But cheese.
“How do you feel about pizza?”
With Riley at my side, I wasn’tjustcrashing another of Luke’s work gatherings. That didn’t make me feel any less awkward as we approached—like I was a lion kicked out of his pride, begging for scraps.
When had it gotten like this? After Henry died, I’d just kind of drifted. Old friends fell off, and I didn’t make new ones like I once had. Lucas hadn’t left for a second though. Did his coworkers think it was weird that I tagged along so much?
It was a little pathetic, me sulking around a bunch of friendly weres who had an actual reason to hang out. These were Lucas’s friends, not mine.
But there was still cheese. Who could blame me for wanting cheese?
Julia saw us first, but when her attention landed on me, Lucas twisted around and hopped out of his seat. “Come on, come on,” he waved us over, practically shoving me into the curved bench seat first right next to Landon, leaving Riley to budge in beside me.
It was a tight fit already, and there I was, my leg pressed against Landon’s beneath the table. Lucashadto sit me beside the new guy, didn’t he?
“I’m going to go get another pitcher of beer. You two sit. Special requests?” Lucas pointed around the table at everybody, but everyone shook their heads.
“Everyone, this is Riley,” I said, nodding to them. “Riley, this is Julia, Tate, Brandon, Rachel, Kelly, Oscar, and Landon.”
Oh shit. I knewalltheir names.
When had I learned all their names?
While I was contemplating where the fuck I belonged and how I could go around the whole table without missing a beat, Riley waved and bumped fists and greeted everyone. Finally, they leaned around me and stuck their hand out to Landon. They smiled brightly as they shook his. “Hiya. Thanks for letting me crash. Dean promised cheese,so?—”
They flipped over their utensils, setting the butt ends on the table, ready to dig in. A couple people laughed, and they fell into easy conversation. Oscar and Julia asked Riley questions—polite stuff—what they did, how we knew each other, that kind of thing.
Riley talked about the band excitedly, and it struck me, watching them lean in across the table, that it’d been a long freaking time since I’d felt that enthusiastic about anything.
Then, beside me, Landon shifted.
I leaned back on the bench, adjusting. “Do you need more space? We’re packed in kind of tight. I can get a chair?—”
I hadn’t even turned to look where I might find a chair before Landon was shaking his head. Even though he was shoved back in the corner, his knee pressed against my outer thigh. More, even as his cheeks went red and he pressed his knee in harder.
“No,” he said quietly. “No, it’s fine. I’m fine. You don’t need to.”
I frowned at him, but he was staring at his empty plate—one of those thick white restaurant numbers just begging for a huge slice of pie.
“Okay. Sorry.”
His gaze shot up and he blinked at me with wide amber eyes. “Why sorry?”
I wanted to laugh, but the feeling came up on me all bubbly and erratic, so I swallowed it down.
“Honestly? Don’t know,” I admitted. There were a lot of things I was sorry for, but not a damn one of them had anything to do with Landon. “I don’t want to trap you.”
He looked me over, and the tiniest smile appeared on his face. “It’s not like you’re manspreading or anything. You’re fine.”
He wiggled his foot under the table, and I wondered if he meant to knock it against mine.
“Okay,” I said, “but I could get a chair.”
His smile widened, and my heart did a flip in my chest. “Duly noted.”
I nudged his foot too.
Luke came back, not just with a pitcher of beer, but with a wholehugepizza balanced in his other hand. He’d waited tables in college, and a panther’s reflexes made that way easier than it was for most people. He lowered the enormous round tray with a flourish, setting it onto the stand that held the whole pie above the table itself, so everyone could reach for a slice without sacrificing table space.
