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Anxiety alleviated.
“Elliot, you kill me.” He shakes his head, tearing open the bag to dive in.
“How’s it going?”
He chews. Swallows. “Been looking forward to working with this coach for months, but when I dragged my bag into the hotel room, I just wasn’t feeling it.”
“What? I thought you were excited about this trip.” I grab a rod same as he has.
“The training’s going to be awesome.” He takes another bite, twirling the rod in his fingers. “The hotel, less so. Gotten used to company in the evenings at home.”
Aww, me too. “You don’t think you’ll be hanging out with the guys?”
“No, I will.” He wags his head. “Just, not the same.”
I lean back against the counter and nod. “I get it.”
One brow lifts. “We talking in the kitchen again?”
I look around, realizing I’ve set the phone on the windowsill behind the sink. “Of course. Catching up on the day over a shared snack.”
That grin. “Our thing.”
Then his big hand is coming at me, and the background swirls around before his face takes up the screen again. “Ready to have your mind blown?”
I blink because the last time he asked me that was eight years ago and under very different, very naked circumstances.
Giving myself a mental hand slap, I ground myself in the now. This call. “Ready.”
He leans closer, so I’m looking at one giant eye and the crooked line of his nose. “We’re in two places at once. Talking in our kitchen and kickin’ back at the hotel.” The screen flips, and he slowly pans around a hotel room that’s nice but not nearly as nice as I imagined. “Where do you want to sit?”
“Mmm, choices, choices. How about on the table by the window.”
“Nice pick,” he says, moving in that direction. “Great view too.”
“I meant facing you, goof.”
The phone flips back, and he fills the screen, leaning close to wink. “So did I. Get another pretzel and pour a glass of that white I left you in the door of the fridge. Wanna hear how the new project’s coming.”
6
Ben
Pick up avocados and limes for game night!!
I grin at Lara’s scribbled reminder stuck on the mirror next to the front door on one of the Tiny Twist-shaped sticky notes I found online when I got back from camp.
Pretzels are our thing now.
Solid choice for a second-chance friendship if you ask me. And fun. I like pointing with the rods for emphasis when I talk. I like snacking on them. And there is very little in this world more hilarious than when Lara starts nibbling the salt crystals off one at a time. And since she seems to be on the same page, guess what I had delivered to her office last week.
It was this whole bouquet thing. Very fancy. And the look on her face when she walked me through the entire selection— at a whisper, because she was at work, and I was in an exam room waiting on the doc to give my problem-child nut a clean bill of health —priceless.
PS: Those wayward thoughts that were accosting me on the regular when she first moved in? Almost completely gone.
Grabbing my shoes, I head back to my bathroom.
Sure, every now and then— couple times a week, max —some stray thought goes barreling past the platonic line and into the DZ. The Deviant Zone. But I shut that shit down faster than it can cause an incident. Because in my hierarchy of needs, protecting this friendship ranks a fuck-ton higher than finding out what that stretch of skin at the curve of Lara’s neck would taste like dusted with pretzel salt.
