Jeff froze, but no one was even looking at him. Rufus was driving, Justin was leaning against his shoulder, and Kara was sunbathing, face tipped toward the sky. It made him brave, or maybe stupid. “Carter’s like that. Even the embarrassing stories just make you want to fall in love with him.”
“Hmm,” Jeri said, then challenged, “prove it.”
This time Jeff selected the story of eight-year-old Carter attempting to save a dying plant in his mother’s garden only to discover, one very painful rash later, that it was poison oak.
Jeff paid for the gas when they got back to town and bought everyone dinner to boot, and they sat on the patio at the restaurant until it got dark. By the time he returned to the cottage, he had four new numbers in his phone and reassurance in the knowledge that he did still know how to make friends, actually.
He showered off the lake water and fell into bed.
The next day he really did have to get groceries. He’d gone through the meager supplies the fridge could hold, and he needed eggs and milk and yogurt and cereal, among other things. After a breakfast of stale toast with only one egg made him feel like a sad hobbit, he went into town.
A quick peek inside the store confirmed that Georgia was working. Hopefully she’d continue to be cool. Jeff took a basket from the corral by the door and headed for the refrigerated section.
Because Willow Sound was a small town currently conspiring to make Jeff believe in a sadistic god, Carter was already there, sunglasses clipped in the V-neck of his clingy T-shirt as he double-checked to make sure his eggs weren’t broken.
“How many dozen do you eat each morning, again?” Jeff asked idly, bumping against him as he reached for his own carton. “Can’t remember the lyric.”
Carter made a face at him and bumped him back twice as hard. Fortunately Jeff hadn’t picked up a carton yet. “Shouldn’t you still be in bed? I thought you rock stars were allergic to mornings.”
“Don’t remind me.” It felt downright unnatural to be awake and doing things at this hour. “I take it this means you have two days off from naturalism? In a row? On a weekend, no less?” Jeff wasn’t as diligent about checking his eggs for cracks as Carter; a cursory glance sufficed. Not obviously broken. He put them in his basket.
Carter snorted. “No. Night shift.”
Jeff could feel his face contorting into an expression of extreme horror. “You have the night shift? Whose idea was that? Aren’t you, like, the boss? Don’t they know you fall asleep by ten?”
“Are you ever going to let that go?” He’d dropped off at nine thirty at a sleepover once when Jeff was thirteen. “I told you, I worked all day, and then I had baseball! I was a growing boy.”
Oh boy, here it comes.
“You know, maybe if you’d gone to bed a little earlier—”
“I wouldn’t have ended up such a shrimp,” Jeff pronounced along with him, rolling his eyes as he added a tub of butter to his basket. “My height—which is completely normal for a man, by the way, you’re the freak here—couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the fact that neither of my parents was tall.”
“Definitely the sleep,” Carter said sagely.
Uh-huh. They moved together to the next section and fell naturally into step. “So do you just not ever take days off?” Jeff paused in front of the healthy cereal. The store didn’t carry his favorite brand, and he wasn’t familiar with one of the two options they did have. “Hey, do you eat this?”
“Take the Morning Crisp,” Carter advised, grabbing a box for himself… and then he moved on to the next shelf without answering the first question.
Jeff smelled an evasive maneuver. “So that’s a ‘no comment’ on the days off?” he called as Carter rounded the endcap to go to the next aisle.
Two steps later he almost ran right into him as Carter did an abrupt about-face and beelined back down the cereal aisle.
Jeff blinked. “Where’s the fire? Is someone asking about your self-care routine in aisle three?”
Carter gently but firmly took his elbow and marched him down toward the other end. Jeff let it happen, utterly bemused and bursting with curiosity. “Just come with me. Please.”
It wasn’t like Jeff was putting up resistance. “Where are we going?”
“Small change of plan,” Carter said. “Do you mind coming back later?”
“Like how much later?” They were in sight of the exit now. “I need food for lunch. My bread is stale.”
“I will hand-deliver you groceries for two weeks if you leave with me right now.”
But now Jeff’s curiosity was piqued. “When are you going to have time to buy groceries for me? You barely even have time to sleep.”
He’d stopped, and now Carter was facing him, shoulders hunched a little like he was hiding. “Jeff—”
