He took the truck out of park and began making his way toward the street. “And for what it’s worth, that tackle was a thing of beauty.”
I didn’t want to smile. I shouldn’t have smiled. I should have demanded Logan take me home and drowned myself in a pint of ice cream. But a hint of a smile crept onto my face anyway.
“Do you want to go back to that cow place now?”
I sighed. “No. I kind of want to blow off Jake’s date and do our own thing.”
He looked interested. “Blow off an overly fancy restaurant with less-than-stellar reviews? Yes, please. What are you thinking?”
I thought for a minute. What kind of food would make this night better? “A big, fatty hamburger with fries handed to me through a window.”
Logan looked like he might cry from happiness.
We ended up parked out by the Salmon River, sitting on the tailgate of his truck, shoulders touching, sharing fries and eating oversized hamburgers in the dark. I even splurged and ordered a Pepsi. The full-sugar kind, not diet. Diet was for days when I was on top of things. But after today…it was a loaded cowboy burger with barbecue sauce and an onion ring on top, a large waffle fry with fry sauce, and a Pepsi—large.
The food in my belly, the drink in my cup, and the medicine working its way through my bloodstream had done wonders in settling my nerves—as well as the man sitting beside me.
“I don’t mean to tell you your business,” Logan said, his mouth full of his “Sunrise Burger” with egg yolk dripping down his face, “but if it were me, I’d stick one waffle fry on that burger for more texture. You won’t go back.”
“Are you a foodie now?”
He wiped his face with a napkin before continuing. “It’s your fault. One of the guys brought in some brownies to work the other day. I had one bite and had to throw the rest away. I also used the words salted caramel for the first time in my life.”
I smiled and glanced down at the burger I was currently eating like an ape, with barbecue sauce dripping down my hands and face. “Well, this burger needs nothing else. I’m trying to find the right word to describe how good it tastes.”
“How about really good?”
“That’s pathetic.”
“Perfect?”
“Still not right.”
“How can anything be better than perfect?”
I thought for a moment. “It’s too sterile. There’s not enough warmth in the word. This burger is messy, and big, and with the onion rings…it’s a rule breaker. It’s not perfect. It’s better than perfect.”
“That’s all the words I got.”
“It needs more syllables. The level of how good this burger is, mixed with how crappy my night has been, means the word has to be…something amazing. But not amazing. That’s too generic.”
He rolled his eyes, leaning over to take a swig of my Pepsi. “Nobody talks like that.”
“Sure they do.”
“Nobody normal. Like the word magnificent. Who actually uses that word?”
“Lots of people use it.”
“When’s the last time you used it in a sentence?”
“This burger is magnificent.” My eyes and mouth widened with excitement. “You’ve found the perfect word.”
“Nope. You sound pretentious.”
“It sounds like a word that waits for the right time. Like when the most perfect piece of food in existence makes its way onto my plate. This burger deserves me stepping up my language game.”
I took another bite, my mouth full of hamburger and barbecue sauce and onion rings in all of their magnificent glory, when Logan suddenly nudged my arm with his elbow. “I thought we talked about this.”
