Instead, I hop onto the counter next to him, keeping him company as he hands me a dish to dry. It’s annoying whenever the water drips onto my thighs, but I can’t be bothered to move. I’m not quite ready to leave the kitchen just yet.
Or Ezra, truth be told.
He’s intriguing. Grumpy, that’s for damn sure, but intriguing. I get the sense he’s hiding a lot under his gruff exterior, and I want to find out just what that is.
“So why aren’t you working in a restaurant now?” he says after a while.
“I told you. My dad.”
“Yeah, but there are plenty of places here in Port Harbor you could be working instead of here.”
I wrinkle my nose. “Not really. They’re kind of lacking in restaurants here. We have, what, like five good ones?”
“Depends on your definition of good, but yeah, somewhere around there. Why not work at one of those?”
“I’m not sure I want to work for anyone else anymore.”
“You want your own restaurant?”
I laugh lightly. “I would kill for my own kitchen—one that’s truly mine—but it’s not in the cards right now.”
Besides, I’m back in Washington for my father, not my own self-serving reasons.
Ezra stares at me a moment before nodding like he understands, and maybe he does.
Still, I’m grateful when he moves on and asks, “Why Chicago?”
“Because it wasn’t Port Harbor. I’d spent my entire life here up until that point, and something new felt like what I needed at the time. I hated leaving my father, but I’m still glad I did it.”
“And your mom?”
That familiar tug I always feel when I talk about her pulls at me. “She passed away when I was eight. Breast cancer.”
He nods. “That sucks.”
I laugh at his response.
“What? Was that not the right thing to say?”
“No, it was perfect. Most people say how sorry they are—which I do appreciate—but they never state the obvious that, yeah, it doessuck.”
“I lost both of my parents pretty young, so I understand.”
My heart races at the thought of just how close I came to being in his same position a month ago.Almostlosing my father was bad enough. I can’t imagine how hard actually losing him would be. “That had to have been tough.”
“Honestly, I don’t remember much. I was only six, so it’s not as if that time in my life is full of memories, you know? There are flashes, sure, but nothing concrete.” Something flickers in his eyes, and it’s clear it bothers him that he doesn’t recall things clearly, but he tries not to show it. “I barely even remember the night they passed. It was a multicar wreck where I grew up in Minnesota. Bad weather, too much snow and ice. That kind of thing. I just remember the cops pulling up to the house with their lights on and telling my uncle Paul, who was watching me at the time, what happened. After that, I was just with him. He raised me like I was his own, and I don’t think I fully comprehended what I had lost until later. In more ways than one.”
He says that last part so quietly that I almost don’t hear him.
The urge to reach over and hug him is so strong that I actually do it.
At first he’s stiff. It’s like hugging a board. A really big, broad board, but still rigid.
Then he yields, giving in to it, and he sinks against me, his arms going around me just as tight as I’m squeezing him.
I don’t know what I expected tonight, but it certainly wasn’t this. The scent of rain-like soap fills my senses as I hold Ezra in my arms, and he nuzzles his nose against my neck.
Wait, what the hell?
