“That depends when. I like steak, I guess,” Gray said, making his way across the parking lot and toward the restaurant.
“Why?”
Gray took a deep breath, as if Shadow’s questions were somehow tedious, when it was him who’d complained that Shadow wasn’t trying to get to know him. Well now he was, and that wasn’t good enough either?
“Because I like how beef tastes. Plus, it’s good for building muscle,” Gray told him, crossing the wooden fence around the motel and entering the diner parking lot, which only hosted three cars.
“Oh! You want to build more muscle? Do you think that I could grow too? I don’t really know if I’m growing older, because it’s only been a month.”
Gray walked on toward the Di-er sign, which kept blinking, as if it had faulty wiring. “I don’t know. You’re not like other people.” he said, entering the restaurant.
Most times, Shadow was wary of entering places that served food, but there was an undertone to the scent of this place that he found surprisingly nice.
Next to him, Gray scowled, standing in the entrance, as if he wasn’t sure whether he wanted to enter after all. “They can’t have a good hygiene rating,” he whispered, briefly glancing toward the other end of the elongated room. The brown tiles on the floor did their job, making dirt smudges and sand less visible, but the state of the diner was not on par with Gray’s standards. Gray even told Shadow to make his bed every day.
“But can you eat something here? Or we could try to get more bananas. Bananas with steak. Yum, right?” He smiled, stepping closer until his arm itched to go around Gray’s shoulders.
Gray covered his eyes with one hand and chuckled. When he shook his head, his fine hair floated through the air like the most intricate spider webs. “No. Bananas don’t go with steak. Then again, if you like everything most people don’t, maybe you’d like that combination.”
He was about to say something more when his body suddenly stiffened and backed into Shadow, who caught the rapid movement of a black dot along the pale counter.
The lively tap of cockroach legs was like an invitation to chase.
Shadow pushed Gray aside and slammed his hand over the bug before his brain could consciously make that decision. And then he stilled, gaze pinned to Gray’s pale features while the roach stirred under his palm.
It was the ultimate conundrum: if he followed his instincts and tossed the crunchy delight into his mouth, he’d have to face Gray’s disgust. If he let the roach go, he would miss out on the nourishing deliciousness hiding inside the exoskeleton.
He did the one thing that came to his mind—pointed to the parking lot. “What’s that?”
The moment Gray looked over his shoulder, Shadow packed the roach between his teeth and chewed through it quickly.
“Okay, okay, I’m coming. Jeez, you don’t have to punch holes in the counter,” said a woman from somewhere behind Shadow’s back. Her voice had a nasal quality to it that made it lower and more similar to the sounds men typically made. Shadow was sometimes confused by the subtler differences between genders but when the speaker emerged through a door behind the counter, Shadow was glad to find out he’d been right this time.
Dressed in a pale uniform with an apron that had a washed-out stain at the front, the waitress was relatively young, though the puffiness under her eyes and the earthy tone of her skin made her appear older than she likely was. Either way, her face held the expression of supreme disinterest.
“It’s fine. He stumbled. Goodnight,” Gray said, retreating through the door.
“No? But you didn’t ask about steak,” Shadow tried as he followed Gray back into the cool evening air.
“I’m no longer hungry,” Gray told him as soon as they were outside, walking right back to the hotel. “That place was filthy!”
Shadow looked back longingly, but decided not to comment. “Any good places you know for steak?”
“Yes. There’s a good one in Brecon, fifteen minutes away from the clubhouse. Why do you want to know?” Gray asked, stepping through the fence again. A passing car briefly lit his ass with its headlights, causing a stab of jealousy deep inside Shadow, as if the glow had been a physical touch.
Unable to keep himself from caressing Gray too, he ran his fingers over Gray’s knuckles, shivering at the jolt of electricity that sparked between their flesh. “I want to know everything about you.”
Gray stilled for a second, and his gaze unmistakably lingered on the fragment of skin Shadow touched, so maybe he was feeling something too!
“How is this relevant? You hate human food.”
That wasn’t quite true. In Shadow’s limited experience, food often turned softer and sweeter as time passed, like the banana Gray had once forgotten about. It turned black, and in the end Gray had let Shadow eat it. “It gets better when you leave it in a warm place.”