Chapter 3 Just Pizza #3
“There’s no such thing,” I said over my shoulder.
As I turned the corner into the foyer, through the thin strip of windows lining the front door, I caught sight of Punc’s profile. He held a grocery bag, and a pizza box.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” I whispered.
“What? Is it the douchebag?” Catalina whispered from close behind me.
I whirled around and faced her. “Ted’s here. The good news is that I think we’re having Renna’s for dinner.”
“Seriously?” she asked, a huge grin on her face.
I nodded. “Probably, but I need you to do a quick clean of your bathroom and be sure to scrub the toilet.”
“Why?” she asked.
“Why do you need to do a quick clean? Or—”
“No, why is he bringing pizza?”
This was part of why I hadn’t wanted him to swing by in the first place. I hadn’t told Catalina about my new job yet, and for some messed-up reason, I wanted to wait until my first nightshift.
I shook my head and focused on my sister. “I’m not sure, but regardless, if he needs to use the bathroom, no man wants to be confronted with your hair and makeup situation. Now, I need to open the door, and you need to help your sister right about now.”
“All right,” Cat said, turned and skipped toward the guest bathroom.
I opened the door.
Punc shifted and held out a grocery bag to me. “Take this. I figure you don’t have beer, and for the hell of it, I picked up a bottle of red wine.”
I took the bag and shut the door after Punc came inside.
“How do you even know where I live?” I asked.
He shot me the cockiest of smirks. “You listed your address on your application.”
I spoke in a low voice. “Yeah, I haven’t told Catalina yet about my new job…I’m going to share with her later.”
With a slow nod, he wandered to the kitchen. “And did you talk to my sister yet?”
I pressed my lips together for a beat. “We’ve both been busy.”
He chuckled and opened the pizza box. “Hope you two like pepperoni.”
I nodded. “Yes, thank you, but you really didn’t need to go through so much trouble.”
He settled a hand on the counter causing his leather cut to fall open. I noticed he wore a black t-shirt featuring the Aerosmith logo on it. With an eyebrow arch, he unearthed a bottle of Landshark and uncapped it. “You drove off before I could tell you, it isn’t any trouble at all, Savannah.”
“Oh my God, that smells delicious!” Catalina said as she walked into the living room. The moment she rounded the counter into the kitchen and caught sight of the pizza box, she beamed at Punc. “Renna’s? How did you know that’s our favorite?”
Punc swallowed a swig of beer and grinned at her. “I seem to recall your sister mentioning something about it back in the day.”
Cat nodded, moved to the pantry, and grabbed three paper plates. “This is so nice of you, Ted. I know I should stick around and eat with y’all, but I gotta put the finishing touches on my project because my AP History teacher wants us to turn in a five-page paper in two weeks.”
Punc stared at Cat for a beat. “Two weeks seems like plenty of time.”
Catalina put two slices of pepperoni on her plate. “Yeah, except she just told us it had to tie into Orwell’s Animal Farm, and none of us read it because it wasn’t on the syllabus.”
“Ah,” Punc said.
I slipped into Mom’s role and asked, “Do you have the book? Or do we need to get it from the library?”
Cat grinned at me. “I downloaded it on Libby. I’m good as long as I can read it in time.” She turned to Punc. “Anyway, thanks for saving me from a skillet dinner out of a bag.”
“You’re welcome,” Punc muttered.
I couldn’t stop myself from giving Cat crap. “What’d you eat for lunch at school?”
She paused mid-way through the living room. “Pizza.”
I made big eyes at her. “That skillet dinner might have rounded out your daily nutrients.”
That earned me an eyeroll and a scoff. “Whatever. I could eat pizza year-round, and you know it.”
“Get your food, Savannah,” Punc said.
I wandered to the end of the counter where Cat had left the paper plates. A sense of awkwardness filled me. After a beat, I met Punc’s gaze. “Should we be hanging out like this?”
“It’s just pizza,” he said, putting his beer on the counter.
It didn’t feel like just pizza. It felt like a stay-at-home date. Maybe I needed to get Cat back out here to eat with us, but that felt silly.
“Where’s your corkscrew?”
“Drawer next to the fridge,” I said reflexively. I realized why he asked and shook my head. “Wait. Don’t open that bottle. You should take it back to your place.”
He stopped in the middle of the kitchen with the corkscrew in hand. “You don’t drink wine?”
“I do—”
“Then the bottle stays here, Smythe. Go with the flow, and enjoy your food.”
I couldn’t argue with that, so I didn’t.
Renna’s made New York-style pizza, and the slices were huge. Unlike my sister I took one slice and settled at the square dinette table.
Punc sat next to me, and I couldn’t ignore the way his knee brushed mine under the table.
It was nothing. I should have been able to push it out of my mind, especially since he was wearing jeans so we weren’t even touching skin to skin.
Yet, the random touches felt like everything.
Good and wrong, hopeful and ultimately right.
I took a deep breath to stop my wayward thoughts.
With the table butting up against a kitchen window, and a pile of mail on the only other open spot, he’d been forced to sit next to me. I was reading too much into it.
Like he said, this was just pizza.
We ate in silence.
“You were chatty as hell last night. Do I make you nervous being here?” he asked after a few minutes.
To keep from choking, I swallowed hard and coughed. Once I had myself under control, I said, “No. Not nervous, but this is out of the ordinary.”
He stared across the kitchen for a beat. “I don’t think so. We’re going to be co-workers. Of a sort. During our phone convo last night, I realized I want to know more about who you are now.”
I gave him a small dose of side-eye. “Thought you said this is just pizza?”
A muscle in his jaw ticked. “I say, let’s not over-analyze this shit. What’s the last thing you watched on TV?”
What was the last thing I watched on TV?
Punc gave a short laugh. I loved listening to him laugh, though, I wished I’d actually done something funny.
“It’s a simple question, Savannah.”
I twisted my hands up over the table. “I can’t say there’s anything I’ve been watching unless it’s something Catalina wants to watch. During the days, if I’m home, I put it on as background noise while I clear out Mom’s stuff. If it’s just me at night, having it on reminds me of her - it’s crazy—”
He put his hand over mine on the table. “It’s not crazy. Forget I asked.”
To steer us out of this heaviness, I asked, “What have you been watching lately?”
He chuckled. “Almost hate to admit this, but I’ve fallen into a rabbit hole streaming true crime shows.”
I swallowed a bite of pizza. “Alanis loves those shows, why would you hate to admit it?”
His grin made my breath catch. “She does love them, but Tundra and a couple other brothers give me a ton of shit because they think I’m watching the modern-day equivalent of a chick flick.”
I shook my head. “If anything, I’d think all of you would want to know how cops think and stuff, being bikers and all.”
He pressed his lips together. “Plenty of the brothers know how the cops think already.”
There was a big fat dose of reality crashing in…we were such opposites.
“I suppose you’re right. When she isn’t studying as much, Catalina loves watching true crime. I can’t stomach it. I think they remind me too much of Dad - not that he’s a killer, but he’s probably spent time around those types of people.”
While he wiped a napkin around his stubbled lips, he nodded slowly. “Where is your dad? Has he been coming around to check on you and Catalina?”
My head tipped up and I stopped myself from staring at the ceiling since that would give too much away.
I met Punc’s blue-eyed gaze. “He was at the funeral. And the next day he went behind my back to Mom’s lawyer.
” I hesitated. “Seeing as there was no money or property being left to him, he left the law office in a snit, and we haven’t heard from him since then. ”
“How do you know he left the office pissed?” Punc asked.
My head tipped to the side, as I thought about it.
“The receptionist called me that day. I suppose she wasn’t supposed to tell me, but when I’d been there prior to the funeral, she’d taken pity on me.
” I sipped my wine and set it on the table.
“Let’s not talk about my dad. Especially, since you have a much better relationship with yours. ”
Punc lowered his chin and frowned. “Not really.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
He let out a sharp breath through his nose. “Yeah, well, now that Alanis has her own family, she’s not around every time I’m at Mom and Dad’s. He can’t stand that I’m part of the Riot.”
“Really? Why?”
Punc’s expression filled with disbelief. “He says it’s because of Mom. She worries about me, but I think that’s bullshit. She’d worry about me regardless. He doesn’t like it because when I started prospecting years ago, I told him flat-out why I joined and that nearly brought us to blows.”
My eyes went wide. “You’re joking.”
He threw back the rest of his beer. “I’m not. But I think you had the right idea. Let’s not talk about our dads.”