“I was expecting a movie projected on actual rock.” Lark leans forward, cocking her head so her red curls spill over her shoulders.
“Not going to lie—so was I.” Glancing at the clock, I note we are five minutes early and there aren’t a lot of cars. The movie theaters back home were always jam-packed.
Just then, my door opens. Arlo stands there in his red flannel, smiling at us.
“Mom said she packed me dinner,” he teases. “Move over.”
“Like, to the center?”
“Where else are you going to go?”
I should have parked so we could sit in the truck bed. I eye the back and then the mound of pillows and blankets at Lark’s feet.
I don’t want to tell him no. His mom has been so hospitable, but this is a confined space. I’m not sure I can be this close to his spicy scent. He’s far too damaging to my self-control.
“Mom.” Lark hands me a Tupperware container with Arlo’s name on it.
“Oh, that sneaky woman.” I hand the food over to a grinning Arlo, who leans against the doorframe.
“Bed or cab, you decide. I’m not going anywhere,” he teases with a knowing smile before scowling at me.
“What?” He just went from zero to a hundred in under a second.
“Where’s your coat?”
“Where’s yours?” I counter, noticing he’s only wearing his red flannel and that black knit beanie.
“Move over.” He sets his food on the dash, pushing me to the center of the truck. “The movie’s starting.”
“Did you pay to get in here?” I notice a bunch of kids stumbling off a trail, not because they’ve been drinking, but because it’s dark and rocky. “They didn’t pay either.”
“No one pays Reggie.” He slams the door shut, locking the three of us in together, where his spicy scent does its best to suffocate me. I like it far too much.
“I paid him ten bucks. Five to get in here and five for this popcorn.”
“Didn’t Mom send you with food?” he questions just as Lark hands out containers of said food. “Then why’d you buy anything else? Reggie will just try to charge you five dollars for everything.”
“I thought it was a rip-off.” Sneaky man.
“Here.” Arlo leans over me. Once more, his scent travels right up my nostrils to that part of my brain that screams how attracted I am to this human.
I can just picture the caveman in my brain now, hauling clubs and demanding I knock this one out and drag him to my cave.This one belongs to us, they’d grunt. Of course it’s not plural. It’s just me and my multiple personalities up in here.
“There, you have to put the right station on.” He leans back, peeling off the plastic fork that Saffron taped to the top of the container. With a grunt, he digs into the mashed potatoes and roast beef as though he is a wildebeest who just caught his prey. I must make a sound, because he blinks up at me with those baby blues. “What?” he says around a mouthful of food.
“I know your mama taught you better.”
“The n what?” He swallows, leaning against the door with a squinty face.
I wave my hands all around him, but point to his beard that caught a thick layer of gravy. “That.”
He flips down the visor, nods at his reflection, and goes back to being a human vacuum as he watches the youngest McAllister realize he is home alone.
“Mom never leaves me home alone,” Lark states around a mouthful of food, earning Arlo’s attention.
This conversation won’t end in my favor, I just know it.
“Really? Aren’t you like twenty now?” Arlo returns to slurping up gravy through his beard.
