Surprisingly, the three of us work pretty well as a team. We haven’t come anywhere close to delivering the orders within the required ninety-second window—our best time, by my watch, was just over three minutes—but so far, no one has complained. Not even when we ran out of rice pudding.
After serving what seems like most of downtown Seattle, the lunch rush is finally over. Carter, Wesley, and I stare at one another in stunned silence.
I feel like we’ve come through a war. We looked directly into the face of a hungry mob and we lived to tell about it.
“I need a cigarette.” Carter stumbles out of the truck, his fingers fumbling to untie his grease-stained apron. He can’t seem to get it off fast enough.
“So that was fun,” Wesley says, tossing his hairnet into the garbage can. He picks up the tip jar and starts sorting through the bills. “How much do you think we made?”
I don’t even care. I’m too busy obsessing over how I will probably never get the fried turkey stench off me. Being locked in such a tiny space has magnified the stink. I am desperate to go home and take a shower, but we still have so much cleaning up ahead of us. It’s like a bomb went off in here. Seriously, I do not even know where to start.
Wesley counts out the bills, smoothing them on the counter. “Two hundred bucks.” He smiles at me, delighted, and he looks so much like the boy I used to know that I feel myself softening toward him again.
The feeling totally unnerves me. Every time I make up my mind to forget about Wesley, he throws me off balance. I fill the sink with water, while Wesley stuffs the money back into the tip jar.
“So…,” he says as I squirt lemon-scented dish soap under the running water. “What happened to you at the party? You sure left in a hurry.”
I don’t want him to know that my exit from the party had anything to do with him. Or his pixie girlfriend. “I wasn’t feeling well. Caleb walked me home.”
Wesley grabs a dishcloth and tries to corral the food crumbs covering the counter into a neat pile. “So you and Caleb, huh?”
I swallow. “Yeah. Me and Caleb.” I don’t sound convincing, but maybe I’m a better actress than I think because Wesley doesn’t say anything.
Why isn’t he saying anything?
He reaches past me to dump the crumbs into the garbage can underneath the sink and his arm brushes against mine. It feels intentional and that makes it much worse.
“Q?”
“Yes?”
I glance at him and my heart starts to quicken. There isn’t a lot of room inside this truck, but he’s definitely standing a lot closer to me than he needs to. He’s also staring at me with the same expression he was wearing at the party, when we were on the balcony. Right before he almost kissed me.
“I should have told you about Jolie,” he says. “I don’t know why I didn’t.”
I shake my head. “You don’t owe me an explanation.”
“It’s just … I don’t want any awkwardness between us,” he says. “I really do want to be—”
I find myself holding my breath, hoping, against my better judgment, that he’s not going to use the F word.
“—friends.”
He’s staring at my mouth when he says it.
What kind of twisted game is Wesley playing here? He’s totally sending me mixed messages. This is all obviously part of a plan to get me to like him, so he can then …
Well, I haven’t quite figured out his motive yet. But I know he has one.
I move away from him.
I start attacking the rice pudding pot with a scrub brush. A hunk of pudding skin hangs from the edge of the pot—so gross it actually makes me shudder—and rice is crusted onto the bottom, hard as cement.
Wesley takes the pot from me and he’s standing really close to me again. Every nerve in my body is firing. This doesn’t feel like friendship. This feels like so much more than that.
“There’s something else,” he says.
“Hello?” Someone raps on the counter. Wesley jerks around, and over his shoulder I see a homeless man standing at the take-out window.
“Argh, what can I get ye, matey?” Wesley says, leaning on the counter. “The turkey leg makes for a fine feast, if ye be lookin’ for a hearty meal.”
“Smells good,” the man says, sticking his head inside the window. “Got any leftovers? Anything you were going to throw out?”
“No, but…” Wesley grabs the tip jar and extracts a five-dollar bill. “I do have enough for one special. Sound okay?”
The man smiles and Wesley sticks the bill into the cash register. He gives me a small shrug and then turns to throw a frozen turkey leg into the deep fryer. A cloud of hot steam instantly rises up, obscuring his face.
God, why does he have to be so nice? Why can’t he be an ass and shoo the guy away like Carter does? He’s making it harder and harder for me to destroy him.
Wesley James may seem like he’s a good guy—the kind of guy who feeds the homeless and builds houses or whatever for people in Mexico—but it’s all an act. It has to be.
No one is that perfect.
And suddenly, I’m mad again. Angrier than I’ve been since the night Wesley first showed up at Tudor Tymes. Because he’s a total fake. And everyone is falling for it.
Even me.
So while he’s busy making lunch for Homeless Guy, I unpin the schedule from the corkboard. Wesley and I have only one shift together next week and it’s at the restaurant. He never makes a copy of the schedule or writes down his shifts; he relies on his memory.
I check to make sure he’s not paying attention and then I grab a purple feathered quill from the box of Tudor Tymes souvenirs that Joe is always pressuring us to sell.
The schedule is a photocopy—the original is posted in the staff room at the restaurant—so it shouldn’t be hard for me to change Wesley’s shift. Make him an hour late. Maybe two, for good measure.
Just enough to tarnish his suit of armor.
And, with any luck, finally get him fired.
nineteen.
Caleb’s waiting for me at the entrance to the beach, a big wicker picnic basket hooked over his arm. He grins when he sees me, and while his smile doesn’t go right through me the way Wesley’s does, it does make me happy. I’m sure choosing Caleb is the right decision.
Pretty sure.
Mostly sure.
I mean, okay, I don’t have the same crazy physical response when I’m with him that I do around Wesley, but you know what? Attraction is overrated. I may not want to rip Caleb’s clothes off, but maybe that will come in time. He’s funny, sensitive, and kind. And—as an added bonus—he isn’t responsible for the destruction of my family.
“Hey, you,” he says. He leans over to give me a kiss, but I turn my head at the last second. Instead of my lips, he gets a mouthful of my hair.
After what happened between us the last time we were on the beach, I know that there’s a high probability of kissing in the forecast tonight. I’m hoping that this time there will be fireworks, that any lingering doubts about Caleb will be put to rest and he’ll make me forget all about Wesley James.
So yes, my expectations for this date are high. Turning my head away when he tried to kiss me is probably not the best way to start it off. From here on out, I decide to be more open. If Caleb tries again, then I’m going to just go with it.