We should talk to them about it, Tuck said.I wonder what the real estate market is like in Coral Canyon.
Deacon blew out his breath, knowing the answer to that. Not good. It took a long time for houses to sell in Wyoming right now, and in February?
No one in their right mind would move here in the winter. No, they’d have to be wooed by the summer months, after someone had prayed for months for fifteen minutes without any wind.
His stomach growled, reminding him that he still didn’t have his food. He left the siblings chat for now and tapped on hisorder confirmation for The Darling Dragon. A number sat there, and Deacon tapped on that next. The line simply rang and rang and rang, and irritation drove through him all over again. What was the point of an online order and curbside pickup if none of it worked?
His stomach growled, and that propelled Deacon out of the truck and toward the Chinese restaurant. The din of laughter and chatter and music all combined into one, creating a froth of noise that drove Deacon insane the moment he walked inside. At the same time, it fed his soul—a kind of energy Deacon hadn’t experienced for a while, since he’d taken a break from dating. He didn’t visit too many restaurants, and certainly not on a weekend night.
The Darling Dragon had a pickup counter, and Deacon joined the line for it. Someone else joined him almost immediately, and he listened to the woman behind him talk to someone on the phone.
“I just said I don’t know,” she said, her voice light and airy and yet also tinged with frustration. “If you can’t talk right now, it’s fine. I’ll get dinner and see you later. No, I don’t know why they don’t have it. I’ve been waiting outside in the stall for fifteen minutes. I just came in to check on it.”
Another pause came on her side of the conversation, but Deacon felt a sense of validation move through him, because she’d clearly ordered for pickup and hadn’t gotten it as well.
“I clearly have a phone that works, Jonathan,” she said next, her voice turning snowy and crisp. “And I know how to make a phone call, thank you very much. Yes, I called. No one answered. I’m inside, in the line right now to find out. Okay, I’m just gonna hang up. No, I’m hanging up because you didn’t even listen to the first half of this conversation, and now you’re trying to mansplain to me what I should do to get the food. I know what to do. I’ll see you later.”
She sighed mightily and muttered something Deacon couldn’t catch. He wanted to commiserate with her about The Darling Dragon’s inability to bring out a curbside order, but decided against it. On the best of days, he didn’t want perfect strangers talking to him. And with his order twenty minutes late now, he figured it best to wait to talk to female strangers until he wasn’t hangry.
The line inched forward, and Deacon peered over the shoulder of the man in front of him as a woman yelled, “If you’re new to the line, we’re having a problem with our curbside orders, and we really apologize. We need all curbside people over on the left. We probably have your order ready right now.”
Deacon shuffled to the left along with only one other person in front of him.
“We didn’t get any names printed on the orders,” the woman called. “So please listen and know what you ordered.”
She started firing off an order as she lifted a brown paper bag up to her eye level. Deacon fumbled for his phone because he wasn’t exactly sure what his momma and daddy had put into the app. He caught the wordshrimp, though, and knew immediately that would not be his.
No one should be eating seafood in Wyoming in February, he thought, adding it to his list of strikes against the state.
His momma had a mild shellfish allergy, while Daddy simply didn’t like the stuff, so thankfully, Deacon didn’t have to explain the rules to them. He found his order and pulled it up as another man went to get his food.
“Orange chicken,” the woman called. “Beef lo mein.”
Also Deacon’s.
“Vegetable tempura.”
His momma’s.
“Hot honey chicken with fried rice.”
Deacon stepped forward, because the woman had just named everything on his order. “That’s mine,” he said as he approached the counter.
“No,” a woman said, coming to his left side and planting herself against the counter as well. “It’s mine.”
Deacon looked at her, recognizing the voice as the woman who had been on the phone behind him in line. She had long blonde hair that cascaded in waves over her shoulders and romantic eyes that sat somewhere between blue and green.
Deacon turned his phone toward her, trying to ignore the pounding of his heart and the way his voice caught in his throat as he said, “I’m pretty sure it’s mine.”
She didn’t even look at his device. She turned hers toward the woman holding the brown bag. “It’s mine, Howdy. Sally.”
Sally looked at her phone and handed her the bag.
“Wait a second,” Deacon said, and he showed his phone to the woman at the counter. “I’ve got the same order.”
“What’s the timestamp?” Sally asked.
Deacon looked down at his phone again, struggling to find where that was.
