The way she said the last statement made me wonder what had happened between them, but it didn’t really matter. What did matter was that the beautiful Nattie was about to join me for my dinner.
I grabbed both of our bags before motioning toward the door. “Ready?”
With a bob of her head, we pushed into the waning afternoon sunlight and rounded the building toward the table. As we approached, Ava arched an eyebrow at the woman trailing behind me.
“Be cool,” I whispered, trying to signal to her that I was interested in this one.
I raised my voice as Nattie joined us. “Uh, Nattie, these are my friends, Alex and Ava. Alex, Ava, this is Nattie who I met inside, and invited her to join us.”
“Hi, Nattie,” Ava said as I motioned for Nattie to sit down, then plopped onto the brightly colored bench next to her. “Glad you could join us.”
“I’m pleased, too.” She dug into her bag as Alex passed out the food from ours. With the little cardboard box in front of her, she flipped it open and stared at it.
“Are they everything you hoped for?” I asked.
She glanced at me then back to the chicken nuggets. “They don’t look like chicken.”
“You’ve never had chicken nuggets?” Ava asked.
“No,” she answered with a shake of her head. “I’m concerned I have been lied to.”
She lifted a chicken nugget and examined it. “There’s no way this is chicken.”
Alex chuckled across from me, still chewing his burger. “I mean, it’s definitelyfroma chicken, but it’s not like…the kind of chicken you may have hoped for.”
She peered at him curiously, and my heart sank. She probably only said yes so she could get closer to Alex. I was certain she’d recognized him. Women threw themselves at him constantly, always impressed with his unfathomable amounts of wealth.
“It definitely is not,” she murmured before she dropped it into her box and grabbed a fry. “I’ll try the potato stick first.”
“Potato stick,” Alex said with another laugh, “I like that.”
I bit into my burger. Every moment that passed made it agonizingly obvious that she probably wasn’t interested in me.
I side-eyed her, finding her glancing over her shoulder as though she was searching for someone. Her muscles tensed for an instant before relaxing again.
“Everything okay?” Ava asked.
“Yes,” she said with a forced grin. “I thought I saw someone I knew.”
“Oh, are you from the Hamptons?”
“No,” she answered. “But I’ve been here on more than one occasion. Only briefly, though.”
“Where are you from?” Ava asked.
I shifted my foot to hit hers under the table, pressing my lips together and giving a slight shake to my head. I loved Alex and Ava, but I didn’t need them crushing my game right now. What did it matter where she was from?
Ava kicked me back—hard enough that I had to suppress a groan.
“New York,” Nattie answered as she finally bit into a chicken nugget before she stared at it again.
“Oh, nice. The city?” Alex asked.
“No, upstate,” she answered.
“Beautiful country up that way,” Ava answered. “We’re actually from Silver Pine.”
I spotted the barely perceptible narrowing of Ava’s eyes as Nattie failed to react to the town’s name. I really liked my friends, but sometimes, I really hated them.
