“Yeah!”
“I’m always down for pavlova,” Cass says, fishing around in his pocket. “Kyle, do you want to grab a dozen for us? My treat.”
He holds his credit card across the table like it’s perfectly normal to hand your payment information to someone you just met. Chester looks thrown. “Oh. Uh, sure, Cass,” he says, gingerly taking the card. “Desi, do you want to stay with JJ and Cass?”
Desi pouts. “Okay,” she says moodily, crawling off his shoulders to plop down on the seat next to him. “Auntie Roma, can I have the rest of your steak pad thai?”
“Sure you can, kiddo,” Roma says, sliding it across the table.
Chester pushes himself to his feet, his eyes flickering in Obie’s direction. “Do you, um, want to come?”
His tone is pointed enough that Obie glances towards Pavlova Forever, gauging the distance. It might be just on the edge of twenty feet, but he thinks they should be fine—and, if worst comes to worst, he can always claim that he wants to add something extra to his order and follow Chester later. “Nah, I have to keep these bozos in line. Thanks, puppy.”
Chester’s jaw twitches at the pet name, but he manages to smooth it over quickly. “Cool. Be right back,” he says, striding off towards the food truck.
Ez waits until he’s out of earshot before rounding on Obie, her eyes narrowed.“Spill,Obadiah.”
Obie raises his eyebrows, taking a long sip of his drink. “Pulling out the full first name, huh? You mean business.”
“Obie,”Cass says, exasperated. To Obie’s surprise, he looks almost as eager for details as Ez does. “Come on, man! Where’d you get the human?”
“Yeah, Kyle seems cool,” JJ adds. “You two met at bowling, you said?”
Obie’s heart twists. Even though he knows he needs to keep Chester’s identity a secret, he still hates hiding something so important from JJ and Roma. “Yeah, we met at the alley. It was, uh, a pretty vanilla meet cute, to be honest. We were just at adjacent lanes and got to talking.”
Roma’s lips twitch. “After you admired his bowling throw, you mean?”
“I should clarify that bowling better than me isn’t too much of an accomplishment,” Obie says. “The bar is pretty much on the floor already. But yes, his ability to actually knock over pins was part of it.”
Ez squints at him, clearly unconvinced. “Seriously? That’s it? Obie, you’re one of the most untrusting demons I know. There’s no way you’re already comfortable enough with a human to introduce them to—” She gestures meaningfully around the table. “—tofamilywithout extenuating circumstances.”
Oh, if she only knew. “Well, it’s true,” Obie says, feeling the slightest bit defensive of the lackluster origin story for his himbo boy toy. “Look, not all of us can have dramatic enemies-to-lovers romances, okay? And not all of us want them. Some of us are perfectly content to meet people the normal way.”
Cass grins. “As in, the ‘not attempting to kill each other at first sight’ way?”
“Precisely,” Obie agrees.
Ez still looks suspicious. Obie’s smile starts to feel forced. There’s no way she could ever guess the truth, but if she thinks Obie is faking this relationship for another reason, she’ll be more primed to notice any slips when they inevitably happen.
Especially since Chester is an atrocious actor. To be fair, Obie didn’t give him much time to prepare for his role, but still.
Maybe Obie just needs to up the ante a bit. Right on cue, Chester wanders back to settle two trays packed with pavlova on the table, and impulsively, Obie drags the stupid hunter into his lap. “There you are, puppy.”
Chester freezes, mortified. “Obie,” he hisses, jabbing his elbow into Obie’s ribs. “What are you doing?”
“Being cute,” Obie says, raising his eyebrows in challenge at Ez. “See? Just because we never adopted a child or combated a magical crisis together doesn’t mean we can’t be cute.”
To his relief, Ez looks both highly entertained and slightly more convinced. “Never said you couldn’t.”
“Obie was just telling us how you two met,” Roma explains to Chester. “It was… a lot more tame than how I met Ez and how JJ met Cass.”
“Really?” Chester says, deliberately elbowing Obie again as he turns to face her. “Tell me more.”
To JJ’s clear indignation, Roma immediately launches into a wildly overdramatic version of howhemetCass.He protests over her descriptions, Cass and Desi jump in at periodic intervals, Ez sits back with a proud smirk?—
Chester looks like he’s hanging off every word. Obie’s good mood sours at the sight. He wouldn’t put it past Chester to be mining their stories for any details he—or the Sanctum—could use against them, and barring that, he’s probably trying to figure out when Cass and Ez “brainwashed” his friends.
Vindictively, he pulls Chester tighter against him, close enough that Chester’s arm ends up wedged between them. Chester shoots him a glare as he tugs it out and reluctantly winds it around the back of Obie’s neck.
