Page 14 of Hope for the Best


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"Most of them," I said, nodding. "We're open on Saturdays until noon, but we use a skeleton crew and I only have to do it about once a month."

"I thought you might work at the burger place," Astrid said. "We wouldn't have asked you to deliver this all the way out here to us."

"Oh no, I was coming out here to see my dad, anyway. It was no problem."

"Thank you," Astrid said, standing up to get her burger. "Just tell me how much I owe you."

"Oh, it's not, I'm sure it's… it's really not that much."

I was incapable of coolly asking people to pay me back for things.

"Yeah what do we owe you?" Donnie said.

"I think it was… I'll look at the receipt later. I'm not sure exactly. I was just telling everyone else about how I had a running tab over there at the Black Skillet."

"Well, thank you for picking it up," Max said. "Let me know how much we owe you for all this before you leave."

"Yes sir," I said smiling and nodding at Charlie's dad. He wore a ponytail and looked so much like Casey.

"I heard you do some rock climbing," Charlie said to me.

"Where did you hear that?"

He smiled. "Your dad."

"Oh, yeah," I said. "I don't climb many actual rocks, but yes, my friend has a rock climbing wall that he built, and I like using it with him. It really tore my hands up at first. I had blisters from trying to hang on."

I was in the middle of saying this when I realized that Charlie's wife was probably a well-seasoned rock climber. I got lost in that train of thought, and I felt embarrassed and just sort of trailed off.

"But you probably know all about that," I added, looking at Savannah. "Do you do rock climbing?"

"A little bit, but you're probably better at it than I am. I'm out of practice, so my arms would be gassed pretty quick."

"Oh, the arms," I said, shaking my head.

"If Savannah ever climbed a cliff, she'd just turn around and jump off of it," Beau said, chiming in.

"I remember you telling me you like to jump off of things," I said.

"Yep. That's how I met Charlie. Well, not how I met him. But I was down in Miami, jumping with a group of friends."

"Jumping off of a bridge…" Max said.

"I wasn't jumping when we met, but I was in Miami for a jump and I met Charlie at my hotel."

"I thought it was a restaurant," Astrid said.

"A restaurant in my hotel," Savannah clarified.

"Tell them about that time you got arrested," Caleb said.

Caleb was in some sort of law enforcement. I was almost certain he was with the FBI, but it was a known thing—a regular job at his local FBI branch. As far as I knew, he was part of governmental law enforcement, but he wasn't secretive about it. My dad was the one who told me that, and he knew more. Either way, it didn't surprise me when Caleb brought up Savannah getting arrested.

She laughed and shook her head as if recalling the story. "Well, I'm a BASE jumper, so you would think that I got arrested trying to jump from a structure that was illegal to jump from. That's how most of us get arrested. But that wasn't how it happened. I got arrested skydiving, actually. I landed on private property, and the owners pressed charges. I think they were drug dealers."

"If they were drug dealers, they wouldn't get the cops involved," Caleb said.

Savannah shrugged. "Either way, I got off with a warning, but I got arrested and taken down to the station and everything."

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