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“We’ve decided we’ll take our food to go,” I tell him. For Ziggy’s benefit, when she widens her eyes at me, I flash Stevie a grin that’s gotten me exactly what I want more times than I can count. “Please.”
Ziggy watches Stevie blink at me and turn bright pink. “S-sure,” he says, tucking back a lock of brown hair behind his ear. He pushes his glasses up his nose, from where they’ve slipped. “Absolutely. No problem.”
Ziggy’s eyebrows lift as Stevie turns, walks into a table, then slowly steps around it, fidgeting with his hair again, throwing me a dazed smile over his shoulder. “That charm, Gauthier,” she mutters bleakly. “It’s a dangerous thing.”
I smirk as I slouch back in the booth. “Don’t I know it.”
“Man, this is good,” Ziggy moans around her food. “I didn’t even think I’d be that hungry—I already ate dinner—but there’s something about Betty’s burgers.” Another happy moan leaves her as she chews, then swallows.
Ketchup seeps from the burger, landing with a splat on her thigh. “Oops,” she mutters.
I watch her slide an index finger across her skin to wipe up the ketchup, then bring it to her mouth, licking the ketchup clean off the tip of her finger with one swift flick of her tongue.
I bite the straw stuck in my milkshake so hard it cracks.
It’s bad enough that I’ve had to sit right beside Ziggy, listening to each appreciative groan as she bites into her burger. Now I have to watch her lick her fingers.
I need to get laid.
But that’s pretty damn impossible when I’m on virtual house arrest and under strict instructions from Frankie not to fuck around with anyone. My hand’s been getting a workout, and it’s barely taken the edge off. It’s been that way even before I got myself into this latest bit of trouble. I’ve been restless, annoyed, frustrated. No one’s pleased me, no one’s drawn me in. There hasn’t been a single person I’ve enjoyed debauching in weeks.
Now, sexually frustrated, stuck in the longest abstinent streak of my adult life, I have to listen to Ziggy moan over diner food on the hood of my car.
Fucking hell.
“Oodonikeurs?” she says around her bite.
I raise an eyebrow, sipping from my chocolate milkshake that Ziggy’s helped herself to at least half of. “Believe it or not, I didn’t quite catch that.”
She swallows, then says, “Sorry. You don’t like yours?” She nods toward my barely touched BLT.
I stare down at the sandwich, my stomach tightening. Before this one, I hadn’t had a BLT since the day my dad left. He loved them. I have few memories of him before he walked out on my mom and me—he was a professional hockey player, often on the road for games, but I remember the smell of bacon and toasted bread, eating a grilled cheese at the table while he chowed down on his beloved BLT. I’ve hated the sight and smell of BLTs ever since. But after I, for some inexplicable reason, asked Ziggy as we walked into the diner what she liked to eat here, and she said their BLT was the best she’d ever had, I ended up telling Stevie I’d take one.
The worst part is Ziggy’s right. It’s fucking good. I stare at the sandwich, then pick it up and take another bite. This bite’s even better than the last, the thick-sliced tomato having softened the crisp, toasted bread; smoky bacon mingled with rich mayonnaise, still a bite of crunch from the romaine lettuce.
I hate it. And I love it. Shit, I need a drink.
“It’s good,” I admit to her, dropping the sandwich back in its carton, brushing off my hands. “I’m just…slow finding my appetite.”
She turns my way, sharp green eyes examining me. “Sort of like me being seen in the diner, you and nourishing yourself, huh?”
I stop chewing, my chest tightening as I remember what she said about being seen in the diner, being comfortable with it.
It’s hard. Change…it takes time.
Staring down at the sandwich, I shrug. “Maybe.”
“When you have hockey, it’s easier to make good choices, isn’t it? But when it’s off-season, you don’t make those good choices, because you don’t think you deserve good things. You only do it because that makes hockey possible.”
I throw her a look, and say around my bite, exasperated, “All right, Freud.”
“You can blame my therapist, not Freud, for that one.” She shrugs, eyeing up her burger. “That’s how it is with me and soccer. I can play in front of a stadium packed with people, and I’m fine. But take me out of soccer, and I can’t do it. I feel worthy of that kind of attention and respect when I’m Ziggy the soccer player. Anywhere else, any way else…” She sighs, forlorn as she stares at her burger. “Not so much.”
I stare at her, biting my lip. “Look at you, chattering away, Sigrid. I didn’t know you had it in you.”
“Yeah, well,” she mutters. “Try being the last of seven kids and see if you ever cultivate the habit of trying to get a word in edgewise.”
“Talk as much as you want around me. You know, if that’s what you’d do around a…friend. I can stare moodily into my sandwich and pretend to listen while you do.”
