Had he had any doubts as to the power of the Dark Curse to erase all that all of them had been, the fact that he had spent twenty-eight years seeing the woman in front of him on almost a daily basis and not smiled back at her as he was then would have surely brought that home. He had gone nearly every morning for his first cup of the coffee of the day and so many late nights when he had planted himself into the far booth of the diner with a stack of paperwork. She had been there each and every time, and yet while she had smiled and flirted, in the emptiness of his memories and the hollowed set of his world, he had never been more than polite.

He let her go with a nod, watching her as she went. While it was not without an appreciation of the sway of her hips or the length of her legs, such things were secondary to an overheard conversation to do with an upcoming event at the Nexus. Valentine's Day was foreign to him beyond the markers that Storybrooke had attached to it. Even there he had not understood the idea of it, not hollowed or caught beneath the cold hands of the mayor. Only as the world had bled back into him had he caught a whiff of it. Only with Ruby smiled at him did he want a taste of what it was supposed to be.

He nodded again when she returned, his mind made up. "Yes, please." After a pause, he tipped his head back and asked, "Hey, Ruby?"