“But you said that your mom had no idea it ran in her family.”
“I’m not sure if you’ve noticed that logic and reason don’t mean much when it comes to relatives,” he pointed out. “Like you and your sister.”
“I saw her tonight.”
“Morgan? Where?”
“She came to the restaurant and I was her server. She asked to be seated in my section.” She had looked great in new clothes, things that fit her better than mine ever had. I was taller but also rounder—fewer angles. She had put on weight, which was a good thing for her, and she had done something to her hair to recreate the pretty, curly waves that I remembered admiring when we’d been kids.
“How did she know you worked there?”
I explained how Max’s girlfriend Avonlea had been keeping in touch. “Not a lot, just sometimes. She asked where I was working and it’s not like it’s a secret.” It was a little embarrassing, since I was the only sibling who had struggled to get a college degree, although apparently I hadn’t needed one.
“Were you glad to see her?” he asked.
Oddly, I had been. “We haven’t talked in weeks,” I answered. “Not since she and Mom embarked on their solo careers. But she let it slip that things aren’t going too great. They got an offer on the house but that fell apart after an inspection and then they had to drop the price. My dad is apparently back in the picture, to some extent. He’s been calling to ask for money.”
“Good golly, I hope they’re not giving him any.”
“Morgan isn’t but she thinks that Mom is. They’re barely scraping by, so there’s not much to give. Apparently, life without the support of your family is harder than they imagined, once you run through the slush fund that you’d been hiding from everyone else.” I heard the gloating note in my voice but hoped that he hadn’t caught it. “I had other tables so I didn’t get a ton of information.”
“Maybe you could see her again,” Shane suggested.
No, because I was still mad at her, if he hadn’t noticed. “Maybe,” I said. I’d tried to sound noncommittal but was aware that I might as well have said “no, no way in hell” because I had firmly shaken my head as I’d spoken the word. “What can I do to make things easier over the next few days with your parents? Do youwant me to stay out of the way?” If his answer to that question was “yes,” there was the problem of where I would go…
“No, this is your house, too,” he answered immediately. Phew. “If anything, I think that you should spendmoretime with them. Then they’ll see.”
“See what?” I wondered.
“They’ll see that they should like you,” he said. He looked over at me and smiled.
I smiled back, although my best move had been the BLTs and they had already vetoed those. “You know, I can’t imagine you playing football,” I told him.
“Really? Why?”
“I always think of those guys as super mean and competitive,” I explained. “You’re not like that at all.”
“I was the one who fought you over the last bowl of strawberry sorbet. I won,” he reminded me.
Yes, it was true, but I hadn’t really been trying. That stuff wasn’t creamy like real ice cream and it hadn’t even been very sweet, more like red ice chips. I nodded, though. “And you did threaten Corbin at my graduation.”
“I wasn’t threatening him,” he disagreed. “I was letting him know his options.”
I remembered what Shane had said: move on or I’ll make you sorry. “I guess so.”
“Think of the guy making the messes on the tables at Walter’s, the ketchup criminal. He acted like a dumb little kid, not some killer competitor. You said he folded like an origami crane when you confronted him about making a mess.”
That was also true. I nodded and he nodded back at me.
“He goes up against defenders who are a half a foot taller and outweigh him by a hundred pounds. When you’re out on the field, it’s different. In college, I played against one of my former high school teammates from Arkansas. Great guy and a good friend,” he said. “I knew that he would have taken me out in a heartbeat, though, so I stayed the heck out of his way.”
“Do you ever talk to him now?”
“McCoy? No. No, we haven’t spoken in a few years,” he answered.
“Why? If he was a good friend and great guy, you should text him. Maybe he’d want to visit, too. I was thinking that we could buy a nice air mattress.” There was enough space if we didn’t get any new chairs, and the floor was definitely clean enough for someone to sleep on it.
“Maybe.”
