Katie froze in the act of pulling up the tab on her soda. What was that supposed to mean? The can hissed as she finished opening it so she could wet her mouth. “He doesn’t care where anybody sits as long as he can see the screen.”
“Maybe not ‘anybody,’ but he cares where you sit.”
She snorted, making a show of how stupid she found that observation. No matter how much she wanted it to be true, the last thing she needed was to be a topic of conversation for the guys.
“I don’t think he even knows it,” Max continued, “but he definitely puts out a vibe.”
“What vibe?”
“The Katie sits near me vibe.”
“I don’t know what you’ve been smoking, but you might want to cut back.” Katie had been waiting for Josh to put out that kind of vibe for most of her life—and she’d just skipped celebrating her thirty-third birthday—so if there was one, she wouldn’t have missed it.
It wasn’t as though she’d been sitting in some tower her entire existence, pining away for her oblivious prince. She’d dated. She’d even had a few serious relationships, but, in the end, none of them were Josh. No, if there was a vibe, she would have felt it.
“Everybody in this town knows you’re his girl but him.” Max didn’t seem to notice the heat she could feel lighting up her cheeks like a stoplight. “You should…I dunno. Wear some lipstick and put some of that crap on your eyes.”
“Makeup? I don’t think so.”
“Men notice that stuff.”
“I have worn makeup before, you know.” Not often, but for the occasional funeral or wedding. “He didn’t do any kind of cartoon double-take and walk into a wall.”
“Maybe you need more.”
“I’m not doing my face up like a clown to get him to notice me, Max. This is me and this is always going to be me, so if I don’t do it for him like this, then I don’t do it for him at all.”
“He just needs a nudge.”
“I’ve known him my whole life. The only thing that nudges Josh Kowalski is a softball bat upside the head.”
“And yet your soft, nurturing nature hasn’t drawn him in yet. I’m shocked.” Max dumped the entire bag of chips into a cheap plastic bowl.
“Bite me, Max.” She took the bowl and the dip and walked into the huge living room. When he’d moved to town and bought the place, Max had removed some walls and let the space absorb what had been a formal dining room.
She glanced toward the sectional and found that, as Max had predicted, the corner was still empty. And Josh smiled at her when she walked over to claim it, setting the chips and dip on the coffee table. That damn smile had always made her feel like a giddy teenage girl, but she had years of practice hiding that giddy girl from the world.
“Thought maybe that junk of yours finally shit the bed,” he said when she’d dropped into the corner.
“Leave my Jeep alone, Kowalski. She’s outlasted three of your pickups.”
“Because I know when to put a vehicle out to pasture.” He leaned forward to grab a slice of what looked like her mother’s banana bread off the table and turned his attention to the big screen, where the pregame chatter was wrapping up.
“Hi, guys,” she said to the room at large, and she got some hellos and a “Hey, Katie” back. Gavin Crenshaw, who cooked at the Trailside Diner, was there with his dad, Mike. Butch Benoit, whose wife, Fran, had made her late, was sitting in the recliner. He was the oldest guy, so he got the prime leather real estate. It was a light crowd this week. Usually there were a few more guys, but it was the first weekend of December and she knew the town well enough to know there were a lot of Christmas lights being hung in lieu of watching football.
Since her spot in the corner put Katie just slightly behind Josh, she was able to watch him through the corner of her eye. She was pretty sure Max was wrong about Josh putting out any kind of vibe where she was concerned, but even the possibility was enough to make her heart beat a little faster.
He looked better, she decided. Some of the tension had left his expression over the past several months, and more of his usual charm shone in his blue eyes. Even though her mother never said much, Katie knew Josh well enough to see the strain the past few years had put on him. He’d been unhappy and had started drinking enough that she’d half-jokingly given him a hard time once in a while. But then he’d broken his leg, his brothers had come home to Whitford to help and they’d all devoted themselves to getting the Northern Star back on its feet.