All around their seats at the counter in Vito’s Diner was complete chaos, with the jukebox blaring out old songs from the eighties, people packed into booths to grab a bite before the shows started in the theater district, and a line of hungry customers that went out the door and down the block. However, Nash couldn’t tear his attention away from Chelle as she continued to teasingly give him shit about the disaster that was their second date.

“I was thinking that the guy running the check-in process was completely overwhelmed and starting to drown in flop sweat,” Nash said in his halfhearted defense, because he wasn’t so much interested in proving he was right as keeping Chelle talking. “He needed some insight.”

“So you thought telling him how to do his job—” She held up a finger in the universal sign of hold on one minute as she sucked in a breath between giggles. “No, correction, you thought telling him how to do the thing he volunteers his time for would be a good idea?”

He got it. He’d done the thing again, but the last thing Nash wanted was for the guy in head-to-toe Master of the Games wizarding cosplay to have a bunch of people mad at him because it was taking so long to find people’s registrations.

“What?” Nash snagged one of the few fries left on Chelle’s plate and popped it into his mouth. “You wanted me to sit there and let the poor guy suffer?”

Chelle wiped away her tears of amusement as she got her giggle fit under control. “Or—walk with me on this one—you could have simply asked him if he needed help and then helped according to what he said he needed rather than what you think he needs instead of offering up a ten-minute lecture the poor guy definitely didn’t want while the line got longer and longer behind us.”

Nash stuffed his natural defensive response down and thought about it for a minute. The guy had been sweaty, but he’d also just rushed into the room and let everyone know that the printer was being an asshole. That meant he had to go by handwritten notes instead of the spreadsheet from the Google form and—

Fuck.

That guy had his shit together. He’d just needed some time to get his bearings together.

Way to go, Beckett. Open mouth, insert foot.

“You might be right,” he said, stealing another fry from Chelle’s plate to soften the blow to his ego.

Chelle turned her stool so she faced him completely and then raised an eyebrow. “Might be?”

He stalled her from saying anything else that he’d have to admit she was right about by swiping a third fry from her plate. This time, however, he dragged it through the ketchup and offered it up as a peace offering. “Truce?”