“Just marveling at how goddamn lucky I am.”
As expected, she blushed. “You’re laying it on kind of thick with the compliments. I already said I’d be your girlfriend.”
“See last comment.” He slid into the driver’s seat and cranked the engine over. As they cut through the back roads into town, she reached over and laced her fingers through his.
He was struck by how…nice…this was.
It was almost enough to banish his dread of going to the Diner. On a Sunday morning, there was bound to be a bunch of old-timers who’d shown up after the early service down at the church, all willing to share their old battle stories—andhisfamily’s stories. It was exactly the kind of situation he’d avoided before now.
But Bri loved this town. And he was rapidly falling for her. That meant he needed to at leasttry—no matter how much he hated it. So he pulled into the parking lot and braced himself. Except Bri didn’t move.
“We don’t have to do this, you know.”
She was just waiting for him to back out. To leave. All he had to do was say the word, and she’d let him take her back to her place and maybe they’d fall into bed and spend the next seven days tangled up in each other. But he’d have blown his one chance to prove to her that he was really serious about this.
“I want to.” In that moment, it was almost the truth.
From the look she sent him, she knew exactly how hard this was. “Okay.”
As expected, the Diner was nearly full, mostly of retired folk who used breakfast as an excuse to gossip about whatever drama had gone down over the weekend. The faded and cracked red vinyl seats were exactly the same as when he’d been in high school. Even the old black-and-white tiled floor still sported the stain in the grout from when Avery clocked Matt Jennings in the face and broke his nose after he dumped her big sister. Nothing had changed.
They took the only open booth and slid in. Immediately, the waitress, Dorothy, scuttled over. “Hey there, you two. I’m surprised to see you here. I would have thought you’d be at the library today, Miss Nave.”
It was painfully obvious she was scooping for a story, but Bri just smiled. “You’re pulling my leg, Dorothy. You know the library isn’t open on Sundays.”
“Oh, right. Silly me.” She looked from Bri to Ryan and back again, clearly fighting back the questions she must have been dying to ask. “What will you have?”
They ordered and watched her slink away, as if she thought if she moved slowly enough, they would call her back and confess what they’d been up to for the last few days. Ryan shook his head. “This town.”
“It’s just a little harmless curiosity.”
He was saved from responding by Old Joe walking through the door. The only thing Joe liked better than drinking on his boat was telling stories, and Ryan had all of three seconds to hope his presence would go unnoticed before the old man zeroed in on them. “Is that Billy Flannery’s youngest I see?”
He sighed. “You know it is, Joe. You’re not half as blind as you pretend to be.”
Joe chortled and shuffled over to slide into the bench next to Bri. “Good Lord. Miss Bri? Tell me you aren’t consorting with this here fella.”
She smiled. “Hello, Joe.”
“What’s a nice girl like you doing spending time with a hooligan like Flannery here?”
A hooligan. He was nearly thirty, for God’s sake. He’d stopped being a hooligan when he graduated from high school. And that wasn’t even getting into the fact that everyone still referred to him as “Billy Flannery’s youngest” despite the fact that his father had died nearly seven years ago.
For her part, Bri didn’t seem all that bothered by it. “Ryan is buying me breakfast.”
“Back in my day, when a man buys a woman breakfast, it means something serious.” He shot a surprisingly serious look at her. “You should know this boy right here burned down the high school on the very day he graduated.”
Here they went. It was always the same old story. He didn’t even know why he was surprised, but this was taking it to a whole new level to interrupt his date with Bri to tell the same old tired story.
Bri’s eyes danced. “Ihaveheard that. On several occasions.”
“Well, of course you have. Everyone and their dog in this gossipy little town thinks they know something.” Apparently the irony of that statement was lost on Old Joe. “But I’ll tell you something else.”
Jesus Christ. Would it never end? What was next? The stink bomb incident? Or maybe the time he and Drew jumped their car over the school garden and were suspended for a week?
“There was a reason that fire started,” Joe continued. “He was there in the first place because those little Jennings shits thought it would be funny to color the fur of a cat they found with melted crayons. Our Ryan found out, and he wasn’t going to sit back and let some bullies hurt a defenseless animal. He got that kitten out of the fire, see if he didn’t.”
Bri laughed and patted Joe’s arm. “Sounds like a hero.”