I pulled my phone out and began to text my dad, wondering if he would catch on if I was upset or not.
I texted my dad a lot.
My mom, too, for that matter.
But my dad was my rock. My best friend. One of my only friends.
I wasn’t sure why, but I was incredibly introverted. It took everything I had inside of me to go to school and become a radiology technician. Hell, if it hadn’t been for my mother and father demanding I do it, I wouldn’t have even gone to graduation.
But then I moved here, trying to get rid of my crutch—i.e., my father—and low and behold I’d been forced to make friends.
I now had a steady client base here.
I also had a few really great people that had turned from clients to friends.
Just as I was texting my dad that I didn’t have cash for a hot dog, one appeared in front of me.
I blinked, staring at the foot-long length of meat that was in front of my face.
Would it be totally weird if I leaned forward and bit into it while the man was still holding it in front of me?
“Here.”
But the ‘here’ didn’t come from the man at my right—my douchebag date. It came from the man on my left—the hottie redhead that also had other pieces of meat I wouldn’t mind exploring.
Jesus Christ, I’d turned into a horny toad.
I looked up from the meat and glanced at the redhead that was staring at me with amusement in his eyes.
“Um, thank you,” I said. “But no thank you. I hope I didn’t guilt you into buying that. I didn’t really need it. But thank you. That was really nice. Thank you.”
Oh, sweet baby Jesus. The endless displays of gratitude were starting.
He grinned. “It was four bucks, babe. Trust me when I say, it was definitely no imposition.”
I gently lifted my hand and pushed it his way.
“My father told me to never take food from strangers,” I tried.
Seriously, I was not eating this man’s hot dog.
The redheaded hottie grinned. “My name is Lock Downy. That’s my sister, Ares Downy. I live in Kilgore, Texas. My dad’s a police officer. I’m a police officer. My mother is a…” he continued his entire life story until I was blinking at him owlishly.
I’d lost.
“Listen, buddy,” Tad said, interjecting. “She doesn’t need the hot dog. It’ll go straight to her ass. And she’s already packing enough back there to sustain her through at least six months without food. If you know what I’m saying.”
Tad said it in a joking way, I was sure. He was grinning like a loon and winking at me. He was trying to keep me from having to eat the hot dog from a stranger.
I was sure it was a joke.
Right?
But it didn’t come off that way.
Honestly, it came off as him calling me fat.
It came off as him being controlling.
It came off as him thinking that I was ugly.
I smiled saccharine sweet at the redhead. No, Lock…
“Thank you,” I said, taking the foot-long hot dog into my hands and viciously took a bite.
“If you want, during the seventh-inning stretch, you can go get me a beer or something from the concession stand to pay me back,” Lock offered.
I looked at him out of the corner of my eyes to see him staring at me with amusement in his eyes.
He knew that I hadn’t wanted the hot dog since I couldn’t pay for it, and now I was eating it like it was about to disappear from existence.
He was giving me a way to pay him back.
I smiled, mustard and ketchup, bread and meat, all likely covering the front of my teeth.
“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll do that.”
And I would.
We ate in companionable silence after that.
It was in the fifth inning that everything just went…wrong.
The girl next to Tad must’ve realized what a dick he was. Or maybe she just accidentally got up and never came back. Whatever the reason, Tad finally started to pay attention to me, his date once more.
I, on the other hand, continued to ignore him.
Each time a word came out of his mouth aimed in my direction, my anger would rise.
Tad had literally ignored me for five innings. Five.
And honestly, it was a while before that, too, seeing as he’d been talking to the other girl from the moment we took our seats twenty minutes before the game started.
So now that she was gone, he was going to talk to me?
Yeah, I think not.
I was doing my level best not to get pissed, and I was also leaning so far into Lock at my other side that I was practically rubbing my shoulder against his.
Lock didn’t say a word, though.
He just chatted with his sister, commented every once in a while about the game, and ultimately ignored me.