Secrets We Whisper in the Moonlight (Decisions in Durham Book 2) Read online

  Except her eyes were suspiciously glossy like she was trying to hold back tears.

  Maybe that was the problem. We needed to stop hiring nice people and stack our shifts with sassy assholes who could survive the absolute cesspool that was food service. Humanity was all nice and fine until Karen didn’t get the drink she ordered. Or Dave’s salad dressing was put on his salad after he specifically asked for it on the side. Heaven forbid Samantha had to deal with fucking gluten when she was mildly gluten intolerant.

  It wasn’t that I had an issue with people not eating gluten. I applauded them. It took a lot of self-control—that I didn’t possess incidentally—not to eat gluten. But it was how people went about it that truly killed someone’s soul.

  After almost four years in this business, I knew two things. One, the lower-than-minimum-wage server bringing food to your table didn’t have malicious intentions to kill you with an overdressed salad or vodka when you asked for gin in your martini. Two, whatever mistakes were made in my bar were seldom life or death. Unless that gluten-intolerant person was actually anaphylactic. Then okay, fine, maybe then, and only then, the consequences were dire. But still accidental death at best.

  Most people were trying to do the right thing. And most people were not intentionally going around fucking up random strangers’ lives on purpose.

  Maybe sadistic assholes out there took their revenge on the unsuspecting food service people. And obviously, serial killers walked among us or whatever. But we tried really, really hard not to hire any of those people.

  “You look tired,” Will said by way of greeting when he stopped over to see what I wanted.

  I smoothed my expression and put the many problems with society, and our humble little piece of it, out of my mind. That was the kind of thought train that deserved alcohol and chocolate. And I had neither right now.

  “I’m going to run out with Jonah and grab supper. Want anything?”

  It was like we’d swapped expressions. Now he looked tired and depressed. “Must be nice,” he grumbled. “How’d you get Jonah to want to do something?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. He offered.”

  His dull eyes narrowed sharply. “Why didn’t he ask me? I’m his friend. Not you.”

  His question was a rusty knife to my kidneys. I wanted to scream. And a buried, younger version of me wanted to cry. “Don’t be an idiot. It’s just supper. I’m hungry. And I’ve been working all day.”

  My answer did not appease him. “Me too.” The difference was that he was still working. “Where are you going?”

  “I don’t know. I told him to pick. But knowing Jonah, probably someplace new and trendy.” He continued to pout, but I didn’t have patience for him right now. “What’s with the scowl?”

  “I just don’t know when you and Jonah became better friends than him and me.”

  The eye roll following his woe-is-me comment practically pushed my eyeballs out of my head. He was being needy and annoying, and he knew it. But I probably still shouldn’t have said, “Well, you have a girlfriend now. What did you expect?”

  His eyes almost bugged out of his head while he processed my low-key burn. It was on the tip of my tongue to apologize to him, but then my phone dinged with a text from Jonah. He was pulling up front.

  He would have waited for me to sort this out with Will. But I was so pissed at my brother and this possible second bar. So pissed.

  So instead of acting like a mature grown-up and smoothing things over right then and there, I said, “I’ll probably have him drop me at home afterward. So I won’t be coming back here. I’ll Uber to work or bum a ride with Charlie tomorrow. Case can make you something if you’re hungry.” Then I tapped the bar and stalked out. He called after me, but the bar was too crowded and loud for me to make out what he said.

  The wind was chilly outside the stifling heat of the packed bar. I tugged my leather jacket closed in front of me and shuffled in my two-inch black pumps to Jonah’s sleek navy blue Mercedes. Although it was a couple years old, it was new to him this year. Jonah was a responsible adult and didn’t buy brand-new cars. But it was so fancy on the inside and looked pristine because he was anal-retentive when taking care of his things.

  This thing especially. Everything seemed to light up at my touch. And the seats were butter soft. I’d only been in it a handful of times, but every time he gave me a ride, I felt like I was in something that belonged in the future.

  He was waiting with a friendly smile as I slid in and closed the door carefully behind me. I wanted to slam it. And then slam it again. But for Jonah’s sake, I was gentle.

  I tried to match his warm optimism, but the weight of dealing all wrong with Will was crushing me.

  His brow furrowed, and he frowned. “What’s the matter?”

  At his question, hot tears pushed at the corners of my eyes. I forced them back, refusing to let them fall. This wasn’t something to cry over.

  It was just that . . . his kindness was so unexpected. Between Case and Will, I had been wound tight, and I was ready to fight someone. I wanted snappy words and sharp claws. But here was Jonah, soft and sweet and ready to catch my mess.

  I ignored the familiar fluttering in my gut. It belonged to a long-buried butterfly that had been with me as long as Jonah had been in my life. It used to demand a whole lot more attention. But that was years and years ago. A different life, practically.

  A different me, definitely.

  “Will can be really annoying,” I told him with a tired sigh. “I know he’s like your . . . ride or die or whatever. But he bugs the bejeezus out of me.”

  His lips twitched on one side. “I don’t know what you mean by ride or die, but I know he can be a total asshole when he wants to be.”

  I bounced back against the seat in a huff, releasing a whoosh of breath. “Has he told you he’s thinking about opening a second bar?”

  His eyes about fell out of his head, and his mouth opened in a way that was so dramatic for him and so un-staged that I knew my answer. “I had no idea. A second bar? Are you serious? Did he tell you this?”

  I already regretted opening my mouth. Because Will hadn’t actually told me this. And while the information had come from a very reliable source, it wasn’t the source. So that made this gossip. And maybe totally needless and unnecessary gossip. But I had been stewing on it for twenty-four hours, and despite Claire’s encouragement that I talk to Will, I hadn’t. And Jonah knew Will better than anybody.

  “Ada overheard him and Lola talking about it. I guess he was picking her brain and figuring out logistics.”

  He bounced back against his seat too, staring ahead through the windshield. “I told you she was no good.”

  I slid him a sideways glance and watched his lips do that twitchy thing again. “I doubt it was her.” That fateful drunken night when Will confessed all his secret pre-bar plans to me played through my head like a record stuck on repeat.

  It was his turn to shoot me an unbelieving look. “You really think Will would go behind your brother’s and your backs and open a bar with his girlfriend? Whom he has known for a total of three months?”

  It was much more than three months, but I wasn’t going to argue with him. At least not tonight when I wanted it to sound as improbable as possible.

  He added, “Will would never do you dirty like that. He’s spent his entire life looking out for you and Charlie. He’s not going to quit now even if he’s dating an evil witch.”

  I shouldn’t have laughed. I really did like Lola. And, apart from this new thing, I was really happy for Will. She softened him. She gave him a broader purpose than simply living and breathing Craft, something he’d been lacking in his life. And she seemed to genuinely love him. And Will had not had enough love in his life.

  But that said, Jonah’s total dislike for her was so surprising it was hard not to be entertained by it.

  So I laughed, and I felt lighter and less agitated afterward.

  “You’re
probably right. Next time I see her, I’ll throw a bucket of water her way and solve that problem real quick.”

  His gaze narrowed on the road. “You make jokes, but when she flies away with your brother tied to the back of her broom, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  The stress and tension I’d been drowning in melted into something soft and squishy, warming my entire body. I took a deep, relaxed breath and settled deeper into the car seat and this happier mood. “Where are you taking me for supper?”

  He took a series of turns before answering. “Well, my original plan was sushi. But I feel like we need comfort food after Will’s mutiny.”

  I hummed my approval. Jonah had a lot of things going for him and had won my loyalty in about a hundred different ways. Still, his ability to feed my food mood was his best quality. It was a knack he’d always had. And I wasn’t sure where he’d gotten it from.

  His mother was far from maternal, and he wasn’t exactly a chef—at least not like his other friends. But he had this instinct with food that was close to a spiritual gift level of miraculous. When I was in high school, I would come home after a bad day, and he would quietly get up from playing video games or working on homework with Will and make me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. After a really hard, long day, they are still the thing I make.

  When my dad died, while we were planning the funeral and Charlie and Will were fighting about everything, he snuck me out of my mom’s house and took me to get waffles at this shitty little diner my dad used to love. Two years ago, after I’d gotten dumped for the third time that year—it had been a mix of bad taste in men and being too dedicated to the bar to make any of the relationships serious—he’d brought chocolate milkshakes and my favorite chicken fingers and french fries with a big side of gravy to the bar and locked us in my office until I was three hundred pounds heavier and no longer depressed.

  He was equally intuitive about what drinks I liked.

  So it shouldn’t have surprised me that he’d read my mood and figured out the perfect meal to appease it. But how could anyone get used to that?

  “Vera Quinn has her food truck parked downtown tonight. Foodie is all about the classic comfort food. Does that work?”

  “I love that truck,” I told him, ignoring the way my misty eyes blurred.

  He smiled, and I turned the radio up; we small-talked and mumbled lyrics for the rest of the ride. By the time he finally found parking down the street from Foodie, I had been able to shake off the last of my bad mood and misgivings about Will’s intentions.

  “It’s kind of cold out,” Jonah said with the car idling. “Do you want me to order and bring it back?”

  “I’ll be okay,” I assured him. “I’m tough.”

  He didn’t argue, but he also didn’t look convinced. He shut his car off, zipped his jacket up, and said, “Okay, let’s go.”

  We bolted out of his car and shuffle-ran down the block to the food truck. The bike shop behind it was aglow with lights and crammed with people. There must be an event tonight, and the food truck was there for it.

  “Are you sure it’s open to the public?” I asked, my breath turning the air white, thanks to the cold. “Or is it here for some event?”

  “I follow them on Insta,” Jonah said smoothly. “They said they’d be here tonight. Their specials are curry chicken potpies and shepherd’s pie with ground lamb.”

  I started salivating immediately. “I’m going to get one of everything.”

  He chuckled and then slowed as we approached the short line in front of the truck. People stood around waiting for food and to order, stomping their feet and rubbing their hands together to survive the cold. Durham certainly wasn’t the coldest place on earth, and we hardly got snow, but anything below sixty degrees felt icy to me.

  Jonah’s phone pinged while we were standing there, and he pulled it out to check it. I watched his expression while he read the text, trying to interpret how his lips pressed together in a frown.

  I didn’t try to even hide my nosiness most of the time. For as long as I could remember, I had been tagging along with Will, Charlie, and Jonah. If I didn’t demand to know what they were talking about, they’d never have included me in a single conversation. Especially when we were younger, but even nowadays too.

  But when it came to texts and phone calls, I at least made a minimal effort to mind my own business.

  Well, sometimes anyway.

  “Is it Will?” I asked when he tucked his phone back into his pocket without replying.

  He blinked, looking down at me as if he’d forgotten I was there. “Is what Will?”

  I jutted my chin toward the general direction of his chest. My hands were preoccupied with being shoved into my pockets. “The text. I told him I wasn’t going to bring him back food, so he was pissed.”

  “Oh, no, it wasn’t Will. It was one of my dating apps.”

  I nearly swallowed my tongue. “One of your dating apps?”

  A sheepish grin twisted his lips. “I mean . . . whatever, you know what I mean. You’re the one who keeps sending me new accounts to sign up for.”

  I took a step closer to him, trying to get him to block some of the wind. The line slowly moved, and I needed Jonah to shield me from the cold. Compared to the whipping wind and frigid air, his body was warm and cozy.

  I stepped even closer to him, leaning my shoulder against his bicep. “Keep me warm,” I murmured.

  He stretched out his arm, wrapping it around my back and pulling me into him. “We’re almost there.”

  Tipping my head back to keep an eye on his expressions and mouth tilts, I said, “So are they working?”

  He stared straight ahead, his gaze fixed on the food truck cashier. I knew he was being purposely vague when he asked, “Are what working?”

  “The dating apps.”

  He made that frowny face again. “I don’t know. Yes. But also no? There are girls . . . but I don’t know . . . it’s hard to find someone I have stuff in common with.”

  It was my turn to frown. Hard to find someone he has stuff in common with? This was Jonah Mason. He was so easygoing and chill. He liked almost everything. Food and alcohol were obviously on the top of his list. But he also ran every day, went hiking, played golf, liked competitive poker and card games, regularly beat me in Scrabble or checkers or whatever other board game I could coerce him into playing, read actual books, watched the news way more than was healthy, and had recently started teaching himself how to infuse his own alcohol. It had been hit-or-miss so far. But his hits had been really great. It was only that time he tried coriander and anise that was really terrible and should never be repeated as a flavor profile as long as mankind walked the earth.

  “What do you mean? What kind of girls don’t have anything in common with you?”

  He looked down at me, startled and maybe a little offended. “What does that mean?”

  “I’m just saying, you like normal stuff. How hard is it to find a girl who likes trying new restaurants and watching twelve hours of old episodes of Survivor Man in a row?” I shrugged.

  He chuckled, his mood settling. “I don’t watch twelve hours of Survivor Man at a time.”

  I chose not to respond. He definitely did. Well, he’d put it on and then do other stuff around his apartment. But it was literally always on. He loved Les Stroud with an unnatural obsession.

  “Be that as it may,” I said, “you’re easy to talk to, easy to look at, and from what I hear, easy to sleep with. You think you’d be the perfect guy on a dating app.”

  “Hey, I’m not—”

  “Can I help you?” a perky brunette with aqua tips on her bobbed haircut asked from the window. I knew Vera enough to know this wasn’t her. Had she hired staff to run her food truck? I knew she and her husband, Killian, were either planning to open a second restaurant or they just had. I was impressed that they had hired staff for the food truck too. Business was either really great or really desperate. Only time, and my chicken
potpie, would tell.

  “I’ll take a chicken potpie,” I told her decisively. She started to ring in my order. “And the shepherd’s pie,” I added quickly. Jonah made a snorting noise, so I looked up and glared at him. “What? I like leftovers.”

  “I know,” was all he said in response to me. The cashier looked up expectantly. “I’ll have the same,” he told her. He was already pulling out his credit card before I could talk him out of paying for both of us.

  The cashier looked down the line and stepped back to talk to the chef before she finished our order. “We only have enough for one of the shepherd’s pies. I’m sorry, we were busier than we thought.”

  I felt Jonah sulk behind me at the same time I made a pouty face. “You can have it,” I told him. “Since you’re buying.”

  “You want to share it? We might not have leftovers, but I can’t eat it all myself.”

  “Sure.”

  He smiled at me, secretly laughing at how easily I was swayed by food. He handed over his card to the cashier, and we moved down the line to wait by the pickup window. My body had started to shiver all over, and my hands were officially numb.

  “We’ll have to eat in your car,” I told him through chattering teeth. “I can’t stay out here for much longer.”

  “I told you to wait in the car,” he tsked.

  “I mean, I’m totally fine.” My frozen body jerked in protest, but I didn’t acknowledge it. “I’m just saying, our food will get cold.”

  “Right,” he said with an eye roll. “How about we just take it back to your place? We can watch Survivor Man and analyze my online dating profiles.”

  I couldn’t help the big smile that stretched my ice-cold cheeks. I briefly thought about Will’s words that Jonah was his friend but didn’t let it dilute my joy. Because even after being close to Jonah for years, something was so sweetly satisfying every time he chose to spend time with me. Sometimes, he chose only me.

  It probably had something to do with a latent inferiority complex after being the tagalong little sister my entire childhood. But I couldn’t help feeling like I won something every time he picked me.