“Don’t even think about it,” he grumbled.
“What? I wasn’t gonna say a thing,” I remarked, making a show of locking my lips and tossing the key over my shoulder.
“Why don’t I believe that?” he said.
“Because you have a suspicious mind.”
“Around you? Hell yeah, I do.”
“And that round went to Kit,” Steel said, chuckling at theback and forth between us.
“Wait, how did I get sucked into this game?” I replied. “I’d planned to sit safely over here and watch how it all played out.”
The last thing I expected was their simultaneous response ofcollateral damage. At least the afternoon would be amusing, especially since I was going to get to spend it with them.
“If we could focus on the song for a moment, I was thinking warbling hammer and pulls with an uneven drumbeat and cymbal crashes, like bodies slamming into a metal trashcan, bodies and steel hitting the ground. Little beats, like giggles and laughter, so the whole song plays like a drunken night shambling up the avenue,” I declared.
“Fine, then you’ve got to make that guitar wail like sirens as the cops close in.”
“Bet.”
With a creature feature on mute on the flatscreen, we started working out how to accomplish the things we’d challenged each other to do. When the knock came to signal that our food had arrived, I started to get up, but Steel held his hand up and motioned for me to keep playing while he went to the door to sign for it. I didn’t stop until I’d achieved something close to the woo, woo, whine of the patrol cars back in the city and threw in a high-low series of chords to mimic the rhythm of an ambulance siren too. No Friday night in New Bedford was complete without that sound.
By then, Steel had placed each of our dome-covered trays on the coffee table in front of us and taken the television off mute, so we had something to listen to while we ate.
“We might have to change the name of this one to drunk and out of control,” Kit suggested as he plucked the first chicken wing off his plate and dunked it so far into the bowl of ranch dressing he’d asked for that I started to think he was trying to drown the damned thing.
I honestly hadn’t known what to think when he’d asked for a bowl instead of just an extra container, but watching him swirl that drumstick around in his bowl convinced me that he’d use itall by the time he was through.
I’d opted for a salad topped with steak, double crunch shrimp, and a bunch of croutons doused with a mound of creamy Italian dressing that coated everything on my plate. I caught him eyeing my food the way I’d been checking out his and realized that between us, we could bankroll a salad dressing factory.
“Enjoy a little food with your dressing?” Steel quipped as he poured what looked like a cup of blue cheese dressing all over his burger.
“Uh-huh,” Kit remarked, pointing across the table at him. “Like you’re any better.”
“Guilty,” Steel muttered before taking a bite, blissfully sighing around the food in his mouth.
“And not the least bit ashamed of it, either,” I snickered as he grinned at me.
“Nope.”
Chapter 20
(Steel)
“Okay, now what the hell are we supposed to be doing here?” I asked as we stepped out of the SUV and into a packed parking lot full of people lining up beside an illuminated booth.
“It’s a Texas tradition,” Rebel explained. “Jaws on the Water.”
“On the…is that why I’m wearing swim trunks?"
“Didn’t think you’d want to float around in jeans,” Rebel replied as Kit stepped out beside him inIncredible Hulkboard shorts.
It didn’t shock me to seeThoron Rebel's; these two had a thing for superhero movies. What surprised the hell out of me was seeing the giant movie theater screen on the opposite side of the lake after we’d been handed our inner tubes.
When Rebel had proposed a night out doing something relaxing beneath the stars, this was not what I’d envisioned.
“I’ve been dying to do this since I first heard about it,” Rebel said as we headed for the water. “Come on, let’s see how close we can get.”