Drive Me Wild (Bellamy Creek #1)(30)

The server arrived and set down our plates of burgers and fries. “Another round?” she asked, picking up my empty beer bottle and Blair’s glass.

“Sure,” I said.

Blair bit that lip. “I shouldn’t.”

“It’s on me,” I told her, assuming she was worried about the cost. “Have another one.”

“Thanks.” She smiled, but she still looked uncomfortable. And she stopped talking—the server came back with our second round, and she still hadn’t spoken.

“Hey. What’s up?” I nudged her foot with mine under the table.

“Nothing.” She sprinkled a little salt on her fries. Pushed them around on her plate.

“I don’t buy it. You’ve been silent for like four entire minutes. That’s got to be a record.” I was hoping it would make her laugh, but she gave me only a half-hearted smile.

“I’m feeling bad about myself.”

“Why?” I picked up my burger and took a bite.

“I guess I was just thinking about how hard you’ve worked your entire life. Everything you have, you earned. And I had everything handed to me. It doesn’t seem fair.”

“Who said life was fair?”

“You know what I mean.” She picked up one fry and ate it slowly, like a rabbit nibbling to the end of a carrot. “Tell me more about how you grew up.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Were you good in school?”

I shrugged. “Good at what? Behaving? No.”

“Did you get good grades?”

“When I tried.”

She sighed in exasperation. “Did you try?”

“Sometimes.” I took a few more bites and thought about it. “There were some subjects I liked, some teachers I liked. I worked hard for the ones whose approval mattered to me.”

“What was your favorite subject?”

“I spent a lot of time in detention. Does that count?”

She laughed. “What did you get detentions for?”

“Mostly for being late for school. I’m an early riser now, but back then, I constantly overslept. I also got in fights sometimes. I’d mouth off when my temper got the better of me. My friends and I pulled pranks and got caught.” I shrugged. “Nothing serious. Just too much testosterone bottled up in a small town.”

“You got in fights?” Her eyes were wide. “With who?”

“I don’t know. It was just stupid guy stuff. Someone would say something that pissed me off, I’d say something back, and it would get physical. I was trying to be a rebel all the time.”

“So you had a bad temper?”

I tipped up my beer. “You could say that. Yeah.”

“Do you still?”

“Sometimes. But I’ve learned to control it.”

“How?”

“Eight years in the Marines.”

“Oh. You’re a Marine.” She glanced at my arms. “Is that where you got all the tattoos?”

“I had a few before. Most of them I got when I came home.”

“I’ve never seen so many on one person,” she confessed, looking a little scandalized by it. “Did they hurt?”

“I’ve been through worse.”

“You were deployed?”

I nodded. “Three times.”

“That must have been . . .” She stopped and sighed. “I don’t even know how to finish that sentence. I was going to say hard, but that seems like a stupid remark. Of course it was hard. It’s war.”

“It was a lot of things. Hard is one of them.”

“Do you hate talking about it?” she asked quietly.

I didn’t respond right away. I took a few more bites of my burger and drank some beer, and thought about how to answer the question. Usually I kept my barriers in place with silence, but there was something about Blair that made me want to lower them a little.

But just a little.

“I’m sorry,” she said when I didn’t answer the question immediately. “I didn’t mean to bring up bad memories.”

“It’s okay. I was just trying to put my thoughts into words. Some of us don’t have three languages at our disposal,” I said, nudging her foot again. “Most days, I feel like I don’t even have one.”

She smiled. “Well, anytime you want your thoughts translated into Latin, I’m your girl.”

Leaning back in my chair, I turned the conversation onto her. “What about you? You were good at school, I take it?”

“Yes, I was.”

“And I suppose you never once had a detention?”

“Not once.”

“And probably stayed out of fights, the principal’s office, and tattoo studios?”

She swirled the ice cubes around in her drink and stared into the glass. “Guess I’ve led a pretty boring life.”

Immediately, I felt bad. “I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant . . . I don’t know. We’re different. We’ve had different life experiences.”

“I guess that’s true. The most rebellious thing I’ve ever done is take a secret job at a bakery.” She looked so down about it, I had to smile.