She slipped into a corner table, looking longingly out the window. I slid into a chair a table away, trying not to seem likeshewas the only reason I’d come back in here, but my curiosity was doing all the heavy lifting.
Finally, she glanced at me with a sheen of suspicion in her eyes. “Are you stalking me?”
I laughed softly. “No. I told you, I was also supposed to meet someone, but they didn’t show. Seeing you running down the street made me realize that sometimes, people are just late.”
Her gaze flicked back toward the window, then returned to me with a mix of disbelief and hesitation. Maybe curiosity.
As soon as she’d said she was meeting someone and then proceeded to sit down alone, I’d started putting the piecestogether, and now I was watching her try to compose herself as she did the same thing.
“Lottie?”
Her eyes went wide, but that told me I’d hit the nail right on the head. I’d heard Alex call herCharthe other night.Lottiemust be the nickname her friends used.
It has to be.
Her lips pressed into a thin line. She shook her head so quickly, I thought her dark hair might topple out of the messy bun on her head. “No. No, no, no.”
“Are you waiting for Tony?” I asked, keeping my tone light.
Her eyes flicked down to her coffee, then back to me. “Uh, yeah. I guess. I’m supposed to meet him here this morning, but he’s not… he’s just…”
“Just a blind date your friend set up?” I finished for her.
Her eyes widened again and she groaned, resting her forehead in one hand and shaking her head repeatedly. “Stella. Of course.”
I let a small smile spread my lips. “Right. Stella Marquise. She ambushed me in line at that coffee place around the corner from W&S the other day.”
Her gaze flicked to the side, then back to me. “Soyou’reTony?”
I chuckled. “Sorry to disappoint you, but I wasn’t going to give my real name to some girl who refused to let me say no to going on a date with her friend.”
“Thiscannotbe happening,” she muttered, groaning again before resting her face in both of her palms and shaking her head once more. “If you tell Alex or Jameson about this?—”
“About the fact that I accidentally went on a date with their baby sister and cousin?” I scoffed down a laugh. “You have nothing to worry about,Lottie. My lips are sealed.”
“I wasn’t trying to trick you or anything. This was?—”
“A setup by a friend who had no way of knowing that we already know each other,” I said. “Don’t sweat it. You have a different nickname when you’re with your friends. I get it.”
She finally lifted her face out of her hands and looked over at me again, those blue eyes so big and clear that it was almost like staring at the summer sky back in Texas when I really looked at her.God, she really has become beautiful.
“Not only a nickname,” she mumbled. “I basically have a whole other identity.”
“You’re not the only one,” I said, surprised that I was telling her this, butwhat the hell. We were here now. “When we were your age, Jameson was very different when he was with the family too. Same with Alex. Hell, I was different too.”
“When you were my age,” she repeated, her nose crinkling before she rolled her eyes. “Of course, because you’re so much older and wiser. You’re Jameson’s age, right? Basically the same as Alex?”
“Thirty-three,” I said. “You’re, what, twenty?”
“Twenty-five.” Her chin lifted ever so slightly, her eyes lighting with a challenge for me to tell her how much of a baby she was. “I’m twenty-five. It’s not that big a difference.”
“Maybe not to you,” I mused out loud. “To be fair, you do seem a lot more mature than we were back then.”
“Fifth graders are more mature than you guys were back then.”
I opened my mouth to deny it, but then I realized she probably wasn’t wrong. We’d been young and dumb, and some of us had made bigger mistakes than others because of it. “Fair enough.”
Her eyebrows rose like she was surprised I wasn’t arguing, but then she sighed and reached up to tug at her messy bun. We fell into a quiet pause, each of us sipping our drinks.
