Four #2
“All the McEvoy children are so cheeky. The little girls especially.” He shrugged out of his jacket to reveal a nicely fitted black button-up.
“I love it.” I picked up the menu. “They won’t take shit from anybody.”
“The bond all the cousins have is pretty special. They really have each other’s backs.”
“I don’t have cousins I’m close with. I wish I did. But they’re all spread out all over the country, and my parents never made a point of helping us forge any kind of bond as kids. I mean, it’s tough when the parents work, kids have activities, and travel is so expensive, but it still sucks.”
“I didn’t have much of a relationship with these guys until now. I’m glad it wasn’t too late.”
A server with a lip ring on the left side and shaved head but purple died goatee approached us. “Hey guys, welcome. Can I grab you something to drink to start?” He placed two bingo dobbers and bingo cards on the table. “Game starts in about twenty minutes if you’d like to play.”
“Definitely,” Logan said. “I’ll have a pint of the San Camanez Belgian witbier, please.”
“I’ll get a glass of the Westhaven Moscato,” I replied, my gaze drifting to the plate of nachos that another server carried past us to a different table. My belly rumbled. I turned to Logan. “Can we get nachos?”
“Totally,” he said, nodding in approval before facing the server again. “And we’ll get the nachos. Loaded. With extra guac, too, please.” Then he turned to me. “Chicken or beef?”
“Chicken,” I said. “And jalapenos.”
“You got it,” the server replied with a smile before taking off to place our order.
The place was certainly hopping. I recognized a lot of people—a lot of locals—and waved or smiled at most of them.
“Awkward,” Logan said again, making me giggle. “It still doesn’t have any meaning for me.” He feigned horror. “What if it never does again?”
“That would be awkward,” I said, prompting us to both chuckle.
“Seriously, though, I don’t want this to be weird.
I’ve liked you since the day I arrived on the island.
And I’ve wanted to ask you out … I just …
didn’t think you felt the same.” His cheeks pinked up again, and he lifted one shoulder.
“You intimidate the crap out of me with your confidence. You’re definitely out of my league, Renée Brewster from Spokane. ”
That made me toss my head back and laugh. “I am not. You’re from Boston.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“The East Coast is home to all the Ivy League schools. To aristocrats and people whose families came over on the Mayflower. If anybody is out of anybody’s league here, I’m out of yours.”
“Uh, no. Just because I’m from Boston doesn’t mean my family is full of lawyers, doctors, and financiers.”
I cocked my head. “No? So what do your parents do then?”
“Here we are,” the server said, returning just as Logan’s expression turned guilty. The server placed our drinks in front of us. “Just the nachos tonight, or can I order you anything else?”
“Yam fries,” I said. “With the chipotle mayo, please.”
“You got it.” Then he disappeared.
“Hmm, Logan Conroy. What do your parents do?”
He rolled his eyes. “Okay, fine. My parents are lawyers.”
“Ha!” I barked out.
“And my oldest brother, Bill, is a doctor. But also the absolute dullest person on the planet. No sense of humor. No inflection in his voice. The man in a monotoned robot who puts people to sleep and makes a butt-load of money doing it.”
All I did was smirk.
“My middle brother, Stuart, is a lawyer at my parents’ firm. And my sister, Evelyn, is in finance on Wall Street.”
I nodded. “Right. So … you are New England aristocracy.”
“We’re not, though,” he pleaded. “Nobody came over on the Mayflower. Sure, we’re WASPs, but … I’m not like them. I’m the black sheep. The embarrassment. The disappointment.”
I knew a little something about being the black sheep. Taking a sip of my wine, I studied his face and the way it contorted into an expression of frustration. Not at me, though. At himself.
I decided to take pity on him. “I’m the baby and the black sheep, too.”
His brows lifted.
“I have two older sisters who are massive over-achievers. And while my parents love me—I know that—I can tell they don’t understand me. They don’t understand the choices I’ve made, or the direction I’ve decided to go with my life.”
He nodded. “Mine definitely don’t.”
“And while my parents aren’t lawyers like yours, they worked hard to give my sisters and me a better life than they had. They wanted us all to get educations and be self-sufficient.”
“Which you are …”
“I mean, yeah, I am. I’m doing my social work degree online, and even though I don’t own a house—what twenty-four-year-old does?”
“Especially in this day and age?”
“Right?”
“But I pay my rent, I buy what I want, when I want. I have a job I love, and am working on a career I know I’ll love.
They just don’t understand why I want to live on the island.
They don’t see it as a place of opportunity.
Both my sisters live in big cities—Camille lives in Seattle, has a doctor husband, and she’s the CEO of some advertising company, and Isla lives in Portland, and she and her husband are both very high up in the medical research field.
Then there’s me. I’m not married, I don’t have a degree, I live on some quirky hippy island, and if my parents knew I had a composting toilet, they’d probably lose their minds. ”
“Or be immensely proud of their innovative, think-out-side-the-box daughter?” he offered.
I shook my head and asked, “Would your parents be proud of you if you lived in a treehouse like me?”
“My parents weren’t proud of me when I was enrolled in a prestigious college and lived in a penthouse apartment.”
“Your nachos have arrived,” our server announced, bringing forth a massive oblong tray of triangle chips heaped with cheese, chicken, and goodness.
He set it down in front of us, just as someone tap-tapped the mic. “Check, check. All right, are we ready for some music bingo?”
The crowd cheered as Logan and I dove into our nachos.
“Well, at least we have that in common,” I said, scooping some salsa onto my plate. “We’re both black sheep, disappointments to our families.”
“Baaa,” he said, doing an impeccable sheep impression.
I nearly spat chips and salsa across the table at him.
This was shaping up to be a pretty great date. Just two black sheep, loaded nachos, and music bingo. Maybe I had nothing to stress over after all.