Sommer Marsden - Chasing Shade

‘It’s cold today,’ he said. Then he peeked under the table and she felt her body grow unbearably hot, as if she were being baked from the inside. Yet Betsey didn’t move a muscle because if she did it could be construed as…what? Entrapment? Wooing? Something!

His handsome head came back up and she swallowed hard. It was torture, this flirting stuff. She’d forgotten just how much. ‘You’re wearing stockings.’

‘I have to,’ she said.

‘That’s gotta be cold.’

‘It can be.’ The spoon went round and round and round.

‘I can give you a ride. Since you’re taking me to your place and I’m going to try and become gainfully employed. Is that OK with you?’

‘Yeah. It is.’

Tony banged that bell. She started. There wasn’t an order that Betsey knew of. ‘Be right back,’ she said. She snagged his plate by the edge. ‘All done?’

Archie grabbed the fruit from the edge. Three small orange smiles and the rest of his sad green grapes. ‘Now I am.’

‘You really must be hungry,’ she said and laughed.

Tony had called her up to tell her to beat it early. She hadn’t even bothered giving him perfunctory arguments. She’d simply said her goodbyes, clocked out and grabbed her bag. Tony had then stopped her for one more small thing before she hurried back to Archie’s table. The hurrying part worried her. It meant she was way more interested in this guy than she wanted to admit. And just in a matter of less than an hour.

She didn’t believe in instant attraction. She didn’t believe in much, she realised.

‘Ready?’

Archie looked at his watch. ‘Early.’

‘They took pity. Let me go early since it’s dead. The breakfast–lunch rush was more of a breakfast–lunch trickle today.’

‘What’s that?’ He stood and grabbed his jacket. When he swung it on his Henley rose up just a hair. Just enough for Betsey to catch sight of a small slice of nice flat stomach. Just a touch of dark hair. The treasure trail, her best friend in high school had always called it.

She felt her face turn red again and quickly looked away. Clearly it had been too long for her. She was a sex-starved walking hormone clutching takeout boxes.

‘Food. Tony sent us home with some lunch. I told him I was going to take you to the park and try and make an honest man out of you. Job to work, hovel – I mean employee accommodations – to live in.’

He chuckled. ‘Nice. What’s in there?’

‘Still hungry?’

‘Nope. Just curious.’ He popped the last of his grapes in his mouth and snagged his truck keys off the table. Betsey pulled her coat on.

‘Salisbury steak. First batch for the late lunch rush. It’s the best. Tony is a Salisbury steak master. And mashed potatoes.’

‘Is he a master at those too?’ Archie asked.

When he opened the diner door cold air gushed in and ran right through her. A chill ran up her skirt. Betsey found herself grateful for the ride for more reasons than time alone with the new stranger in town. She shivered and hurried after him. It wasn’t her imagination, she knew, that she sensed all eyes in the diner were on her and Archie.

‘No,’ she gasped when they were finally in the cab of the truck. ‘He’s not a master at those too. He’s a master at reconstituting them from a box.’ She snorted. ‘But he does make the gravy so all’s fair in love and mashed potatoes.’

‘You’ll have to tell me how to get where we’re going,’ he said.

For a split second her brain got cross-wired and she thought he meant where they were going in her already imagined relationship. But then she realised he meant the park and she sighed. ‘Easy. Take a left out of here, follow Main Street, go until you see the sign TCTP.’

‘TCTP?’

‘Turner’s Corner Trailer Park,’ she said.

‘Ah, very original.’

‘It’s our specialty,’ she said with a giggle. ‘But the people who live there call it the Patch.’

‘The Patch. Much better.’

‘You’ll fit right in,’ she said.

‘Will I?’

Betsey reminded herself that she was just helping a nice guy out. Nothing more, nothing less. All this stuff she was feeling was just her having gone way too long without any human companionship.

‘You will,’ she said. ‘I can feel it.’

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