Chapter 28

The next two weeks were chaotic. Because Tessa no longer needed the protection of living with others, what with Lonnie being gone, she and I switched. We moved her into the apartment I was renting so she could start to work on her independence, while I moved into the house, although I opted to move into my old bedroom for now instead of my parents’ old room, since that would have been just too weird.

We also started working on the process of getting the food bank up and running. The loan came in the same day I dropped Mom off at the airport. Rosita was excited to get started, although there were still a lot of steps to handle before anything actually got built.

Rosita needed to move soon, so they could start clearing the land and getting it ready for building the food bank, and she was very close to signing a lease on an apartment she liked. I’d been thinking a lot about what Mom said. I hadn’t talked to Rosita about it yet, but I really did like the idea of the two of us living together. I was running out of time to say something, though.

I’d actually done a lot of reflecting recently. Part of it was Dad’s passing and Mom moving to Florida, but weirdly a big part of my self-reflection was about my run-in with Stilton, my old college teammate, at the airport. I’d spent the entire drive back thinking about what could have been if I’d stayed in the NFL and comparing it to my life in Buxton, and surprisingly, I found I liked my current life better than what I might have had. Sure, I didn’t have the money and fame I might have gotten if I’d stayed in the NFL, but I had stability that no one I played with back then had. And I had Rosita. The more I thought about her, the more I realized I couldn’t imagine a life without her.

That realization was on my mind when Rosita showed up after closing the restaurant for the day. I’d been working on the house since Tessa moved out and I moved in full time. The house itself was in really good condition, but it still felt like my parents’ house, and since I’d decided to stay, I wanted to make it my own. I’d started with little things like taking down decorations and rearranging the furniture which had morphed into pulling off wallpaper and repainting entire rooms.

Thankfully, Rosita had a better eye for this kind of thing than I did and had been making most of the decisions. It had only been a few weeks since Mom left, but the place was starting to look like a place I wanted to live in.

Tonight though, I didn’t pull out any of the supplies for working on the house. Instead, I’d gone to the grocery store and picked up things to make dinner for Rosita and me. I might not have been the best cook in the world but since she was always cooking for everyone else, I thought she might appreciate someone cooking for her for a change.

“Hey, I was...” she said as she let herself in through the front door, and then paused halfway across the threshold. “What’s that smell?”

“Dinner,” I said, coming out of the kitchen to give her a kiss.

“You made dinner?”

“Yep. I thought I would treat you for once.”

“I’m impressed,” she said, putting her arms around my neck and giving me a kiss of her own.

“Just remember that after you’ve tasted it.”

“I’m sure it’s great,” she said, pulling her arms back down and grabbing my hand, pulling me towards the kitchen.

I tried to keep her from helping, but Rosita couldn’t help herself. It took her all of five minutes to fix the seasoning I’d messed up and turn my home-cooked dinner into something edible.

We chatted about the restaurant, about Mom, who’d called the night before with an update on how much she was loving Florida, and most of all, about the food bank, which was moving along quickly.

“I’ve been thinking,” I said as we finished up dinner.

“About what?”

“Things have been going really well. I’m enjoying working for Orville, the house is coming along great, and...”

“You’ve decided to stay?” she said, cutting me off.

“I have, but that’s not what I’ve been thinking about.”

“Okay,” she said wearily.

I know she’d been waiting for me to tell her I was staying, so we could both really commit to the relationship, so I understood her excitement. I didn’t mean to be dramatic and make it sound like there was a ‘but,’ but I was also about to make the biggest jump in my life, and I was nervous.

Terri hadn’t prepared me for this, since she’d been the one to take the lead in all of our relationship decisions, but now that it was up to me, I realized how terrifying this kind of thing was. And that was while being confident that I knew what Rosita’s answer would be. My stomach had tied itself in knots, so I couldn’t imagine how guys who didn’t know would feel in a moment like this.

“You’re getting real close to breaking ground on the food shelter and needing a place to live, and I’ve got this big house, and...”

“Are you asking me to move in?” she said, impatiently.

“I am. I love you and I can’t imagine living without you anymore,” I said, blurting out what I’d been rehearsing in my head.

It was the first time either of us had said the L-word, although I think we both knew we felt it. We’d just been waiting for me to get off my ass and make a decision.

“I love you too,” she said, not even missing a beat.

“So that’s a yes? You’ll move in with me?”

“Yes. It took you long enough. You know, you almost missed out. I was going to sign the lease on that place I was looking at tomorrow morning.”

“I know. Sorry I waited so long.”

“It’s fine. You’re a big chicken, so I’m giving you points for saying something at all.”

“Big chicken, am I?” I said, getting out of my chair.

She anticipated my move and got up, dashing out of the way as I made a grab for her. I chased her around the kitchen and into the living room before she let me catch her and we went down in a pile, my arms around her middle. She twisted around and we kissed for several minutes lying on the floor.

“Can we go by the house tonight and pick up some stuff? That way I don’t have to go back before opening the restaurant tomorrow.”

“Sure. How long do you have to get everything out before they’re going to tear it down?”

“Not long. I already have a bunch of stuff boxed up, so a lot of it can just be moved over now.”

She had the architect design everything before she even applied for the loan and had scheduled the contractors the same week she put in the application. If the loan hadn’t come through, she would have been out the money she’d had to put down on the contractor and what she paid the architect, but she’d been impatient and didn’t want to wait months after the loan was approved to start the process. Luckily, it had come through, so her impatience only looked like efficient planning.

We piled in my cruiser and headed towards her house, driving through town. We’d just turned onto Oak Street, passing the high school and her restaurant, when something caught my eye.

“What?” Rosita, who’d been looking out towards the high school said as I braked and swerved hard into the strip mall parking lot where Rosita had her restaurant.

I didn’t need to answer. It was impossible to miss Evan standing in front of the broken front window of her restaurant, gas can in hand, a cigarette dangling from his mouth.

He dropped the gas can as soon as I pulled up. I slammed the vehicle to a stop and jumped out, hand going to my sidearm, when I froze. Evan had pulled a pistol and was pointing it directly at my face. Rosita started to come around the front of the SUV when she noticed the weapon and froze too.

“Perfect. Just fucking perfect,” Evan said. “I couldn’t have planned this better if I’d tried.”

“What are you doing, Evan?”

“What does it look like I’m doing? I’m making sure this bitch gets what she deserves. You should have just listened when I told you to sell the land, you fucking wetback.”

“Dixon said they weren’t going to try and buy the property anymore,” I said.

I’d never trusted the company and doubted they’d ever consider keeping their word, but the threats from Stokes had seemed enough to force them to hold to their promise. This move didn’t make sense, since no one in that room doubted Stokes would make their lives hell. Especially now that it had escalated into one of their people pulling a weapon on a law enforcement officer.

“Yeah, and you know what they did after that? They fucking fired me. I did exactly as I was told, and I got fucking fired for it. They said I’d become a liability, and they didn’t need me anymore.”

“Then why aren’t you up at the mine, taking it up with them?” I asked.

“Because it’s your fault. I know you and Orville went up there and threatened them. What did you do, tell them to get rid of me? Couldn’t handle me yourself, so you went behind my back and got me canned?”

“We didn’t. We just got them to promise to stop trying to get Rosita to sell her land.”

He was about to say something else when a truck that had been driving up Oak Street screeched to a halt. Evan stepped slightly sideways to keep the gun on me and try and see what was happening. After a pause Mr. Green, the owner of the hardware store, came out of his truck, pulling a shotgun off the rack in the back window.

Evan started to turn to point the weapon at him, giving me a second to grab my sidearm and bring it up. Unfortunately, Evan hadn’t turned all the way, and stopped with his weapon pointed at Rosita as Mr. Greer came from the other side, his shotgun at his shoulder.

“Wait!” I yelled, worried that if either of us shot Evan, he’d reflexively pull the trigger and maybe hit Rosita. “Evan, think this through. You lost your job. Is that worth getting killed over?”

“It’s all her fault,” he said again, a tear going down his cheek.

He was angry, scared, and cornered. A combination that never ended well.

“This doesn’t have to go this way,” I said, trying to de-escalate the situation. “You don’t want to be dead and you don’t want to spend the next twenty years in jail for attempted murder. You’re only making this situation worse. Put the gun away and let’s talk about this.”

“You’ll just shoot me. I know you. Weren’t you the guy who always said he had to get even? If I’m going down, I’m taking this bitch with me.”

That had been something I said when I was a stupid kid in high school, always worried about my reputation. I grew up and realized how dumb that was and how little a reputation like that mattered, but Evan never had. And like all guys like that, he couldn’t imagine anyone else thinking differently.

“I’m putting my gun away. You know Mr. Greer. He doesn’t have it out for you, but if you fire that weapon, he’s going to cut you in half. Be smart about this. You don’t want to die.”

I looked past Evan to Mr. Greer, who gave me a slight nod to indicate he had it.

Putting my weapon back in its holster, I said, “Put the gun down, Evan.”

Evan, still pointing the weapon at Rosita, looked over at me and then at Mr. Greer.

“Damn it,” he said, and then dropped the gun.

Mr. Greer let the barrel of his shotgun drop and I took a step towards Evan, reaching back for my handcuffs, when Evan surprised both of us by reaching up to his mouth, taking the cigarette, and flicking it towards the broken window. I froze in place watching it arc through the air, the glowing red tip tumbling end over end, before bouncing off the window sill and into the dining area.