Folly Beach - Dorothea Benton Frank [47]
I got there at about five minutes past one, not wanting to be the first to arrive, which was really stupid, because he had to be completely unaware that I had entertained any kind of lewd thoughts about him. It was dark inside. I looked all around at the faces in the crowd and couldn’t recognize him. But then a man at a table in the back stood and waved. It was him and for some reason, I wasn’t nervous anymore.
“Hey! How are you?” I said, fumbling around with my sunglasses and purse. I didn’t shake his hand or give him a hug, because both seemed like a weird thing to do. But I smiled at him and he smiled back, seeming happy to see me, even though it was going to cost him time and money to do so when he didn’t know me from Adam’s house cat. Okay. Maybe I was still a little nervous.
“So, you’re Miss Daisy’s niece. How about that?”
“So far it’s worked out okay,” I said. Don’t be a smart ass, I told myself. “Actually, Aunt Daisy raised me and my sister Patti after our parents died. She’s pretty amazing.”
“Yep, she sure is. You grew up on Folly?”
“Yeah, well, to the extent that I ever grew up . . .” You sound like an imbecile, my inner voice warned. “I mean, living on the beach keeps you young, you know?”
“Yeah, I think it does. Keeps you lighthearted anyway. So are you a surfer?”
“No. My sister surfed. I danced. Musical theater variety of dance.”
“Ah!”
A waiter appeared to take orders but I hadn’t even looked at the menu.
“Drinks?” said the deep-tanned, multi-tattooed, and dyed-blond ponytailed waiter, who obviously surfed whenever possible, all year-round, hence the tan. He was adorable and exactly the kind of young man that my Sara might fall dead in love with and take another ten years off her poor (literally) mother’s life.
“Iced tea?” John suggested.
“Sure, why not?”
“Sweetened?”
“No, thanks,” I said and thought, gosh, I’ll have to get used to drinking iced tea in the winter again. There were a lot of things that were going to take getting used to, such as the freedom to go to places like Taco Boy, which was basically a beachside restaurant, which is also to say they served pretty cheap good food and the whole place smelled like salt and beer. Which I loved. If I had ever brought Addison Cooper to a place like this he would have informed the Health Department that there was a situation on Folly they might like to look into. Then he would have put on an Hermès ascot, which he never wore, just to be obnoxious, some attempt to look like the millionaire from that old television program Gilligan’s Island.
“Did you hear me?” John said.
“God, I’m sorry, my mind just drifted. What did you say?”
“I said, I’m ordering some guacamole and the taquitos to begin and I think the sautéed shrimp taco is pretty great. We could share some quesadillas, too. And the chili con queso with chorizo. Love that. Or you just order whatever you feel like.”
“I think that sounds perfect!” I heard myself say and had no idea what I had just agreed to. To be truthful, I was staring at his hands, which were large and masculine and beautiful and I wondered if they corresponded to other body parts, which people always said they did. I was being ridiculous.
“Okay!” he said and rattled off what sounded like enough dishes to feed six people.
“Awesome,” the Heartbreak Kid said. “I’ll be right back with your drinks.”
When he had walked away, John looked at me and I thought holy hell, it might take every bit of strength I had in my body, but even if my clothes blew off in a hurricane, I was not having an affair with a married man. N. O. WAY.
“Tell me everything about you, Cate,” he said. “I want to know who you are.”
Oh great. That was all it took, that one simple request was all