Fluke

Bonus 6: How Far We'll Go

"I think I can manage that," I said.

"And don't take longer than half an hour, okay? We're on a time crunch."

"What? How are we suddenly on a time crunch when you were just complaining about how you don't want to do anything?"

"You have twenty-nine minutes now."

For someone who thought I had too much energy, he sure liked to add his own stress to the mix, too.

***

"A surprise date night," I said to myself as we pulled up to a Mexican restaurant. "You're my favorite person ever. I love you as much as I love tacos."

He smiled. "Yeah, I'm great. You really lucked out that we were stuck on an island together."

"I really did," I said. Of course, it wasn't easy getting to know each other, but when we did, it was like we both knew it was right. But that didn't mean that it wasn't a lot of work to keep being right for each other. We both had our immaturities and issues, but didn't everyone? What really mattered was that we tried to keep getting better for each other. And Logan and I were pretty damn good at that.

As he led me into the restaurant, we skipped right past the hostess's station to a table in the back of the restaurant. Before I could ask what was going on, I saw some familiar faces that I hadn't seen in a while: Jia, Brett, and even Darrell.

I let out a breath. "How did you manage to trick me into this?"

"I didn't trick you. It was a surprise. Now act happy," he said.

"I am happy. I just—"

Logan interrupted me. "You can clean whatever you want tomorrow, but tonight, you're gonna relax and have fun, dammit." He then spoke up to the group. "No Carter?"

Darrell shook his head. "He said he didn't want to come. Environments like this are too overstimulating sometimes."

Logan nodded. "I get it."

I definitely got it too. Logan knew damn well that I needed more than half an hour to emotionally prepare for the Paradise City crew. We were quite the rowdy bunch back in the day.

"How's everyone doing these days? I haven't seen you guys since our wedding," I said.

It wasn't the private ceremony I thought it would be, but it was better to share those moments with people I cared about. At least, I liked to imagine it was. I didn't have any way to know for sure.

Jia laughed. "I barely remember that day. No offense. I was just trashed. Beautiful wedding, though."

I put on a smile. An open bar made anything beautiful. "I remember how trashed you were. You threw up in one of the table centerpieces." I turned to the rest of the table. "To what do I owe this lovely surprise?"

"I was back in the area, and I wanted to say hi to my Paradise City people," Brett said.

"You came back to Maine from California in November?" I asked. "That's quite a downgrade."

Of course, moving away from the fresh Atlantic seafood in the first place was an even bigger downgrade for a chef like him. But I remembered him telling me that California was where he wanted to cook, and sure enough, he made it there as someone's private chef. He refused to tell me whose, which made it seem like it actually wasn't someone famous. Otherwise, he would have bragged nonstop out of that mouth he could never keep shut.

Brett shrugged. "It's a vacation, though, and I'll take whatever I can get. I don't remember the last time I could take any time off of work."

"Yeah, that's what field season is like. I spend half the year working my ass off, and I love every minute of it, and I then spend the other half bored as shit." I laughed.