“What the fuck, lady?”
She froze and her mouth dropped open. “These aren’t samples?”
Elliott was bent over, laughing so hard he couldn’t speak.
“Not samples. Dinner.” The young guy shook his head.
“Oh, God.” The bite of chicken lodged itself in Clare’s chest as bands of mortification tightened around her body. She’d just taken some random dude’s chicken.
“Who the fuck offers samples at KFC in the middle of the goddamn night?”
Elliott met her eyes and laughed harder. Tears streamed down his face as he clutched his side. “You just ate that guy’s dinner,” he choked out.
The guy who Clare had deprived of a chicken strip was laughing too.
“I am so sorry.” Her voice was barely a whisper. Did she offer the half-eaten chicken strip back to him? Did she eat it right there and hope it pushed the still-lodged first half down the rest of the way to her stomach?
Elliott was no help. The man clearly found this funnier than anything else in his entire life. He wiped his eyes. “I’ll get you more chicken, man. I’m sorry. She just has no manners.”
Clare slapped Elliott’s chest before covering his mouth with her palm. “Don’t. Just don’t.”
Elliott laughed even harder and she couldn’t fight a smile.
“I really am so sorry.”
The guy waved her off, and she grabbed Elliott by the arm and dragged him inside. “It’s not that funny.” She gave him her best mom-face.
“It’s absolutely this funny and more. You took another man’s chicken, Clare. You’re basically married to him now.”
She bumped him with her elbow. “I hate you.” Her heartrate was returning to normal, and the wave of heat that had engulfed her when she realized that she’d just walked up to a stranger and taken his chicken was starting to cool off.
Did other people do that kind of shit? Or was she the only person things like this happened to?
Eli ordered for both of them, and an extra basket of tenders for the good sport out front. As they waited, he pulled out his phone and his thumbs glided over the screen.
“Texting the other woman?” She knew he wasn’t. But standing in the middle of a fast food restaurant dressed for a red carpet event, and—with any luck—on her way to getting laid by the man she’d loved since he was a boy, her insecurities yelled louder.
“Cat, actually.”
Her Cat? Her daughter? Why was her…boyfriend? Was that what he was? Why was her boyfriend—she cringed at the word—texting her daughter?
“She has to know about Chicken-Gate.” He shrugged like he was simply telling an old friend. Cat had given him her number? Did they talk? Were they friends? She wasn’t sure how she felt about it.
He closed the space between them and dropped a kiss on her forehead. “Stop overthinking it. We texted once before this. That’s all.”
Oh, that was all, was it? Well, that made it totally fine then, didn’t it? What was the conversation about? She needed to know. She’d just learned about it and it was already burning her from the inside.
“What did you talk about?” Cool. Subtle. Like a motherfuckin’ ninja.
He tapped her on the nose. “Be patient, chicken thief. I need to make sure you’re not going to be arrested for stealing first.”
She pursed her lips and chuckled. “It’s never going away, is it?”
He shook his head. “It’ll grow, every time I tell it, too. Pretty soon you’ll have wrestled a live chicken from a little old man.”
When they left the restaurant, the guy was still there, arms folded, foot braced against the side of the building. Elliott laughed again as he gave the man fresh chicken.
At the car, he handed her their bag of chicken before closing the passenger door and getting back in the driver side.
