Heroes

Chapter 1 Hiro Nakamura was in love. Full-on, balls-out, head-over-heels in love. Charlie was perfect. Smart, funny, gorgeousGod, was she gorgeous, with that red hair and those small soft hands and that smile . . . He had waited his entire life to have a girl smile at him like that. And it had finally happened, lightning had finally struck. Six thousand miles from home, at a tiny greasy spoon smack in the middle of Texas, he'd finally met the girl of his dreams. Charlie. Mmmmm. Hiro peacocked in front of the men's room mirror, bringing sexy back. He felt like slaying a dragon or saving a village or pounding his chest with mighty fistssomething masculine and rugged and virile, to announce to the world that Hiro Nakamura was in love with Charlie . . . um . . . Charlie Something-or-other. Huh. He didn't know her last name. Hiro's shoulders slumped for a second, then he shook it off. Well, so what? Who cared what her last name was? If he played his cards right, she might just end up as Charlie Nakamura! He gave his reflection a goofy smile. Okay, maybe he was going overboard. Maybe love was too strong a word for what he felt, given that he'd known her for less than an hour, and they spoke different languages, and she was probably only talking to him at all because he'd happened to sit down in her section in the diner. All right, then, he'd admit it: maybe he wasn't actually in love with Charlie. But he was definitely smitten. No one could argue with that. 2 No wonder everyone in America is so fat!" Hiro surreptitiously glanced around the diner, checking out the other customers to see if Ando was talking about anyone in particular. A group of chattering women in tennis whites took up three tables in the back; a sketchy-looking trucker with a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes, shielding his face, nursed a solitary cup of coffee at a table by the door; a pair of businessmen were anchored down the counter; and two men in police department uniforms lingered over the newspaper a couple of tables away. The younger of the two, whose bushy sideburns threatened to take over his face, scowled down at the crossword puzzle, erasing an answer so vigorously that he tore a hole in the paper. But the olderand fatter cop looked up, meeting Hiro's gaze with a friendly nod. Hiro smiled back, trying not to look alarmed at the way the sheriff's chair creaked ominously anytime he shifted his considerable bulk. Then he returned his attention to Ando, who was scowling down at the laminated menu in consternation. "All there is to eat is waffles and french fries," Ando complained. Hiro leaned back in the comfortable padded booth and grinned. "You like french fries." "I've gained four kilos from french fries!" Hiro opened his mouth to respond, then thought better of it. Half a dozen replies sprang to mind, each one more hilarious than the last, but he knew that his friend wouldn't find any of them funny, at least not until he'd had some coffee. So Hiro simply shrugged and picked up his own menu, happy just to be out of the car. Hiro and Ando had been on the road since dawn, steadily ticking off the miles on the endless monotonous ribbon of I-20 East from El Paso. Ando was lucky enough to be doing the driving, but for Hiro, it was the most boring morning of his life. There had been nothing interesting to look at, scenery-wisejust scrubby brown earth, divided by barbed-wire fences that seemed utterly pointless to himwhat were they trying to fence in? There was nothing there! At one point they'Wallington, Aury is the author of 'Heroes', published 2007 under ISBN 9780345503220 and ISBN 0345503228.