“Yep. Same as always.” He leans forward, propping his elbows on the table. “Not much has changed in Apple Grove. I live in the same place. Still have the same friends. Doing the same old stuff, hanging out in the woods and messing around on computers.”
I grin, matching his posture. “I bet things have changed more than you realize.”
“Only thing different is you’re not there. I’ve missed you, Cari.”
My heart skips a beat. “I missed you, too. I’ve spent a lot of time wishing I could talk to you.”
His brow ridges raise. “Really? Why didn’t you answer my letters?”
I frown. I don’t remember getting anything from him. Not a single one. It broke my heart, even though I understood why he never contacted me. “What letters?”
“I wrote a bunch in the hospital, but they didn’t let me send them because of the lawsuit.”
I wince, remembering the hostile legal battle between my dad and the hive. A lot of angry words were traded and legal fees were paid before they reached a settlement. “No wonder I didn’t get them.”
Now it’s Zed’s turn to frown. “I sent them later in one big batch after the protection order expired. It was a whole box.” He draws a shoebox size in the air. “You didn’t get it?”
I shake my head. “We moved a few times, and then I went to college. Maybe they got lost. I wish I’d known. I would have written to you.”
A few beats pass. “Why didn’t you?”
I look down at the wooden tabletop, its warm, battered surface a welcome distraction. “I sent you a card at the hospital, but it was returned.” I remember the day I got the card back, the word “REFUSED” scrawled across the hospital’s address. How my heart sank. “When my dad saw it, he told me about the protection order. By the time it expired a year later, I was…distracted.”
“Dating,” Zed says, with gentle understanding.
I nod, trying to stop my memories from slipping back to the guy I was with at the time. A bright-orange dragon from Boston, he came to Oregon to play beastball. I was working overtime as a cleaner to save up for college, but I did everything to make our busy schedules align. Pulled double shifts so we’d have the same days off. Watched his practices. Traveled to games. But one day in May, at a beastball match in Seattle, he scented his mate in the crowd, and it was like I ceased to exist.
“Sort of. I was going through a bad breakup. I spent the summer crying and building up @SeeRadarRun enough that I could afford tuition. School and content creation kept me busy for the next few years. But I always thought of you.”
The host reappears tableside, with a platter in one hand and a ridiculous, pig-shaped hat in the other. “Ladiessss first!” heannounces, plopping the pig on top of my head and sliding the platter onto the table in front of me. It’s completely filled by two gigantic sausages. He fishes a stopwatch from the pocket on his apron. “On your mark, get set—”
“Wait, wait,” I say, giggling and waving my hands for him to stop. “What are we doing here?”
“The Sausage Showdown!” he says cheerily. “You have thirty seconds to Eat! That! Meat! Ready, set, go!” He clicks the stopwatch, and I stare across the table at Zed, a little bewildered.
“Did you plan this?”
He shrugs, looking as confused as I feel. I shrug back. I guess we’re doing it. I push up the sleeves of my dress and grab one of the sausages, stretching my mouth around the end. It barely fits.
Before my first bite, I’m not sure I can handle it. But the sausage turns out to have a great snap, and inside it’s salty, chewy, and delicious. This won’t be bad at all. The second and third bites go down just as easily.
“Go, piggy piggy, go piggy piggy, go!” shouts the host enthusiastically, watching seconds tick by on the watch. “Fifteen, fourteen…”
Diners at the other tables turn toward me to watch the spectacle as I double my efforts, cramming as much of the sausage into my mouth as I can with each bite. The attention feels awesome and helps me power through the last ten seconds. By the time the stopwatch alarm sounds, I’ve eaten over fifty percent of the enormous thing. I finish with grease dripping down my chin and the end of the sausage clutched in both hands.
The people around us cheer. I raise my half-eaten meat in triumph, feeling like the queen of a barbarian horde…until I remember this is supposed to be a romantic date, and here I gobbled half my weight in sausage and have grease up to my elbows.
I glance across the table, cringing. Zed slow-claps, his grin wide and admiring. “Impressive,” he says, and it sounds like he means it.
“I just…really like meat,” I explain sheepishly.
“That’s what she said,” quips the host. He plucks the pig hat from my head and pauses momentarily before shrugging and hanging it on one of Zed’s horns. He looks pretty ridiculous with it dangling there. It makes me smile that he’s such a good sport.
“Your turn, big boy,” the host says, resetting the clock and passing the platter to Zed. “Let’s see who can gobble that hog down the fastest. Are you ready to Eat! That! Meat?”
“Listen, we don’t need to compete,” Zed says quickly. “Cari gets the crown for sure.”
“You booked the celebration package, sir,” the host reminds him. He clicks the button. “Go piggy piggy, go piggy piggy, go!”
