Work Text:
I seem to recognize your face
Haunting, familiar yet
I can’t seem to place it
Cannot find the candle of thought to light your name
Lifetimes are catching up with me
June 2006
Randal feels like he’s been punched in the gut, and everything about Gemma Martinez - Gemma Cruz - that saw him walk out her door six years ago comes rushing back like it was yesterday.
She looks the same. A faded band t-shirt that’s a little too big for her, tight blue jeans, her little carbon copy attached to her hip. There might be a few lines between her brows, and a few on the corners of her lips, but they suit her. Like she’s done just the right amount of scolding and smiling since he last saw her.
Little Madison is still waving over her shoulder, studying him, like even as a tiny little thing she knows there’s something her mom isn’t saying about this stranger - ‘cause that’s what he is.
He knows her mother’s toenails are probably painted orange right now, knows how she worries her lip when she’s anxious about something, knows her favorite accent to hear is Sean Connery’s and her favorite to perform is the Terminator’s.
And by all accounts, he is absolutely a stranger to her now.
The lunch crowd fades about an hour after she’s gone, so he leaves Elias to his own devices in the kitchen (after he reminds the little fucker not to touch his fryer) and, maybe against his better judgment, raps at the doorframe of Becky’s open office.
“Got a minute?”
She raises her eyebrows at him over her glasses, looking up from whatever mail she’d just opened before he knocked. “Sure. To what do I owe you darkening my doorstep from…” She leans over in her chair, mentally tallying the distance from his prep station. “...ten paces away? Give or take.”
He steps in awkwardly - the doorway is usually as far as he goes, most often because Dante’s usually occupying the other chair in her office, and most often because anytime he comes in here he’s looking for Dante. Fuckin’ kiss-ass, getting all chummy with the boss. But, at Becky’s behest and raised hand, he takes the seat opposite her, propping his ankle over his knee.
“Are you goin’ to Dante’s wedding?”
Becky looks him up and down slowly, skeptically, before leaning back in her chair. “I don’t think they’ve even set a date yet, Graves.”
“Irrelevant,” he shrugs. “Thing is, I heard through the rumor mill you don’t believe in the sanctity of holy matrimony, so my question is, if you think it’s all a big joke, what’re you doin’ going to see the celebration of the future Mr. and Mrs. Dante Hicks?”
She thinks on it a second, he can tell by how she purses her lips, and tilts her head at him. “I don’t see you in any rush down the aisle. And I presume you’re going to the wedding, too, if your unwieldy ass is even welcome among the Florida Buntings.”
“That, Miss Scott, sounds a lot like deflection to me.”
She sucks her teeth, finally making full eye contact with him. “Fine. I don’t think marriage is a joke. I think everyone who wants to prescribe themselves to whatever archaic decision they like should be left to do so in peace. My parents are married.” She raises both palms in compromise. “And they’re as happy a couple I can think of. But I think most of us are…human in nature. Built for fucking, and making merry, and populating the planet to our heart’s content. Doesn’t mean I can’t support my friend in his choice to legally bind himself to a wife.”
Interesting. “Don’t tell me you’re not fond of one Emma Bunting.”
Becky shakes her head, raising a finger to him. “Uh-uh, we’re not doing that. Emma is…a perfectly fine…person. Not saying I’d marry her, but she’s…lovely. I hope she and Dante have a great life together.”
Mmhm. Sure.
“What brings up this line of questioning, anyway?” She steeples her hands together, like she’s his preacher or therapist or something. “Wouldn’t happen to, uh, have anything to do with the cute young MILF you were drooling over in the dining room, now, would it?”
He feels his ears go hot, in spite of himself. “Ah, Becks. You wouldn’t believe me if I told ya.”
“Mm,” she hums, leaning an elbow on the desk. “I see Dante’s the only one around here allowed to see that, against all odds, you actually have a couple of human bones left in that rusty old tin man body. So, who was she? Old girlfriend? High school sweetheart? Girl you picked up in a bar and never called back?”
He sits up in the office chair, crossing his legs under him as far as they’ll go, hands on the feeble little armrests. Becky would love to pry him open, figure out what kind of gears ticked in his rusty old tin man body. But there’s nothing he can really say that’d describe what Gemma Martinez means - meant to him. “Old girlfriend. ‘The one who got away’ type.”
Becks’s eyebrows lift. “Gotta hand it to you, Randal. I wouldn’t expect you to have a ‘one who got away’ type.”
He snorts. No. Nobody outside Dante would ever expect that. “What can I say? I wasted a lot of her time.”
“I don’t know about that. She didn’t look at you like she thought you were a waste of time.”
He slides his gum to the opposite side of his mouth, gives it a thoughtful snap. “Maybe. But I’m not a ‘getting my hopes up’ type.”
She gives him another look, a little exasperated, a little amused, and though he knows she’s more Dante’s friend than his, there’s something warm about it, too. “I never thought I’d see the day I’d try to convince you to let yourself embrace your inner romantic. But you do only get one go at…” She opens her arms, and if they weren’t just in the shitty back office at a Mooby’s, he’s sure the point would come across just grand. “...you know what I mean. Might as well enjoy the parts you can.”
Yesterday she didn’t know he even had hints of an inner romantic. “You and I may not partake in the traditional Christian values of marriage, Becks, but Gemma does. She’s married.”
He knows he’s made a fatal mistake the moment her name has left his mouth. “Gemma’s married,” she repeats, giving away nothing. “Hm.”
Randal has always been pretty good at revealing very little in his face - he’s an asshole to customers because that’s all they’re allowed to see of him, he’s an asshole to his friends because that’s the role he often needs to fill, he’s an asshole to cocky fucks like Lance Dowds and Rick Derris because that’s all they deserve from him. But right now, if he didn’t know any better, he’d say their whole fucking story is written in perfect black ink across his nose.
He had her. He loved her. He fucked it up.
The phone rings, and he realizes he’s been carrying the tension in his shoulders, so he lets them drop. Becky picks up the phone, putting her customer service voice back on, and he figures it’s time to get back to pretending to work, lugging himself out of her office chair, except then the veneer on his boss’s voice drops.
“Randal? Yeah, he’s uh…right here.”
She holds out the phone for him. He has to remind himself to breathe before he takes it from her.
And then he takes in another breath, just for good measure. “Yeah?”
“Hey.” Gemma’s voice is small on the other line, a little fuzzy, but it’s unmistakably, absolutely hers. “Hey, it’s Gemma.”
“Hey,” he says, because you could put a gun to his head now and he’d have no idea what else to say. “Gemma, what’s…what can I do for ya?”
Becky kicks her heels against the floor, pushing away from him, and she makes her way out of the office, quietly closing the door behind her.
“I, um…it was really good to see you earlier. I was…” He’d picture her swallowing, a little sliver of teeth baring down on her lip. “I was wondering what time you’re off tonight. If maybe I could…come see you. If you wanted.”
His mouth is suddenly very dry, and it feels like a fuse has blown behind his temples. Fuck, is this what a stroke feels like? Is he dying?
For good measure, he lifts one arm as high as it normally goes, and then switches hands for the phone before lifting the other. No. That’s not it.
“Randal?”
“Hey, uh…” He clears his throat, glancing quickly down at himself like a fucking teenager; there’s a stain on the Ranger Danger shirt under his Mooby’s uniform, and he can’t recall if these briefs are ones he yanked out of the drawer or peeled off the carpet, as if that’s something that’ll matter - as if that’s how far they might get. “I’m…closing tonight. Should be off around ten thirty, I know most shit’s closed by then except the bars, but - ”
“That’s okay.” She sounds like she always has, anytime he’s gotten trapped in his own head or when a customer’s done something that just barely finds the nick in his armor - like her foot is up against his under the desk, like she’s letting her knee bump against him, making it look easy. “We can talk more tonight. If you want. But…I’ll be there at ten thirty?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I’ll see you.”
She hangs up first. And if he weren’t sitting here with his palms sweating and his jeans feeling too tight around the ankles and the hum of Becky’s desk lamp buzzing about twenty decibels louder than it was a minute ago, he’d be able to convince himself he made the whole conversation up.
She walked in an hour ago, after being out of his life for six years, and now…now what?
His feet carry him back through the office door, and for the first time since he’s started this stupid fucking job, when Elias starts jabbering about the live-action Transformers movie that’s supposed to be happening soon, Randal has nothing to say.
Elias’s parents pick him up at 8:09, blasting something by Josh Groban on the car speakers. Becky gets the register counted at 10:13, and gets her purse over her shoulder at 10:24. Randal’s prep station is clean, and the dining room somehow organized, by 10:27, but by 10:30 on the dot, he’s still scrubbing at the same spot of cutting board with his eyes on the clock.
“You clocked out?” Becky asks, as stern as she can sound, with what she’s waiting for him to tell her by tomorrow.
“Yep.”
“And I can trust you to set the alarm system when you leave?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Randal.”
“Yes,” he says, flinching at a glare that passes through the window - but it’s not headlights, just a reflection: the flash of the computer screen as it starts the shutdown process. “I got the alarm code, I’m not burnin’ the place down. This time.”
Becky clicks her tongue and smiles over her shoulder. “Have fun. Also, I locked the office, so you can’t fuck in there.”
He scrubs the cutting board spot until 10:32. And then adjusts the Mooby Mini-Meal toys on display until 10:34. And then turns back and forth in a seat in the dining room until 10:36.
At 10:37, an SUV pulls into the parking lot, and he makes himself notice the little hole in the side of his sneaker. He definitely doesn’t notice the headlights shining through the whole front of the restaurant, or their cutting off when the car parks itself right out front.
He keeps his eyes on the hole until he meets her at the front door, pushing it open as he drinks her in, for real this time.
Her hair is wet, is the first thing he notices. And she’s changed out of the faded band shirt into a faded raglan, but the jeans and the flat-tops are the same, and the only makeup he can make out is a little sheen of gloss on her lips and some extra length in her eyelashes.
And she’s smiling, and she’s nervous, setting her keys on a table, standing in front of him because they’re both waiting for the other to…do something.
“Hi,” he says finally.
“Hi,” she says back, and then a beat, and then she’s reaching for him, tucking herself into his chest, and good God does it feel like a part of his body has been missing since the fucking millennium.
“I didn’t think…” But he can’t finish the sentence, because he’s holding her again, and her arms around his waist are exactly how he remembers, and he can’t help rub his thumb back and forth over her shoulder.
“Me neither.” She pulls away first, clearing her throat, and it takes her a second to smile again, her eyes fighting their way up to meet his. “To be honest, I…can’t really believe that I’m here.”
He laughs softly through his nose, glancing down at the ground. “You’re tellin’ me.”
“Madi’s with Gwen,” she says quickly, and wets her lips. “Gwen, uh…kind of convinced me to come back.”
“Come back?” To Leonardo? For good?
“To come here.” Oh. “Tonight.”
The next time he sees Gwen Thirteen, he owes her a milkshake. And probably his firstborn, but, you know. All in due time.
“Well.” He tests the waters, dropping his hand down to hers, his pinky hooking around hers. She lets him. “I’m glad she did.”
“I’m married,” she explains, too fast again, but she lets him hold her hand. Still, she lets him hold her hand. “I…don’t know how long that’ll last, because I’m pretty sure he’s been fucking around the last six months, and, y’know, now I’m…I’m just as bad, so…”
“Gem?” He tilts his head a little, so she knows he’s on her side. “You’ve never been bad a day in your life.”
She swallows again, smiles again, and his stomach just about implodes with affection. “I’m really glad you think so.”
He wants to kiss her, then and there, but there’s gotta be some decorum to these kinds of things. If he’s gonna draw her into marital infidelity, there’s gotta be some kind of finesse to…however that kind of thing is supposed to go.
“Do you…wanna go somewhere? I mean, we don’t have to, y’know, hang around here.”
“I’m…not really ready for a second location, if that’s okay. Unless - are you gonna get in trouble for me being here so late?”
He’s pretty sure Dante brought Emma here after hours a few weeks back, but then Dante is an irrefutably better employee than he is, thus more likely to get little more than a metaphorical slap on the wrist for similar transgressions. “No, you’re good. Becky’s really…well, fuckin’ nosy is what she’s about to be, tomorrow.”
She laughs - suddenly now he knows why Dante rambled on one time about why ‘again’ is the most painful word in the English language, because it’s been too goddamn long since he heard that sound, and he’d give his left nut to hear it again.
“She’s…the actual epitome of ‘a nice girl like you doing in a place like this.’ Like, Fredo’s worked with girls who aren’t a tenth as pretty as she is.”
He lets himself smile. “How is your brother doing?”
She’s smiling too, shaking her head. “He finally settled down, holy shit. Madi loves her uncle Alán. She always says she’s gonna run away to their house if Mommy’s mean. But he’s good. He’s really been able to get himself in design. Really doing what he always wanted to do.”
“And you?” He brings her hand up to his chin, wants to kiss every fingertip a hundred times. “You still…doin’ virtuoso things? Passing those crazy Rocket Man skills to future generations still?”
She looks down, her smile turning sweetly embarrassed, chewing at her bottom lip. “Ah, not really. Not too much. We, um…we’re in Maryland now. Mostly I’m taking care of Madi, doing stuff around the house, but I do still get in the occasional piano lesson. Got a couple of great kids who come in once or twice a week. Y’know, not exactly…life changing stuff.”
“Preachin’ to the choir, there.”
She shifts her weight from one foot to the other, her small hand still folded into his. “I heard Dante’s getting married.”
“Married and gettin’ the hell out of dodge. Emma’s moving him down to Florida, so he can run her father’s car wash.”
She pauses, looking up at him, and then pulls a face. “Hang on. You said Emma earlier - Emma Bunting ? Like Emma Bunting from North who was, like, two years older than us?”
“...yeah?”
Her brow creases in frustration, and she groans up at him. “She and I got paired together for link crew when I was a freshman because we both had ‘emma’ in our names, she was the fucking worst .”
Randal can certainly believe that - he doesn’t remember much of Emma from high school, except that she was the popular type. Not a cheerleader; he and Brodie had made it to third base with the less socially active half of the cheerleading squad by the time they were sophomores, but maybe dance team? That’d make sense, seeing as he does remember her looking down her nose at him one time in some kind of tight, all-black uniform.
“Well,” he says, not about to own up to all that, because Emma Bunting is kind of about to marry his best friend, and he has learned better than to meddle in Dante’s relationships since the Veronica-Caitlin incident. “That was, what, fifteen or sixteen years ago? Maybe she’s different now.”
Gemma bumps him with her hip, and suddenly he’s back at Jay’s house twelve years ago, at that fateful party where they met for the first time after high school, and she did the same thing, stealing a bag of Doritos from him in the kitchen. “You’d know better than I would. Is she?”
“She seems like she makes Dante happy,” is what he settles on, bringing her knuckles up to brush against his chin. “Even if she is stealing him away from Jersey, everything he’s ever known and loved.”
“Stealing him away from you, you mean.” Her eyes sparkle, even in the dim darkness of Mooby’s after hours. “He was always yours first.”
His chest feels somehow both tight and airy at the same time, and he’s not sure if it’s the mischief in her voice or the fact that she still knows him like the back of her hand, even though they’ve been apart for however long, even though she’s gone on to live a whole life without him. “Yeah. Yeah, you’re right.”
She takes a step closer, lifting her chin, and then the hand that’s not in his to cup his face, and he’s like the raw skin under a band-aid, fresh and pink and suddenly bare, like she can see through him. Like she always has.
“You…still think I’ve never been bad a day in my life?”
There’s something so quiet, so honest about the way she says it, like his judgment of her really is the deciding factor of who she is as a person, that makes him need to pull his shell back up, just a little. “Well, I have seen you naked, so you’re not exactly Mother Theresa - ”
“Randal,” she says, searching his eyes, and hers are still shining and yet almost black in the darkness. “Let me want this.”
So he does. And her eyes are closing, and she’s raising herself up onto her toes, and the hand that’s at his cheek smooths its way to the back of his neck, and he lets himself want this, too.
Gemma kisses him - not that he really believes it, because this might be dying. Because he can feel the ghosts of every kiss she’s ever shared with him in this moment, from the first time on the beach to the last time in her apartment, tears running down her nose, and if he thinks too much about the last time it’ll make him wonder if this will be their last kiss.
Again.
Again.
Again.
But she’s as sweet and soft as he remembers, a touch more bite to her when she tugs his lower lip between her teeth, her tongue warm and slick as it passes over him, feather-light. And she’s beautiful, more beautiful than he remembers, her hands decisive now, slipping out of his hand and off his neck and down to his chest, digging her nails into his shirt.
She breaks away for just a second, to look at him, and the fleeting fear that she’ll take it all back rushes up from his gut, but then she smiles, and he pushes a hand back through her hair to free up her face.
“Look at us,” she whispers, running her thumb over the dimple in his chin. “Is this…is this stupid?”
“Probably,” he admits, noticing a distinct disappearance of the ring finger from her left hand, but he dips his forehead down to hers anyway. “You wanna stop?”
Her smile widens, and he wants to kiss every last little wrinkle around her mouth. “No. But…” She glances back over her shoulder, at the floor-to-ceiling windows that lead out into the playground, the parking lot. “You think maybe we could go into the back? For old times’ sake?”
He always hated that - ‘for old times’ sake.’ Maybe because everybody who’d ever said it to him was stuck in old times - assholes like Dowds or Derris who would fling cash at him across the counter as a tip, like they were still the top dogs in high school and he was just him, floating along, doing what made sense. But it doesn’t bother him so much to hear Gemma say it; maybe because somewhere, in the back of his mind, he knows that this is just…something to remember her by.
“Yeah,” he says, and swallows. “Becks, uh…she locked the office, but the kitchen’s safe. Everything’s off. Y’know, if that’s not too weird for you.”
She lets a soft laugh loose - she’ll probably never come back here anyway , he thinks, before he can stop himself - but she slips her fingers through the loops on his jeans and steers him toward the open doorway behind the counter.
He leans into her next kiss, both hands to the small of her back, pulling her into him, and his ass connects with the board at his prep station. She makes a soft sound deep in her throat, and he takes the opportunity to press a kiss to the shell of her ear, the sensitive place under her lobe, down her neck. She sighs then, into the open air, clawing at the back of his neck, bringing a knee up to curl her leg around his waist, and he spins her around, pinning her to the station, his hands moving under shirt.
“Wait - ” she squeaks, her eyes flying open, wide. “I…I don’t exactly look…”
“Gem.” She holds her arms up, reluctantly, letting him pull her shirt above her head, and once she’s free of it she seems to shrink back into herself a little, back bowing away from the cutting board behind her. There are a few new white stripes lining her breasts above her bra, and her stomach is ridged in soft vertical folds - did she expect him to think she’d look exactly the same after she had a baby? After six years? Lord fucking knows he doesn’t. “You’re fucking perfect.”
He kisses her once, firmly on the lips, and then pulls away to drop his lips to the base of her neck, her collarbone, once to each breast, moving back the cups of her bra to suck gently at her nipples. She threads her fingers through his hair, his hat falling behind him somewhere, forgotten, and bites her lip over the sound stirring in her throat. He gets to his knees, kisses as delicately as he can down her ribs, above her navel, and then below it, at the hem of her jeans.
“Please, Randal…” Her voice cracks on his name, and when he looks back up at her, she’s gazing right back down, something heady and pure in her eyes. “I - you should - I want you to like it, too.”
“I like it plenty already, Gem.”
She’s still waiting on him, though, expectantly or hopefully, he can’t quite tell, and it does fucking ache, his cock hard as hell against his fly, so he takes one hand off her hip, just for a second, to undo his zipper and pull down his briefs, takes himself in his palm and strokes while he gets her jeans down, too. He tries not to let the surprise strike him once her panties come down her thighs - there’s a thin strip of hair down to her cut, which isn’t so surprising, considering every girl these days has that particular…grooming strategy, but Gemma’s never cared about what everyone was doing with trends like that.
She smells like musk and baby powder, he notices, and he hadn’t thought it possible, but his cock strains in his hand, like he could even get harder. But she needs to come, he knows, he thumbs at her clit at first, and her thighs tense, so he knows he’s doing it right. And then he kisses her mound, tender, open-mouthed, lips in a small ‘o’ until his tongue can find its mark, and he can swirl her around in circles, and she’s calling his name over and over, quietly at first but then louder, like it throbs to come out of her.
Again.
Again.
Again.
He cradles her with his lips, sinks one finger and then two into her, trying to time them with the motion of his tongue, and reflexively the speed of his hips begins to pick up, his cock jerking in his hand. And her hand clenches in his hair, one leg flexing as she picks herself up on tiptoe, the other draping over his shoulder. She starts to lose her pace, her hips bucking, a sheen of sweat glowing across her skin.
“Randal,” she chokes out, and finally he looks back up to her, into her eyes. And it’s not how she smells, then, not her hand gripping his hair or the other one clasped around the edge of his cutting board, not even the taste of her that’s going to linger on his lips into tonight, even after she’s gone back to Gwen’s and he’s alone in his bed, the door locked behind him.
It’s the look on her face as she comes, that deep crease between her eyes, her mouth curling around his name - again, again, again - her gaze locked on him, the tight little puff of air that she sucks in between each harsh exhale. That’s what sends him over the edge, cracking the ground open under his feet.
He closes his eyes before coming hard in his fist, a groan shuddering out of his chest.
The air comes back into the room, and Gemma is slackening above him, her hands coming down to his shoulders, to steady herself. He waits until she has a good grip to try standing again, using his clean hand to pull his underwear and then his jeans back up.
“Are you okay?” she asks, and then, before he has a chance to answer, catches a glimpse of his very much not clean hand. “Oh, shit. Here, let me, um…”
“There’s a dish rag - ” She manages to find a clean one in the darkness and passes it to him. “Thanks.”
There’s a silence then. Not just them catching their breath, not just the aftermath of cunnilingus in his workplace, not just a reunion.
“So.” He really was telling Becky the truth earlier; he’s never been the ‘getting his hopes up’ type. “You probably gotta get back to Gwen’s.”
She looks at him, her eyes like a little baby deer’s, and she swallows. “Yeah. Yeah, I don’t…really want Madi to wake up if I’m not there.”
“I gotcha.” He goes to the sink to wash his hands, but she doesn’t keep her distance. She follows listlessly, not making eye contact, bending to pick her shirt up off the floor.
“Do you, um…need me to give you a lift? I didn’t…I didn’t see a car out there, I didn’t know if you…”
“Sure.” And like that, they’re back to being not Gemma and Randal, who they were in 2000 or in 1994, but Gemma, the beautiful mother from Maryland, and Randal, the fuckup frozen in Leonardo. “Thanks.”
“Randal?” she says, placing a tentative hand on his arm, which is fucking absurd because he’s just gone down on her against his fucking work station. “I don’t want you to…I don’t take it back.”
“No.” He shakes his head, and now he won’t meet her eyes either. If he does, he knows he’s just going to…fall in love with her all over again. “No, you never had to. I’ll be fine, Gem. You know me, I’ll get along.”
She looks at him like that’s exactly what she’s afraid of. “Okay,” is what she says instead. So she goes to the dining room to get her keys. And he locks up the security system, as promised. And he gets in the passenger side of her family car, doesn’t look at the car seat in the back, or the snack crumbs mashing into the floor, or the toys and cardboard books strewn across the back seat.
And she thrusts her key into the ignition, turns the car on, lets it warm up a minute. And then she looks over her shoulder to reverse out of her spot, turns out of the parking lot. And it doesn’t occur to her to ask him if he’s still living at his mom’s place, because she doesn’t have to ask. She knows the route.
He decides to spare her the responsibility of speaking first. “You headin’ home Sunday?”
“Yeah.” Her hands are at ten and two, her eyes on the road. “We’re takin’ Gwen and my mom to dinner tomorrow, and then probably heading out in the afternoon Sunday. We come see them, sometimes - birthdays and parties and things.”
He leans back in the seat, toying with the button to roll down the window. “Does Madi’s dad like comin’ to Jersey?”
She’s quiet, and then: “No. No, not really.” The stoplight near the QuickStop holds them up, still on a timer after all these years. “I guess we’re pretty good at hurting each other.”
He doesn’t ask if she means him or Madi’s dad. Probably she means both.
“All things considered, it was good to see you,” he offers, a few blocks away from his mom’s place. “And I don’t take it back, either.”
Her throat sounds heavy when she speaks again. “It was good to see you, too, Randal.”
He won’t be dramatic; there’s a very real possibility he’ll find a place or time to see her again, at somebody’s birthday or somebody’s funeral, a high school reunion or Dante’s wedding, if he wants her there. But this is definitely the end of something, he can feel it. Knows it, something in him has known it since he heard her voice on the phone.
They arrive at his house, and he looks back at her one more time - memorizes the sad smile on her face, the shape of her bracelet curving around her wrist as she reaches across the center console to touch his arm again.
“Take care of yourself, Randal.”
He musters up a smile, just for her, and pretends she’s memorizing his face as well.
“You too.”