“Everything smells so good,” she says. “I’m starved.”
I smile. “So let’s get everything,” I say.
She laughs at my suggestion, but I take her hand and pull her along. We walk from truck to truck, getting a small dish from each one. There is everything from hibachi to street tacos to barbecue and everything in between. Once we have enough food to fill both our hands, we go sit at a table under a heat lamp near the microbrewery bar.
“Beer too?” she asks.
“Of course. It wouldn’t be the full experience if you don’t wash it all down with locally crafted beer. What’s your poison?”
Harper reads over the board in front of us, scanning the light beers, sours, porters, and the IPAs.
“The honey blonde is good,” I suggest, knowing literally nothing about her beer preferences.
“Too light,” she says. I’m surprised, but also not.
“Blueberry lavender sour?” I ask.
She shakes her head again. “Do you not know me at all?”
I laugh. “Apparently not.”
“I’ll take the coffee stout, please,” she tells the beertender, and I raise my eyebrows. “What? I like my beer dark.”
“Alright,” I say as my lips twist into a smirk. Meanwhile, my heart is doing acrobatics in my chest.
“Let me guess,” she says. “You like a sour.”
“Nope,” I say. “Though, I do see where you’d get that from.”
“Negronis,” she says.
“I’m an IPA fan, myself. West coast,” I say.
“I suppose that tracks. It literally tastes like biting into an orange rind and then licking a tree.”
I laugh out loud. We spend the next hour sampling all the different types of food in front of us and washing them down with two beers each. The conversation is light but passionate as we talk about our favorite foods and flavors. With each moment that rolls by, I find myself more and more enthralled by her. Smart, witty, sunny, yet spicy. It’s amazing to me how someone could be right under my nose for years, but it wasn’t until about five years ago that I even realized who she really is.
“So, how did you actually find this place?” she asks. The food is mostly gone, and she is finishing the last of her beer.
“My parents,” I say, sitting back feeling fat and happy. “They used to come here when they started dating.”
“It’s been around that long?” she asks.
I nod. “Some of these trucks are generational. Of course, back then there were only about three or four of them, and no brewery. Though there was a guy that sold margaritas out of the back of his truck.”
“No way,” she laughs.
“Yep. His wife made homemade tamales. Best I’ve ever had north of El Paso.” She smiles, and I keep going. “They brought me here when I was a kid. Dad was always about quality over popularity. New places were always looking for the next big, fancy thing. But here, he used to say, you can taste the soul in the food. So even though I eventually ended up with brick-and- mortar restaurants, I have always kept that mindset.”
“Well, I love it,” she says. “All of it.”
I smile back at her, and for a moment, we are quiet. There’s so much I want to say. As I watch her, smiling with mischievous eyes, I can tell she feels the same, whether either of us says it or not.
Chapter 34
Asher
After our trip to the food truck village, I realized something. I am in love with Harper St. James. And now that I recognize that, I realize the time has come; we have to tell Jaylen.
