The Starter Boyfriend by Tina Ferraro Read Free Book Online

customer, and pretty much dropped something myself. My chin on the floor. Because no way could I wrap my mind around what I was seeing: Adam, here in the store.
    Was he planning to set aside his surfer duds for one night, and don a high-styling tuxedo for his date with Saffron? If so, he must want her bad .
    “O.M.G., look what the tide rolled in.”
    “Yeah, it’s the Big Kahuna.”
    Kahuna: God of surf, sand and sun. Adam was nothing if not full of himself. “What can I do for you, Oh Mighty One?”
    He stuffed his hands in his board short pockets and smirked. “I’m thinking you could make me look like one of those guys from ‘Ocean’s 11.’”
    I rolled my eyes. The thing was, with his sun-bleached hair, cleft chin and baby blues, he wasn’t that far from a younger, shaggy Brad Pitt. No way I was pumping up his ego any further with that. “Oh, planning to head to Vegas and rob a casino?”
    “Later, maybe.” He tilted his chin back as if to study my face. “For now, I’m thinking a quick lunch with you.”
    While the fact he wasn’t here as a customer did disappoint me, it was totally trumped by his lunch invitation.
    Now that he was with Saffron—well, I assumed he was with her—he suddenly wanted to pal around with me?
    “Go on,” Phillip said, rising up like a jack-in-the-box from behind the display counter. I’d kind of forgotten he was even in the room. “I’m sure the rush is over.”
    “Thanks,” I mumbled, and followed the Big Kahuna to the door. “Be back soon.”
    “Take your time!”
    Outside in the sunshine, Adam and I headed for the crosswalk. I had a pretty good idea where he was headed, but it didn’t hurt to ask. “In-N-Out?”
    “Only the best.”
    Picking up my pace to keep in step with him, I just hoped this wouldn’t take too long. After how the day had started, I didn’t want to test Phillip’s patience. But while the locals sometimes formed lines all the way out the street, what we had going for us was an almost certain lack of beach tourists. In-N-Out was one of the western states’ best kept secrets.
    The real secrets, in my opinion, were items they did not advertise on the menu board, like lettuce wraps, grilled cheese sandwiches, and their ultra-sloppy orange tinged sauce, which could be added to burgers or fries, called Animal Style. Requiring, I swear, one napkin per bite.
    I was a devoted fan of the Animal Style burgers, but today I was sticking with the basics. Even though I stood a better chance batting .700 next season than Adam meaning this as a date-date, I wasn’t taking any chances with the sauce, my white shirt and my shaky pride.
    We grabbed an empty table after getting our food, and dug in. Cars idled bumper-to-bumper in the two drive-thru lanes, music and exhaust competing for air space.
    I waited until Adam’s mouth was crammed with a double-double with grilled onions to ask about last night. “What was that? You handed me your beer and disappeared.”
    Of course, I knew what had happened. Saffron had happened. And while I was going to have to accept him being with her, it gave me the teeniest sense of satisfaction to watch him hurry-swallow to kill the dead air on the subject.
    “I was showing you the ropes.”
    I must have looked as baffled as I felt because he took a slurp of his soda, then continued.
    “That’s how you work it, Courtney. The not-drinking thing. You pour a cup from the keg, hold it awhile, then put it down. You get another one, you hand it to someone. On and on. All night, people see you getting a beer, holding a beer, putting down a beer, hearing you saying you need a beer. It never occurs to them you’re not drinking any of it.”
    Yeah, okay. I bought that. “But,” I continued, thinking out loud, “it’s lying .”
    “It’s covering your butt.” He ran a napkin across his mouth. “Look, like we’ve said, all that matters to me is a clear head at dawn, when it’s just me, my board and the waves. Drinking the