Page 72 of Your Every Wish
“Uh-uh. Why, you want me to make you something?”
“Let’s go to that place we went to the other day, the one with all the Raggedy Ann dolls.”
“All right. Let me log out, first. I’ll meet you in the car.”
The restaurant is closer to Cedar Pines than I remember. Last time, it seemed like we still had a long drive to get home. I guess that means I’m getting used to living in the country where it takes longer to get anywhere.
The parking lot is full, but I still manage to find a spot that’s probably meant only for motorcycles or a Mini Cooper. While my Bimmer is compact, it’s a tight squeeze.
“Can you get out?” There’s a tree on Emma’s side. She successfully wedges herself between the tree and the door.
I request a table by the fireplace, like we had last time. Though the place is packed and fireplace seats are probably coveted, especially in colder weather, the host scores us a booth catty-corner from the hearth.
We’re just getting comfortable when I notice who’s at the table next to ours. It’s none other than Bent McCourtney. It’s as if I conjured him just by thinking about him last night. Or there’s not that many breakfast joints in the area.
He bobs his head at me and goes back to talking to the three men he’s with. All beefy guys wearing jeans, flannel shirts, and cowboy boots.
“Who’s that?” Emma looks from Bent to me.
“The devil incarnate. Just ignore him.”
I open my menu and pretend to concentrate on the various entries, while sneaking peeks at Bent’s table.
“That’s not what I expected him to look like,” Emma says. “I thought he would be older and preppy with trendy horn-rimmed glasses and thinning hair.”
“How’d you come up with that?” First, it couldn’t be farther from Bent’s appearance. He’s got a full head of dark hair. No glasses. And I peg him to be in his midthirties, so not old.
“I suppose it’s the house,” she says. “That’s who I see living in a house like that . . . not a cowboy. He’s really good-looking.”
“He’s fine if you go in for those sorts of guys.”
“What sort of guy is that?”
“A guy who thinks he’s a lot hotter than he is,” I say. I want to add that Bent McCourtney makes Dex seem like a prince among men but put a sock in it. Emma is well aware of my feelings on Dex. “Stop staring at him and figure out what you want to eat. I’m starved.”
We both get the pumpkin pancakes with whipped cream and candied pecans and share a side of bacon. It’s nice having someone to eat with. At home, I’m running from morning to night and even when I have time to grab a bite it’s usually alone. Occasionally, Lorelie and I will dress up and go out to dinner. Steaks or seafood at Michael Mina, pizzas at Wolfgang Puck, or we’ll go off the Strip to Le Thai. Most dinners we spend talking shop or Lorelie complains about her loser boyfriend, Ty, who’s got a serious condition of failure to launch.
The dinners are fun and a nice break from the everyday. But with Emma it’s different, effortless, like neither of us has to make conversation if we don’t want to. And sometimes I know what she’s thinking even before she says it. And I’m pretty sure she knows what I’m thinking.
While Lorelie is my friend, she’s also my mentor and there’s always a teacher-student thing going on between us. To be truthful, in the last few years there’s also been a subtle one-upmanship that makes our friendship feel more like a competition—who can land the biggest whale, whose connections are better, whose high rollers bring in the most money.
And not once during my “hiatus” (that’s what I’m calling it) has she bothered to see how I’m doing. She knows about Sterling and the money, by now everyone does. That kind of gossip doesn’t stay under wraps for long. And I’m sure anyone even slightly affiliated with me has been tarred with the same brush. The whole birds-of-a-feather thing. But you expect your friends, your real friends, to stand by you—or, at the very least, to call you.
The restaurant is hit with a new wave of diners, many of whom have been relegated to wait in the hostess area until a table frees up.
Our pancakes come, and I drown mine in maple syrup. Emma pours her syrup in a little puddle on the side of her plate and dips pieces of pancake in it with a fork.
“This is so good,” she says around a bite. “I love this place.”
I grin because I kind of do, too, which is a surprise. The local-yokel thing isn’t usually my speed and this is clearly a neighborhood restaurant where everyone knows your name. I’ve always preferred anonymity and eateries with a little more flair than stuffed dolls for décor. But I have to say from the food to the fireplace this place exudes a certain kind of comfort lacking in my usual haunts.
“Don’t look,” Emma whispers, “but hot cowboy at twelve o’clock is coming over.”
Shit.
I’ve already shoveled a forkful of pancake and bacon into my mouth and quickly try to wash it down with a slug of coffee, which simultaneously burns my mouth and makes me choke. Emma only exacerbates it by beating on my back.
“You okay there, Hoss?” Bent hands me my glass of water.
