Every time I try to say them, my throat seizes and I feel like I’ve swallowed a fish. Which, yes, I have done. Not my best story from my time with the SEALs. It was only for a second, but fucking Knox saw and fished it out.
Ha. Fuck. That was a slip.
When she walks out of the building, the smile on her face dances in her eyes.
She jogs the short distance between us and gives me a hug and a kiss on the cheek. “What are you doing here?”
“I thought I would take you out to dinner. Just the two of us.”
“Really?”
“Is that ok?”
“Yea, yea, of course!”
She slides into the passenger seat when I open the door for her, tossing her bag in the back. We’ve started doing things more one on one with her. We didn’t want her to think she had to be with all of us all the time. Between the clubs, work, and home, we didn’t want to wear out our welcome, as Ms. Mary would say.
When the car starts, I press play and Romantic by Stanaj starts playing. I had thought about going with the NOTD Remix because that’s the one I usually listen to, but decided to go with the original. It’s slower, but feel it will really say the words I can’t.
I recently found Stanaj and love a lot of his music, but this song really spoke to me. I hope she sees the meaning behind the words in the song and will know I love her even if I can’t say it to her.
My hand drifts to her leg and I give it a light squeeze as I hold her gaze, watching her as the words dance around us. I wait until she reaches the moment of realization that this song was picked for her, then pull out onto the road. My plans were to take her to a nice steak house tonight. It’s one that recently opened up. I’ve been wanting to try it and I know she loves her steak, so win-win.
When we get to the light, I quickly glance at her and see her eyes are glassy, so I flip my hand over and she interlaces her fingers in mine. When the song ends, I turn off the audio and we sit it silence. Admittedly, not my best idea. Should have thought past the song, because now I feel like there’s an awkward silence in the car. Or maybe that’s just me.
Ten minutes later, we’re at the bar inside of the restaurant. We still have a few minutes until our reservation, so we decide to get a drink. She squeals when she sees they have Luxardo liqueur to make Emmett’s old fashion, so we give the directions to the bartender and order two.
We get to our table and talk about any and everything, but mostly about my time at Ms. Mary’s and which school I went to. We determine we had to have crossed paths at some point growing up because we lived so close to one another. Perhaps we were at some of the same festivals or fairs. She and Beckett loved going to them, and Ms. Mary usually had a booth setup selling her homemade jams and chow-chow.
We talk so much it’s hard for us to eat our food, but we do. We decide to split a twelve-ounce wagyu filet so we can order more sides to try as many as possible. The steak is perfectly cooked and seasoned, and we order a side of spinach, mushrooms, brussel sprouts, potatoes au gratin, and asparagus. It’s a ton of food, and we devour most of it, but have to bring a few boxes home of the sides. The boys, mostly Emmett, will be happy he gets to try them.
Even though we’re stuffed, we order dessert, because why not? We get a flight of chocolate cake, cheesecake, and a raspberry and lemon sorbet. As soon as Everlee sees the chocolate cake, she attacks with a ruthless ferocity I’ve never seen from her before and that’s saying a lot since our latest trysts have been… well, more intense. She refuses to give me a bite until I threaten her with vanilla sex. I was only teasing, but you would have thought I threatened her life.
We wrap up our three-hour meal and head to the car.
“Do you want to go home?” I ask.
“Not yet. This is nice.” She interlaces her fingers in mine.
“This is.” I lean over and kiss the top of her head.
“But we can’t do anything super active because I feel like you could literally roll me around right now, I’m so full. I shouldn’t have had that last bite of cake.”
“You could have shared it with me. The one tiny little bite you gave me was the equivalent of a crumb.”
“Yea, I suppose I could have.”
She doesn’t say anything else and I’m all smiles.
“I have a spot I used to visit when we first moved here.”
“Really?”
We get in the car and take a thirty-minute drive to an abandoned area of town. The buildings are empty and have graffiti painted all over the walls. I lead her around to the back of one of the buildings and we climb the stairs, all the way to the top of the building.
“How many flights of stairs was that? Fuck.” She bends over at the top and grabs her knees.
“Seems like more than I remember, but this view.” I walk to the edge and just stand. It’s like a wave of memories come rushing back to me. Memories and feelings of when we first moved here. The excitement, the fears, and the pain from all the bullshit I left overseas. The loneliness and loss of purpose. I fought for a long time with the feeling of duty to go back, while also having the desire to be home. I missed Callum and Emmett. And Knox. We were together in the same unit, but I saw him drifting further away and at moments, it was like he wasn’t even there. We talked and decided to come home, but I still miss it. And parts of me always will. I get my fill every once in a while, when I go on random missions with Dufrey, but it’s not a life I can go back to again. Not with Ev here now.
