Full Tilt (Full Tilt #1)(18)

She started to ask another question as I pulled the truck into the parking lot of Mulligan’s, a mom-and-pop diner. It was nearly three in the afternoon, the lunch rush was over, plenty of parking to be had. I pulled into a spot near the door.

“This is right up the street from you,” she said. “We could’ve walked.”

“In this heat?” I said, and shut off the engine.

“Good point. The heat is godawful. I don’t know how you desert dwellers cope.”

I held the diner door open for her, surprising her again. She beamed at me and I almost lost my train of thought.

“I was born and raised in the desert,” I said. “I’m used to it, but some people can’t hack it. Wimps and pansies, every one.”

Kacey snorted and elbowed me lightly in the side as she breezed past me into the restaurant. She sighed with relief as we entered the air-conditioning, then caught me giving her a knowing look.

“Oh, fine. I’m a wimp,” she laughed. “Get us a table, smartass, while I use the restroom.”

I chuckled on my way to the hostess station. It was easy to be around this girl. And it seemed like she found it to be around me, like we’d known each other for years instead of hours.

A waitress greeted me. “How many, hon?”

“Two,” I said, and felt an immediate twinge in my chest.

I’d heard you could cut off a limb but still feel the pain of its absence. I didn’t miss Audrey, my last girlfriend. She’d cut me off, right after my transplant surgery. We’d planned a certain life together, but when the virus wrecked my heart and nearly killed me, it wrecked our plans and killed our relationship.

Audrey couldn’t take the illness, the hospitals, the specter of death hovering over me until the call came in that a donor heart was available. She left before I even came out of the anesthesia.

Theo would never forgive her for leaving, but I got over her quickly—even after being together for three years. It hurt she left, and the timing sure as shit could’ve been better, but I forgave her for leaving to find someone else, someone healthy with whom she could fall madly in love, and build a real life with.

I didn’t miss her. Yet in answering a waitress’s innocuous question, I realized I missed the ‘two of us.’ Being part of a couple, holding a door for someone, requesting a table for two, joking, teasing, being someone's smartass... My tiny circle of loved ones didn’t include a girlfriend and wouldn’t ever again. I thought I’d made peace with it, but some part of me, buried down deep, said otherwise.

I sank into the booth and took up a menu to distract myself from thoughts I didn’t want. Mulligan’s had typical country diner fare—breakfast served all day, and a variety of burgers and sandwiches for lunch. Unfortunately, more than half the items were strictly forbidden to me.

Kacey flounced into the seat across from me, looking scrubbed and vibrant. I tried not to think about the fact she was wearing my T-shirt, like girlfriends sometimes did with their boyfriend’s clothes.

The waitress set two waters on the table. “Coffee?”

“Yes, please,” Kacey said. “Desperately.”

“Decaf for me,” I said.

The waitress moved on and Kacey shot me a funny look. “Decaf?”

“I can’t have caffeine.”

“What a tragedy.” She leaned over the table. “You know what they say about decaf. There’s a time and a place: Never and in the trash.”

I laughed with her. “I’ll have to remember that one.”

Kacey studied the menu. “I’m so hungry, I might have one of everything. What about you? What are you going to get? Wait…” She let the menu drop to the table. “What can you get?”

“Not sure yet. My options are kind of limited.”

“Because of your dietary restrictions.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, shit, Jonah, why did you bring me here?” She flapped her hand at the menu. “This is all grease and fat.”

I laughed and held up my hands at her sudden outburst. “Whoa, it’s cool. I’ll find something.”

She bit her lip. “Yeah, but...”

“I brought you here for you. This is perfect hangover food,” I said. “I used to come here with friends when I was at UNLV.” I tapped the corner of her menu. “Get whatever you want. It’s fine, I swear.”

She still looked dubious as the waitress came back with our coffees, putting an orange decaf doily under my mug.

“You ready to order, hon?”

Kacey gnawed her lip.

“Order,” I told her. “Unless you’d rather we go back to my place and fire up some Lean Cuisines?”

“When you put it that way…” Kacey turned to the waitress and said in a deep voice, “Yes, very well, I'll have a Bloody Mary, and a steak sandwich, and a steak sandwich.”

The waitress gave her a look and I frowned at the Bloody Mary.

Kacey flashed her eyes, looking between us. “It’s from Fletch? The movie?” She jabbed a finger across the table. “You, Jonah Fletcher, can’t tell me you haven’t seen the greatest Chevy Chase movie of all time?”

“Sorry, I missed it,” I said.

“It’s a classic,” Kacey said. “I have a thing for eighties movies.”