I didn’t bother to look more into his work because when I asked him about it, he went into technical detail, and my poor little brain couldn’t handle it.
Well, it probably could.
But Anderson didn’t know how to control himself when he got to talking about it.
“Yeah, I gotta go. Nance reminded me that I have an appointment in about two minutes to talk to the head honcho at Dime Tab, a major competitor in the…” I lost him for a second while he started to veer away from the phone, his excitement making him forget that he needed to speak into the phone and not let it drop from his face. “Shit, sorry. I forgot I was talking to you there for a second. I love you, sis. Gotta go.”
Then he was gone, and I was left smiling at my phone.
“Brother?” Callum asked.
I nodded. “Brother.”
“What’s your brother do?” Price asked.
I grimaced. “I don’t actually know, to be honest. I know that he owns a computer engineering company, but I hate to admit this, he’s too smart for his own good. He doesn’t know how to dumb it down enough for me.”
“What’s his company name?” Callum asked.
I told him, which had Price looking it up on his phone.
“Computer engineering is designing computers/computer parts,” Callum explained.
“Your brother is a millionaire,” Price grunted. “He designs systems for the US Military, darlin’.”
I shrugged. “I knew that. I just mean… I don’t know what exactly he does that’s so special. Like, I don’t know why he is picked over everyone else.”
The next ten minutes were spent talking about Anderson, and why what he did was so much more special than what any other computer engineer did.
We stopped talking when the queso arrived at the table.
I immediately started to dig in, having refrained from eating chips until it arrived.
I was through half of the basket when I looked up at the two men.
They were staring at me with equal measures of shock and laughter on their face.
“I’m hungry,” I told them. “I had a really long day, and that chick that complained about not getting any food got my food. Which Meya knew.”
There was a long moment of silence, then the two of them dug into their food with gusto right along with me.
We were nearly all the way through the guac and queso before the chick came back to take our orders.
I paused, looking at her. “I thought they already ordered… I’m gonna be so full.”
She gave a little laugh, then took their orders, having held off on putting mine in until theirs had been placed.
It was only when she was gone, and Price was scraping the side of the bowl with the last remaining tortilla, that I finally felt like me again.
“Damn,” I sighed. “Now, if I could just find somewhere else to live, I’d be happy as a clam.”
“How did that saying even come to be?” Price asked curiously. “Happy as a clam?”
“According to historians, sailors and gatherers used the term ‘happy as clams in the mud at high tide,’” Callum murmured as he took a heaping chip full of hot sauce and shoved it into his mouth.
I frowned. “That was really random. How do you know that?”
He shrugged, but it was Price who said, “He’s full of all kinds of useless facts and thoughts. Ask him about Tow Mater.”
I was almost afraid to ask. But ask I did.
“What about Tow Mater?” I paused. “Are you talking about the dude from Cars? The tow truck?”
Callum smirked.
It was Price who started laughing. “Go on. Tell her.”
Callum sat back and said, “Well, you know how the car resembled an actual person, right?”
I nodded. “And you know that Tow Mater lived at a salvage yard?”
I nodded again.
“Well, if you take it as a car symbolizing an actual person, then Tow Mater living at a salvage yard, then technically, he was surrounded by body parts.” Callum dipped another chip, getting less on it this time since the bowl was narrowing down the more he ate.
My mouth fell open.
“And you know how everyone said that the town didn’t get many tourists?” he continued.
I gasped then. “Are you accusing Tow Mater of being a serial killer?”
“If the shoe fits,” Callum quipped.
Just… holy hell.
“You just ruined Cars for me.” I shook my head. “I’ll never be able to watch it again now.”
“He can do that on almost every single Disney movie,” Price said. “His brain just doesn’t work correctly.”
“What else can you ruin for me?” I wondered.
So that was how we spent the next hour.
Price was great.
I liked him a lot.
But not anywhere near as much as I liked his brother.
It was getting quite embarrassing just how much I liked him.
“How are you getting home?” Callum asked curiously as we all started to gather ourselves to leave.
“Well, my car is here, but if I drink too much, I just leave it and walk home.” I paused. “Why?”
He shot me a swift smile. “I was going to offer to have Price drive your car home, and give you a ride on my bike… unless you want to walk?”
I scoffed. “Who in their right fucking mind would want to walk in this Texas heat?”
But seriously.
Why the hell was Texas so annoyingly hot?
It was going on mid-June, and it felt like the seventh level of hell.
It was a balmy—and I do mean balmy with the humidity sitting at a good ninety percent—ninety-seven degrees.
One would think, after the snowmageddon and below zero temperatures that Texas saw six months ago, that it wouldn’t be as hot as it was. But Texas was all ‘hold my beer’ and showed us how to hit one hundred-degree digits in the same year that it was negative six.
“Keys?” Price asked.
I handed him my purse, and he looked at me with surprise.
“Listen,” I said. “I can’t give you my keys because there is like a sinkhole in the bottom of my purse. Since I don’t have to have them out to start my car anymore, that means that they just get lost in there.”
Price chuckled and tucked my purse underneath his arm.
I grinned and said, “Pink is definitely your color.”
Price winked and headed out to the parking lot ahead of me, leaving Callum to follow behind me.
I was very much aware of what I was wearing, thinking that I should’ve brought something other than raggedy clothes to change into after stripping out of my uniform.
Maybe if I was in a tight pair of leggings, he could see my nice ass and think, “Oh, yeah. I want to tap that.”
Instead, he was watching me walk in front of him in something that made me look like I didn’t have an ass at all.
We made it outside with my mind going absolutely warp speed, only for Price to come to a stop and say, “Which car?”
I pointed at the black sedan across the parking lot.
“Umm,” he paused. “Are you sure that’s yours?”
I frowned, my eyes a bit blurry. “I think so. It’s a Challenger… right?”
“Right,” he confirmed, his hands closing into fists. “I just… you don’t look like a fast car girl.”