“Anything particular in mind?” he asked as we drove down the two-lane highway to the city closest to Halstead. As good as a bacon cheeseburger from the diner sounded, we decided it might be a good idea to lay low in our small town before going out into the world together. Rumors were already going to fly that I’d cheated on Beau with Reid, hell, they probably already were, but there was no sense in giving the town gossips any fuel.
I glanced around at the signs for the restaurants in the area we were driving through. It was just like any other moderately sized town. A McDonald’s, a T.G.I. Fridays, and a slew of other fast food and chain restaurants.
“You pick,” I suggested. “I’m not too particular.”
“Ha!”
“What?”
“I know exactly how this is going to go, Nora.” He cocked his brow and looked over at me. “You say ‘you pick’, but you are going to shoot down every restaurant name I say until we end up over at The Cracker Barrel.”
My mouth watered at the mention of the name. “That’s not true,” I lied. “Just tell me where you want to go, I know you hate that place. Even though I’m not quite sure why. You can get breakfast any time they’re open, who hates that? It seems un-American. It should probably make me question your sanity, at the very least.” I sighed dramatically. “But seriously, we can go wherever you want.”
“Don’t act like you aren’t thinking about a short stack from there right now.” He flicked on his turn signal and pulled into the turn lane. “You want pancakes and hash browns, plain, not the casserole kind with onions,” he added. “Oh... and, one of the Orange Creme sodas, don’t you?”
“Maybe.” I pursed my lips. “How do you—”
“I know you, baby.” He laughed, pulling into the parking lot. I’d missed the easy fun of being with him. And, it didn’t hurt things that he was calling me baby. He had a way of making me feel like I not only belonged with him, but that he was grateful for it. The pro’s and con’s list that I’d drunkenly scrawled with Georgia had been right. We did make each other laugh. There was some unspoken connection between us that I just didn’t have with anyone else. “And, don’t worry, I’ll order bacon so you can steal one of the three pieces from my plate.” This wasn’t the first Sunday morning we’d ate at this restaurant, but it had been a long time. The fact that he remembered my order, down to the specifics, was sweet. “Even though I’m clearly a man who needs his protein,” he said, playfully flexing his biceps as he turned into a parking space and shut off the truck.
“Don’t worry, Arnold,” I teased. “I don’t eat bacon anymore,” I told him. “I became a vegetarian a few years ago.” I jumped out the truck and walked around to meet him. The utter look of disbelief on his face had me laughing out loud. “I’m kidding,” I said. “I’m still a meat eater. And, I’ll absolutely be stealing a piece from you. Maybe two.” I winked.
He slipped his hand in to mine and we walked into the restaurant like we had a hundred times before.
By the time we were seated and had ordered our food, I’d started to see that neither of us had really changed as much as we probably liked to believe. I couldn’t look at him without smiling. Especially as I watched him attempt to finagle golf tees around a tiny wooden triangle, with no luck of completing the infuriating little game.
“This is why I hate this place,” he said, pushing the game in my direction. “I swear they want to make you feel like a complete idiot before you leave.”
“Ignoramus,” I corrected. “They want you to feel like an ignoramus.” I pointed to the scoring chart etched onto the game. “You left four tees.”
“You’re not helping,” he teased. “I bet the inventor of that game can’t jump a double on a dirt bike.”
“I bet he can’t.”
“Probably doesn’t even know how to start one,” he smiled proudly.
“So, tell me about the circuit,” I said. It was as good of time as any to talk about Reid’s future. It was his career after all. If we were going to try and make things work between us, I might as well bite the bullet. “What’s it like to be a professional motocross racer? Everything you’d ever hoped for?”