All You Need Is Love by Various

Author:Various
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

It was a grease fire, I learned later, small and fast and stinking. Nobody was hurt, but the damage in the kitchen was enough to close us down for the rest of the weekend. Dark, damp-looking stains crept up the walls like crooked fingers; the whole dining room reeked of oil and smoke.

My father put a hand on my shoulder as I sat alone in a booth a couple of hours later. He’d already sent Shelby and the rest of the waitstaff home. “I have a couple of things to finish up here,” he said. He looked exhausted; earlier I’d seen him munching Tums and I let myself worry, for one quick minute, about the stress on his heart. The idea that we could have lost the restaurant made me feel panicky and protective of the place and my father both. I thought of leaving for college in a few months and felt a pang of missing him, even though he was right in front of me. “Can you make it a little longer?”

“I can take her, Leo.” That was Sawyer, materializing out of nowhere like a ghost—I’d been half convinced he’d left, no good-bye or explanation, like that night in the hospital all over again. “I can drive Reena home.”

My father looked at Sawyer for a long minute, then back at me. Finally he sighed. “Straight home,” he said, and I knew he must feel even worse than he looked. “I mean it.”

“Straight home,” Sawyer promised. “Absolutely.”

I nodded, stood up, waved good-bye to my father. Sawyer pushed open the front door of the restaurant with one broad shoulder and swore softly as a blast of wind sliced inside. “Freezing,” he said—although it definitely wasn’t cold for any place besides Florida—and he took my hand so casually that I wondered if he even knew he’d done it. I swallowed and tried to ignore the petty contact, the shock waves it sent through my bones.

“Don’t you have a jacket?” he asked. He wrinkled his pretty nose as we hurried around the side of the restaurant to the parking lot.

“It was in the kitchen.” The sky looked heavy, full of thick, purple clouds.

“Fat lot of good it’s going to do you in there,” he said, opening the passenger door. “There’s a sweatshirt in the backseat.”

Kid had manners, at least, I thought. Lydia had made sure of that. “I’m okay,” I lied.

He slid behind the wheel, groped around in the backseat, and produced a gray hoodie. He looked annoyed. “Reena, can you forget your principles or whatever for one second and just take it? It’ll be a few minutes before the car warms up.”

He looked awfully good in the dark, and I found myself nodding. “Okay.”

“Good.” Sawyer stepped on the gas. “That wasn’t so hard, right?”

I didn’t answer. “It’s going to cost them a lot of money,” I said instead.

“That’s what insurance is for.”

“I guess.” I pushed a CD into the stereo. John Coltrane: A Love Supreme. I leaned my head against the window as the music started up.

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