How many times he had sat in the same exact booth in Granny's, how many times he had begun his morning with a coffee or ended it with a drink, he could not even begin to guess. Had it been every day of the Curse that he had looked up into Ruby's smiling face and felt nothing? He could remember only at the fringes of the details of his world that she had flirted with him, but he had never thought anything of the tilt of her lips and the shift of her body as she sunk into one hip or the pitch and lift of her voice when he spoke.

Even as he knew he couldn't appropriate all of her time for himself, as much as he might have liked to.

How successful he was at keeping something of the surprise from his face as she leant in, moving close enough to press her lips to his cheek. His smile was startled, if not immediate and he nodded. "Sure thing, Ruby."