“Not really, no. Now I have to eat garbage while being angrily glared at.”
“The food here isn’t garbage. I drive out all the time just to grab lunch.”
“That doesn’t fill me with confidence. In fact it fills me with dread, honestly.”
“Liked the breakfast I ordered you, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, but there they had things I enjoy.”
“They do here, too.”
He gestured at what she now had in front of her, before picking up his own fork to tuck into what he had. Switching from the left hand to the right, as usual, sawing with one side of it, then spearing it angrily and shoveling it in. It always looked to her like he didn’t enjoy it, like he just needed fueling up, which was probably a good thing considering his meal was even plainer than hers.
But her stomach was growling, so she had to at least try.
She picked up one half of what looked like a toasted sandwich, imagining the flavor of boiled potatoes in the middle. And instead got such a hit of garlic it almost made her eyes water. She actually coughed into her sleeve, it was that strong.
Much to his amusement.
“Told you. They only serve basic stuff but you can quadruple the amount of the basic stuff if you want. So I quadrupled it for the thing you like,” he said, and damn him, he had gotten it right. Hell, she even knew how he had—the garlic shaker at Desoto’s Pizza. The one he’d seen her upending all over her triple mushroom, as he worked on the bread he’d scraped all the tomato and cheese off of two tables away.
Trying to ward off vampires, huh, he’d said.
If by warding off vampires you mean warding off you, she’d replied.
But apparently he didn’t care if she reeked, and she didn’t care if he mocked her, because she ate the whole thing. Then couldn’t help sucking her fingers when she was done—even though he reacted the same way as he had for the breakfast in the diner. That smug satisfaction briefly dipped, just long enough to hit disgusted.
Or maybe unsettled.
It was hard to tell, and even harder to spend time working out. “Fine, it was good,” she conceded. “But I am still going to propose that the second rule is we trade off. You pick one place to eat, I pick the next. And we both have to take into account what the other person might want to eat.”
“Do you even know what I like?”
“I’m already thinking of the stewed cabbage place just outside Paramus, New Jersey.”
“Then we have an agreement. Rule number two, restaurant trade-offs.”
“Cool. And what did you have in mind for number three?”
“No more than ten minutes of talking per hour.”
He gave her a pointed look on the end of that, and tried to pick up his paper.
He had to know, however, that she was never going to allow such a thing.
“And how are we supposed to work that out? Are you wanting me to time it?”
“All I know is we have already massively gone over budget.”
“We better be super fast, then. What’s rule number four?”
He pretended to consider. Then, “No talking about personal things.”
“We should make rule number fiveno vague rules.”
“These rules are perfectly clear. You’re just determined not to understand them,” he said, but the paper was down again. He was leaning forward slightly, invested in this overshoot of rule three.
And she was happy to oblige him.
