Page 23 of Drifting Hearts
I climbed into the truck and turned the key. “Charles said there’s a good place to grab lunch on the way out of town.”
“Charles was super into you,” Clayton quipped as he fastened his seatbelt.
“I—what?” I went over the interaction in my head, but saw no spark of interest there from Charles. “I think you’re mistaken.”
“I think you’re too straight to notice when a dude is checking you out.”
Unable to stop myself, I barked out a laugh. “I’m not straight. I am, however, a clueless bisexual and it wouldn’t be the first time I missed a cue like that.”
My comment stunned Clayton into silence. I knew he wasn’t a homophobe, what with his best friend being gay. He seemed genuinely pleased about Archer’s happiness in his relationship with Shane.
“You’re bi?”
“Mom had three sons and none of us are straight. Shane is gay. I’m bi, and Brodie’s motto is hearts before parts.”
Clayton snorted. “How romantic.”
“What about you?” I chalked the sudden urge to know where Clayton fell on the Kinsey scale up to the fact that I’d shared about my bisexuality. And my cluelessness when people of any gender were flirting with me.
“Me? Oh, gay. Girls are friends not food.” Clayton paused, looking horror-stricken. “I did not just say that.”
“Oh, but you did.” I laughed, both at what Clayton said and the look on his face when he realized it. When Clayton loosened up a little,he wasn’t bad to be around. For days now, I’d tried to hold on to my old animosity for him, but it had turned to sand that slipped through my fingers. I could grasp it for a short time, but couldn’t hold on to enough of it to matter.
“Before all this hit the fan, were you seeing anyone?” I asked in case there was someone he’d wanted to get in touch with, I told myself. It had nothing to do with the little hot rock of jealousy burning away inside me, the one that I ignored.
“Ha. No,” Clayton answered as though the idea of it was absurd. “There was a guy a long time ago, but we met when Archer and I were trying to get the business off the ground and he didn’t like not being my top priority all the time, so I cut him loose.”
“I’m sorry.”
“What about you? I have a hard time believing that you’re single.”
“Well, believe it. The last serious relationship I had ended long before Shane won the lottery. She wanted different things. You know, the big house, the ten kids. A farm. That’s not the life I wanted. I had a couple short-term things. One with a firefighter, but he was in the closet, so that didn’t go anywhere.”
“Is that the reason you haven’t dated since?”
I shrugged. “I sort of see my life as being divided by that event, you know. Before the money and after the money. After he won, he suddenly had a whole host of people who wanted to be his friend. And by proxy, so did I. It was easier to just stick with the small circle of people I was already comfortable with than to risk branching out.”
Without realizing it, we’d passed the restaurant I’d intended to stop at. I turned around at the gas station and headed back.
“We could’ve kept going.”
Clayton was forever acting like his presence was an inconvenience. Some of that might be because of the way I’d treated him when he wasfirst dropped into my life. I wasn’t proud of the fact that I’d judged him on his past and on the opinions of other people and not given him a chance from the start.
“I just lugged around a two thousand pound birdbath. I’m starving.”
“It was not two thousand pounds.”
“It wasn’t exactly made of feathers.”
The parking lot was packed, forcing me to choose a spot around the side of the building. “I can get a couple things to go if you didn’t want to eat in.”
Clayton rolled his eyes and unbuckled his seatbelt. “I could stretch my legs. Besides, if we’re back too soon, your mom will be mad at us for rushing our little outing. Who knows where she’ll send us next.”
“The moon. I hear they’re selling moon dust. Pick up only.”
Clayton turned his head and looked at me, eyes wide with shock.
“Did you just make a joke?”
