“It’s never going to be as strong as my right hand.” It throbbed at night sometimes, a bone-deep ache.
“Wow.” The kid touched his fingers to Noah’s hand. “I never knew that.”
“Most folks don’t.”
He and Abe spent a few more minutes with the kid, and Noah gave the teen his number before they left. It wasn’t something he did often—kids tended to brag, and he had no intention of dealing with thousands of messages. But he didn’t think this kid would boast. Having the number would be enough for him. And if he did ever call, it’d be because he couldn’t figure something out.
Heading back down the street afterward, they made it to the restaurant right on time.
“This is bad.” Abe glanced at his watch with a scowl. “We’re being way too well behaved. What’s next? No shenanigans on tour? No raising hell? Punctuality is a slippery slope, my friend.”
Noah snorted. “Screw bad behavior. I want to eat.”
“Noah, Abe.” Luca Meluchi came over and shook their hands, his grip that of a man who spent his off time fixing up and flipping houses. “Like I told Abe, I squeezed in a table for you on the patio, but it’s kind of stuck in a corner.”
“Every seat here is the best in the house.” Noah grinned. “And forget about taking our orders. Just feed us.”
“Done,” Luca said with a laugh, and led them out the side door and onto the patio.
Seeing the soft semi-darkness of it, the tables romantically small and lit only with candles, Noah glanced at Abe. “Don’t try anything.”
“You should be so lucky,” the bigger man said as they were shown to their shadowy and tight corner, the table right up against the back wall of the restaurant. “You’re not my type.” With that, Abe grabbed the seat that put his back to the rest of the people out here, which meant Noah ended up with his to the restaurant wall, his view of the other tables uninterrupted.
It was the seat he’d have chosen given first pick—and he knew full well Abe was aware of that.
Luca came out right then with a loaded antipasto platter and they dug in.
“I swear this is the only place I actually eat eggplant,” Noah said, reaching for more.
“I’m all about the olives, man. And those weird pickled pepper things.”
“Those are goo—” Noah froze, his eyes on the woman who’d just stepped out onto the patio.
Never would he mistake Kit’s profile for someone else’s. About to raise his hand, alert her to his and Abe’s presence, his brain finally caught on to the fact that she had a male hand on her lower back. That hand was attached to a man who looked vaguely familiar.
“What’s so interesting?” Abe looked over his shoulder, blew out a breath. “Dude works with Kit, doesn’t he? I remember him from that awards ceremony.”
Noah’s brain clicked. “He wrote the script for Last Flight—she liked working with him.” All at once, he could remember every good thing Kit had said about her date. “Terrence Gates.”
“Maybe they’re working together again.” Abe returned his attention to the platter.
“Yeah, Kit mentioned a new project,” Noah said, but from the way the guy had just reached out to touch Kit’s hand across the table, it was obvious this was a date. He knew he should stop looking, stop watching, but he couldn’t help himself. The candlelight caressed Kit’s face, made her skin glow and her eyes sparkle. Or maybe the glow was because of Gates.
They hadn’t sparkled for Noah in a long time.
“Shit man, we can leave, eat somewhere else.”
He jerked his attention to Abe’s keen gaze. “No. If we do, we’ll only draw attention to ourselves.” Right now, their position made them all but invisible to Kit and her date.
Abe leaned in close, the candlelight throwing shadows on his face. “Then stop staring at her.” A grim order. “I don’t know what you did to mess it up with Kit, but you did. Now live with it.” Pausing to take a drink of the ice-cold water one of Luca’s brothers had placed on the table as they took their seats, he said, “She looks happy. You want to change that?”
Noah’s hand clenched around his own glass. “No.” Forcing his gaze off Kit, he tried to keep it on the food. He knew it was delicious, but he couldn’t taste a bite because he was trying so hard not to look at the only woman who had ever been his friend.
Leaving ten minutes after Kit and her date finally headed out, Noah and Abe didn’t speak much. When he would’ve dropped the other man off at his place, Abe shook his head. “You know what I learned when I ended up drinking myself into the hospital?”