Behest
"An urgent prompting."
"You're not serious. No."
"Please?" Lucy begged, tugging on Gray's arm as she continued to sidle up to him on the couch. She couldn't get as close she liked anymore, not with the spawn in the way, but Lucy could still make things work. "Come on, you're not even doing anything!"
That was not the point. The point was that it was a ridiculous time to be going out. He wasn't twenty-three anymore. He had a reasonable nightly routine of not doing anything past ten o'clock. "It's the middle of the night."
"I know, but I'm hungry," Lucy complained.
"We have food. Make something then."
"But I don't wanna. And I want onion rings. I can't make onion rings."
"Sure you can," Gray said, shrugging.
Lucy nudged him again, doing her best to get him to cave to her whim. "Please, Gray? Pleeeaaase?" she begged. "It'll take fifteen minutes!"
Gray made the mistake of looking down, instantly falling prey to her best puppy-dog eyes. He sighed loudly, almost groaning, and switched the TV off with the remote. "Fine," he grumbled. "But you're coming with me."
The last thing he needed right then was to get Lucy's order wrong, which he was still awfully prone to doing. It wasn't his fault she kept changing her mind about what she liked though.
"Okay!"
"Welcome to Eight-Island, what can I get for you tonight?"
Gray squinted at the menu boards in the drive-thru, trying to decipher the words amidst the disgustingly bright pictures. "Uh, yeah, hi, could I please get…" He turned to Lucy beside him in the car, quietly urging her to tell him what she wanted.
"The chicken deluxe burger," she said. "Large."
"Can I please get one of those, uh… Chicken deluxe meals? Large," Gray said, turning back to the speaker box.
"No pickles," Lucy added. "Or tomato. But extra mayo. And bacon. And cheese."
Gray couldn't help but turn back and gawk at his girlfriend. "You eat weird shit," he muttered under his breath.
"Pregnant."
"You ate weird shit before you were knocked up."
Lucy shrugged, listening as Gray amended the order and it popped up on the little screen under the speaker.
"Anything else?"
"A large onion rings, too," Lucy said. "Two, actually."
Gray tried not to roll his eyes. "Um, yeah. Two large onion rings as well, please," he said.
"Uh-huh. Anything else?"
"Tenders, too. For breakfast."
"And, a pack of your chicken tenders as well," Gray sighed.
"And was there anything else tonight?"
Gray completely expected Lucy to list something else she wanted, but instead she just shrugged and sat back in her seat with a pleased smile. Because of course she was pleased - she'd just ordered twenty-five dollars worth of food for herself and wasn't paying for it. But Gray didn't really care.
Still, it was Eight-Island, and Eight-Island served the best soft serve ice cream in the entire town, and Gray could never resist ordering it. "Yeah, and just one of your jumbo sundaes. With extra sprinkles," he added finally.
"Not a problem. Was that all for tonight?"
"Yes, thank you."
Hearing the order total, an amount that just made Gray cringe, he pulled around to the next window to see a familiar face operating the register. "They put you on overnights, Wendy?"
"Just until I finish this semester," she answered, waiting patiently as Gray fished his wallet from the console. "Wanted a midnight snack, I take it?"
Gray scoffed. "Yeah, sure. More like someone didn't like the food at home so I had to come and get a mountain of onion rings, at her behest."
Wendy leant out her booth as Gray handed her the notes. "Didn't see you there. Hi, Lucy!"
"Hi, Wendy," Lucy said sweetly.
Grabbing the receipt and the change from Wendy, they bid goodnight to their young friend and Gray pulled forward to the next window to pick up the giant bag of food. Before Gray had made it back onto the main road, Lucy had already pulled one of the packs of onion rings out the bag and was happily digging in.
