Chapter 8 Beth #2
"It's a work night," Luna says, standing up with a speed that directly contradicts her casual tone.
"Uh-huh," I say.
She grins, conspiratorial and completely unashamed.
"Go, go," I say, waving her off. "But I want details tomorrow. Actually, scratch that, just give me the PG-13 highlight reel."
She smirks, kisses my cheek, and grabs her jacket. I watch her weave through the thinning crowd, and then the bar noise rushes in to fill the space she left behind.
"So," I say, turning back to the three alphas. "What do people do after their friends abandon them at a bar?"
"We could go grab something to eat," Mason says, like it's the most obvious answer in the world. "Have you eaten?"
I think about the sad handful of crackers and cheese I inhaled standing at the kitchen counter before Luna picked me up. That was four hours and two bourbon smashes ago.
"Not enough," I admit. "Do you have suggestions?"
Arthur sits up straight. "Carlo's."
Knox and Mason nod once.
"Carlos?" I say. "Is this, like, a friend of yours? Because I've never heard of this restaurant."
"What?" Arthur asks, eyes wide. "You don't know Carlo's? Five minutes past the Lakeview General Store? They have the best tacos in the county and they're pretty much always open."
"I didn't know there was anything out by the general store except pine trees and dead zones," I reply.
Knox does the half-smile. "You've lived here for what, eighteen months?"
"Seventeen and a half. And I've been busy. Building a business, and... all that." I wave a hand vaguely. "You know how it is."
By the look they give me, I don't think they know how it is. And in fairness, I'm not sure I know how it is either. But it did sound cool.
"So it's decided," Arthur says, slapping the table.
I'm already reaching for my jacket when my body picks this exact moment to remind me I woke up at six a.m. and hiked through the woods.
It is pretty late. I am hungry, but there's also leftover lasagna in the fridge.
Except, knowing Mason, the lasagna may already be a memory.
And tacos do sound nice. But god, my legs.
Then again. Tacos.
"Let's go," I say.
***
Arthur opens the passenger door, then steps aside and gestures.
"After you," he says.
I climb in. Arthur folds himself into the back next to Knox. Mason starts the engine, and Johnny Cash comes on the radio.
"So what's good at Carlo's?" I ask.
"Everything," Mason says.
"Helpful."
"He's not wrong," Arthur says from the back. "But specifically: the carne asada tacos, the elote, the churros... and of course the horchata. It's to die for."
"That's a bold claim for a beverage," I say.
"You'll understand when you taste it," Arthur says. "It's like someone liquefied a hug."
Knox, from his corner of the backseat, says, "And let's not forget the birria quesadilla."
"Oh," Arthur says, sitting forward. "Yeah. The birria quesadilla."
"I don't even know what that is," I reply.
"You'll find out soon enough," Knox says with confidence.
Mason turns off the main road and the streetlights disappear. The headlights cut a path through trees that crowd the road on both sides, and for a second, it's just the engine and the radio and the smell of pine.
"So what did you do for late-night food before?" Arthur asks.
"Crackers over the sink, mostly."
A beat of silence from the backseat.
"That's the saddest sentence I've ever heard," Arthur replies.
"Grant really never took you to Carlo's?" Knox asks.
"Grant cooked," I say. "We didn't really do late-night dinners. He was more of a meal-prep-Sunday, early-to-bed situation."
Mason makes a sound in his throat.
"Thinking back on it, we're very different people," I add quietly.
Nobody seems to know what to do with that. The silence stretches just long enough for Johnny Cash to finish a verse, and then Arthur reaches forward and turns the volume up a notch.
Carlo's appears around a bend in the road like a little glowing outpost at the edge of the world.
It's a white food truck with a hand-painted mural of the Mexican flag wrapping around the side, strung with warm Edison bulbs.
There's a chalkboard menu propped against the tire, a window where a man in a backwards cap is working a flat-top grill, and a longer line of people than I would've expected for a Thursday at eleven.
A few picnic tables sit in the gravel clearing beside it, half-occupied, lit by the truck's glow.
"Carlo's been here about eight years," Arthur says as Mason parks. "Carlos moved up from Guadalajara with a family recipe for birria and a dream. Started with just the truck. Everything's fresh, most of it sourced local."
We join the line. The air smells like charred meat, grilled onions and churros. My stomach makes a sound I hope nobody heard but, given Mason's sideways glance, at least one person did.
"Okay," I say, squinting at the chalkboard menu. "What do I get?"
"Get the tacos," Arthur replies. "We'll grab more stuff to share."
When we reach the window, Carlos, stocky, grinning, backwards cap slightly askew, spots Knox first and says something rapid in Spanish.
Knox replies in kind, which I was not expecting, and Carlos breaks into a laugh, slapping the counter.
Arthur leans in to add a quick comment of his own.
Carlos murmurs a response, and whatever Arthur just told him earns me a look of profound, sudden sympathy.
"What did you tell him?" I ask.
"I told him," Arthur says smoothly, "that you've lived here for seventeen months and never tried his food."
"And what did he say?" I ask, narrowing my eyes at him.
Arthur's grin turns wicked. "He said he's praying for you."
Knox gives Carlos our order. Three orders of carne asada tacos, a birria quesadilla, two elotes, churros, and one horchata each.
We step aside and the food comes fast. Within minutes we're standing around one of the picnic tables, each holding paper trays and foil-wrapped bundles that radiate heat through the napkins.
The carne asada tacos are perfect: tender, bright with lime and cilantro.
"Okay," I say, mouth half full. "I'm sold."
"Told ya," Arthur and Mason say, more or less in unison, neither of them looking up from their food.
Then Mason, without a word, angles his birria quesadilla toward me. The cheese is doing a slow, golden stretch from the foil, the slow-braised beef glistening underneath.
I tear off a piece and close my eyes.
"Oh no," Arthur says. "We've lost her."
"That's—" I press a hand to my sternum. "That's obscene."
"She gets it," Knox says quietly, almost to himself.
"Seriously," I say, opening my eyes. "I can't believe you've all known about this place and just—let me exist without it."
"In our defense," Knox says, tearing a churro in half, "before tonight, we didn't know you'd never been here."
And just a month ago, the only thing connecting me to these three alphas was the shared wreckage of a breakup. Now we're hanging out at eleven at night, eating tacos out of paper trays.
Funny, how things works.
Arthur takes a long sip of his horchata, looks out past the Edison bulbs toward the tree line, and says, "Hey. Wanna see one of our secret spots?"