Not willing to share that thought at all, I clamped my mouth shut and focused on menial tasks until most of the tables left and the table of birthday boys seemed to be done.
“Anything else I can get for you all?” I asked while I cleared their plates. Surprisingly, they’d stacked their garbage and napkins on their plates, not leaving an enormous mess for me.
“No. Just the check, thank you.”
“No problem. Split three ways?”
The brown-haired guy pointed his thumb at his chest. “I’ve got this.”
“Okay. Be back then.”
As I turned to leave, that sensation of being watched pricked at my spine and I frowned.
Eyes ahead. Don’t look.
I shook it off. They were only a couple years younger than me and staring at my ass. No big deal. I had to learn how to get used to it.
Still, it unnerved me enough that my hands trembled while I dumped their dishes and wiped off the tray. I printed out their check and delivered it to the table.
It must have been their age. Maybe their similarities to guys I would have known way back that caused me to ask, “You guys have a sober ride home?”
Brown-haired guy lifted a finger. “That’d be me. I haven’t been drinking.”
Yeah. And I’d heard Josh say that one or eighty times, too. “Sure?”
“You offering?” Drunken Matt slurred again, slapping the table like he’d made a great joke.
“Dude. Shut up.” His friend shoved his head to the side.
Brown-haired guy wasn’t smiling when he replied, “One. Hours ago, I’m in charge tonight as their older, more responsible friend.”
Relief washed through me.
“Drive safe then.”
I took his card that he slid into the bill envelope without looking and came back to the counter to ring them up.
“Do you always do that?” Hudson asked, voice low. Thick with something I couldn’t place.
“What? Request a sober driver? Sometimes.”
Usually when they were young and had their life in front of them. More commonly when they weren’t jerks to me. I had no problems ordering a taxi for anyone or requesting they called an Uber. Not that they ever listened, but I at least tried. Once, I called the cops on a particularly drunken and obnoxious table. They could barely stand by the time they left the diner, much less drive. I still hoped they’d been busted and spent time drying out.
I delivered the card and the signature slips. Birthday boy was now singing another silly kid song and playing a sloppy game of what looked like patty cake with the guy across from him.
Shaking off the thoughts of Josh and trauma and drunken accidents, I grinned at Hudson when I got back to the counter.
“Want to hear something good?”
“I’m all ears.” He curled his hand toward him in a welcoming gesture. “Hit me with it.”
“I got a B on an accounting test. I hate accounting.” A B wasn’t great, but it’d made me happy and besides Angie, it’d been a long time since I had anyone to share good news with.
“Sweet. Let me take you to dinner to celebrate.”
“What?” I expected a congratulations. Not a dinner. Unless… “Like a date? I mean… friends. Like friends. Having dinner together.”
And holy shit. Someone. Please kill me now.
18
Hudson
Truthfully, I was up for it to be a date, but as Lilly choked on her words and flailed her hands in the air, correcting herself, it was more enjoyable to watch it happen than step in and save her.
She looked flustered, splotchy red started growing on her chest, up her throat. And the more she attempted to correct herself, fumble over her words with nervous gestures, that pink slid to her cheeks and the tips of her ears.
For the first time since I’d met her in person, I suspected I was seeing exactly the girl she used to be… before her life and freedom was ripped away… and she was beautiful.
Grinning at her, silently encouraging her to continue to babble, I lifted up on the rungs of the stool I was sitting on and reached across the counter for the pitcher of ice water she kept nearby. After filling a glass, I slid it toward her, stilling the hand she flapped in the air as she kept rambling. “I mean, obviously. Not a date date like that.”
I wanted that. Based on this sudden burst of insecurity, I wasn’t going to push for it.
“Lilly.” I wrapped her hand around the glass of water. “Drink.”
“Right. Water. Hydration. That’s probably good. Right?”
I nodded, still grinning. Her cheeks were now as dark as her chest, and I pressed my lips together as she fanned herself.
After downing the water in two large gulps, she sucked in a deep breath. “So. Dinner?”
“Dinner.” I choked down my laughter. If I laughed at her, regardless of the fact I was enjoying this and she looked so damn pretty while doing it, I had a feeling she would have no problems punching me in the face.
“Friends?” she said the word again, slowly, her recent attitude rearing its head.
“I think we could be friends. Don’t you?”
I wanted more. More would take time. Some finesse. The latter of which I was well aware I hadn’t handled correctly.
She refilled her water glass. After another large drink, she fiddled with her ponytail. “I think I’d like to be friends.”
“I’m a pretty good one to have.”
“Are you?” she asked, sassy look on her face.
“Yeah. I’m loyal. I’m friendly. I can keep secrets and I’ve been told I’m good to cuddle up with and watch a movie.”
She laughed this low, throaty chuckle. I almost had to lean in to hear it. “You just described a puppy.”
“I’m okay if you think of me as a puppy.”
She shook her head like I was being ridiculous, because I was, and went to go clear up a couple of tables. I was thinking I’d have to ask again about dinner when she returned. She flicked the dish towel into a bin of soapy water and came to me, wiping her hands on the white apron of her uniform.
“I think what I want is to talk to David tomorrow and then do dinner after?”
She was doing it. Warmth stretched my lungs and made them expand as I took her in, the tapping of her chewed-up fingernails on the counter as she bit her bottom lip. “And celebrate a new job, too?”
“I think we can definitely have dinner for that.”
“As friends,” she said.
“As friends,” I agreed.
For now. For a while. For as long as it took.
“Do you know what she’s thinking?” Dad asked as we met outside the conference room. I wasn’t entirely sure why we didn’t use his office, but I wasn’t offering up mine for this meeting, either.
I doubted it was for the same reasons.
Mine was so I didn’t have the memory of Lilly in my office, giving us a hard-earned smile or maybe another low laugh, to distract me throughout the day.
This gave me separation, but I was pretty sure that wasn’t an issue for Dad.
Stephanie knocked on the opened doorframe like she always did before entering a room and brought us a tray of water bottles.