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CHAPTER 7
“Seriously, Wes?” Eleanor stopped beside the driver’s door, juggling her purse, a can of Dr. Pepper, and a sandwich that Wes was confident would give her food poisoning.
“What?” he said.
“You don’t have to sit in the back seat. You’re not a client right now,” she said.
He hesitated, and a brief look of embarrassment flickered across her face. “I promise I won’t, like, grope you or something if you sit in the front seat.”
“I know,” he said and opened the front passenger door. He pushed the seat back and sat down before clicking his seat belt into place and setting his bottle of water in the cup holder next to Eleanor’s Dr. Pepper.
She put on her seat belt and started the car before tearing open the wrapping on the sandwich. He cringed when she took a big bite. “You know,” she said when she finished chewing, “if I’d known my insistence that I buy lunch meant you wouldn’t eat, I would have let you pay. I’m not completely broke, Wes. I can buy you lunch.”
“I know,” he said, “but I’ve never eaten a gas station sandwich in my life, and I’m not about to start now.”
“Never?” Eleanor stared at him, her sandwich starting to drip what he hoped was mustard – Christ, let it be mustard and not some weird yellow fungus – down her hand. “You’ve never eaten a gas station sandwich ever?”
“Never,” he said.
“Gas station burrito?”
“No.”
“Gas station hot dog?”
He visibly shuddered, and she laughed before licking the mustard away. “Wimp.”
“Do you want food poisoning, Eleanor? Because this,” he pointed to the sandwich, “is how you get food poisoning.”
She grinned at him before taking another huge and deliberate bite. He rolled his eyes and opened the bottle of Dr. Pepper for her before opening his water and taking a drink. “I reserve the right to say I told you so when you’re puking along the side of the road in half an hour.”
“Not gonna happen,” Eleanor said before taking a swig of soda. “I have a cast iron stomach. When I was sixteen, I joined a competitive eating team. I once ate thirty-seven hot dogs in less than thirty minutes and won us the state championship.”
“You’re kidding,” Wes said.
“I’m not,” Eleanor said. “I beat out a guy named Big Gene. He was 6’6”, weighed close to four hundred pounds, and been state champion for three years running.”
“How many hot dogs did he eat?” Wes said.
“Thirty-one,” she said with a grin.
“Do you still do competitive eating?” Wes said.
“Nah, it’s a young person’s game.”
“Yeah, because you’re so old,” he said with a snort.
She just shrugged. “I’m not that young. I’m twenty-seven.”
“Compared to me, that’s young.”
“How old are you?” she said.
He hesitated, and she pointed the second half of her sandwich at him. “Don’t turn back into a mute now, Wes. I gave up my age. You can do the same.”
“Forty-two,” he said.
“That’s not old,” she said.
