Chapter Fifteen

Nash

“I can’t believe you got us kicked out of a tabletop board game club before we even sat down.” Chelle was laughing so hard she could barely get the words out. “What were you thinking?”

All around their seats at the counter in Vito’s Diner was complete chaos, with the jukebox blaring out old songs from the eighties, people packed into booths to grab a bite before the shows started in the theater district, and a line of hungry customers that went out the door and down the block. However, Nash couldn’t tear his attention away from Chelle as she continued to teasingly give him shit about the disaster that was their second date.

“I was thinking that the guy running the check-in process was completely overwhelmed and starting to drown in flop sweat,” Nash said in his halfhearted defense, because he wasn’t so much interested in proving he was right as keeping Chelle talking. “He needed some insight.”

“So you thought telling him how to do his job—” She held up a finger in the universal sign of hold on one minute as she sucked in a breath between giggles. “No, correction, you thought telling him how to do the thing he volunteers his time for would be a good idea?”

He got it. He’d done the thing again, but the last thing Nash wanted was for the guy in head-to-toe Master of the Games wizarding cosplay to have a bunch of people mad at him because it was taking so long to find people’s registrations.

“What?” Nash snagged one of the few fries left on Chelle’s plate and popped it into his mouth. “You wanted me to sit there and let the poor guy suffer?”

Chelle wiped away her tears of amusement as she got her giggle fit under control. “Or—walk with me on this one—you could have simply asked him if he needed help and then helped according to what he said he needed rather than what you think he needs instead of offering up a ten-minute lecture the poor guy definitely didn’t want while the line got longer and longer behind us.”

Nash stuffed his natural defensive response down and thought about it for a minute. The guy had been sweaty, but he’d also just rushed into the room and let everyone know that the printer was being an asshole. That meant he had to go by handwritten notes instead of the spreadsheet from the Google form and—

Fuck.

That guy had his shit together. He’d just needed some time to get his bearings together.

Way to go, Beckett. Open mouth, insert foot.

“You might be right,” he said, stealing another fry from Chelle’s plate to soften the blow to his ego.

Chelle turned her stool so she faced him completely and then raised an eyebrow. “Might be?”

He stalled her from saying anything else that he’d have to admit she was right about by swiping a third fry from her plate. This time, however, he dragged it through the ketchup and offered it up as a peace offering. “Truce?”

“Only because you know I’m right,” she said as she took the fry and popped it into her mouth.

His fingers were still tingling from the brush of her fingers when their waitress, Carlene, showed up on the other side of the counter where they were sitting. Her dangling hamburger earrings were swinging with the force she used to chomp her gum, and her order pad was at the ready, but otherwise she seemed impervious to the other diners trying to get her attention.

“You two lovebirds want dessert or the check?” she asked between snaps of her gum.

“It seems a little busy tonight,” Nash said.

“Yeah,” Carlene scoffed. “Denise called in sick, and Ruby is not long for the waitressing world.”

They glanced over at the only other waitress in the place. The woman who looked like a stiff harbor breeze would send her flying down First Avenue was carrying a tray overloaded with milkshakes. She weaved a little to the left, then a little toward the right in her efforts to keep the heavy tray right side up, until she got to a table of six tourists and set it down with a relieved sigh.

“You know,” he said, turning back to face Carlene, “one option may be if you divided up—”

Chelle reached over and gave an unmistakable stop-before-our-waitress-stabs-you-with-a-kitchen-knife squeeze to his knee. It was just enough to send his thoughts in two directions faster than Christensen with a breakaway puck at an Ice Knights game. One, Nash really wanted Chelle’s hand to keep going northward. Two, he could actually be the one to take advice every once in a while, and maybe this was one of those times.

“Let me try that again.” He gave their waitress his most charming smile. “Would you like some free help tonight?”

Carlene looked from him to Chelle and back again. “Do you have any experience?”

He shook his head. “None.”

“Too bad, we don’t train amateurs here. If you wanna help, leave a big tip,” Carlene said, putting her pen to her order pad again. “Now, do you want dessert or the check? There’s people waiting for your stools.”

It was like losing out on a bet with his cousins. First there was the shock of it even happening at all, and then there was the annoyance at himself for not doing better, for not doing what it took to make sure everyone had what they needed.

“Dessert, please,” Chelle said, filling in the empty space when he should have answered. “Apple pie, two forks, and an Oreo shake, two straws.”

“You got it.” Carlene dashed off a notation on the order pad and then she was gone, making her way down the counter to the next couple who had been waiting to place their order.

Her hand still resting on his knee, Chelle asked, “If I promise that you can have the cherry that comes on top of the shake, will that ease your pain?”

Right now, he wasn’t so much concerned with pain as the way every nerve in his dick was tuned in to her hand. It wasn’t that having his offer of help turned down didn’t still sting, but one of the hottest women in the world, who also happened to be married to him—if only temporarily—was literally inches from touching his cock. He was going through some things, okay?

Still, sitting here silent wasn’t really going to do anything to persuade Chelle that he wasn’t a complete fool, so he managed to string together some words. “I really could have helped.”

“But you’re gonna leave a good tip, right?”

He wasn’t a complete dipshit. “Yeah.”

“Well,” Chelle said with a smile, “I’ll cover the check, and you leave a ginormous tip, and that will give her the help she actually wants, not the kind you think she needs.” Her hand traveled up his thigh an inch before she seemed to realize what she was doing and pulled back, flexing her fingers as her cheeks turned bright red. “Deal?”

How the fuck was he supposed to argue with her logic when it was right on target? “You’re kind of obnoxious when you’re right.”

“Are you going to hold that against me in the divorce?”

Fuck. That little bit of reality was like a sucker punch to the kidneys, but he managed not to flinch. “Absolutely.”

“Fair enough.” She pivoted back in her stool so she faced the counter, moving her glass of water and nearly empty plate to the side so Carlene, who was making her way back over to them, would have room to set down the pie and shake. “I’m holding the fact that you moved my coffee table to the perfect spot and picked out my new favorite color for the kitchen against you when I talk to the judge.”

Carlene put the shake and the apple pie with a ginormous scoop of vanilla ice cream between them and then slapped the check down on the counter before moving on to take care of another customer.

“Sounds like it’s going to be a contentious divorce,” he said as he grabbed the cherry from the top of the shake’s mountain of whipped cream and ate it. “Don’t worry, it’ll be worth it.”