“No, yes. I dunno.”
“Girl trouble?” Miller slid into the seat across from him, wiping his hands on his apron.
Kyle looked up at him. “No,” he lied.
“We don’t need to get into specifics, son, but how about we stick to the truth.”
“Okay, yeah. It’s about a girl.”
“I’m gonna wager a guess that if it’s evoking this kind of emotion, you got pretty strong feelings for her.”
“I don’t know what I’m feeling. I mean, I do, but, I don’t know.”
Miller chuckled, relaxing back into his seat, sliding down a bit. “That pretty much sums up how I felt when I met Marta. She twisted me into knots. One minute I was high as a kite, the next, I was raging because someone said ‘excuse me’ to her on the street.”
“So what’d you do about it?”
“I told her how I felt. Told her I was crazy about her and I had no idea what I was doing, but whatever it was, I wanted her there by my side. When she told me she felt the same, well, that was easily the best damn feeling in the world,” he sighed, taking a moment to relish the memory. He looked back up and straight at Kyle. “Your girl share your feelings?”
“I’m not sure. I thought so, but, now, now I’m confused.”
“Well, son, you’re never going to be anything but confused unless you remove your head from your ass and go talk to her. And I mean really talk with her, let her be heard. I don’t mean just listening. Hear what she is telling you, with her words and her heart.”
The kitchen door burst open again and Dalton plowed through, making his way over to Kyle.
“What the fuck was that, dude? Your granny panties in a wad?” he accused, stopping dead in front of Kyle.
Kyle stood up, billowing out his chest like an angry bird trying to defend its nest. “Really? You’re gonna ask me what the fuck that was? I think you’ve got plenty of explaining to do yourself.”
“Why don’t you boys take this out back? I am probably not the person who you should be having this discussion in front of,” Miller said, not bothering to get up from the table.
“Good call,” Kyle ground out. He turned, stomping out the back door of the kitchen, with Dalton on his heels.
Once they were both outside and the door had closed, they turned to face each other, arms crossed, scowls across their faces.
“Kyle, do you really, for one fucking second, think that there was something to that back there?”
“I don’t know what to think anymore.”
“Well, whose fault is that?”
“Mine, damn it, I get that,” Kyle shouted.
“Something you wanna share?”
Kyle turned and paced a little in the alleyway. He knew he could trust Dalton. He was his first mate and, really, his closest friend. He just wasn’t so sure about saying the words out loud. But he supposed he was going to have to at some point, and better to Dalton than to any of her uncles.
“I kissed Drea last night,” he answered, looking up to meet Dalton’s gaze.
“Fuck yeah, dude!” Dalton held out his fist. Kyle bumped it with his. “About fucking time!”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Seriously? Kyle, we’ve been friends for three years. You think I don’t see the way you look at her. Like she walks on friggin’ water?”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, oh. So, what’s this mean?”
