It’s a really good look for him.
“You good?” he shouts over the whine of the engine, and I don’t dare look at the speedometer.
“Yes!” I yell back.
He goes a little harder, then downshifts and eases onto the brake, the car slowing down but not in a way that jerks you forward. We roll to a stop at the end of the road leading up to the cidery, and I’m instantly annoyed by the grin stretched across my face.
“Fun?” Ezra asks with a smile of his own.
I shrug. “It was fine.”
“Fine, my ass. That was a fucking blast, and you know it.”
My lips twitch involuntarily, and I force a stoic face. “Whatever.”
But Ezra doesn’t stop grinning, and dammit if it doesn’t make me want to grin again too.
“God, I could do that every day if it weren’t for your father always busting me. It reminds me of being on the ice. It feels like flying.” His words are laced with longing, and I’m suddenly hit with the desire to be able to rewind the clock for him so he could do things differently and get hockey back. “But that’s why we have the iceplex. It’s my way of connecting with the game again.”
He doesn’t say anything else, and I don’t offer anything either. I don’t know what to say. Losing my kitchen is nothing like what happened to him. I can still cook. He only has his dream from the sidelines.
“You’re really clinging to that pizza,” he says as we drive through town. He’s not going a single mile over the speed limit, and I wonder if that’s because of Noah getting onto him about his speeding, or if he’s actually heeding my father’s warning.
“What kind is it?”
“Pesto chicken with balsamic glaze.”
My stomach rumbles loudly. Ezra doesn’t miss it.
“Hungry?”
“Yeah. And their pesto chicken happens to be my favorite pizza ever. I missed it in Chicago.”
“Not a fan of deep dish?”
“Blech. Not even a little. Give me a good sourdough any day of the week.”
“Agreed.” He flicks his eyes down to the pizza, then up to me. “You want some?”
His words are so casual that they take me off guard. There’s no way I heard him right. There’s no way he wants to share his pizza with me.
“What?”
He chuckles lightly, like he knows I’m stumbling over his words. “I have no business eating a whole pie by myself. We could split it.”
It’s a bad idea. I know it is. But I am hungry. We didn’t get a lot of downtime tonight with our bingo night, so I haven’t eaten since lunch. A pizza sounds a lot better than going back to an empty house and warming up the leftover chicken and broccoli pasta I made for my dad and me last night. Plus, he does need help with those kitchen plans. Whatever he has going on isn’t going to work. It’s better to fix that now than try to change it later.
But I shouldn’t. I really, really shouldn’t. I ...
“I don’t want to intrude.”
“Wouldn’t have invited you if you were. Besides, I could use your help with the kitchen plans. The contractors want me to review them by Friday so we can finalize everything and get started next week.”
Well, when he puts it that way ...“Yeah, sure.”
“Don’t sound so excited.” He flips his turn signal on and drives in the opposite direction from my father’s house. “Are you still thinking about opening your own restaurant?”
His words surprise me. He remembers me saying that?
