Page 62 of Here We Go Again

“So it probably felt totally normal for your mom to invite you to Anna Maria,” I say.

“That part did,” he says. “Meeting her online boyfriend to make sure he wasn’t a serial killer? Not at all.”

“I’m going to die if we get there and Hector Villanova is actually present and swooning over your mom.”

“You and me both.” He cuts the engine. “Do you still like seafood? I probably should’ve asked. But this place has the best Gulf shrimp anywhere. Also good deviled crab. And a papaya dessert thing that’s amazing.”

“You had me at Gulf shrimp,” I say. “I love seafood.”

I follow Theo inside the restaurant. Though the outside is sunbaked and dusty, the inside exudes a kind of warm, Southern charm that I immediately love. Wooden booths, laminated menus, checkered curtains. Whatever they’re cooking in the kitchen smells amazing, and my mouth immediately starts to water.

It’s after seven p.m., and the dining room is packed, but there’s an empty booth in the back. “Do we just sit?” I ask. It doesn’t look like there’s a hostess or even any servers.

“We order first,” Theo says. “It’s counter service. Then we can sit.”

“Well, if it isn’t my second favorite hockey player,” a woman says from behind the counter. She’s short, heavy-set, and old enough to be Theo’s grandmother, but that doesn’t stop her from stepping out from behind the counter and pulling him into an enormous hug. “Theo Williamson. What are you doing here?”

“Hey, Mrs. Reba,” he says. “You know that joke’s not funny.”

She leans back and grins. “It only is because you know I say it to you both. You traveling without your brother? I thought I’d never see the day.” Her eyes dart over to me, and her eyebrows lift. “Or maybe you traded him for an upgrade?”

Theo chuckles. “He’s the one who traded me. My brother went and got himself a wife this year. This is my friend, Becca. She and I grew up together.”

I fight to keep myself from frowning at the word friend. I don’t know what else he would have called me, but I still don’t like it.

“Well, it’s lovely to meet you, Becca.” She moves back to the cash register. “I’ve been watching these boys grow up going on twenty years now. Can you believe that? Every year they came in with their parents, keeping me in business with the amount of shrimp they could eat. Then that one video on the internet went viral, and they really were keeping me in business. I still have people coming in here saying they planned their vacation so they could come to Palmetto and eat my shrimp.”

I look from Reba to Theo and back again. “A video?”

Theo lifts a hand to the back of his neck. It’s tinged pink with what can only be embarrassment. “It’s just a thing Carter and I did the summer after our first year with the Jaguars. We came down for a weekend, ate dinner, and filmed a video where we mentioned the restaurant. It was quick and a little silly, and we didn’t expect many people to see it. But then it went viral and…”

“And I had to hire all four of my nephews just to keep up with how much shrimp I was frying,” Reba says. She lifts a finger and wags it at me. “This is a good man you’ve got here, Becca. The very best.” Her expression softens. “He comes by it naturally too. His daddy was the same way.”

“I really need to see this video,” I say.

“It’s still on the internet,” Reba says. “Just search for the name of the restaurant. It’s one of the first things that pops up. Now. What can I get you?”

I let Theo order for me—everything on the menu looks amazing, and he’s tried it all, so I trust his judgment—then we make our way to a booth in the back corner of the dining room.

I immediately pull out my phone and search for Reba’s Fried Shrimp, then navigate to the video results. Sure enough, there’s Carter and Theo in the first result, standing side by side outside the restaurant.

“Oh my gosh,” I say. “It really is the first thing that pops up. How old are you in this?”

“Twenty-one,” he answers. “I remember because that trip was the first time we ever ordered a beer, and we were so excited to get carded.”

I push play on the video, smiling as the brothers tease each other about who can eat more shrimp. They look younger, more boyish, and I feel a sudden twinge of sadness about all the stages of Theo I missed. The years I didn’t see.

There’s definitely something familiar about being with him now, but there’s no getting around the huge gap of knowledge I’m missing. Eight years is a long time. I became a different person in eight years. I’m sure he did too.

But this guy in the video—he reminds me of both the Theo I knew and the Theo sitting across from me now. A kind of bridge from the past to the present.

“I love that this happened,” I say when the video ends. “Reba seems great.”

“There’s nobody more deserving,” he says. “And not only because of her food. She’s just a good person.”

“And you legit met her because you stopped here to eat whenever you were on vacation?”

“That was my dad,” Theo says. “He was like that with everybody. He always wanted to know people’s stories. Make them feel seen. He had friends everywhere—people he would meet who would always remember him.”