Chapter 8

I called Rosita, who was at the hospital in under ten minutes, which was a lot faster than I’d been expecting. Charleston was a decent-sized city, and the hospital wasn’t near a lot, so I’d have expected she would have driven further into the city to do her exploring.

“How was it?” She asked when I got into the car.

“Good. He says I can lose the crutches in a few days and switch to a cane, and I should be able to get rid of that and be back to normal in a month or two, as long as I do my physical therapy.”

“That’s great news. The first time Tommy was injured, they had to really push him to do his physical therapy and for a little bit it almost looked like he was going to get medically discharged, because he wasn’t doing it and it was going to keep him from recovering enough to meet the standards. He hated doing them, so I’m really impressed you’ve been able to keep up with it.”

“Actually ... I haven’t. Except for the walks around town, I haven’t done them at all. The doctor said pretty much the same thing about what would happen if I didn’t do them. It’s good to know I’m not the only one really bad at forcing myself to do it though.”

She gave me a side glance that looked frighteningly similar to something my mother would have done before turning her attention back to the road and saying, “Henry, you have to take care of yourself. A little bit of pain now will save you a ton of problems in the future. You don’t want to have to rely on others to help you when you’re older just because you messed up now.”

“Wow, you’re good at the guilt trip.”

“I got a lot of practice with Tommy. He was really stubborn about doing stuff he knew he needed to do but didn’t want to do. Besides, I’m Latina. It’s practically genetic. You should hear my mother. Dios mio, she could make us feel like we betrayed Christ for twenty pieces of silver when we didn’t clean the table after supper.”

“Well, consider your message received. I’m going to start doing them every day. I don’t want to be on crutches or have to use a cane the rest of my life. It’ll be nice to get back to normal.”

“Good. If you forget, I will taunt you a second time.”

She had an amused look on her face and my confused look made her burst out in laughter.

“Never mind. I found a place not far from here I want to try out for lunch. Are you hungry?”

“I could eat.”

The place turned out to be a BBQ joint that had just enough of a hole in the wall kind of look to suggest it might be good without looking so run down that I thought we’d get mugged on the way in. I’d always found with BBQ, the shabbier it looked on the outside, the better the BBQ was on the inside.

The whole place smelled like mesquite and made my mouth water as soon as we went inside, and the tables were basically picnic tables with the benches removed and chairs put in their place. They had a roll of paper towels on the table along with a plastic bottle of BBQ sauce, which was another good sign.

We took a seat and I was just starting to look at the menu with our waitress came over, and surprisingly called my name.

“Henry Brewer?” she said, looking hard at me.

The waitress was pregnant. Extremely pregnant, actually to the point where it seemed ill-advised that she was actually walking around waiting on tables. She looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place where I knew her from. I stared at her face, drawing a complete blank.

“Tiffany Clark,” she said, pointing at herself when it became obvious I didn’t remember her.

“Ohh my God, Tiffany. I’m so sorry. I don’t know why I didn’t recognize you.”

“Don’t worry about it. My mom says my face looks so different since I started putting on weight with the pregnancy.”

“You’re living in Charleston now?”

“Yeah. I got married to Bud Newsom the year we graduated and he got a job out here. You remember Bud?”

One of the things about living in a small town was that it was hard to not know everyone in your school, even the people you didn’t associate with. There were only thirty kids in my graduating class, and Tiffany and Bud were two of them. Bud had been in the marching band and I don’t think I spoke to him once in four years of school. Tiffany was a cheerleader and it had seemed odd, at the time, that she ended up with someone like Bud. Or maybe I’d just wanted it to seem odd, since I’d taken her to homecoming my freshman year before Terri and I got together, and when things didn’t work out between us, Bud was the guy she dated next. There’s a good chance my ego didn’t like the fact that she moved on from me that quickly, especially with someone I’d thought, at the time, was beneath me. Considering how I’d basically ignored her for the rest of high school because I couldn’t handle rejection, it was surprising she was even willing to talk to me now.

Just another reminder of a misspent youth.

“Yeah. So, you two got married and moved out here?”

“Other way around, but yep. Bud’s uncle is an electrician and has a small company out here. He’d offered to take Bud on as an apprentice. Bud just got his own license last year and there’s even talk that his uncle might make him a partner in the business.”

“That’s really exciting,” I said, and meant it.

Tiffany was a good person and I was happy that things had worked out for her.

“Well, not as exciting as you going off to play football. I heard you even got into the NFL.”

“I did, but only for a year. Got injured.”

“Ohh. I’m sorry to hear about that. You were always amazing to watch. So did you and Terri stay together after school?”

I don’t remember Terri and her being friends, but they’d both been cheerleaders, so it wasn’t surprising she remembered Terri.

“Kind of. We got married just after college, but it didn’t work out. We’ll be officially divorced in the next couple of weeks, I think.”

“I see. I’m sorry, I didn’t introduce myself. I’m Tiffany. Henry and I went to school together,” she said, changing the subject and sticking her hand out to Rosita.

“Rosita,” she said, taking her hand. “It’s nice to meet you. How far along are you?”

“Eight months and a bit.”

“My gosh, and you’re still working? You must be so tired.”

“I am, but we need everything we can get before the baby comes. Bud makes good money, but this’ll be our second one, and kids are danged expensive.”

“Two?” I said, surprised.

I wasn’t even thirty yet, and I felt years off from even thinking about kids, if I were still married. Terri and I had never discussed them, although I sort of got the opinion that we would have had some eventually.

“Yeah. Bud Jr. is four and he’s just amazing. We talked about it and we wanted at least one more, but we didn’t want too much of a gap between them. We decided that we’d go for another one when Bud got his license and well ... here we are.”

“You’re working, eight months pregnant, and have a four-year-old at home,” Rosita said, sounding astonished. “You are a machine.”

“Ha, I wish. If I was a machine I think my feet would hurt a little less.”

“I just mean I’m amazed with how much you must do every day.”

“I know, I was just teasing. Yeah, it’s a lot and, don’t get me wrong. There are days I just wish I could be eighteen again not having bills to worry about and two boys to clean up after, but then I look at Bud Jr. when he goes to sleep and ... it’s just all worth it. Anyway, I’ve been babbling on; let me get your order.”

We gave her our order and Tiffany was about to walk away from the table when she stopped and turned back and said, “I’m sorry if I sounded weird a minute ago when I asked about Terri. I really am sorry to hear you two split up. You two were the ‘it’ couple back in school, so I know that must hurt.”

“Thanks, but it’s okay. Things had been bad for a while. She was unhappy for a while, so it’s better off this way.”

“I hope I’m not out of line saying it, but I think you’re probably better off. I don’t think Terri ever really appreciated you. I think she saw you as a meal ticket, and you deserve someone better than that.”

“Ohh,” I said, surprised and unsure how to respond.

Rosita clearly didn’t have that problem, “A meal ticket?”

She said it in a way like she didn’t understand the phrase, but I’d used that exact wording before, and she hadn’t been confused. Maybe it was the cultural differences, her accent, or the way she occasionally put religious undertones into something, but I’d somehow formed this image in my head of Rosita being a little bit on the innocent side. The way she manipulated Tiffany, who took the question exactly as I thought Rosita had wanted her to, made me suddenly consider how much cleverer Rosita was than I thought.

“I just mean she looked at Henry as a way to get out of Buxton and off to being rich and famous. The day after our homecoming dance, she cornered me in the locker room and told me that I needed to back away from him. She said she had plans for him and I needed to stay out of the way. After they started dating, she’d occasionally make comments, never to me but when I was around, that made me think she didn’t really care that much about Henry. Little jokes about him, that kind of thing.”

“She did?” I asked.

While it matched completely with the Terri I know, I hadn’t ever heard this story.

“Yeah. You seemed happy and Terri had the ability to make my life hell, so I just stayed out of it. Sorry I didn’t tell you.”

“It’s okay. I was an idiot back then and probably wouldn’t have listened. We’ve all got to learn things the hard way sometimes.”

“True enough. Besides, you two are cute together, so it all worked out. Anyway, I better go put your order in.”

She walked away and I kind of awkwardly looked at Rosita and said, “Sorry, I should have told her we’re friends and aren’t together.”

“It’s okay. Besides, I think she knows. A woman can tell a lot from body language. She was just trying to nudge things along a bit, to help you out. I think you would say ‘being a wing woman’ for you.”

“Really? Then what did our body language tell her?”

“That we have chemistry together and like each other, but we’re still in that ‘getting to know you’ phase.”

“I see,” I said, playing it cool.

Inside, I was doing a little dance. I really liked Rosita and had no clue that she felt the same. Maybe my dating sense was stunted by basically being with one woman for my entire life, so it was good to hear confirmation that she liked me too and that we were in any kind of phase at all.

The rest of our short trip was really pleasant. Suddenly knowing that Rosita was into me made me feel comfortable enough to flirt with her and, now that I was watching for signs, she was flirting back with me.

It was a really great day.

When I got home, I almost ran over Mom when I walked through the front door, since I hadn’t expected her to be just behind it looking out the window.

“She didn’t want to stay for supper?” Mom asked, looking past me out the screen door.

“She has to go close up the restaurant and it’s been a really long day. Don’t worry, she’ll probably be back by again.”