Carter had no room to talk, though, and he knew it. I had him dead to rights there.
“Time to get back,” Carter said, looking at his phone.
“I got this,” I said, pulling out my wallet and then holding out my hand to shush them as they began to protest. “No, seriously, I’ve got this. I put you two through an hour of me flirting with Rebecca. Least I can do is pay for the breakfast.”
“I’m fine with that,” Carter said. “I’ll finish my coffee while you pay.”
I stood up and headed toward the register, but when I got there, Rebecca came around the counter and grabbed me by my shirt. She pulled me in, and I bent at the hip so she could crush her lips into mine. Wrapping my arms around her, I pulled her tight and laughed into the kiss as several whoops came up from the crowd in the diner. Specifically, I could pick out Carter’s voice, though Everett’s was conspicuously absent.
“Well then,” I said. “Do I have to pay extra for that?”
“Nope,” she said. “Compliments of the staff. And by the staff I mean me. I am the staff.”
I grinned and paid for lunch, making sure I wrote out a rather large tip and then handed her back the receipt. She grinned and stuffed the receipt in her apron billfold, and I grabbed the guys, heading to the door. Somehow, as we exited the building, it was me who was blushing. She had turned the tables on me really well.
“You two seem to be getting on well,” Carter said. “I’m happy to see it.”
“Yeah. She’s great. Just great.”
“What about the age difference?” Carter asked as we piled into his truck. Everett was sitting in the back seat, and he snickered as Carter asked. It didn’t come off as pushy or judgmental, but I could tell there was genuine concern in Carter’s voice.
“It hasn’t come up, really,” I said. “I know it’s a pretty decent-sized difference, but we just haven’t run into it being an issue. Not yet.”
“Yet,” Everett said. “What will you do if it does? I mean, she’s like, what, twenty-five?”
“Something like that,” I said. “Like I said, it hasn’t come up. She’s definitely younger than me, and I get that. But if it does become a problem, I’ll be honest with her. She’s bound to know I’m older. Except, she just might not know by how much. But if it doesn’t bother her, why stress it?”
Carter nodded and turned the engine without saying anything. He turned onto the road, and we headed back to the office in relative silence. Something about my answer didn’t seem to sit well with Carter, but it was all I had. I hadn’t addressed our age difference yet, not in anything more than passing. We both knew I was older, and she was younger. But we were both very much adults.
After work, I headed home with Everett and grabbed a beer to sit on the couch. A game was coming on that neither one of us wanted to miss, but Everett was also excited to make buffalo wings. We got a late start getting home, and that meant the wing preparation was going to take into the beginning of the game and they wouldn’t be ready until midway at best.
Consoling myself with beer and potato chips, I watched the game with Everett popping in over my head from the kitchen occasionally or hollering to ask what was going on.
When the food was finally ready, the game was nearly over, and I munched on the delicious wing recipe Everett had. I didn’t know if he stole it from firefighters or what, but I knew it was some of the best damn wings on the planet. Not even Sergio’s could make wings as good as the ones on the plate in front of me, and I pounded through them in impressive fashion.
Occasionally, Rebecca would text me, and I would shoot off a text to respond, but mostly I spent the time sipping beer and thinking. When Everett wasn’t in the room, I analyzed the conversation with Carter over and over and tried to figure out what it was that bothered him so much.
Everett sat down on the other side of the couch, and we watched the game like old times. With my feet propped up on the coffee table and beer being brought out in six-packs rather than poured into glasses, I thought about that age difference. Right then, it didn’t feel like I was much over twenty-three.
I just wondered if she felt the same.
20
REBECCA
I let out a breath and nodded. I had just watched Gus finish the final details on a massive, intricate piece that covered a man’s entire back and stretched down both arms and around his hips. It was the largest single tattoo I’d ever seen, and this was the fifth session he’d sat through to get all the details in it. I didn’t get to actually work on it, but as Gus’s official apprentice, I got to stand with him and watch as he worked so I could see how he handled various aspects of this project.