3.27

He made direct eye contact with her as she walked briskly from table to table. Her speed didn't carry itself up from her feet, though. Her face was serene and settled, like a mountain over a pressure point, a fault line. She looked his way and for a moment saw him looking at her. He looked away immediately. She was just trying to wait tables, and the young man had been examining her face, waiting for her to look at him, expecting it but not wanting it, because it would mean he would have to glance away. Just then, she walked straight to him. Soft panic.
"I noticed your loyalty card. You'll get that discount when I total your bill."
"Oh! Thanks."
"Of course!"
Oh--there it was. He had been waiting for it. She smiled at him, and it sort of broke across her face and shook through her the way you would expect an earthquake to ripple through the crust of the earth. She turned away, and he kept looking at where her smile had been, and he fell for her the way a house stands through the initial quake and slowly slumps over in the aftershocks.