Page 86
His smile gets bigger. “Good. Did you eat?”
I consider lying because, technically, I had a protein bar while trying to read the paper. “Did something masquerading as a food product enter my mouth? Yes.”
“You ate crackers or a granola bar or some shit, didn’t you?”
I can’t help but laugh. “I had a protein bar.”
He takes my hand. “Come with me.”
I expect him to lead me to his room at the clubhouse, but he doesn’t. He leads me down a long corridor to a kitchen that is, unexpectedly, spotlessly clean. Stainless steel counters without a speck of grease. No dishes stacked in the sink because of the low hum of not one, but two, dishwashers running.
“You want to get a Petri dish out and swab it, just to be sure?” Sunny says with a grin as I run my fingers over the cool surface of the counter.
“I’m just surprised. For all motorcycle clubs are seen to be reckless and dangerous, you seem to have a lot of organizational structure and cleanliness.”
“It’s next to godliness or something, right?”
I think of the saying my mom used to quote all the time. “Apparently.”
He tugs open the fridge, and jars rattle. “You want me to enable your low nutritional content for the night and serve up some solid leftover pizza? Or can you wait half an hour for me to cook some chicken in the oven?”
“After the day I had, pizza and a beer sound perfect. Especially since I missed out on pizza after that stellar massage and sleep I had courtesy of your hands the other night.”
He leans around the door of the fridge to look at me with a soft smile. “You gotta promise me you’ll let me cook you a healthy breakfast tomorrow.”
I make the sign of the cross over my heart. “I promise.”
Sunny pulls three boxes out of the fridge and places them on the counter, then grabs two plates. “Serve up what you want. I’m just gonna get some beers. Microwave is over there, if you want to heat them up.”
The first pizza is untouched. Loaded with pepperoni and tomatoes. The second pizza is half a Hawaiian, which is fine by me because I’m firmly pro the stance that pineapple is a suitable topping. The third holds a few slices of something that looks like sausage and peppers. I’m hungry, so I grab one of each.
When he returns, Sunny has four beers and a blanket thrown over his arm, and after he’s loaded his plate and thrown a fourth piece playfully onto mine, we head outside to the dock, where there is a fire pit still glowing with red embers.
“You came all this way to see me,” Sunny says. “And I feel like I’ve barely been outside all day. Is it okay if we sit out here, for a minute?”
Night has settled over the property. Light from the clubhouse only stretches so far before the darkness takes over. The world beyond becomes one of sound rather than form. Ripples lap. Insects vibrate in the grass. Something calls from the water. A frog answers farther along the bank.
“It’s perfect.”
He puts everything down on a nearby table, then encourages me to sit on an outdoor sofa. Heavy duty plastic Ratan with gray cushions. He throws a blanket over my lap, even though it’s too hot for it. In a move that makes his bicep pop for a moment, he uncaps two of the beers and hands me one, before knocking the neck of his to mine.
“This feels suspiciously like a date, Sunny,” I say as he tosses a few logs onto the fire. It spits and hisses, sending a flurry of sparks and ash into the air before settling into a steady crackle and snap.
He smiles at that before chugging some of his beer. “Good. Because I’m really having to fight the urge to throw all the pizza into the water and take you back to my room. But I kinda wanna date you too.”
“Good. And please don’t do that.”
“Fight it?” Sunny says with a hopeful raised eyebrow.
“No. Throw your pizza into the water. It’s not good for marine life or water quality.”
“Of course, it’s not.” He grins as he hands me my plate, then grabs his own things and sits down next to me. “Tell me about your day.”
I flop back on the sofa and groan. “You’re going to wish you hadn’t asked. I’ve been ignoring the new contract the dean offered me, and I hate it.”
“I could kill the dean for you, then it would be voided.”
I shake my head, aware he’s only fifty percent joking. “Please don’t do that. I was going to ask my parents if their lawyer could take a look at it for me, but I don’t want to be beholden to them.”
