Coming Home(18)

Please just drop it, he prayed silently.

“Wow,” she said.

“Wow? What’s wow?”

“I don’t know,” Leah answered, stirring her drink with her straw. “It’s just, I thought it was really nice of you to do all that work around the house for her when I assumed she was family. But, now that I know she’s not…I don’t know. It’s even nicer of you, I guess.”

Danny looked down, shredding his napkin with his fingers. “I guess.”

Even if he wanted to talk about this, which he didn’t, there was no way he could ever explain why he did what he did for Gram. It had nothing to do with being nice. The truth was, he could work in her house every hour of every day for the rest of his life, and it would still never be enough.

“So, you work near here?”

Danny swept the remnants of his napkin into a neat pile before he looked up. She was looking at him with something that could only be described as empathy.

Their first piece of common ground: prohibited topics of conversation.

“Yeah, about fifteen minutes from here.”

“What do you do?”

“I own an auto repair shop. D&B Automotive.”

“Really?” she asked, squeezing another lemon into her iced tea. “That’s interesting.”

“You think so?”

“Sure.” She shrugged, and Danny smiled.

“No you don’t.”

“Well, it might not be interesting to me,” she said through a laugh. “But I’m sure it is to someone who’s into cars, which I’m assuming you are.”

Danny smirked, resting his elbows on the table. “What do you do?”

“I’m a teacher.”

“Really? That’s interesting.”

She sat back against the seat, folding her arms.

“I’m serious!” he said. “That really is interesting to me. I couldn’t do it. You must have the patience of a saint.”

Leah shrugged. “There are good days and bad days, just like any other job. I’m sure there are days that try your patience at the shop, right?”

“True,” he said. “But I’m allowed to curse at the cars.”

She laughed before she shook her head at him. She had the prettiest laugh. It made him want to spend the rest of the afternoon finding ways to get her to do it again.

“So, what do you teach?”

“Tenth-grade English.”

He scrunched up his face, and Leah rolled her eyes.

“Clearly, your favorite subject.”

“Is it anyone’s?” he asked, and she scoffed, throwing a sugar packet at him.

“Jerk.”

He grinned, picking up the packet and twirling it between his fingers. “Aren’t you supposed to be some sort of master of the English language? I would’ve thought you could come up with a much better word for me than jerk.”

“Believe me, I’m just getting warmed up.”

Danny burst out laughing as the waitress approached the table with their appetizers. She placed the plates down in front of them, and Danny reached for the pepper, freezing when he saw Leah begin to work away at her salad with a knife and fork.

“What are you doing?”

She glanced up. “Cutting my lettuce.”

“Cutting your lettuce,” he repeated.

“Mm-hm. I always do.”

He put the pepper down, watching her. “May I ask why?”

Leah reached into her salad and held up a piece of lettuce that was the size of his palm. “You can’t really bite lettuce, so either I can attempt to cram this ridiculous thing into my mouth like a savage, or I can cut it into respectable, human-sized bites.”