He purposely stepped into her path and she almost ran into him because she held her head down. When she looked up and realized who she’d all but bumped into, she turned pale.
He couldn’t help the knowing smirk, but he didn’t say anything as they stared at each other for several seconds. She stared, surprised, at his clean-shaven face—he rarely did clean-shaven. He usually sported varying stages of shadow, stubble, and beard.
“You’re in a hurry, Princess Danarya.”
She scowled, obviously in a bad mood, and possibly because he called her by the name he knew she hated.
“Yes. I am.”
He smirked again but didn’t step aside. “Where’re you headed?”
“Home. See you around.” She stepped around him, in a hurry to be on her way again.
He moved to match her step and still blocked her path. She looked up at him again with an exasperated look on her face. He ignored it. She held a grocery sack in her hand and he reached down to take it from her before she realized what he’d done. She grabbed for it, but he evaded her attempt and looked inside.
“A package of dried pasta and a can of spaghetti sauce. Hmm. Looks like you’re in the mood for Italian.” He cocked his jaw to one side with his tongue in his cheek, trying to hide the temptation to smile. He tossed his head Taylor’s direction. “So are we. Why don’t you join us?”
“No, thanks. I just want to go home,” she was quick to reply.
“I thawght we were friends.”
“You can’t say I haven’t been friendly.”
He smiled again. “Yeah, you’re always friendly. You’re a nice person, Rhees. That’s why I don’t understand why you seem to be kind of feisty tonight. Are you mad at me?”
“No. I’m not mad at you.” She finally sighed remorsefully.
“Who are you mad at then?”
She glanced down at her grocery sack, still in his hands. “No one.”
“Then what’s wrong?” He cocked his head.
“Nothing.”
He gave up. “Contrary to popular belief, Fratelli’s is actually the best restaurant on the island—not Ray’s. Have dinner with me—join us. Please? I need something pleasant to look at. Making eyes with Taylor through dinner is really hard on my appetite.”
“I can’t afford Fratelli’s. I’m getting low on money. I’ll have to cut my stay short three days if I eat here.”
Paul’s expression fell. When they’d called their truce, she mentioned she would stay until her money ran out. He panicked for a second. He’d gone too long. It was time, again, to make sure she just happened to come across a little extra somewhere. He relaxed when he decided the next clients were going to be so impressed with her they were going to leave a ridiculously big tip with him—to give to her. Problem solved. He found his happy place again.
“I’m buying.”
Her mouth dropped open. “No. I can’t let you spend that kind of money on me.”
He flashed his most devious smile. “Okay. We’ll let Taylor pay. He’s loaded.”
She glanced once at Fratelli’s, giving him the slightest hint she might consider the offer. It was all he needed to take it as a yes.
“Come on. Friends don’t let friends eat bad Italian.” He winked as he held up her bag of store-bought spaghetti. He took her hand and led her, reluctantly on her part, into the restaurant.
oOo
The waitress saw them walk in and her face lit up when she realized who it was.
“Paul. My favorite customer.” Being an older woman didn’t stop her from gushing.
“Annetta, you look lovely tonight, as always,” Paul said in Italian, and then switched back to English. “You remember Taylor.”
Her smile dimmed as she looked at Taylor. She stepped to give him a hesitant hug. She turned ice cold when she turned to Rhees.
“And this is Danarya.” Rhees shot Paul an annoyed glance. “It’s the three of us tonight.”
Annetta led them to a table, handed them each a menu, and Paul told her he wanted two cold Peronis. Taylor said he would also have two. Rhees just ordered water and the men didn’t do a very good job hiding their disgust.
“So . . . Paulsville.” Rhees scoured the menu though Paul hadn’t even looked at it. “I’ve never been to an authentic Italian restaurant. You said this was your favorite restaurant. What’s good?”
Paul smiled and acted like he didn’t notice the name she called him. “You don’t want what I order. Just read the descriptions and choose something that sounds good to you.”
“But what do you usually get?”
“My old standby isn’t on the menu. It’s something they make just for me.”
“I’ll just try that then.”
“Trust me. You don’t want what he orders.” Taylor shook his head and stuck his tongue out.
The waitress brought their drinks and readied herself to take their order. She asked Paul first, then Taylor, and finally turned to Rhees.
“I’ll have what Paul is having,” Rhees said.
The waitress’ expression showed surprise, but it quickly changed to irritation, believing that Rhees just wanted to please him, like all the other girls he brought in.
“And bring us a bottle of wine,” Paul said. “Do you have something that would go good with our food? You know I’m a sucker for good wine.”
“I’ll see what I can find.” Annetta smiled and winked at him and then smiled shyly at Taylor before walking back to the kitchen.
“I need to make my bladder gladder.” Paul stood and headed toward the restroom, outside and around back.
The second Paul walked out of earshot, Taylor leaned forward and stared at Rhees with the same intensity Paul got in his eyes sometimes, like he was trying to hypnotize her or something. She tried to ignore it, but the more she tried, the more forceful his stare became. She finally stared back and a second later, he leaned away and looked off at the wall. The same way Paul always did when she stared back.
“What’s going on with you two?” Taylor finally asked, not looking at her again.
“Who? Me and the waitress? I think she’s wondering what a girl like me is doing with the two best-looking men on the island.” She took a shot at flattery.
Taylor didn’t laugh, but his eyes conveyed amusement. Rhees hadn’t had a chance to really get a good look at him before. She thought he looked like Paul—not really, but . . . yes, Taylor was a good-looking man. His long, sandy-brown hair fell down to his shoulders in a messy, come-hither sort of way. His facial features were a little rounder, softer, than Paul’s, but his body was even more muscular. Paul was long and lean. A couple inches shorter, Taylor was bulkier, like a football player. He looked like he spent a lot of time at the gym.
His eyes interested her the most. Though they were a light grey instead of Paul’s intense blue, and they didn’t have the sparkly, mesmerizing quality that Paul’s did, Taylor knew how to use them. The thought of Paul and Taylor sitting in a tree house together as boys, practicing their eye magic on each other, made her laugh.
“You and Paul.” He leaned across the table toward her. “What have you done to my friend?” He chuckled, but then turned serious again.
“We’re just friends.”
“Paul doesn’t have girlfriends.”
“I didn’t say I was his girlfriend. I’m his girl friend.”
“I said Paul doesn’t have girl friends.”
She rolled her eyes.
“He has sex with girls, and he has sex friends, but I’ve never really known him to be so friendly to girls outside of having sex—except for you.” Taylor squinted while he waited to see what she would say to that.
“Paul and I have never had sex!”
Taylor’s brow creased. “Ye
ah, I heard that the other day. That’s what confuses me.”
“Well, you’re wasting a lot of brain power that might otherwise be used to solve the world’s problems. There’s nothing going on between us. We’re friends, period.” Taylor saw Paul walk past the window on the other side of the restaurant, which meant he was on his way back to the table.
“Yeah, you’re probably right. You’re definitely not his type.” He leaned back, staring at Rhees again until Paul sat down.
“You and the waitress have a good time in the bathroom?” Taylor smirked, glaring at Rhees. Rhees shot a look at Paul, revealing how she believed it was possible.
“Taye! You’re so crude. We’re in the presence of a lady . . . and we both know Annetta is your type, nawt mine. She’s still good to go for ya.” Paul smirked.
“Maybe she’d be your type too if she played hard to get.” Taylor glared at Rhees again and smiled when he got the reaction he was after.
She blushed but gave him a dirty look.
Taylor and Paul drank their beer, ordered more, and reminisced about the old times.
By the time the waitress brought the food, they were famished. Annetta poured the men’s wine and when she reached for Rhees’ glass, Rhees started to tell her not to bother, but she didn’t get the words out in time. Rhees stared at her glass, full of wine, for a second but then finally just picked it up and took a sip.
Paul noticed Rhees’ hesitation about the wine and smiled when he saw her decide to drink it.
“Cheers.” He clicked his own glass to hers before she tried it.
“Cheers,” Taylor said as he put his own glass in the mix and then swallowed a mouthful—no sipping for him.
“Good?” Paul swirled his glass and sniffed as he watched Rhees take a sip.
“Not bad,” she said, and they exchanged smiles. She looked at her plate. She didn’t recognize anything except for the salad and the pasta with cheese sprinkled on top, trying to melt, but not quite managing to. A huge slab of goat cheese sat on top, sprinkled with a bunch of red slimy things. A piece of meat, she wasn’t sure what kind, lay under the strange sauce. She remembered something Tracy had said about the kind of meat the locals eat.
“Mmm . . . looks delicious!” she said a little too enthusiastically, giving away her doubts about ordering Paul’s standby. She’d been so smug about having his favorite dish, she couldn’t change her mind now.
Rhees played with her salad and pasta until she could no longer avoid trying the main course. She cut into the meat, hoping she’d recognize it from the inside, but it was covered so heavily with sauce, it quickly dribbled into every crevice she tried to create for a peek. She held the piece on her fork and stared at it, working up the courage to put it in her mouth.
“Chicken,” Paul said.
“I know I’m a chicken. I told you, I’m a confirmed big baby.”
“No. It’s chicken—on your fork.”
“Oh,” she said, relieved. “I worried it might be iguana. I heard the locals eat them.”
“Mrs. Morgan’s Kitchen is where I get my fried iguana. I’m sure you’ve seen her little hole-in-the-wall about a hundred yards south of here?”
Rhees made a cringing face. She’d seen Mrs. Morgan’s Kitchen. It was nothing more than a shanty made of pieces of tin roof, tied together and held up by a few two-by-fours. She used a wooden plank supported on two sawhorses for her worktable and cooked on a dirty range oven sitting in the middle of a dirt floor. Rhees would never eat there.
“It’s not too bad, actually. Tastes kind of like the chicken you’re afraid to eat right now . . . or am I just trying to give you a false sense of security? For all I know, the brothers may have decided to cut a few expenses and have started buying their chicken at the iguana farm.”
Paul seemed to be having too much fun grossing her out so she popped the meat into her mouth and chewed as happily as she could.
“I’ll have to try Mrs. Morgan’s iguana sometime. Thanks for the recommendation.”
She took a sip of wine and then cut another piece, reconciling all the conflicting flavors in her mouth. The entree was not only edible, but it tasted quite delicious. She glanced over and noticed Paul watching her. There was a vulnerable quality to his expression but it disappeared, knowing she’d caught him staring at her. She smiled, reassuringly.
“It’s good. I’d order this again.”
His teasing expression turned into his bashful smile. She thought maybe his bashful smile had become her favorite of all his expressions.
“But I lied about the iguana. I will never, ever try it,” she said, and they laughed.
“I need more wine if you two are going to giggle and make googly eyes at each other all night like teenagers.” Taylor didn’t sound happy. He raised his hand and hollered to get Annetta’s attention.
The waitress returned and poured more wine into Rhees’ empty glass. Rhees couldn’t believe she’d emptied the first one, but she took another sip from the fresh glass. They continued through dinner, eating, drinking, and laughing.
Taylor demanded their attention through the rest of their meal by trying to humiliate Paul, telling every embarrassing thing he could remember Paul ever doing during their friendship. Paul would retaliate by telling his own side of the story, which often proved Taylor was too often the reason for the trouble they always wound up in. Their ribs hurt from laughing so hard.
“Just don’t expect him to take you to Vegas for a quickie wedding, Rhees.” Taylor laughed at the look on both of their faces.
“He’d most likely end up wearing a new pair of cement shoes at the bottom of Hoover Dam if he shows his face there again. He counts cards,” he continued.
“Taye!” Paul warned. His eyes were dark and serious. “She doesn’t need to know about that.”
“You have to be smart to do that, right?” She glanced at Paul, recalling her suspicions about his intelligence and ignoring Paul’s sudden touchiness on the subject.
“There’s no waiting period back home either. How about I call Annetta over? We could make it a double ceremony.” Paul sidestepped Rhees’ question and shut Taylor down quickly with that.
“As if you’d ever come back home,” Taylor said under his breath.
He picked up his wine glass and looked out the window while he chugged the rest of its contents. It took a minute for Taylor to find his usual carefree, play-the-fool self. Rhees watched them both, hoping to decipher the private signals passing between them, but they’d known each other too long and she had no clue. Eventually, they worked back into more stories.
“Remember the time in seventh grade when you, me, Bryce, and David, we surrounded that girl in the hall and wouldn’t let her go? What was her name?”
“Donna,” Paul said with a quiet chuckle. “Donna Raymond.”
“Yeah. Man, she was cute, but she was such a little Miss Goodie-Two-Shoes. She told Mrs. Garrick that she saw you and that girl . . .”
“Evelyn Petersen,” Paul inserted quietly.
“Yeah . . . having sex under the bleachers during lunch. You were giving us an education.” Taylor looked at Rhees when he said it, gauging her reaction.
“What? Am I supposed to be shocked? Paul, apparently, hasn’t changed much since then.” Rhees caught the end of Paul’s grimace.
“Well, we decided to get her back by scaring her. We had her surrounded and were passing her back and forth,” Taylor continued. “She hugged her books and cried like a baby.”
“That’s mean!” Rhees said, flabbergasted.
“She deserved it.” Taylor believed it.
“It was mean,” Paul said.
“Well, anyway, she tattled on us for that too.”
“My mom was so pissed.” Paul whistled between his teeth at the memory. “She grou
nded me to my room for a month, and said I couldn’t be friends with you and the guys anymore because you were a bad influence on me.” He laughed so hard he reached up to wipe a tear from his eye.
“Hell yeah! She didn’t know her baby boy was our esteemed leader.”
“Pfft! Not me, you were always the creative one,” Paul said. “But you were all, ‘To hell with this, we’re breaking him out and running away’. The next thing I knew, we’d all hopped a train and ended up in Detroit.”
That made Taylor laugh even harder. He leaned back, grabbed his stomach, and leaned forward again. “Yeah, and the only reason we got caught is because that hobo made a pass at Bryce.” Taylor was still laughing but Paul didn’t seem as eager about the ending of the story.
“He did more than make a pass at Bryce, Taye. He beat the shit out of him, and if someone hadn’t stopped him—that pedophile was about to rip Bryce a new one.”
“Well, the rest of us were so shocked. We stood there with our jaws hanging on the ground.” Taylor laughed. “I’d just barely figured out boys did that to girls. I had no idea that boys did that to other boys! But you didn’t hesitate to jump the guy and start beating the shit out of him. I still remember it like it was yesterday.
“Your fists were flying, and you were screaming, ‘I’ll fucking kill you, you fucking pervert! No one does that to my friend, you mother-fucker!’ That hobo looked dead, man. I thought you’d killed him, but you still kept swinging until the railroad cops showed up. It took three of them, grown men, to pull you off.”
Rhees remembered Shanni’s story and sat quietly listening, waiting for Taylor to confirm what she already knew, not sure how she’d react. She couldn’t take her eyes off Paul, even when he caught her staring.
Wet: Part 1 Page 19
