Hunger gripped her tummy and craving took over. Cheese. She hummed and nodded. “Italian.”
“Sold,” he said, and nodded to his car. “I can follow you to your house and we can drive over together?”
“It’s a date,” she said, her stomach leading the way. “See you in a few.”
It’sadate?Like…
Fuck this was weird. Obviously, of course, but…
Ryder climbed in his rental car and started to call Haley. No, he was pretty sure Zoe mentioned Finn was working today, so she was probably enjoying a quiet evening, just she and baby Emerson.
When Zoe’s phone had been acting up—and subsequently replaced—last weekend, she’d given him Evan’s number in case of emergency. This was… sort of… not at all an emergency.
He fired up the engine and called Evan over Bluetooth as he pulled out of the parking space.
“Ryder?” Evan answered, as puzzled as Ryder could have guessed.
“Hi Evan,” he said easily.
“Everything okay? You made it to the ultrasound, I hope? Zoe’s okay?”
“All good, she’s good, I did,” he quickly answered, and waited at the end of the parking row for Zoe to pull ahead. “It went great.”
“Zoe sent me some pics of the ultrasound… am I right that it’s a little girl?”
Ryder grinned as it set in a little thicker. “Yeah. Yeah it is.”
“That’s great,” Evan said, leaving long pauses as he seemed to wait for Ryder to get to the point. “Areyouokay?”
Breath oddly uneven in his chest, Ryder scowled ahead, following Zoe in her massive truck. “We’re on our way to your place now, and Zoe’s going to hop in with me and we’re going out to the Italian place for dinner.”
“Good call. Zoe loves Italian, but none of the rest of us do, so she only gets to go when she ropes in Haley or Trace or someone.”
The last time Ryder had been to the Italian place, he’d hoped to rekindle his rapidly crumbling relationship with Claire. Mood lighting, intimate tables for two… “I guess. I don’t know. I know you’re going to say I should ask Zoe…”
“That’s not a good lead into whatever you’re going to ask me.”
“I know she was together with Raphe for a while, and they must have loved each other enough to get back together, and all I know is that they broke up. I have no idea what happened between them, if it was me or the baby or what. Fuck, it’s obvious I like Zoe, like, a lot. But, you know.” The more time he spent at work, the worse Ryder seemed to become at basic human interactions. Was this what had happened to his mother? Dizzy at the thought, he blinked it away. “I’m trying to be supportive of her, to not at all take any sort of boyfriend role, but now we’re going out to a romantic restaurant on a Friday night.”
“Oh,” Evan said sharply, and made an odd, stalling, awkward sort of throat clearing. “Fucking eh, Zoe,” he mumbled under his breath. “Look. You really should be talking to Zoe about this, not me.”
“I know.”
“But, honestly, Zoe sucks at relationships. Not that I’m one to talk,” Evan snorted a laugh.
“Same,” Ryder admitted and huffed a painful laugh.
“Look, it’s obvious that Zoe and you have a lot of… chemistry, I guess. You never saw her with Raphe, did you?”
“No. I haven’t seen Raphe in years.”
“Well… they fought. A lot. You know those couples who are miserable to be around, because they pick at each other constantly?”
“Oh, ouch. I can’t picture Zoe putting up with that.”
“We’ve all been in relationships where we found ourselves acting… not like ourselves.” Evan paused, and huffed a noisy breath.
Ryder waited, and realized Evan wasn’t expounding. “You okay?”
