Page 83 of Play With Me

When I look over at Nora, her laughter’s gone, replaced with a look I can’t place. But she quickly averts her eyes, brushing Cap’s hair as she walks.

“Where’s Farrah?” Cap asks.

The spot where they were standing is now empty.Who cares?is my first thought. But a spike of guilt hits me at the callousness of that.

As we cross the remainder of the space to the restaurant, I spot her ahead of the others, tucked inside the entryway. She’s looking at us with a sad kind of smile. Does she wish it was her here instead of Nora? She’s never given that vibe, but how could she not?

“Right there,” I say.

“You going to be nice tonight, Jude?” Nora asks softly as Cap runs inside.

I frown. “I guess.”

She puts a hand on my arm. “Please? For us?”

My stomach drops. Not just for Cap. For her too. Jesus, I’ve been a dick if she needs to ask that.

I already know that. Except I just can’t seem to shake that old anger at her. But I’ll try, for them. I nod, unable to say the words. Because I don’t want to be made a liar.

The four of us at a table is a little awkward at first, especially when the waiter comes and doesn’t know who to ask about whether he should bring a special drink for Cap.

“I’m his dad,” I say, and the waiter, a diminutive man with a trim salt and pepper beard, nods, looking relieved.

But once the drinks come—a lager for me, white wine for Nora, some kind of fizzy cocktail for Farrah, and a whole fishbowl of sugar for Cap—we all start to relax.

Cap surprises me by asking Farrah to help him decipher the menu to find the stuff he might like. Meanwhile, Nora pores over the menu like she’s studying an ancient textbook, while I briefly skim the entrees and decide on a chicken tagine. Delicious. Sounds good to me. I snap my menu shut.

“What do you thinkconcasséis?” Nora asks. “Is it a method of preparation, maybe?”

She pulls out her phone, clearly looking it up. She’s always like this at restaurants, studying the menu like it’s an ancient text and weighing each option against the other like she’s going to be tested on it later.

“Why don’t you go back and observe the chef?” I suggest.

Nora rolls her eyes at me before returning to her menu.

I laugh. “I missed your eye rolls.”

She doesn’t look up, but I can tell she’s smiling. “I’ve got lots more if you want them.”

Eventually, she makes a decision and closes her menu, setting it down on the table.

You’d think that after all the years we spent going to restaurants together, I’d be annoyed by her indecision, but I can’t help finding it cute as hell. Now, as Farrah tells Cap about what it was like living in Japan, I watch, completely bemused, as Nora reaches a hand out for the menu as if she’s going to look again.

“Don’t do it,” I warn.

She snaps her gaze to mine. “I’m not. I know what I’m getting.”

“But what about your second choice? What if they could change the sauce for you?”

Nora huffs. “Hey, lots of places say it’s a béchamel when it’s actually a Mornay sauce, and sometimes the cheese in Mornay makes me itchy, if it hasn’t been cooked all the way through.”

I love it when she gets like this. “You could make hives look sexy,” I say, just to tease her.

Nora pinches her lips together, scowling, but I can see the laughter in her eyes.

“What are hives?” Cap asks.

I hadn’t noticed he and Farrah had stopped talking to each other.

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