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I take my time chewing and swallowing, wiping my mouth before looking at him.
“You know what that means, right?” His brow raises in question. “We can’t be friends anymore.”
“Is that so?” he asks, humor dancing in his eyes. He puts his paper plate on the bench next to him, leaning back and resting his arm on the bench behind me.
“Hmm, hmm. There’s no way anyone who doesn’t like lobster can be trusted.”
“Lobster in Vegas isn’t cheap, so can’t say it fit into my budget. I make a mean trash can burrito, though.”
“You’ll have to make me one sometime.”
Did I just invite myself over to his place? The cool breeze caresses the heat of my cheeks, and I want to close my eyes in mortification. What is it about this man that makes me second-guess everything I say?
“I mean, not that you have to, but if you wanted to, it would be nice. You could always bring it to my shop, or something like that. Or I could come and fetch it.”
Just shut up, Bailey, my brain calls for mercy.
I sigh, squinting at a seagull circling a fisherman’s boat, searching for his next meal. I’d gladly trade places with him.
“You’re cute when you’re embarrassed,” he says, pulling me away from my contemplation of life as a seagull, and when I look back at him, he’s grinning.
I shake my head, finding the seagull again. He's flapping away, a shiny fish caught in his beak. That's me. I'm the fish. A fish out of water.
Desperate to change the subject, I eye his half-eaten lobster roll. Would it be weird to ask if I could have it? It’s not like he’s going to eat it, and throwing it away would be a crime.
“I feel bad. You must still be hungry.”
He came in earlier for a coffee and sandwich, and we got to talking. I was horrified when I heard he'd never tried a lobster roll. So I dragged him down to the harbor to get one from my favorite food cart.
“Guess I owe you a sandwich.” I sigh, giving up the fight and grabbing his leftovers.
“I’m a big boy. I’ll survive,” he says with a bemused expression while watching me scarf down the rest of his roll. I’m sure he’s wondering how I can fit in more food because they’re huge. But I have absolutely no shame when it comes to lobster rolls, and I’ve already embarrassed myself. Might as well go for broke.
“But anytime you want a burrito, just say. It can either be a dining-in experience or a takeaway.”
I’m not sure when it happened, but I’ve started to cherish these moments I share with Kallan. Not once has he asked me about Quinn, and not once have I volunteered information about him. It should be weird, but it’s refreshing. Everyone in my life is in some way entwined with Quinn. My parents view him as a son—in fact, I’ve always felt that they love him more than they love me. My siblings see him as a brother. All my friends are his friends. Except for Aspen, we all went to school together, and they’ve known him as long as they’ve known me. Sure, some of them are closer to me than they are to him, but we’re still viewed as a unit. We’re Bailey and Quinn, a single entity.
With Kallan, I’m just me. There’s no “and” tacked on behind my name, and with the state of things in my marriage, I need that right now.
“Do you miss Vegas?”
He’s silent for a while. “Some things, but mostly, no.”
“You don’t have any family living there?”
His eyes darken around the edges, and he pulls his eyes from mine, staring out over the ocean.
“Technically, no.”
“What does that mean?” Either you have family, or you don’t.
He swallows, a muscle in his jaw flexing. “Sharing the same blood doesn’t make you family.”
I want to ask him to explain because he has this way of answering a question without really answering it, and all it does is make me want to ask more questions. In the short time I’ve known him, though, I’ve come to realize that he’s not the kind of man who wears his heart on his sleeve, and it doesn’t seem like he wants to talk about his past, so with a sigh, I let it go. He’ll tell me when he wants to tell me.
“Yeah, family isn’t always what they’re cracked up to be.”
And that’s true for me. At some point in my life, I’ve come to terms with the fact that Mom sees me as a disappointment, and no matter what I do, there’s no changing her opinion. She’s never come out and said it, but it’s there in the words that she doesn’t say. It’s there in the things she does for Amelia, Cody, and Quinn, but not me.
