The saddest girl to wear a yellow dress

"The sassiest girl to wear ripped jeans" (2)

When he saw the girl in the yellow dress again he was meeting Sam in Sam's favorite Brooklyn pub. It was Saturday night and the place was booming, he wondered how he was convinced to show up. Regret washed over him as he gazed at the condensation that rolled down his beer mug. It's not that the place wasn't half bad and or that he wasn't enjoying the cold drink; it was actually nice and toasty inside. Socializing was just one of those things he was still mastering, again, after all the years he had been a Hydra-trained assassin.

Bucky slipped his leather jacket off his broad shoulders and placed it lazily on the back of his bar stool. Sam was running late, of course! So he was forced to dodge as much eye contact as possible in the meantime. He didn't wish to be identified, so he kept his head down; his hair tucked into a low bun. The noise, for a moment, drowned out the gawing memory of the saddest girl to wear a yellow dress.

That was until he heard the voice next to him. It sounded so familiar he had instinctively lifted his head, his icy-blue eyes closing in on the blonde standing next to him at the bar. She ordered a whiskey on the rocks and he couldn't help himself. He was now running his eyes slowly up and down her profile, his breathing becoming slightly faster, his throat drying out and ...he had to stop himself from appearing too eager to see her again. ........."I wish you would've waited for that sandwich, it was hella good," he says, working the courage to speak. His voice is hoarse from nerves that had unavoidably developed after lacking practice for decades. He had been good at this sort of thing once.

"Excuse me?" She whips her head toward him. Her ponytail bouncing as her brown eyes are aimed at him. She looked the same. It was...unquestionably the same girl...but this girl's gaze was avid and daring. She wore a risqué spaghetti strapped, black cropped-top exposing more cleavage than his apprehension would like, and a pair of very ripped, skin-tight, dark denim jeans, followed by back leather combat boots.

"I got you a sandwich." His words are followed by an awkward swallow, as his attempt at staying focused fails him, "About a week ago?" He wouldn't tell her how he had driven through town that afternoon, searching for her, or how he had thought about her lips when it was dark at night. Those were the kinds of things he would only tell her...in time.

"Oh, I see," she flirtatiously throws her head back, a wicked smile unfolding across her face. That face that was both the same, and simultaneously....so extremely ...new? "I have a boyfriend, sorry!" She chimes, looking away. The barman brings her Whiskey. She grabs it and Bucky's head is spinning and before his brain registers his next move his hand is on her wrist and she's gaping at him. Half indignant, half concealingly flattered she twists her mouth at him and he wants to bite that damn pouty lip.

"I'm not hitting on you, doll," he clarifies and her eyes dart to his hand on her wrist, then back at him, so he lets go. "I thought you'd remember, is all." He takes a sip of his drink feeling slightly bitter.

"I'm sorry, never seen you in my life," she blinks, eyes still fixed on him, her mouth making a contrite little gesticulation.

"You were at the bus stop, it was raining and you had..." he feels the urge to clear his throat, he didn't want her to know how vividly he remembered their meeting (not yet anyway) "...this yellow dress on." He continues.

"Do I look like a girl that wears yellow dresses?" She gave her head a little shake, one of her trimmed, carefully-filled eyebrows arching sarcastically. A sarcasm that prompts a sudden need for him to erase it from her face. Replace it with something else entirely. He might've forgotten how to small talk, but he still remembered how to make a woman's toes curl.

The image makes his cheeks burn. "I guess not," Bucky grumpily mumbles. The woman standing a foot away from him even speaks differently, with an accent he doesn't recognize, yet...her smell - vanilla mixed with something luscious he can't identify - he distinctly recalls.