Page 83 of Set Me On Fire

I let out one shuddering breath, finally releasing the death grip my spare hand had on the edge of the table.

“We’re in,” Knox corrected, leaning forward.

I couldn’t meet his eyes, couldn’t take him in, nor Charlie as he did the same. It was tiny details that caught my attention instead. That one stray curl of Charlie’s hair that I wanted to wind around my finger, the way the seams of Knox’s coat strained across his shoulders, the shine of Noah’s motorcycle helmet that he’d left on the spare chair next to him, all of them fought for my attention. As I sucked in a breath to say something, anything, in response, the waitress returned.

“Your drinks.”

She seemed to sense the intense mood at the table, but moved around placing our glasses in front of us before grabbing out her order pad.

“Were you ready to order? Perhaps something small to start with?”

A self-help manual to get me through this, I thought. A blueprint for navigating a situation I had no experience in, but instead of blurting that out, I picked up my menu and looked it over. My stomach rumbled way too loudly. It’d been ignored or I’d been too queasy to eat much for days, but apparently my appetite had come back with a vengeance.

“It all looks so good.” I smiled at the waitress because the guys weren’t looking at the menus, but at me. “The lamb… Oh, the pizza looks amazing, but maybe the salad?” Another noisy rumble from my stomach. “Maybe the steak bites?”

“Get it all.” Knox now had the waitress’ entire attention. “All the things she mentioned as well as…” He gave the menu a cursory look. “The fish, the chicken and some garlic bread.”

“Make that two garlic breads,” Charlie said with a wink. “And can we get that out ASAP? I think everyone’s pretty hungry. If the rest of the dishes could come out afterwards for us to share, that’d be great.”

The waitress nodded and then disappeared into the kitchen. If my own experience with hospitality was anything to go by, it was to deliver our orders and then gossip about what she thought was going on at our table.

“You didn’t need to order all that food,” I told them.

“I’ve got it.” Noah threw his card down on the table.

“We’ve got this.” Charlie added his and then Knox couldn’t let the others outdo him. His card joined the pile.

“Is this where I grab mine out too?” I reached for my bag, but Charlie’s hand went around my wrist. A little caress there, his thumb leaving a burning trail behind before he pushed my hand away from my wallet.

“No.” That persistent smile faded then. “This is where you let us buy you dinner.”

“Right, right.”

If they were trying to sweep me off my feet, they were halfway there, but with my experience dating, I knew what love bombing was. Guys came on strong until they had your defences down, then walked all over your boundaries. I forced myself to pull away from both of them, folding my hands under my chin before regarding the lot of them.

“Well, I brought you here for a reason.” I let out a hopeless little laugh. “I’ve been trying all week. You must be wondering what the hell is going on. Why I ghosted, why I turned up weeks later to start a job at your work.” I forced myself to look up and into the eyes of each one of them, seeing intense interest but not much more. “We were drunk and had some fun, and that’s all I thought it’d ever be. It was hot?—”

“Really fucking hot,” Charlie rasped, but Knox shot him a dark look, shutting him up.

“But it was never going to be anything more.” My voice was growing firmer by the second. “I didn’t want to prolong things, make it awkward, so I did my walk of shame as fast as I could out of the station and figured that’d be the end of it.” This is when I began to falter. “I was on antibiotics for…” I did not owe them my medical history, I reminded myself. “It doesn’t matter. What does is despite being the daughter of a nurse, a woman who reminded me over and over of the different drugs that impair the pill’s efficacy, I said I was down for unprotected sex when I shouldn’t have. I was drunk, not thinking straight, because I probably wouldn’t have ended up in bed with any of you, let alone all three.”

“Do you regret it?” Noah was sitting back in his chair now, watching me steadily.

There was so much in that question I had to stop and think about it. I looked down, remembering everything, the way the three of them had made me feel. My memories were hazy, imprecise, but somehow that just made them hotter. Wouldn’t it have all been so much simpler if that’s where the story ended? But it didn’t, it really, really didn’t, so I forged on.

“No.” I met his gaze head on. “Not even for a second. With you, it felt like something had come full circle, like I got some kind of closure.” I smiled then, but his expression remained serious. “With the others…” It was hard to look at them like this, out of uniform, because the cool barrier of professionalism wasn’t there to protect us. My eyes slid down the open neck of Charlie’s shirt, and I knew just what lay beneath the white linen, just as I knew what Knox’s big hands felt like as they traced circles on my body, not the tablecloth. “It was a chance to live out a fantasy.”

I wanted to stop there, to stay right in that space. If I could do that, I could recapture the bliss I felt that night. Reality wasn’t like that, of course, so instead I forced myself to smile.

“But of course, reality had to come and bite me on the arse. I was feeling off all the way up until Christmas, and my mum always thinks any kind of stomach bug is pregnancy. She made me take a test, which now I think about it, why the hell did she have them stashed under the bathroom sink? That woman is prepared for anything. I did the test and?—”

“Garlic bread.”

The waitress returned, placing long wooden serving boards in front of us, laden with savoury smelling garlic bread. I grabbed a piece without thought, my body taking control.

“Thanks,” I replied with a smile.

The woman whirled away and went to serve other customers.

---