37 - Haley
37
Haley
Bran was practically giddy with excitement by the time we dropped him off at home. He wouldn’t stop talking about his hole-in-one, and how he had beaten Lucas fair and square. The date could have ended right now and I would have smiled for the rest of the week.
“We’ll have to use your free game for a rematch,” Lucas told him on the front porch.
“Let’s go inside so these two can go to dinner,” Sara said, putting a hand on Bran’s shoulder.
But Bran tilted his head up toward Lucas. “Where are you going?”
Lucas crouched down so that he was at the boy’s level. “It’s a surprise.”
“Mom says she hates surprises.”
Lucas grinned up at me. “I know. But she’ll like this one.”
Bran hugged him, and once again I felt my heart skip a beat. I never thought I would see the two of them together, let alone hugging . It was like a dream come true, but for a dream I didn’t know I’d had.
“Have fun, you two,” Sara said with a knowing smile.
“I’m surprised your sister likes me so much,” Lucas said as we drove away.
“Why does that surprise you?”
“Because she hated me when we first dated.”
“That’s not true!”
He glanced over at me.
“She… thought you were a bad influence on me,” I admitted. “Which you totally were back then.”
“Fair enough.”
“Where are we going to dinner?”
“I told you,” he replied, “it’s a surprise.”
I groaned. “I feel like I should know where we’re going, since I’m the one paying.”
“Nothing crazy,” Lucas said, deadpan. “Just Clay Pigeon, the most expensive steakhouse in town. You’d better hope Bran doesn’t get into that academy, because I intend to buy a tuition’s worth of food tonight.”
It felt so good to laugh with Lucas. Both of us were so serious back in high school, the way only angsty teenagers could be. Lucas still felt like the same man I had dated back then, except he was more comfortable in his skin. More lighthearted.
The more time I spent with him, the more I liked the man he had become.
When we pulled into the restaurant parking lot, I couldn’t help but laugh. “You’re taking me here? To Shaw’s Diner?”
“Yep.”
“I haven’t been here in years!”
“Me neither,” Lucas said. “I’ve been wanting to go since moving back to town.”
“You didn’t have to pick such a cheap place,” I told him. “We can go somewhere a little more expensive.”
“I don’t care about price. This is where I want to go.”
I grinned. “Then it sounds great to me!”
The diner was half-full, and we got a booth up against the window. The menus were covered in plastic laminate, just like I remembered. I felt a strange sense of déjà vu as the waiter brought us a pitcher of water. This could have been one of our dates back in high school, except this time we both ordered beer.
“I’m feeling like a bacon cheeseburger,” Lucas mused.
“It’s comforting that some things haven’t changed,” I said. “You’re still a sucker for junk food.”
Lucas’s dark eyebrows drew down. “Their burgers aren’t that unhealthy.”
“Lucas. They’re greasier than any fast-food burger. I’m not complaining—they’re delicious. But they’re definitely not good for you.”
“I like healthy foods,” he said. “You saw me meal prepping at the grocery store.”
“I don’t believe you,” I teased.
He tilted his head. “You think I bought those ingredients at the store for what? A show? To pretend I was all grown up now?”
“Yes, exactly,” I said.
The waiter reappeared with our beers. “Are we ready to order food?”
“I’ll take a bacon cheeseburger,” I said, handing him my menu.
Lucas glared at me and said, “I’ll have the kale salad with grilled chicken.”
“He’s not really going to order that,” I told the waiter. “He’s just trying to make a point.”
“Nope. This is exactly what I want.” Lucas handed him the menu, and the waiter walked away.
“Wow,” I said. “I see you’re still stubborn.”
“I’ve learned to pick my fights, though,” he said, raising his beer. “Thanks for dinner.”
I clinked my glass against his. “Thanks for watching Bran while I was in Vegas. I know he can be a lot.”
“Nah, he’s great.” Lucas smiled widely. “He’s a really cute kid. He’s got your light eyes.”
And he has your hair , I thought.
“He likes you,” I said.
“I’m easy to like,” Lucas said smoothly. “And I’m good with kids.”
I snickered.
“What’s so funny?” he demanded.
“You used to hate children!”
His dark eyes sparkled with humor. “I did not!”
“You most certainly did. You talked about it all the time. It was one of the things that pissed me off about you back then.”
He sipped his beer, then gave me a cutting smile. “I didn’t want children of my own, sure. But I always got along with other people’s kids. They’re easy to be around, unlike adults.”
Sensing an opening, I asked, “Do you still feel that way?”
“Oh, definitely,” he replied. “Adults suck.”
The two of us laughed. My foot brushed against his leg under the table as I adjusted my seat. He’d diverted the subject smoothly, but I wanted to hear a serious answer from him.
No, I needed to hear it.
“All jokes aside,” I said casually, “now that you’re older, do you still not want kids of your own?”
Lucas frowned in concentration. The boy I dated in high school would have answered immediately, with a response that was either too blunt or not truthful. He had a way of lying back then, saying whatever it was that I wanted to hear in order to get into my pants.
This time, I could tell he was legitimately thinking about the question. Searching his feelings.
“I think the reason I didn’t want kids back then,” he answered slowly, “was because I valued my independence above everything else.”
“Oh?”
He nodded slowly. “I grew up in a strict household. You remember how my dad was. He was in the Marines, and tried to run our family like it was Boot Camp. He told me when to wake up, what to eat, when to do my homework. He made arbitrary rules and enforced them by…”
He glanced out the window, and my heart went out to him. Lucas’s father was fond of using his belt as punishment, for crimes big and small.
Lucas cleared his throat. “He enforced them strictly. Looking back on it, I think that’s why I rebelled so much. Not trying to make excuses, but that’s just how it was. Because of that, independence was important to me. I didn’t want anyone else in my life controlling my schedule.” He smiled ruefully. “Including you.”
“Tell me about it,” I replied with my own smirk.
“But yeah, I think that was the root of my feelings about kids. Having yet another force in my life guiding my actions, siphoning away my independence. Now that I’m the wise old age of twenty-five,” he chuckled, “I don’t think I feel the same way. Yeah, independence is still important to me, to some degree. But life isn’t about doing whatever you want all the time. It’s about finding people who want to do the same things with you, and then doing them together.” His eyes bore into mine. “Like playing mini-golf on a Monday night and then getting beers afterward.”
It was the exact kind of answer I had been hoping to hear with all of my soul, and I didn’t realize it until he’d spoken the words out loud. It was the final bit of proof that Lucas hadn’t just gotten older—he’d matured into a thoughtful, introspective man .
“Cheers to that,” I said.
The waiter arrived with our food. Lucas gazed longingly at my plate.
“I can cut it in half if you want to share,” I teased. “But only if you admit you still like junk food.”
“I’m extremely pleased with my salad,” he said, sounding just like the stubborn teenager I remembered.
We chatted about Lucas’s time in Detroit while we ate, and about Bran’s newfound interest in baseball. The topic drifted all around—to the revitalized downtown Vancouver, and how bad the traffic had gotten across the bridges to Portland. Everything felt so easy— there weren’t lulls in the conversation, and I didn’t have to pretend to be someone I wasn’t.
It was just the two of us, together, being our authentic selves.
“I’m glad you picked this place,” I said after finishing my burger. “What made you think of it?”
Lucas looked up at me from his salad. “You really don’t remember?”
“Remember what?”
He leaned back in the booth, resting his arm across the seat. “This is where we went on our first date.”
“What? No it isn’t. Our first date was to the movies.”
Lucas shook his head. “That was our first date after we became Facebook official. We had already made out between classes by that point. Our first actual date was when we came here after a football game. Do you remember?”
I concentrated on the distant memory. “We were with a group of friends at the football game. Someone had a flask, but it was full of wine. Was it that night?”
Lucas nodded.
“I remember someone suggested we come here for food,” I said slowly, piecing it together on the spot. “They said their friend was the manager and would serve us beer. We all drove separate, and you and I were the first ones here.”
“The only ones here,” he added.
“That’s right! Everyone else bailed and went to Sonic instead, but they forgot to text us. So you and I were stuck here together.”
“We sat in that booth.” Lucas pointed behind me. “We spent over an hour trying to work up the courage to order an alcoholic drink. Eventually we chickened out and got burgers and Cokes.”
“The waitress was so annoyed! I forgot all about that.”
“And you accidentally left your purse in your friend’s car, so I had to pay for your meal,” Lucas concluded. “ That was our first date, even if it was by accident.”
My smile faded. “You brought me to the place of our first date?”
He shrugged. “It felt appropriate. Except this time, we weren’t afraid to order beer.”
My chest swelled with emotion. I’d been sitting here, enjoying my evening, without realizing Lucas had arranged a nostalgic date.
The waiter walked by, and Lucas flagged him down. “Can I get an order of fries?” He turned to me. “I’m sorry. I can’t fake it any longer. This salad is fine, but the smell of your food is killing me. You win.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
Lucas pointed across the table at me. “No, but I can feel you thinking it.”
“Do you want to upgrade them to chili-cheese fries?” the waiter asked.
I raised an eyebrow at Lucas.
“Buddy,” Lucas told the waiter, “I want that more than anything in the world.”
“We’ll take those fries to go, along with the check,” I told the waiter before he left.
Lucas frowned at me. “In a hurry to get home to tuck Bran into bed?”
“No,” I replied with a lusty smile. “In a hurry to get back to your place.”