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“Don’t get me wrong, the food’s good, but you’re slightly obsessed.”
“It’s that good. Your problem is you got the chef salad.”
“This salad is amazing,” Michelle said.
“It’s still a salad. At heart it’s a bowl of cold lettuce. I don’t care what you put on it,” I said.
“I’m with Nic on this one,” Trixie said, eyeing the salad bowl, studded with ham and hardboiled egg and cheese. “Lettuce is lettuce no matter how fancy you make it.”
“Y’all are missing out,” she said, spearing a big bite.
“I can live with that,” I said.
Just then, the door swung open and Ray Forrester walked into the diner. I tried to repress a shudder. He gave me a leer, that was the only word for his smarmy grin.
“Yuck,” Trixie said. “Slimeball Forrester’s here. Someone hide me.”
“Hey, you’re not the one he tried to feel up in biology lab in tenth grade,” Michelle objected. “Hide me.”
“So I’m not just being prissy about him? I always thought he seemed like a creep.”
“Listen, you may be stuck up about grits and gravy, but that man has been creepy since he wasn’t old enough to grow a mustache,” Trixie informed me.
“He’s put in a bid on the community center,” I said.
“Gag. Why would you want to work closely with him on a project?” Michelle asked. “I always go over the books he returns to the library with a sanitizing wipe.”
“Ew, he’s looking this way,” Michelle said. “Don’t look. He might come over and say hi.”
“Are we in the high school cafeteria? Seriously?” Trixie said.
“No, the food’s way too good,” I said. “But I do feel like hiding. I don’t want to deal with him. I know professionally I have to, but this is not a work lunch. So I don’t feel obligated to say hello or anything. I’m sweating this bid though. The mayor wants him to get the job because he has a reputation for coming in under budget. But I know from recent citations, he’s run afoul of building safety codes more than once. I’m not investing that kind of money in shoddy workmanship that will cost more in repairs down the road.”
“Uh, Damon said a couple weeks ago that the department had to back up the Overton FD on a warehouse blaze that started in one of Forrester’s builds, the fish and chips place there.”
“That was one of his?” Michelle asked. “I hadn’t heard that. And I hear everything.”
“The department wasn’t spreading it around. Privacy laws,” Trixie pointed out. “But I know it’s not the first fire Damon’s been called to that was one of Ray’s projects.”
“So what you’re saying is if you hire Ray, make sure the inspector isn’t paid off? And you have loads of fire insurance?” I asked. “I’m sweating. I have actual pit sweat happening over this. Because I know I can’t award him the build, not when I’ve heard all these whispers about his lowball bids and the corners he cuts, not to mention the fact that he’s creepy like Gollum.”
“No, you can’t. So is it gonna be the Overton firm or Noah? I know who I vote for. When he did the reno on the library bathrooms to make them more accessible, I have never gone down that hallway more than I did that month. Just checking to see if they had any questions, figuring out which style of Levi’s he favors. That kinda thing,” Michelle said.
“You ogled and harassed the builder?”
“Ogled, yes. Harassed? No. He’s a no-strings-attached guy and I’m not here for that. I mean, I’m here for that ass all day long. I’d pay hard cash for a GIF of him bending over. Make it my wallpaper,” she bit her lip. I threw one of Trixie’s fries at her.
“Hey!” Trixie said. “Mitts off the fries!”
I laughed at how indignant she was and how Michelle basically drooled over Noah Jeffries.
“Didn’t you say he used to work for his dad?” I asked. One thing about moving into a small town, everybody knew stuff I didn’t know. And they all grew up together.
“Yeah,” Trixie said. “His dad had a heart attack a few years ago and passed away. Noah was basically running the place by that point anyway, but he took over officially then.
“That must’ve been hard. I don’t know everybody’s history around here so that’s good to know.”
“We could draw you a chart of everybody and how they’re related by marriage and who used to date whom but there’s not enough paper in this town,” Trixie said. Michelle laughed.
“That sounds terrifying.”
“Oooh. Look who just walked in.”
I turned around and saw Noah Jeffries waiting at the takeout counter. Six feet plus of oh-my-God muscles all tanned from working outside, dark almost-black hair and blue eyes that made me think of James McAvoy if the British actor was completely shredded and suntanned instead of pale and wiry.
