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Chapter Fourteen
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I’ve been hard since she opened her front door and it hasn’t let up. I haven’t ridden with a hard-on since I was eighteen and took the head cheerleader for a ride in the country. And my bike wasn’t the only thing she rode.
Lexi heads to the back of the little dive restaurant, finding a booth beneath an old mismatched light. “This okay?” she asks.
“Perfect,” I answer, sliding into the bench across from her.
An older woman arrives at our booth a minute later and takes our drink order. I stick with a coke, while Lexi orders a sweet tea. The menu is an old plastic one-sheeter with bent and peeling corners.
“Have you ever eaten here?” she asks, glancing at the options on the menu.
“Nope. I’ve heard about this place a few times and always wanted to try it. This seemed like the perfect choice.”
“I haven’t been here in years. Chris didn’t like it. If it didn’t have cloth napkins and a wine list, he thought it was beneath him,” she mumbles, rolling her eyes as she keeps them focused on the menu in her hands.
“But this kinda place is right up your alley,” I state. It’s not a question. She’s given me glances of the real Lexi over the last couple of weeks, and she seems like the type of woman who likes messes and laughter and doesn’t mind dirty dishes in the sink.
She glances up at makes eye contact. “Yeah, it is. Sorry to bring him up. That’s not very good first date etiquette.”
“You’re fine. I want to get to know the real you, not the woman you had to become to please someone else.”
She stares at me intently, her green eyes searching my face, before nodding her head. “I love waffles with fresh strawberries, wearing no shoes in the yard, and comic books, though I haven’t read one in years.”
“Comic books, you say?” I lean in closer until my nose is close to hers, I whisper, “I once owned The Amazing Spider-Man number sixteen, signed by Stan Lee, graded 4.5.”
Her gasp goes straight to my groan. “September 1964. Not a widely popular version, but signed by the master would bump up the value.”
“I got six hundred bucks for it,” I tell her.
“Why did you sell it?” she questions, her green eyes searching mine.
I stumble on the words that I need to say, but I fight through it. “Needed the cash.”
Ain’t that the truth? When my mom found out I sold the one comic book I worked extra shifts at the garage in high school to buy, she was pissed. But I needed to fix the mess we were in more than I needed a signed Spider-Man comic book.
Lexi tsks. “That’s too bad.”
I just shrug my shoulders and lean back in the booth. My shoulders are tense, so I extend one arm across the back of the booth just to give off a casual appearance. The way her eyes study me, I wonder just how much of my demeanor my fiery little Lexi can read. She gives me a look like she knows I’m anything but relaxed, but thankfully, she doesn’t call me on it.
After we both order crab legs with shrimp scampi, I get comfy and just watch her. She’s messing with her paper napkin, curling the corners around her finger and then flattening it out again. She looks deep in thought, but there’s a hint of a smile playing on the corner of her lips.
“So tell me, have you always wanted to be a hairdresser?”
“Always. When I was a kid, I used to love fiddling with all of my sisters’ hair.”
“Same with me and the garage. I started tinkering around with car parts, engines and transmissions, at an early age. Gettin’ greasy just kinda called to me.”
“I like that about you,” she says quietly, her eyes locked on mine.
“That I’m a grease monkey?”
“That you don’t mind getting your hands dirty.”
I have a feeling it has a lot more to do with the fact that her ex received weekly manicures than anything else. The fact that I’m the polar opposite from the douche probably has a lot to do with it.
“Can I stop by sometime?” she asks.
