After the ride, I went home, showered, and then hopped in my truck to meet up with Chloe for our date. I’d told her she could choose where we went, figuring that it would probably be somewhere I’d never been before, somewhere fancy that might even require me to wear a tie. But no; she ended up suggesting this little hole-in-the-wall place that I was a little surprised she knew about, right on the outskirts of town, not too far away from The Finery. Lorraine’s, it was called. It had a homey feel, with calico curtains and pine-paneled walls that were mostly obscured by the hundreds of decorative plates that the proprietress—Lorraine—had adorned them with.
Fine dining it was not, but the food was good and I sure as hell wouldn’t have to be concerned with whether or not I was dressed appropriately.
She was just getting there as I pulled in, and I parked right next to her car. “Hey, you,” I said. She looked great, in a fraying pair of cut-off jean shorts and an old white T-shirt she’d cut the sleeves off of, her hair pulled back in one of those messy buns.
“Hi,” she said. She came right over to me and gave me a quick kiss. “I’m starving. This place has the best burgers.”
Any sort of food after a ride tasted good, but there was something particularly satisfying about a burger, especially one loaded with bacon and cheese. We went in and got seated at a corner table.
“I’m surprised you knew about this place,” I said, glancing at the menu even though I already knew what I
was going to get.
She had the menu in front of her, obscuring all of her face but her eyes, which flickered over to me. “I’ve never actually been here before,” she said.
“Yeah? How’d you know about it?”
“I ... looked it up online.”
Before I could say anything, our waitress, Denise, came over, a girl I’d actually gone to high school with. She’d been one of Trisha’s friends, actually, and had supposedly been the person Trisha called immediately after calling the police after Kurt had left that night.
I could tell Denise hadn’t realized it was me until she was already at our table. We didn’t dislike each other, but things had always been awkward after Kurt and Trisha had broken up, even all these years later.
“Oh, um, hi. Hi, Graham.” She looked at Chloe. “Hi there. What can I get you to drink?”
Denise didn’t really look my way again as she wrote down Chloe’s request for a lemonade and mine for an iced tea.
“Do you know what you want to eat?” I asked. Chloe nodded. “Maybe we should just order our food now, too.” I figured this would at least save Denise an additional awkward encounter.
“So, you two obviously know each other,” Chloe said after Denise had left. “What’s the story there?” She leaned forward, a smile on her face. I imagined she expected me to tell her some funny story about a date that didn’t go quite right.
“That’s Denise,” I said. “We went to high school together. Never dated.”
She raised an eyebrow. “She must’ve liked you then. I think she still might! Did you see the way she blushed when she came over here?”
“I can say with 100 percent certainty that she does not like me like that.”
I hoped that she’d drop it after that, because I’d have to make up some story to tell her if she didn’t. No way in hell I was going to tell her about Kurt.
But my answer seemed to satisfy her, or at least she didn’t ask me about it any further. She looked over my shoulder, taking the room in, the people. The place was fairly busy, and random snippets of people’s conversations floated over.
Chloe leaned across the table toward me again. “I want to talk to you about something.” There was a serious note in her voice.
“Okay. What’s up?”
“I know this is going to sound a little weird. So, please don’t take it the wrong way.” She brushed a few wisps of hair back from her face. “But I’d like it if we could maybe keep this ... just keep it sort of between the two of us.”
Denise appeared then, with our drinks.
“Here you are,” she said, looking only at Chloe. Chloe kept looking at her then at me, as if trying to say, See? She likes you so much she can’t even make eye contact!
“Thanks,” I said. Denise ignored me and walked off. I looked at Chloe. “So, what is it you want to keep a secret?”
She fiddled with the wrapper on her straw. “Us. You and me.”
“You want this to be a secret?”
“Um, something like that.”