Love and Sorrow (Small Town Secrets Book 5), стр. 27
The whole evening felt surreal. Holding hands—something that felt far more intimate than maybe it should have—emphasized how stupid I’d been, allowing my feelings for this man to intensify. I hoped it didn’t show on my face as he opened the door for me, resting a hand on the small of my back as we moved into the foyer of the restaurant. It was then that I caught a whiff of him—not of heavy cologne, but a clean, fresh, deodorant soap scent mingled with the underlying smell of his skin.
My toes curled again.
Jesus. I’d never met a man who smelled quite like Justin, and his scent drove me absolutely wild.
A young woman at a podium asked how many were in our party.
“We have a reservation.”
“Name?” the woman asked.
“Anderson.”
“All right. Just a moment.” While we waited, Justin turned to me, flashing a smile that made me weak in the knees as the woman gathered up two menus. “This way, please.” We followed her to a small table at the back of the restaurant and, as I sat down, Justin pushed my chair in. “Your waiter will be with you shortly.”
Despite the butterflies in my belly, I focused on breathing calmly and perusing the menu. Justin looked up from his and said, “Get whatever you want.”
While he wasn’t as poor as I was, I knew cash wasn’t an easy commodity—and I appreciated the gesture, but I wanted to let him off the hook. “You sure? There are—”
“Yes.” Through a grin, he also scowled. “Don’t be a pain in the ass.”
“Fine. What are you getting?”
“I don’t know yet.”
The problem was everything looked good. After looking through the menu twice, I settled on the crab and shrimp combo. When the waiter came to our table and Justin ordered a steak and seafood combination platter, I didn’t feel so bad about mine. Then, when the waiter asked what we wanted to drink, I ordered iced tea.
Reaching across the table, Justin flipped my menu over and tapped his finger on it. “No, I don’t think so.” The page was full of various alcoholic beverages. “I’ll have a beer,” he told the waiter, scrutinizing the page. “How about a Newcastle?”
“Yes, sir. And you?”
I had no fucking idea. I continued looking over the list of drinks before deciding. “Okay. I’ll have a beer, too. But can I also have a glass of water?” With hardly another word, the waiter nodded and smiled, scooping up our menus and hustling off.
Justin winked. “That’s more like it.”
As if we were on a real first date, the two of us made small talk, even noting the décor in the restaurant. Soon, though, the waiter brought drinks and salads and we settled into the food. Justin asked, “So how’s Sarah doing?”
“Same old thing. But, you know, she actually got a little angry today.”
“What happened?”
“Well, when we were driving to my parents’ house, Devon was asking me why Mike and I weren’t married anymore. I gave him the usual answer, that we didn’t love each other anymore, just couldn’t be together, blah, blah, blah. And, all of a sudden, Sarah just said, out of the blue, that he was a mean person.”
“No shit.”
“Yeah. It was weird.”
“So do you think her problem is with him?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe now she’s starting to realize what living with him was like. I was going to have her stay with him last night—did I tell you this already?”
“No.”
“Well, Noreen couldn’t watch the kids last night, and neither could my parents. So I called Mike, and after being a total asshole about it, he agreed to watch Sarah when he had Devon. But when I told her what I’d planned, she totally freaked out and refused to go. So I wound up taking her with me to work last night.”
Justin brought the bottle of beer to his lips. “How’d that go?”
“It was okay. She was good. But Kathy told me to ‘not make it a habit’.”
“Does she know what all’s going on?”
“Some.” I speared a cucumber slice with my fork. “But let’s not talk about that.”
“Fair enough.” After setting his beer down, Justin pushed aside his almost-empty salad plate. “There was another reason why I wanted to take you out tonight.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. To celebrate.”
“What are we celebrating?”
“I found out for sure that I’ll be graduating in December. And the shop where I’ve been working, my boss told me that when I’m out of school, he’ll hire me full time and double my pay.”
“Wow. That’s great.”
“No kidding. Far cry from what I was doing two years ago.”
“What were you doing two years ago, Justin? What were you doing before we met?”
As if considering my question, he smiled, sipping once more from his beer before answering. “I was already taking classes when you started at WCC. After I moved here, I was mostly washing dishes, cooking, that kind of shit. I didn’t want to do that anymore.”
“Sounds familiar.”
“I’ve always tinkered with cars, so after I went to the Workforce Center and they told me I should take some classes, I did. I worried at first, ‘cause I’m not a school guy, but I haven’t regretted it.” Tipping the neck of his bottle toward me, he said, “Especially when I made friends with a girl who knows her way around an essay.”
I laughed. “I just cleaned up a little of your punctuation. It’s not like I wrote your papers.”
“Yeah, but I appreciated all of your help.”
It was a fair trade, especially since Justin had helped me with that stupid fucking math class I’d had to take.