She hadn’t been here in years and had forgotten it existed, honestly. It was a couple of streets off Main. They’d done a lot of work to it since she’d been here last. There were new trucks that boasted southern style barbecue, and Thai food, and meat pies, and street tacos. One specialized in macaroni. In the center was a huge, covered area with picnic tables and standing heaters. Every table had individual miniature fires in the centers.
He walked her around the entire circle of food trucks before they ordered and got their buzzers to tell them when their food would be ready.
He was on water now, and she got a raspberry lemonade, and they picked the table right between two giant heaters for her.
She’d ordered a buffalo chicken mac from the macaroni truck, and he ordered roughly a cow’s worth of meat from the barbecue truck, and they went back to the easy banter from earlier. He told her about the members of his Pack, and which ones he hated the least, and she told him about her friends from college that still met up for girls’ nights once a month. They were busy with families now but still made the effort to hang out with single-Destiny.
This was what a date was supposed to feel like. She wouldn’t say that aloud, for fear of him freaking out again, but she felt it in her heart.
“I like that you are teaching me how to do a date,” she said.
“Your thanking a werewolf for teaching you to do a human date,” he said, his face glowing with the illumination of the tiny fire between them. “I think you are the one teaching me.”
“You know what I mean. I met Chance in high school, and dating was just going to football games together, and the pizza place with a group of friends. And when we graduated, it was just moving in together immediately, and because of his health, we weren’t going out very much.” She shrugged. “This is nice. It’s what I imagined it would be like.”
He nodded, his eyes thoughtful. Dodger reached over the table and took a forkful of her macaroni and ate it. And then he took another bite, and another. “This is really good,” he said, and she giggled as she pushed it closer to him. She wouldn’t be able to eat the rest anyways. It was an enormous portion.
He pushed a plate of brisket toward her and said, “Eat up,” as he dug into her pasta.
And here was something else she liked. She was truly enjoying that he was sharing food with her. There was intimacy with that. She couldn’t remember if Chance liked to do that or not. The memories of some of the little things had faded over time. She thought they probably didn’t share much because of his health. She’d had to wear a mask around him for the last year of his life to try and control the amount of pathogens around him.
The random memory of the masks she’d worn drew her up, and desperate to return to the here and now, she asked, “Why did you kiss me earlier?”
“Because I wanted to know what a human tasted like.”
“And?”
“I don’t remember,” he said with a wicked glint to his blue eyes. “I should try again.”
And the butterflies were back. “I wouldn’t mind.”
“Yeah? Well, you’re going to have to teach me how to not break you. I was terrified the whole time that I was going to squeeze you too hard or something.”
She laughed. “You’re overthinking it. How about we make a deal. I’ll tell you if it’s too rough.”
He chewed slowly, and from here, she could see the flames of the tiny fire reflecting in his frosty eyes. “Deal.”
“What would your friends say if they knew you were making out with a human?”
“I don’t have any friends here. If I was back with my old Pack? The one I grew up in? Or around my brothers?” He shook his head. “I don’t think my sisters would care much, but you’d be targeted by everyone else. The rules are softer around Coeur d’Alene. My Alpha has a human mate. I don’t know what my current Pack would think. Nory probably took some of the shock value away.”
“I wouldn’t mind meeting your friends.”
“Pack,” he corrected her. “That’ll take a bit. I kind of want to just see what we are first.”
And she understood. Sure, it stung a little that he didn’t want his people to know about her yet, but okay. It was their first date. It was early. She needed to see where this was going too before she wanted to tell her friends about him too. Destiny understood.
“You aren’t going to hound me?” he asked.
“Hound you to what?”
“Define the relationship or whatever they call it.”
“We’re friends. Friends who kissed in a dressing room. That’s what we are.”
He smiled and nodded. “Atta girl.”
“Besides, now that I have practiced dating, I may go ahead and activate my dating app.”
