Four Letter Word

Tori’s eyes rounded to the size of dinner plates.

I peered around Jamie to look at Brian, indicating with my head and knowing eyes for him to step in and break up this back and forth before it got any worse.

Brian shrugged casually.

“Told you before, Wild. Unless it’s getting pushed on me, I stay out of it,” he reminded me.

I glared at him to show my disapproval.

I could tell by the smile tugging at his mouth that Brian thought my glare was cute and not at all threatening.

That made me glare harder.

“Anyone working today?” Nate asked at my back with a tone that screamed unemployment for all of us.

I lost the glare, quickly spun around, and waved my ticket book in front of me.

“I am!” I said enthusiastically, grinning at his hardened face.

Nate was a good-looking guy even when he looked angry. It was the dark hair, dark eyes, dress shirt rolled at his forearms, and Clark Kent glasses.

Nerds were right behind hot boys who used to surf, in my book.

“I was just getting ready to take down orders,” I further explained when Nate looked unconvinced.

He kept his face hard as he cut his eyes to Tori, his coffee steaming in his hands.

She was already moving away and toward a table on the other side of the room, greeting a four-top with that small town girl charm she radiated and everyone fell in love with. The two couples ate it up, and if they’d been waiting long, they forgot all about that wait the second Tori started talking.

I looked back at Nate and saw his approval. His face was marginally less angry, and he turned that face on Jamie and relaxed it further to ask, “You being helped?”

Jamie nodded, choosing not to get Tori into trouble, which I could’ve seen as sweet but I chose not to because I was still holding on to the knowledge Tori shared last night, then he moved in front of me and took the seat across from Brian.

Nate stepped away and took his coffee to his office. The door shut loudly behind him.

“Dude is hurting,” Brian observed, pulling my eyes to his. He jerked his chin. “You can see it. That wasn’t just about you girls standing around and not getting to work.”

I thought it was sweet he noticed Nate’s pain, thinking most guys wouldn’t pick up on something like that and would only see a boss getting on his employees, and I chose to show my feelings about Brian being in tune to that by leaning over the table and kissing him quickly.

It was soft and sweet and tasted like spearmint gum.

I loved spearmint gum.

Then I pulled back, readied my ticket book, and looked between Brian and Jamie, asking, “Do ya’ll need time or are you ready to order?”

Brian chuckled.

Jamie slid the menu that was already set out on the table closer to me, keeping it closed.

“Not sure I should bother,” he said. “You seem to get some crazy idea of your own every time I come in here and bring me whatever you’re feelin’.”

“Well, you could always eat somewhere else if you’re unhappy with the service,” I suggested, forcing my lips into a smile that was one hundred percent fake.

The smile Jamie hit me with in return was one hundred percent genuine—heart-melting dimples and all.

“Nah. I like the view here,” he told me, winking. “Just bring me a Coke with grenadine if you feel like it.”

I looked at Brian.

His smile warmed my belly and melted other parts of me, not just my heart.

“Southern stuffed shrimp, Wild. And that coffee.”

“Got it.”

I scribbled down his order and my choice of the day for Jamie—a bucket of clams—swiped the menu off the table, and deposited it back at the hostess booth, then ripped the ticket off and carried it to the kitchen window.

“Is there a way to do the Loser Special on the bucket of clams, Stitch?” I asked, sliding the ticket across the cold steel. “Or is it a waste of time to drop clams on the floor?”

Stitch was standing at the grill with his back to me, stirring up something in a sauce pan.

He turned his head after hearing my question, registered it with a jerk of his chin, then went back to staring at the sauce pan.

I leaned my elbow on the steel.

“I have no idea what that little chin jerk means, you know that, right?” I asked.

Stitch said nothing.

I turned my head to look at Shay.

She had moved on from filling salt and pepper shakers at the bar and was now passing time between tending to her patrons by sitting at a vacant table and rolling extra sets of silverware.

No one ever volunteered to roll silverware. You only did it when Nate asked you to.

I looked once again at Stitch, rolled up on my toes, and added for only him to hear, “She’s upset with you and she has reason to be. You bailed on her. And when girls are excited about something and that one thing they’re excited about falls through, they get disappointed and sometimes get quiet.”

I watched the silent man, all messy edge and lawless looks, leave that sauce pan and turn to face me. His eyes were hard and his nostrils were flaring with irritation.

“Never said I’d go,” he clipped, saying more than he’d ever said to me at once before, and if that didn’t make me highly interested in listening, it was the topic and tone of his voice that kept me invested and not ducking behind the bar. “She just assumed ’cause I didn’t say different when she was talkin’ about it, and that’s on her. I got no business bein’ at a party like that and she knows it, just like she’s got no business invitin’ me to one. What the fuck would I do there?”