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Sure enough, Allison reached them just a few seconds later and waited silently with her pen hovering above her order pad.
“Oh God. I have no idea.” Lily scanned the menu. “I haven’t eaten here since just before your wedding.”
“The menu is actually pretty much the same. You always ordered the biscuits and gravy, right?”
Lily handed her the menu and nodded. “God lives in that gravy recipe, so that’ll do it.”
Allison scurried away, and Lily turned back to Sara. “What do you put in it, anyway? Food and Wine magazine included it a couple of years back in their Heaven on Earth issue, right? One of my chef buddies in LA was raving about it.”
Sara refilled her coffee from the carafe on the table and smiled. “I hinted at it, but the recipe is so simple, I didn’t dare tell them the actual secret.”
“Going out on a limb here,” Lily said, reaching for a sugar packet. “But bacon grease and bourbon?”
Sara threw her head back and laughed, which made all the senior citizens at the Formica bar look up over their newspapers to check out where the noise was coming from. They smiled warmly when they realized it was Sara, and she lowered her voice to whisper, “How did you know that?”
“Sara, we’ve been close for a few years now. I think that would be the answer to most questions one might ask about you.”
“Well, you’re not wrong.” Sara smiled at Lily over the rim of her cup. “Which segues perfectly back to hot Latin dance instructors. Tell me everything.”
“That doesn’t segue in the slightest.” Lily laughed as she shrugged off her jean jacket and folded it beside her. “I don’t know what’s happening, to be honest. I know I’ve only been here a few days, but she’s sexy as hell and makes me feel…”
“Safe?”
“Yeah, that’s exactly it. How did you know?”
“Because that would have to be true for you to be thinking about getting into something. I know you spend too much of your time feeling the opposite.” Sara dumped two packets of sugar into her coffee, barely pausing before reaching for a third. “Besides, I don’t know what it is, but she definitely has this old-world gangster vibe to her. I have a feeling she could handle just about anything she encountered in a dark alley.”
“But…” Lily hesitated, picking up an empty sugar packet and folding it into a square as she spoke. “Last night we had this amazing date, danced together, stayed up all night…”
??“But didn’t sleep together?”
“Exactly.” Lily tossed the packet and laughed. “And how the hell did you guess that out of the blue?”
“Let’s just say I wouldn’t be surprised if
Sam and Alex have a few things in common.” Sara shook her head, dropping her voice to a whisper. “The first time Sam and I were together, she actually stopped us right before it happened. I was literally naked in the back of my boat when she sat up and said that she just couldn’t do it.”
Lily’s mouth dropped open. “Jesus Christ. Did she say why?”
“Not till a few days later.” Sara shook her head, tucking a stray blond wave behind her ear. “And I can tell you, it took me that long to find the shattered pieces of my ego on the floor of the boat.”
“Damn.” Lily paused. “Sam is usually so smooth. I have a hard time picturing her telling a gorgeous—”
“And naked,” Sara cut in.
“Excellent point.” Lily nodded. “I have a hard time seeing her saying no to a gorgeous naked woman she was already in love with.”
“Well, that’s the interesting part of the story. She took me on a little food tour of Idaho after an impromptu tasting for this place crashed and burned. We were drinking whiskey the first night when I told her that it was okay if she wasn’t attracted to me, that she could just say it. I think I even said that I wasn’t going to jump off a bridge or anything.”
“Oh God.” Lily leaned forward, completely immersed in the story despite knowing how it eventually panned out. “What did she say?”
“She told me that she realized at that moment in the boat that she couldn’t risk losing me—”
“Which is the most romantic thing ever.”
“Right? So the reality was that she waited until she was sure.” Sara turned the diamond band on her finger. “And the rest is history.”
“Speaking of that, what’s happening with this last IVF attempt?” Lily took a sip of her latte and put it back down on the table. “The last time we talked, your appointment was the next day.”
