Page 20 of The Broken Hearts Club

“Oh, okay, Farmer John.”

“I’m serious.”

“And where is this alleged tomato farm of yours?”

“It’s a single plant, and it’s in a pot on my back deck,” he said. “I impulse-bought it when I was at the farmer’s market this past spring. It was pathetic and spindly, so they’d put it on sale for fifty cents, and I felt sorry for it. Then it got huge, but I only got my first ripe tomatoes from it this week. The end of August seemed late to me, but it turns out we have a delayed growing season in San Francisco, because our summers are on the cool side. Anyway, I’ve only gotten two ripe tomatoes so far, and that’s one of them.”

“I literally have to eat it now. You told me its entire life story and guilted me into it.”

He grinned at me. “That’s what I was going for.”

I reassembled the sandwich and took a big bite. It was so delicious that I was forced to admit, “You’re right. It’s better than any tomato I’ve ever had.” He looked so proud of himself that it made me chuckle. “There’s no way I’m eating the celery sticks, though,” I told him. “I’d just as soon gnaw on strips of cardboard.”

“I didn’t grow those, so I couldn’t care less.”

“Feel free to go back to your game. I’ll watch.”

“You sure?”

“Yup.” He picked up his controller, and as the character started running toward the castle I asked, “What’s the objective of this game?”

“You know. Explore. Collect items. Fight. Don’t get killed.”

I asked, “What’s trying to kill you?” Then I shrieked as an undead skeleton thing jumped out at him. He turned to me with a raised brow, and I laughed and said, “That was scary.”

Miller exited out of the game and asked, “Which video games do you like?”

“We had a Centipede arcade game in the thrift shop. It was for sale, but no one wanted it because it was kind of beat up. Whenever it was slow, I’d play it. I could keep feeding it the same quarter, because it was missing the door to the coin collector.”

“Anything else?”

I thought about it and said, “A couple of times, I played a racing game at a pizza parlor in Boise. Oh, and one of those dancing games where you have to hit the right spots in time to the music. But that’s probably not the kind of video game you’re talking about.”

“That’s it?”

“Pretty much.” I finished my sandwich and reached for the cookies. “Is it okay that I raided your kitchen?”

“Of course. I had groceries delivered today with you in mind, so please help yourself to anything you want.”

I took a cookie and offered him one, which he declined. As I closed the container and set it aside, I said, “We never got a chance to debrief, since I fell asleep on you.”

“Debrief?”

“Yeah, you know. You had an unexpected ex sighting out in the wild. Do you want to talk about that?”

“Not really.”

“It stirred up some stuff, though. I saw your face when Daria told you Bruce was at the baseball game. You looked shocked, and kind of upset.” He didn’t say anything, so I asked, “Do you still love him?”

“No. He cured me of that by the way he dumped me.”

“How did that go down?”

“Like I said, it was two days before the wedding. His parents and brother had flown in from Connecticut, and we were supposed to meet them for brunch. I was getting ready when he walked into the bedroom and said, ‘I can’t do this.’ He went on to say he couldn’t marry me because he didn’t love me, and he wasn’t sure he ever really did. He also felt the need to add that he didn’t particularly like me, either.”

“That’s awful.”

“There’s more. He kept talking, and according to him, it was all my fault. I was too quiet, too introverted. I was boring, and I never wanted to go out. Well, no shit! I’ve always been like this. He knew that from day one.”