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“I’ll try anything,” he said, realizing how fully committed he sounded. The unsent text on his phone told a different story, and he was suddenly so glad she could dial faster than he could text.
“I’ll see if we can go on Tuesday,” she said. “She only takes a certain number of diners, because all of the food is sourced locally, and they make exactly enough for their reservations.”
“This sounds like a weird way to run a restaurant,” Will said.
Gretchen didn’t say anything for a couple of beats, and Will knew in that moment just how related to Travis he was. “I’m sorry,” he said at the same time Gretchen said, “She doesn’t want a big, fancy, chain restaurant.”
“I’m sure she doesn’t,” Will said, turning back to the house, frustrated with himself. “I’m sorry, Gretchen. It sounds fantastic.” That was code for,I just want to see you again. I don’t care where we eat.
“She’s a great chef,” Gretchen said. “I’ll see what she has. It might not work out for Tuesday.”
“Let me know,” he said. “Barring any emergencies around the farm, I should be able to get away any evening next week.” And that was how he went from having a normal conversation with a pretty woman to making himself sound desperate to see her again.
He cleared his throat, which didn’t help, and when Travis opened the back door and asked, “What are you doin’ out here?” Will decided he needed to wrap up this call lickety-split.
He glared at Travis, and they’d exchanged enough heated words on the way home from the candy shop for his brother to hold up his hands in surrender and retreat back inside the cabin they shared.
Will turned around and exhaled. “It was real nice talkin’ to you, Gretchen,” he said.
“You too, Will.”
“Have a good night now.”
“You too,” she said again, and Will’s pride grew and expanded.
“We’ll talk soon.”
“Okay.”
He ended the call, because he couldn’t come up with another one-liner he could say that wouldn’t embarrass him and make things weird. He breathed in and then out, a smile stretching across his face. “That wasn’t too bad,” he told himself. Didn’t mean dinner was going to go well, but he might have had his first non-awkward, non-humiliation interaction with the beautiful Gretchen Bellows.
Trav opened the door again and called, “Will, I need you in here. The sink smells like a beaver climbed inside and died,” and Will had never been so happy to have ended a call before anyone, most of all Gretchen, could hear a sentence like that.
