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Chapter

fourteen

WHEN I WALKED IN THEdiner with Theo, Max’s smile turned big, Lee’s curious, and Deja’s slipped off her face. She must’ve just gotten off work because her hair was pulled up and she wore a green collared shirt. Even the uniforms at the Purple Starfish weren’t purple. Now that I thought about it, maybe her parents were marketing geniuses.

After Theo and I had finished our training session and headed back to our cars, I’d said,I mean, everyone has to eat.

He’d responded,I’ll follow you over.

I gave Max a small shake of my head now. He had the ability to make this weird with his revenge-dating and make-out talk, and I didn’t want him to.

“Nowhow are we going to talk about him?” Maxwell asked when we got to the booth.

“Seriously,” Deja agreed but for much different reasons.

“He doesn’t mind being talked about in front of his face. He kind of likes it,” I said.

“I do,” Theo said. “It’s how I feed my ego, right, Finley?”

“I never said your ego was fed by others. I think you do a good job feeding it yourself.”

Lee’s eyebrows popped up. “Two days in and you already have banter? That seems fast.”

“We’ve had banter since arguing over pool lights,” Theo said.

“When was that?” Lee asked.

I looked at Theo. I honestly didn’t think he remembered that discussion from a year ago. He just stared back at me with an even expression.

“You’re only calling it an argument because I disagreed with you,” I said. “It was probably the first time that has ever happened.”

“Second,” he deadpanned.

“I’m liking this origin story,” Maxwell said.

“An origin to what?” Theo asked, and that knowing smirk of his came onto his face. But I didn’t know what he thought he knew because the only ending our story was going to have was us bringing Jensen down together.

Maxwell and Lee sat on one bench seat, and Deja sat across on the other. It really wasn’t a booth for five, but Deja slid as close to the window as possible as though both Theo and I were going tobe able to fit in the space left. Despite his wide frame, he seemed to think we would too, because he sat down, leaving a small end forme.

I was just about to drag a chair over when he grabbed my hand and pulled me down next to him.

“So how is our girl Finley doing in her training?” Max asked.

I put my hands under my chin. “Yes, how am I doing?”

“She whines a lot,” he said. “Something about sore muscles.”

I elbowed him. “Watch it, or I’ll show you how well I can complain.”

Deja’s mom called a number, and Lee stood up. “Our fries. Don’t talk about anything interesting while I’m gone.”

“We won’t,” I said.

“Hurry, then,” Maxwell said.

We were all silent, as if we really couldn’t say anything at all without Lee present. Out the window to our right sailboats dotted the bay, most anchored in place, one moving slowly in the distance. Lee came back quickly and set down two big orders of fries. It’s all we ever ordered here even though we always said we were meeting for lunch. Fries counted as lunch to us.

Theo wasn’t having it, though. “Where is the real food?”