Miguel was suddenly standing by my car door and it startled me.
“Sorry,” he said. “I tried waving to you.”
I chuckled. “You’re fine. Before we go in, I just wanted to say thank you. I know we haven’t really been talking like usual.”
He grinned.
“It's okay.”
Entering through the entrance, we both headed straight for the counter and placed our orders before finding a seat. We both smelled like smoke and it was making me sad.
“I can’t believe that this happened.” I spun the little buzzer on the table feeling weirdly down. I wasn’t the type that got depressed easily.
“I know. Maybe we can rebuild.”
“Well like I said, I ‘m going to stop by the realtor's office, see if we can find a new spot quickly.”
“Who do you think could have done this…if it was arson?”
I didn’t want to say it out loud.
I didn’t want to throw the blame where I knew it should be. So I kept my thoughts to myself and offered Miguel a shrug.
“I’m not sure, but I’m worried about Mallory, Rina, Ax, and AJ…”
Miguel casually raised an eyebrow. “What about me?”
“And you too, silly. But you’re here with me, they’re off probably applying to new shops. I have to call in the insurance. No telling if this is a covered thing. I can’t remember what I signed up for.”
“Hey.” Miguel took my hands in his to keep me from fidgeting. “We’ll figure it out.”
The buzzer went off but he held onto my hands for a second too long. Finally, he let go and I knew I needed to tell him when I sat back down, that I was seeing someone. We needed to discuss what had happened on Valentine’s Day too.
I waited until we had both gathered our food and was in the middle of applying hand sanitized.
“I need to tell you something,” I started.
“Me too,” Miguel said but stopped. “You first.”
“So…Valentine's Day.”
“Super awkward, right?”
“A little…but the thing is I was just getting out of something, with someone…”
Miguel looked tense and placed his fork down, and started listening. He gave me a reassuring smile, the white of his teeth flashing.
“I had no idea,” he nodded.
“Yeah, and it was a whole complicated mess. And anyway, we just recently started seeing each other again.”
“Is it the guy from the night club…the one who took you home that night?”
Frowning, I tried to remember.
Slowly, it came to me. The night that Miguel had mentioned; the night when Lucien had carried me home and placed me in his bed for the first time.
“Yes,” I admitted.
