Maybe

            Kara stared at the man in front of her. She had spent her whole day trying to find this man, the supposed man of her dreams, and this is who she found. The night before, he had seemed charming, mysterious, cunning, and, well, perfect. She knew it wasn’t the alcohol that had made him seem that way, because she had only had an Irish coffee by the time he had come in to the bar and she hadn’t had anything else to drink, that was alcoholic, until they had gone to a nightclub four hours later.

            The man in front of her, dressed in a crumpled white button-up and dirty black slacks, looked like he had just finished a night of work as a busboy.

            “James! Five minutes and then back to work! Those tables ain’t gonna clean themselves!” A slightly muscular man shouted from the backdoor of Caraway’s, the restaurant Kara had found this loser in. She had been hoping he was the cook, with how well he had cooked her a late morning dinner before departing when she had fallen asleep. Or the owner, with how well he knew about how businesses ran themselves and worked, but she never would have thought that he was a busboy.

            “Couldn’t keep away from me,” The guy, James, smirked and made a move to hold Kara’s hand, but she stepped back, aghast and confused. “What’s wrong?”

            “You’re . . . You’re a busboy.” She stammered, wiping the sweat from her brow that she had gathered from running five blocks just to meet this man of her dreams. The man who had made her laugh so hard that she had snorted, something she hadn’t done since middle school. After middle school, she had to be serious and grounded after her father died. She had to take care of her mother and brother. They had been counting on her, and she had never found time for herself since.

            “Yeah? Is that a problem?” He looked confused, like wealth and occupation and security were things that didn’t matter in the world. To Kara, they did. And they mattered so much that she fainted because of the strange pressure that her heart and her head decided to push her with.

            “That stuff matters to her? That’s no problem, I get the reasoning, and I would love to keep going out with her. Last night was magical and amazing. I didn’t think I could feel that again after my ex. But I have another two years till I get this place from my uncle,”

            “Yeah! I know! It sucks. But I don’t think she’ll-,”

            “I do!” Kara shouted, leaping up from her makeshift bed that James and his uncle had made for her in the break room after she had fainted. “I mean . . . I will. I’m fine. With it. With you. I’d like to keep seeing you.” She stammered. Her friend Mel staring at her with her eyes bulging like a frog’s from how shocked she was. James looked at her, his face going from concerned to ecstatic. Neither of the two knowing that, while Kara was passed out, she had a dream of her dad telling her it was time for her to relax and find happiness, something that she deserved to have after the many years of work she had been putting herself under.