“What do you mean?”
He shrugged, and when his arm settled it was touching mine more fully. “You guys are chefs. Good chefs. I would think this would be every day fare for you all.”
“It’s actually the opposite,” I told him. “We’re usually so busy cooking for other people, we’re too tired to cook for ourselves.”
“Or I am so sick of the food I’m cooking over and over that I can’t even stomach the idea of eating it,” Kaya added from across the table.
“True story,” I agreed. “When you’ve looked at something approximately three hundred times in one night, it’s significantly less appealing.”
“Interesting,” Vann said.
“Nights like these totally make up for it though,” I told him. “You know, when you go out with your friends that have good taste and they want to literally eat everything and you’re like, ‘oh, I guess I do too.’ I’m going to have a food hangover in the morning.”
He smiled at me, but it was slightly peculiar—as if he was surprised he thought I was funny.
The waiter stopped by again and Killian ordered a round of limoncello for the table. We were at this kitschy little Italian place with a tiramisu that I was confident would be served in heaven. We’d been sipping Prosecco and negronis and now we were apparently moving on to dessert beverages.
Killian nuzzled his bearded face against Vera’s neck, causing her to giggle. “Dance with me?” he asked. I couldn’t actually hear him from where I sat at the other end of the table, but I read his lips and watched her cheeks flush.
They stood up a minute later, escaping to the small dance floor in the corner where three older couples swayed and two-stepped to big band music and the best of a Frank Sinatra cover band.
“That looks fun,” Molly told Ezra. He took her hand and led her away.
I gave Kaya a look that said, “Don’t leave me alone here with Vann!”
She raised her eyebrows and tilted her chin toward the dance floor. I shook my head no. Her eyebrows rose higher. I glared lasers at her. She kicked my shin under the table.
Then stupid Wyatt got involved. Taking Kaya’s hand, he said, “If you’re done having your stroke, would you like to dance?”
She smiled serenely at me. “I would love to.”
I slumped against the booth side of the table while the two of them pranced off to the dance floor. “Traitor,” I mumbled beneath my breath.
“That’s kind of cliché,” Vann murmured, sounding as irritated as I’d felt. “Don’t you think?”
I turned to face him. “The dancing?”
“Sinatra, the couples, all of it. I find it repulsive.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. He never said what I expected him to say. “Agreed. They might as well be an advertisement for happily ever after.”
“Or erectile dysfunction,” Vann added.
On that note, I nearly choked on my spit. “What?”
“Haven’t you ever noticed those commercials? They’re all about selling an image like this. Couple goes to dinner with friends. Couple dances romantically. Couple falls into bed only to be interrupted by something unexpected. Don’t worry, this blue pill works whenever you want it to work. Unless it works for longer than four hours. Then you should be concerned.”
I snorted—that’s how hard he’d made me laugh. I’d resorted to snorting. “What concerns me the most, is how much you know about them.”
He hid his sheepish smile behind a sip of the cocktail I knew he didn’t really enjoy. He’d been nursing it for the last thirty minutes and every time he took a sip, his nose wrinkled. “They’re on all the time.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Have you ever watched a football game? Or the news? Seriously, you can’t not know about ED. It’s everywhere.”
“Apparently.”
I had a thing for the look of complete outrage on his face. He didn’t like to be misunderstood. And I knew that sometimes that came off as arrogant, but it was also kind of cute.
