I yank it off and shove it in my purse knowing that I should not care about being sexy. This is just pancakes with an old friend. An old friend who might not even show.
Just as I whip out my compact to check my makeup, I see him out of the corner of my eye. Dallas beat me here, probably because I took a twenty-five-minute detour of indecisiveness. Snapping the compact shut, I pace for a few minutes.
“It’s not a big deal, Robyn. Stop acting like a teenager having lunch with the varsity quarterback. It’s just Dallas,” I whisper-yell at myself. “You’re being ridiculous. Cut it out.”
I close my eyes and take a deep breath. I don’t know why, but it feels like this particular decision is much grander than its outcome warrants.
It’s pancakes. He’s a friend. No big.
But as I open the diner door and a bell chimes overhead, his eyes meet mine and the moment feels monumental. I check the steel cage I erected around my heart the moment I learned he was going to be on this tour. Seems fairly sound, no major breaches so far. That I can feel anyway.
I give Dallas Lark the best I-am-so-over-you, this-is-totally-casual-and-it’s-all-good-in-the-neighborhood smile that I can.
His answering smirk tells me that one thing definitely hasn’t changed—even after all this time.
I’m still a crappy liar.
9 | Dallas
THE WAY I SEE IT, I HAVE TWO OPTIONS.
Freeze Robyn out the way I’ve tried to do since she dumped my ass three years ago, or man up and accept the fact that I’m glad to see her on this tour.
Sitting alone in a diner wondering if she’ll show, I decide to quit being a * and let go of the anger and confusion I’ve held on to for so long. She ended things for one reason or another, reasons I may never know, and I have to shove my macho bullshit aside and deal with that like an adult.
I drum my fingers on the table impatiently while I wait.
“Patience, Dallas,” my granddad used to say when he was first teaching me to play the guitar. I’d get so damn frustrated when my fingers wouldn’t cooperate. “The music isn’t going anywhere,” he’d remind me. “Be patient with it, with yourself.”
I’ve just made up my mind to relax and let her know that I’ve put our past behind me when she breezes into the diner. A bell chimes at the door and all the progress I’ve made vanishes like a figment of my imagination.
Robyn Breeland is the kind of woman who steals your breath away just by entering a room and gifting you with a smile.
I shouldn’t be surprised—she’s pretty much always had this heart-stopping effect on me. But I thought the high from tonight’s show might curtail my reaction to her a bit.
It didn’t.
“Hey,” I say, standing to greet her. “You made it.”
“You know me,” she says with a shrug. “Can’t resist pancakes.”
I fake a wounded look. “And here I was telling myself you might’ve come for the company.”
I add “come” to my mental list of words not to say around Robyn, for my dick’s sake. He has some cherished memories of her that are fairly easy to evoke.
Robyn blushes as if she might be thinking something along the same lines.
“It’s good to see you, Dallas.” She says it like she means it and I grin like a lovesick jackass when she barely lets me give her a one-armed hug before we slide into the booth. “And I caught part of your show tonight. The crowd seemed really into ‘Better to Burn.’ I read that it’s been getting some radio play, which is great, right?”
I nod at an approaching waitress and avoid Robyn’s eyes. If I look directly at her, she’ll see the truth burning in them. She always could see right through me.
“Yeah, Dixie wrote that one. It’s doing well.”
Thankfully before Robyn can inquire any further into my songwriting, a waitress comes over to take our order.
“What’ll it be, kids?” Our waitress’s name is Kay and she has pens stuck in her hair, her shirt pocket, and her apron. Maybe if I kept pens handy like that I’d actually get a decent lyric or two written.