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Katrina put her menu down and picked up her glass of water. “Well, you’d better start believing it. We’re gonna have a lot of questions coming our way once people start noticing the way you’re looking at me. You’re gonna have to make sure you get your story straight sotheybelieve it, too.”
He grasped her hand in his. “I think this will help.”
She laughed.
“I love it when you laugh.”
“You sound so cheesy! We’ve been here before. We’ve spent countless hours together here.”
“Yeah,” he looked down at her hand thoughtfully, rubbing his thumb along the ridges of her knuckles, “but this is different.”
She didn’t respond right away. When he finally got the nerve to look up at her, she nodded with a whisper. “Yeah, not like this.”
“What can I get you folks?” Lacey came up beside their table, and it took all of one second for her eyes to land on their intertwined hands before darting to meet Katrina’s. “Well, it’s about time!”
Katrina straightened, glancing over to Simon with confusion.
Lacey chuckled. “Oh, you guys didn’t know? The town has been waiting for the two of you to finally figure things out since you were teenagers.” She lowered closer to the table and murmured, “You get a lot of the gossip when you see so many people come in and out of the most popular restaurant in town.” Lacey pulled herself up straight and winked at Simon. “Good for you.”
His smile was strained at best. He couldn’t help but wonder how he hadn’t heard any of this before. He could believe it, that wasn’t the issue. He just wondered why no one had pushed him into this situation before now.
Brianne—his own friend—had had to be the one to do the deed, and somehow, that didn’t sit right with him. Everyone else could see something he hadn’t. What did it say about him that he had missed this?
Katrina squeezed his hand and he glanced up with a jerk. “Did you want something other than water?”
Simon shook his head with a smile. “Nope. Water’s good.”
The moment Lacey left, Katrina leaned forward. “Are you okay?”
His brows furrowed. “Do you ever feel like you should have been able to see this a long time ago—like the rest of the town, apparently?”
She squeezed his hand once more, and he was surprised at just how soothing it could be. “I think we were different people back then. We didn’t need each other that way.”
“But now we do.”
Katrina tilted her head and her eyes narrowed slightly. “You know something? I don’t think we need each other that way even now. I just think we’ve realized that we want to be together.”
She couldn’t be more right. This was one of the reasons he cared about her the way he did. Katrina could see things in a way that just made more sense.
Before he had a chance to tell her that, she leaned forward. “You know what else?”
He leaned forward too, as if the two of them were conspiring. “What?”
“I think we should be somewhere else tonight.”
He frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I mean maybe tonight we should just do something different. Something that might start a new thing for us.”
“Like what?”
Katrina cocked her head, her focus shifting to their hands. She traced lines along his skin with her thumb and her eyes brightened as she lifted them to meet his. “I know exactly where we should go.”
“Okay. I’m in. I trust you.”
“Well, you should because this is going to be good.”
She grabbed her purse and pulled out a ten dollar bill and placed it on the table.
