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“How mad was he then?”
“You should consider giving your brother a little more credit,” I tell her.
“Why, for not forcing you to run away from town and join the Army?” she says.
I snort.
“Not that he could,” she amends herself.
“It could be interesting to see him try,” I muse aloud.
“Disagree,” June says.
“He claimed that not giving me permission was a test,” I tell her. “At the very least, he knows you.”
“Does that mean you’re still friends?” she asks. “I’d think that the whole punching situation would mean you’re not, but I can’t say I’ve ever understood your relationship.”
The waitress comes back, puts eggs and bacon in front of June, a stack of pancakes in front of me.
Suddenly, I’m starving, and these pancakes look like the greatest food ever conceived in the history of cuisine.
“Could you bring four small saucers, please?” I ask the waitress.
She gives me a big, wide smile.
“Of course, hon,” she says, depositing a handful of jams on the table. “I’ll be right back.”
June watches her go with her eyes slightly narrowed, one eyebrow slightly lifted.
I frown, look over my shoulder at the waitress, in case she had a third arm or something that I hadn’t noticed.
“You really don’t know, do you?” June asks.
I cut a dry triangle of stacked pancake and put it in my mouth as quickly and yet politely as I can, then just shake my head.
“She’s flirting with you,” June says. “I mean, sort of. Not hard. She wasn’t hitting on you or anything, but she definitely thinks you’re cute despite your face situation and you’re gonna be getting those saucers very — mhm, yup, there she is.”
“There you go, hon,” the waitress says. “How’s everything?”
We tell her it’s great. She smiles some more, exchanges another pleasantry, and she’s gone. I carefully pour a few tablespoons of each of the four syrups onto the saucers, and June watches me, clearly entertained.
“If I mix them, I won’t be able to tell which one is the best,” I tell her. “I can’t just haphazardly slop them onto my pancakes and expect to come to any sort of reasonable conclusion.”
“Of course not,” June agrees.
I cut another triangle and dip it into the syrup all the way on the right while she watches me, still trying not to laugh.
“I think that one’s blueberry,” I say, chewing.
“It’s definitely not a color found in nature.”
June reaches out with the back of her spoon, dips it in, licks it off.
And even though it’s bad blueberry syrup in a diner booth, I’m mesmerized. I stop eating and watch her a little too closely, feel my chest constrict a little too much.
“You know, if you really cared about scientific results, you’d do a double-blind test,” she teases me. “Here. I’ll blindfold you, swap these around, and then you pick which one you like best and you won’t be led astray by this sort of… purple-brown shade.”
I eat more pancake, consider her for a long moment.
“What do you say?” she asks.
“I say if you want to blindfold me and then do stuff with syrup, I’m game,” I tell her.
The pink in her cheeks deepens and her eyes sparkle.
“I’m trying to discuss serious scientific experimentation,” she laughs.
“We can experiment,” I offer.
She stabs a forkful of scrambled eggs, then dips them in one of my syrups before eating them.
“Now you’ve ruined my laboratory conditions,” I tell her.
“Where are you staying tonight?” she asks, tilting her head to one side.
I take my time with the next pancake triangle: stab, dip, chew, consider how best to answer the question.
“Your bed,” I finally say.
“Good,” June answers.Chapter Forty-OneJuneLevi stomps the floor of the car as he parks, then curses under his breath.
“I hate driving an automatic,” he says, turning the keys off, undoing his seatbelt. “I can never get the hang of it. Feels like I’m driving nothing at all.”
He says the last word with his lips against mine, already twisting out of the driver’s seat to kiss me, one arm braced against his headrest and the other curling through my hair.
I kiss him back, opening my mouth under his and pressing in. I fumble for a moment and then I finally undo my own seatbelt, let it snap back into place and push myself up on the passenger seat.
My knee hits the gearshift and I make a noise, but then Levi makes it back at me and I squirm again, find the front of his coat with my hand, grab it.
I wonder, for a moment, how many times I’ve made out with Levi in a vehicle, how many times I’ve been breathless and wanting in the passenger seat, how many times I’ve accidentally kicked a gearshift and fogged up windows.
I wonder how many more times we’re going to do this. I hope it’s a lot. I hope we can never keep ours hands off each other quite long enough to get inside. I hope we always want each other so much that it’s hard to wait.
