“Noted.”
“You nervous?” I ask.
“For a barbecue?” she says. “No.”
“Your brother’s there.”
She glances over. “So?”
“So you tend to act like we’ve never met when he’s around.”
She rolls her eyes. “I do not.”
“You absolutely do.”
“I’m just being normal. My romantic life is none of his business.”
“Is that what that is? Just normal?”
She turns toward me slightly. “You want me to be less normal?”
I smirk. “Depends what your version of not normal is. You’re already the weirdest girl I know.”
“Oh, is that so?”
“Yeah. You text from the next room over but say you need your sleep.”
She shakes her head, looking back out the window, but she’s smiling.
I let the silence sit for a second.
“You ever think about staying here?” I ask, breaking it.
The question lands between us for a moment, and she looks over again, this time more serious.
“Here?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Riverbend. The shop. All of it. I know you’ve only been here, what, almost a month? But it seems like you fit in.”
She hesitates, thinking.
“I don’t know,” she says finally. “It’s…easy here. I feel like I can finally hear myself think. I do like the quiet. That was hard to come by in Dallas.”
“Easy’s not bad. Neither is quiet.”
“No,” she says. “But it’s not everything. I don’t know if this is just a phase, or I’ll settle down here. It’s nice being around Jackson and Ivy and the kids.”
I nod. “You’re lucky, having family like them.”
“What about you? You a big city guy at the end of the day?” she asks.
“Not really,” I say. “But I’m not exactly built for staying in one place forever either. I’m too used to going where the wind blows me. Which ends up being whichever city a team needs me. Last year I was living on the East Coast. The year before that it was Arizona.”
“Yeah,” she says softly. “I can see that.”
When I glance over, she’s already looking out the window again, conversation closed. Or maybe just paused.
We pull up to Jackson’s place a minute later.
