“Just visiting?”
“Yes.”
“And you stopped by the Cove?” she presses. “Why?”
“None of your business.” I stand inside the door, staring at her. “Would you get off my car?”
I mean, how nosy.
“I need a ride,” she tells me. “If you don’t mind.”
I pause. “Excuse me?”
“A lift?” she clarifies as if I’m dumb.
“I’m not a taxi,” I retort.
And… I don’t know you.
“Saucy,” she teases. “He was right about you.”
He? Will told her I was saucy?
Well, if that’s the worst thing he said, I suppose I’m lucky.
I open my mouth, dying to ask about him.
Is he in town? Is he okay?
Is he happy?
But I clamp it shut again, knowing she’s his friend, not mine.
Hopping off my hood, she hangs over the door, peering up at me. “You give me a ride, and I’ll pay for the pizza and margaritas,” she says.
Pizza and margaritas… Is she kidding?
“What do you want with me?” I ask.
She doesn’t know me, and I don’t for one second believe this is anything but a trick.
But then again…the only thing I believe about people is their worst, so...
“I don’t know,” she tells me, her voice softening. “But do you ever have that feeling that you need something, but you just don’t know what?”
She looks at me, a thoughtful look in her eyes.
“Like a drink or a good cry or to jump on a plane and see something new?” she continues. “But then none of those things are it, and you still can’t figure out what it is you need?”
Her words resonate with me more than she knows. The only difference is I know what I need. I just can’t have it.
“Well, when I saw you inside the park just before,” she tells me, “—and recognized you—I felt like we’d found it.”
We?
Why would she need me?
“Sticks is still the place to be,” she sing-songs. “The best pizza.”