Finding Focus

by Jiffy Kate

  “Ready to go, Chuck?” Micah asks, tossing our bags into the trunk of the rental car. We decided we’d take it since his truck is still at the airport in New Orleans. Deacon told him he and Cami were planning on going there for a “hot date” next weekend, so one of them is going to drive it back for him.

  “Yep. I’m driving.”

  Micah

  AS SOON AS I PUT the car in park behind Pockets, my lips are on Dani’s—my hands in her hair. I try to be gentle, but I haven’t been able to think of anything else since we kissed last night at the pond. My incessant thoughts and the need I have for her make me desperate. Dani doesn’t seem to object as she grabs my shirt to pull me closer. She moans softly just about the time my elbow accidentally jabs the car horn. It blares, making us both jump apart, ending the kiss too quickly.

  “Wow.” Dani’s face is flushed, her eyes wide. Somehow, she looks more beautiful than she did just fifteen minutes ago. I feel like she gets more and more beautiful every day.

  “Yeah, wow,” I say, rubbing my thumb over her bottom lip. “You said I could kiss you whenever I want, so I’m gonna hold you to it.”

  “I said you could hold my hand whenever you wanted,” she corrects me.

  I trace her jaw with my fingertips and slide my hand to the back of her head before pulling her face close to mine. “Does that mean you don’t want me to kiss you?”

  “That’s not what I said at all, but since we’re on the subject, I guess it would be okay for you to kiss me on occasion.”

  She’s so fucking cute.

  “Well, then, I look forward to the next occasion.” I place a gentle kiss on her mouth and pull away, knowing we have a full day ahead of us.

  When we walk through the back door of the restaurant, we find ourselves in the middle of a very busy kitchen. It’s almost time for our lunch rush, so everyone is running around making last-minute preparations.

  Trying not to get in the way, I introduce Dani to as many people as possible, including Joe, our cook. Joe, Deacon, and I are doing an interview for the article, so I let him know to meet us at the bar when he gets a break.

  Dani pulls her camera out of her bag and tells me she’s going to take some pictures of the dining area, so I go to the office in search of my brother.

  “Hey, Deke. You ready to head up to the bar?”

  “Yeah, man. Just finishin’ up some paperwork.” Not many people see this serious, hardworking side of Deacon, but honestly, he’s the reason Pockets and Grinders are so successful. He likes to take risks, but they’re always calculated, and so far, they’ve worked out well for us.

  I stroll up behind the bar and fix everyone a Coke. Dani immediately catches my eye and I watch her work, thoroughly enjoying the view.

  I still can’t believe she’s giving me a chance to prove myself to her, and I pray to God I don’t screw it up. If I mess this up, I know without a doubt it’ll be unintentional. There’s no way I could ever hurt her on purpose. The thought of losing her, even now, makes my heart hurt.

  “Why the long face?”

  Turning toward the voice, I see Dani and automatically smile. “No reason. Just thinkin’ about things.”

  She leans over the bar to get closer to me. “Are you not wanting to go on the road with me? It’s okay if you don’t. I mean, I’d miss the company, but I’d understand.”

  “Nice try. You’re not getting rid of me that easily, Chuck.” I take her hand and lift it to my lips, watching as her eyes darken to a beautiful shade of forest green. I kiss her lips to see if they can get darker—until the sound of broken glass breaks us from our bubble. I turn around just in time to see Jamie’s ponytail flying through the air, following her into the ladies’ bathroom. The tray of drinks she was obviously carrying is now a sticky mess on the floor. Once she’s inside, we hear a muffled scream of frustration.

  “Is she . . .” Dani starts, quirking an eyebrow and pointing her finger toward the bathroom, “is she . . . another?”

  Realization hits me, and I’m quick to answer. “No! Definitely not! I’ve never even come close to bein’ with her.”

  “Okay, settle down,” she says, laughing. “Well, she’s obviously not happy about seeing us together.”

  “I know this is harsh, but I honestly don’t give a shit. She’s been nothin’ but a pain in my ass since grade school. I gave her a job because I needed a waitress and she’s really good with the customers.”

  Sighing, I push away from the bar and motion for a busboy to clean the mess while I pick up the tray and take it to the dishwasher. Good waitress or not, she might’ve just earned her ass a ticket out the door.

  Deacon sees me from the office and walks to the bar with me, greeting Dani with a hug. Joe finally joins us and brings with him a plate with a pocket on it. He sets it down on the bar in front of Dani.

  “Oh, good,” she says, smiling. “I was going to ask you to plate a pocket so I can have one to photograph for the article.”

  “Well, this ain’t your average pocket,” Deacon says, sliding onto the barstool beside her.

  “Oh, really?” She positions the plate just right under the light and brings her camera up to her eye. “What’s so special about it?”

  “You, my friend, are looking at the very new, very special, sweet and spicy chicken étouffée pocket. We call it ‘The Dani’.”

  Dani quickly looks up at Deacon and then over to me. Her mouth drops. “Really? You named a pocket after me?”

  “Well, we had to do something to show you how much we appreciate you featurin’ Pockets in your article. This is big time for us, Chuck.” I wink at her, enjoying her shock and awe.

  “I’m flattered.” She lets the camera hang from the strap around her neck and brings her hand up over her heart. “Seriously. This is the coolest thing ever.”

  “Well, maybe you should try it before you get too carried away,” I tell her, inching the plate toward her.

  Her eyes light up and she twists her lips into an adorable smile. “I can’t believe you made a pocket named after me.”

  “You might hate it. Try it and see what you think,” Deacon says. “We could always go back to the drawin’ board if you don’t like it.”

  “This is so going in the article.”

  “Try it!” Deacon and I both yell at the same time. Joe is standing over to the side with his arms folded across his chest, chuckling at the three of us. I can already tell he’s just as smitten with her as we are.

  “All right, all right! Geez, you don’t have to get so testy.” She rolls her eyes and picks up the fork on the plate. “You guys really didn’t have to do this.”

  “Oh my God, woman. Just try the damn pocket!” I take the fork from her hand and cut off a bite. When I hold it up to her mouth, she smiles a devious smile. Wetting her lips with her tongue, she finally opens up and takes the bite, moaning shamelessly as she chews.

  She knows exactly what she’s doing to me, and I hate her for it.

  “Mmm, so good!” she exclaims, slapping her hand down on the bar.

  I clear my throat in an effort to get my head out of the gutter. “Can I get you something to drink with that?”

  “Another Coke, I guess.” She takes the fork from my hand and goes in for another bite. “A beer would be great with this, but since we’re heading out on the road soon, I better not.”

  “Have a beer. I’ll drive.”

  “Well, aren’t you sweet? First, you offer to keep me company, and now you’re going to be my chauffeur.” She smiles, shaking her head. “A girl could get used to this kind of chivalry.”

  I roll my eyes. If it’s chivalry she wants, it’s chivalry she’ll get. I’d like to chival her right out of her pants. “So, what’s it gonna be? A Coke or a beer?”

  “Coke. I try not to drink before five, except on days my boyfriend sleeps with the therapist.”

  “Ex.”

  “Yeah, ex.” She pops another bite into her mouth to hide her smile before taking the pen o
ut of her hair and jotting down a few notes in the journal she brought with her. Without the pen holding her hair up on her head, it slowly begins to cascade down her back.

  Holy fuck. I clench my jaw and briefly close my eyes, willing my dick to stay in line. This might’ve been a bad idea. I’m not sure I can do slow with Sheridan Reed. I want to. I want to do everything right with her, but she might kill me in the process.

  “I’ll get you that Coke.”

  Instead of sticking around and doing the interview Dani wanted at the restaurant, we decided we could finish that part while we’re on the road. Dani’s been grilling me for the past twenty miles. I think she’s past her normal set of questions and is now asking things she just wants to know. Normally, I’d find a way out of a situation like this. I hate talking about myself, but I want to with her.

  I want Dani to know me.

  I want to know everything about her.

  “Tell me about college,” she says, pulling the visor down to keep the sun out of her eyes as we head east on Interstate 12.

  “I went.”

  “Ha ha! Very funny. I want details,” she says firmly, leaning her head against the seat. “What did you major in?”

  “Business.”

  “That sounds too boring for someone like you.”

  I chuckle at her response. “Well, I knew early on I wanted to open a restaurant with Deacon. We’d been dreaming that up since we were kids. LSU didn’t offer a Hotel and Restaurant Management degree, so I went with business.”

  “What about Deacon?”

  “He majored in business, too.”

  “I’m sure there’re other schools that offer Hotel and Restaurant Management degrees.”

  “Yeah, but none I wanted to go to. The only other thing I wanted to do was go to LSU.”

  “So, besides majoring in business, what else did you do in college?”

  “Joined a fraternity, got into just the right amount of trouble, and managed to graduate on time . . . with honors.”

  “Really?” she asks, pushing her sunglasses down on her nose and looking at me over them. “Micah Landry, top of the class?” She pauses for a second, continuing to look at me. “I’m impressed.”

  I laugh, keeping my eyes on the road. Sometimes, when she looks at me so intently, it makes me nervous. I don’t know why, but it does. And I like that it does. She makes me feel things no one else ever has.

  “What about you?” I ask, wanting the focus off me for a minute, but also just wanting to know more about her.

  “I went to NYU.”

  “And?”

  “Oh, you want to know more?” She has her sunglasses pulled back up over her eyes and her head leaned back against the seat with a smirk on her lips. I love that she gives my shit right back to me.

  “Yes, please.” Which is code for: I want to know everything.

  “Since you said please.” She smiles before continuing. “There’s not much to know, really. I knew I wanted to go somewhere with a good fine arts program, so I applied to a few schools, but NYU was my shot in the dark. When I was accepted, it was one of the happiest and saddest days of my life. Happy because it was a dream come true—one I hadn’t even really allowed myself to dream yet. But sad because I knew I’d be leaving Laurel, leaving my granny.” She sighs for a second, staring out the window. “Knowing what I know now—that I only had a few more years with her—I would’ve stayed closer to home.”

  “But she had to have been proud of you.”

  “Oh, she was. She was always my biggest supporter. It didn’t matter what I was doing. If it made me happy, she was cheering me on. I remember the day my acceptance letter came in the mail. She made me smothered pork chops that night for dinner with her better-than-sex chocolate cake.”

  “Better than sex?” I laugh. “Are you kidding me?”

  “No, that’s what she called it. That’s what all the ladies at the bingo hall called it.”

  “And was it?”

  I notice the flush in her cheeks and the movement in her neck when she swallows hard.

  “Yep, pretty damn good,” she squeaks out.

  “You have the recipe?”

  “I don’t, actually. I wish I did, though.” She pauses for a second, biting her bottom lip. “Damn, I miss that cake . . . and sex,” she mumbles so quietly, I almost miss it.

  “What?” I ask on reflex. My mind and dick needing clarification on that last part. Did she just say she misses sex? God, please let that be what she said. Actually, God, please let that not be what she said. I feel my whole body stiffen. Dani missing sex could quite possibly switch this from slow to fast in record speed.

  “Nothing,” she mumbles, focusing on something out her window. Needing a minute to get myself in check, I’m secretly glad she doesn’t want to elaborate.

  “So, tell me about NYU,” I say, clearing my throat and trying to change the subject.

  “NYU was good. I really loved the school. It’s what I always dreamed it would be. When I was younger, the only thing I wanted was to get out of Mississippi and live in a big city. NYU was all of that.”

  “Were you in a sorority? Did you live on campus?” I ask, knowing I’ll have to prompt her to get more info.

  “No sorority,” she says, laughing. “That wasn’t quite my scene.”

  “What was your scene?” I ask.

  “I don’t know,” she sighs, shrugging.

  “Did you get in any trouble?” I ask.

  She laughs again, leaning her head against the seat and turning her gaze to me. “No. Well, at least not until I met Piper.”

  “I can see that.”

  “I was just a small fish in a big city, but when I met Piper, she would drag me out on the weekends, and we’d go explore a new section of New York. It was a lot of fun. She knew much more about New York than I did. Having grown up in Connecticut, she’d been there quite a bit.”

  “What did you major in? Photography?”

  “No, I majored in journalism and minored in business, but I took a lot of photography classes.”

  “Well, you’re brilliant at what you do. I think you’re a natural. The way you see things is something that can’t be taught. It’s like you just know.”

  “Thank you.” She looks back over at me. “Really. That means a lot.”

  “I speak nothing but the truth.”

  “So, what about after college?” she asks. The way she dodges questions lets me know she doesn’t like talking about herself any more than I do.

  “Deacon and I actually opened Grinders before I graduated college. We took out a business loan together and found a place downtown. It worked out great. We already had an apartment close by we were living in while going to school, so it made sense.”

  “Do you guys still have an apartment there?”

  “Yeah, it’s where we stay when we work late. It’s better than making the forty-five minute drive home at three in the morning.”

  “That’s really cool.” She looks down and then shakes her head in disbelief.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. It’s just . . . I feel like I know you so well. I mean, we’ve had a dozen sessions of twenty questions,” she says, laughing. “But you still seem to surprise me . . . impress me.”

  “I’m not trying to impress you.”

  “I know. And that makes it even more impressive.”

  “Okay, you can stop with the compliments now,” I tell him, feeling my cheeks heat up.

  “There’s nothing impressive about opening up a restaurant.”

  “No, but it’s impressive to know what you want to do with your life and go after it. So many people sit around waiting for their dreams to come true and sometimes it never happens. They just waste their life away . . . waiting.”

  “Yeah, I’m not one of those people.”

  “No, you’re not. You’re not a waiter. You’re a go-getter.”

  “Now you sound like my dad.”

  We sit in comfortable silence,
listening to the playlist I put together for our trip. Jimmy Buffett has been singing about cheeseburgers in paradise for the last few miles.

  “Speaking of cheeseburgers,” Dani says, and I laugh. “Our next stop is a hamburger joint. Do you like hamburgers?”

  “Who doesn’t like hamburgers?”

  “Vegetarians?”

  “Deep down, I bet even vegetarians crave a big ol’ juicy hamburger.”

  She laughs. “I couldn’t be a vegetarian. I like bacon too much.”

  “Bacon is the gateway meat.”

  “The what?” she asks.

  “Gateway meat. It’s the one that sucks them in.”

  “Them, who?”

  “Vegetarians. It’s basically the marijuana of the meat world.”

  She laughs so hard, she claims she might pee her pants. It’s adorable. If she’s not being cute, she’s being adorable, and if she’s not being adorable, she’s being sexy. There’s seriously nothing she could do that wouldn’t affect me.

  The rest of the drive goes smoothly with random conversations that make me fall harder and harder for Sheridan Paige Reed.

  She decided she wants to drive to Pensacola, Florida today, the farthest destination on our trip, and then slowly make our way back home.

  The girl is a genius.

  When we find the motel she saw on the internet, we pull into the drive. Both of us hop out, needing to stretch our legs after being in the car for a few hours. It’s still a little early for dinner, so we decide to check into our rooms—plural. If we’re going to take things slow, I can’t sleep in the same room as her.

  Great Southern Motel. I’m not sure how great it is, but at least it looks clean. I think I’ll take over on the lodging for the rest of the trip.

  “So, I guess we can take a nap or something until dinner time.” She scrunches up her nose, squinting against the sun in her eyes.

  “Sure.” I’m not sleepy, though. I’m used to a lot longer, much more tiring days than this. Hanging out and riding in the car with Dani is hardly work. It’s actually something I wouldn’t mind doing every day.

  “How about I meet you back out here at seven?”

  “It’s a date.”

  “A date?”