Page 18 of Keepsake
“Another time. Have a night out, okay? You told me you hadn’t done that in a long time.”
Not since before Guatemala. “I’ll give up drinking, too. In solidarity.”
“No! Seriously. I’m working through some of my issues, but I’m in a good place. I mean it.”
“May!” Ruth called from the kitchen. “Is the table ready?”
She gave my shoulders one final squeeze. “Go on. Sit. Eat like a farmer. We’ll talk later.”
Sitting back down at the table, I felt unsettled. If one of my friends was having trouble, the least I could do was notice. But I was too swamped with my own issues to do even that.
Zach gave me an appraising glance across the table. “Holding up okay?”
“Fine,” I said once I realized he wasn’t asking about my psyche, only about my muscles. “Nothing a little rest and a couple of aspirin can’t cure.”
And now I knew how Zach had such a fabulous physique and sun-kissed hair. He’d quietly picked about twice as many apples as I had today, unloading his bag again and again all afternoon long.
“And a beer, later!” Griffin said. “At the Goat.”
“Not the Goat,” Kyle groaned. “We haven’t been to the Gin Mill in a month. Let’s vote.”
“Sure,” Griff said. “As long as you vote for the Goat.”
“He’s a poet and he didn’t know it,” Dylan put in.
“Audrey wants to hang out with Zara tonight,” Griff said.
“Actually…” Audrey put a platter of fried chicken onto the table. “I’m going over there by myself on the early side. You guys can go to the Gin Mill without me if you want. You’ll all fit in the truck that way.”
“Yes!” Kyle shouted.
“Et tu, Audrey?” Griff hung his head in a gesture of defeat. “I thought you loved me.”
“You’ll know I do when you taste this buttermilk chicken. Don’t mope. And say hi to Alec for me.”
Two hours later, I stood outside the bunkhouse door with Griff and the others, waiting for the last person to emerge so we could head for the Gin Mill.
“Kyle, hurry up!” Griffin called through the window. “Swear to God you take longer in front of a mirror than my sisters. Zach takes like two seconds to get ready.”
“And that is why Zach is a virgin,” Kyle called from the building.
What?
Before I could think better of the impulse, I glanced in Zach’s direction. And then I wished I hadn’t, because he was staring at his boots. It was too dark to see if his neck and cheeks were a ruddy, embarrassed red. But I’d bet they were.
The bunkhouse door flew open. “Let’s go!” Kyle strode out toward Griffin’s truck. “I call shotgun.”
“After making us wait?” his brother Kieran complained. “You dick. We’d be in the truck if we weren’t waiting on your ass.”
“Not my problem.”
I followed the boys to Griffin’s truck and climbed into the back seat, taking the middle seat because I was the smallest. That put me beside Zach, who was staring out the window.
It was hard to say whether he was embarrassed or just lost in thought. But I guess I no longer needed to ask why Kyle called him “choir boy.”
Twenty-five minutes later we pulled up outside an attractive brick building with “The Gin Mill” illuminated in neon above the door. Griffin killed the engine. “Good thing I went for the crew cab,” he said, cocking the door open.
“Good thing,” I agreed. Zach hopped out first, then turned around and offered me a hand when it was time to leap down.
