He looked down at me when we finally made it into the line, his brow crooked. “What?”
I shook my head, my face flushing slightly at the direct eye contact.
“Nothing, really.” I giggled. “I just like how everyone moves out of your way. I have to fight my way through the crowd, and I was thinking it’d be nice to have someone like you around to fight the crowd for me every time I came here.”
He tilted his head, the shine in his eyes catching the overhead lights, making them sparkle. “Anytime you want me, honey, I’m here.”
The warm fuzzies stayed for a few long seconds before they were blasted away by a toxic voice behind me.
Yet another person that hated me.
And she belonged to JJ.
“Don’t think you’re going to get away with hurting JJ.”
I looked over my shoulder at Tinsley, JJ’s on-again, off-again girl.
Tinsley and JJ had been together before me, and after me, and I would forever be a bone of contention between the two of them.
I looked at her over my shoulder, and then back ahead, ignoring her.
“Did you fucking hear me?”
I did.
It was kind of hard not to hear that obnoxious voice.
“If you touch her,” Callum growled, “I will literally rip that hand from your body and slap you with it.”
Tinsley didn’t say anything to that, but I could almost hear her mind working, wondering if he was serious or not.
“Try me,” he said. “Because unlike some men, I have no fucking problem hitting a woman.”
Tinsley, I saw out of the corner of my eye, stepped back hastily.
Then, without another word, she whirled and left, leaving us alone again.
“You don’t have a problem hitting a woman?” I raised my brows at him.
He shrugged. “Not the ones that are like that. You? It would break me in half to hit you. But her? She fuckin’ deserves it, and I don’t even know her.”
I snorted. “That’s JJ’s probably off-again instead of on-again girlfriend, Tinsley.”
“If she’s the off-again persuasion, there’s at least one redeeming quality in JJ,” he muttered, then took a giant step forward and reached the counter. After ordering his choices, he turned to me. “What do you want?”
I listed off about five things, all of them costing about twenty-four dollars total. When I reached for my wallet, he laughed and handed them a few twenty-dollar bills.
With the change left over, he stuffed it into the tip jar that was overflowing for this time of night, and then helped me carry my stuff along with his.
He caught my drink and the Snickers.
I stuffed the corn dog wrapped in butcher paper in the back pocket of my jean shorts along with the mustard, leaving my hands free to devour the nachos.
I was following behind him, enjoying my heart-attack-inducing cuisine, when something caught Callum’s eye and caused his head to turn.
He froze, halfway into the crosswalk, his eyes zeroing in on something there.
“What?” I asked, bumping into his muscular arm, nearly spilling my nachos down his back.
He shook his head, his eyes going sad for a few seconds there.
“Nothing.” He paused. “It was nothing.”
I frowned. “It didn’t look like nothing.”
He tilted his head slightly to the side. “Yeah. Just thought it was a guy I served with once upon a time. Guy’s deployed right now, though. No way it could be him.”
I looked over where he’d looked earlier and frowned. “Are you sure?”
He nodded once. “Sure. I have a group of guys that I served with when I was in. Went on multiple tours together. Inseparable. But then I got out because of my sister… and well, I haven’t seen them since. Been a few years now. I just miss them and kind of see them in the crowd sometimes. You know what I mean?”
I did.
“I have a childhood friend that died of cancer when I was seventeen. We were best friends since way back when.” I paused. “I see her all the time, even though I know she’s not here anymore.”
I tilted my head, nacho covered in cheese suspended midair halfway between my mouth.
“What?” I asked.
He laughed and swiped the chip from my hand, bringing it up to my lips. “It’s dripping.”
I leaned forward and brought the chip into my mouth, the tip of one finger pressing against my lips before he released it.
His eyes dilated slightly, and the grin that lit his lips made my heart race.
“Let’s go,” he urged, bringing his finger up to his mouth and licking the cheese off of it.
I felt something deep in my belly stir at the move.
CHAPTER 10
Pigs don’t sweat. So the term ‘sweating like a pig’ is inaccurate.
-Text from Iris to Shine
IRIS
I’d had an excellent rest of my night.
All with one exception.
Bram, Callum’s brother, was drunk.
Off his ass.
So drunk, in fact, that Shine was glaring at him hard and Bram’s wife had left him hours ago in a huff. Slowly thereafter, his brothers had left, too. Eventually leaving me, Bram, Callum, and the occasional Mimi who was coming back and forth in between her track duties.
I’d found, over the course of the night, that I liked Mimi a lot.
She was a sweet, fun, cute little thing that obviously had done the best with the life she’d been given lately.
To the point that I’d invited her out to go eat with me next week for lunch so we could hopefully become better friends.
“Are you sure that you want to leave him like this?” I asked Callum.
Callum tapped his brother with his toe, glaring hard.
Bram was in a bleacher seat, slumped over against the chain-link fence that lined the sides, keeping people from falling to their deaths off the side the farther they rose into the air.
“I’d rather let him vomit all over himself, then choke on it.” He paused. “But I don’t want him to die. So no, I can’t fuckin’ leave him alone.”
I grinned. “Do you have room for him?”
Suddenly, Callum grinned. “I have a kitchen floor that just so happens to belong to me and Lindy.”
“You’d leave him on the floor all night?” I laughed.
“I would if it meant I didn’t have to clean up his puke in the morning.”
“Do you want me to give him a ride to your place?” I asked curiously.
Callum sighed. “I can’t believe those fuckers left me with him.”
“I can’t say that I blame them,” I admitted. “Ride or not?”
In the end, I gave him the ride, happy to find that he didn’t puke in my car on the way home.
But somehow, I knew that Bram would be the one to clean it up in the end.
He wasn’t a bad guy.
He was just in an awkward situation the entire night, from what little Callum had been able to tell me while everyone had been around. So no, I didn’t blame him for getting drunk instead of dealing with whatever it was that was bothering him.
Everybody had their story, and I couldn’t say that Bram and Mimi’s story wasn’t tragic from what I understood.
Callum slowed his speed to manageable levels, allowing me to follow him the entire hour drive home without trouble.