, he withdrew it carefully, sniffing the end of his own digit. Frowning, he wiped it clean with a paper napkin.

Jon stifled a laugh.

I fought not to do the same, raising an eyebrow at Cass and cocking my head with mock inquisitiveness.

"Yeah, okay." Cass shrugged. "But I like his hands."

"You said that about Jack, Cass," I reminded her.

"Yeah, well I was right, wasn't I?"

I didn't touch that one. I squinted at the black-haired man. "He's like a walking corpse," I said a second later. "...Minus the goth. He probably lives in his parent's basement. I get Asperger's syndrome, listens to bad cowboy music."

Cass gestured with her slim fingers, tugging at a silver chain around her neck. "He looks like there's more to him, Al."

"Again. You said that about Jack, Cass."

"And I was right, wasn't I?"

I grimaced, glancing across the room.

The black-haired stranger rose to his feet.

I watched him reach into a back pocket and extract a money clip. Like he had the day before, and the day before that, I knew he'd leave actual paper money, and well in excess of what he owed. He wore a single piece of jewelry, a silver ring on his smallest finger.

"He's leaving," Cass said.

Jon yanked on my arm. "Stop staring, Al." He sharpened his voice when I didn't look down. "Al...seriously. What are you doing?"

I watched Mr. Mono move softly out the diner's front door. It was already dark outside, but the neon sign lit up his face as he passed by the plate windows. He didn't hurry, and just when I thought he wouldn't, he turned.

The lamp-like stare met mine.

The world became soft.

I grew aware of the sharp lines of the diner blurring. Night filled in the gaps...a sky teeming with violet and black clouds, a backdrop streaming further back than my mind could reach. Stars exploded behind my eyes, a single shocking plume of brilliance.

And it is beautiful. So incredibly...

The clouds enveloped my mind, leaving nothing but silence.

***

Cass watched the black-haired man turn from the window. He was tall, she realized again, maybe more than six and a half feet, and despite the haphazard and almost dated way he dressed-like something from an old fifties movie mixed unevenly with the newer lines of the Aardvarks shirt and a modern watch-she could see an athletic body beneath the hanging clothes and inconspicuous gait.

He was really hot, actually.

She wondered why Allie was pretending he wasn't. Not stereotypically handsome, by any means. But he had a quiet intensity that exuded sensuality, and struck Cass as a relatively thin mask for whatever lay beneath. She watched him glide past the outside window, reminded of Jon's martial arts buddies and of Jon himself, in the way he moved. This man might be a fighter, too.