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It looked like he asked a question, and if possible, Chi’s smile got bigger. Maybe it was because he cared about her, or at least Chi imagined that he did.
Couldn’t Chi see that Griff cared about her too? Griff cared about her more. Griff cared about her in a real way, not in a my wife is at home and I’m out on the prowl and looking for an easy lay kind of way.
Griff gritted his teeth and walked into the kitchen, the little girl’s order rolling in his head. He shoved thoughts of her aside and tried to figure out how he could compete with the fancy lawyer.
He could wear a suit to work. That would probably make Chi do a double take, but it would also make her laugh, he was almost sure. After all, cooks didn’t come to work in a suit and tie. Even if he’d worn more than his share over his lifetime. And while he wasn’t completely comfortable in one, he wore one comfortably, if that made sense.
He had the mac and cheese in the microwave and was putting the burger together when Chi walked in, a dreamy look on her face.
“He wants me to go out with him!” she said in a whisper-shout. “Can you believe it?” She sounded like a high school girl, thrilled about being asked out for her first date.
Griff slapped lettuce down, then realized he forgot the mayonnaise, took the lettuce back off, and squirted some on.
The girl asked for extra onion.
“I said, can you believe it? He asked me out. Me! He wants to take me to a fancy restaurant. Down in Blueberry Beach. There’s a new one that just opened, and he said you have to wait ten days to get a reservation. He’s going to make one for us tonight. In ten days, I will be going out with Mr. James Connolly, Esq.” She seemed to waltz across the floor, waving the ticket that she pulled from her pad. “He wants the veggie burger, baked, not grilled, extra lettuce, no tomato, no onion, with light mayo.” She said the order like it was some kind of Holy Grail. And he wanted to tell her how ridiculous it was. How ridiculous that man was.
“And he wants a side of vegetables, broccoli if we have it, with carrots. No butter. Light salt and no stems.”
Did she really want to be with a man who was that picky?
Griff wanted to roll his eyes. No, what he wanted to do was grab her by the shoulders and ask her what her problem was.
“Griff. You need to hurry. I don’t want to keep him waiting. I want him to come back.”
“You think he’s married?” Griff wanted to slap the words back into his mouth, but they were already out.
If he really loved Chi, if he loved her as much as he thought he did, he should be supporting her. If this was what she wanted, he should be helping her to get what she wanted, not resentful that she wanted someone who was so far beneath her.
“Of course he’s not married. That’s ridiculous. He wouldn’t be asking me out if he were already married to somebody else, Griff. Not everybody lives in the slum world you came from.”
That stung. But it was true.
True for half of his life anyway. Half of it, he lived on the other side, the side where the lawyer came from. That didn’t live that much different than the half that he came from to begin with.
He wanted to tell Chi that. To let her know that the business world wasn’t all roses and candies the way she thought it was.
That people lied. People cheated. It was a common thing. It wasn’t everyone, but it was enough. Enough that a person had to be careful. Griff could see the signs, and he wanted to warn her, but the fact that he just asked a simple question and she’d gotten all defensive told him that she would ignore him if he said anything else.
She huffed away, muttering under her breath. Grabbing the coffee pot and setting a mug down on the counter and filling it. “Do I need to make his burger? I can’t believe you asked such a thing. What were you trying to do, deliberately sabotage my chances? I could get out of this town. I could actually have a family with a fine man, an honorable man. Someone who has a decent job and doesn’t look like he deals drugs for a living.”
She was angry, obviously, and that was a slam against him. So he looked like a drug dealer to her? He couldn’t change the tats. Well, he could pay to have them removed, but that didn’t always work, and a lot of times, it made a person look worse than what they had before. No, they were the scars from his life before.
His earrings as well.
He had kind of hoped that Chi could see beyond that though. He shouldn’t expect more from her than he expected from himself. He often judged people by the way they looked. Why shouldn’t she?
He knew what he had to do, and although he hated to do it, it was right.
“I’m sorry.”
He was sorry that he had upset her. Sorry that the man she wanted wasn’t the man she thought he was. Sorry that she was going to get hurt. Sorry that he couldn’t do anything to stop it or change it.
“I’m sorry, Griff. I got a little huffy, too. I’m sure you probably didn’t mean anything by it. I know you just try to protect everyone who comes across your path.” She gave a little smile. “Do you have any of that strawberry cheesecake left? You know, the one you made the other day? The one that everyone who came raved about?”
He’d saved the last piece for her. She had loved it so much yesterday that when people had asked, he told them that it was gone. Which was true, all except for one piece which he’d put back for her.
“I have one piece left.” He walked to the refrigerator and pulled the plate out. He’d put plastic wrap on it with two toothpicks holding it up.
