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“Okay bad word choice. It sounds hard, actually. Getting those duplexes deeded to me was a total mess. There was missing paperwork, arguing survivors of the deceased owner, deed inaccuracies…”
“Wow,” I say, mixing around the mashed potatoes on my plate. “I thought small town real estate would be easy.”
“Yeah me too. I didn’t have to buy my house, I inherited it. My grandfather built it and he also built those duplexes so I just didn’t want them to be torn down or anything.”
“It can get complicated when someone dies and the ownership of their properties isn’t clearly laid out in the will. Every relative wants a—” I’m cut off mid-sentence by a tangle of girlish squeals and shrieks. Tyler buries his face in his hand. The noise must be giving his already hurting head an even worse headache.
The shrieking is being done by a circle of women around the hostess table. Elizabeth, dressed in a stunning black dress stands in the middle of them. She’s holding out her left hand as they take turns admiring a sparkling new ring on her finger. “Wow,” I say. “Elizabeth’s engaged.”
Tyler’s hand covers his face. All I can see is his eyebrows and they’re crinkled in pain. I know he’s annoyed that I keep doting on him so I ignore the fact that he’s in pain and keep talking. “You know Elizabeth, the waitress? She just stopped by and she’s totally wearing an engagement ring.”
Tyler looks up at me, his tan skin whiter than usual. He rubs his hands up and down his face. “Yeah I know her. That’s nice for her.”
“You look terrible. Do you want to leave?” I shove a big bite of food in my mouth in the very likely instance he says yes.
“Yeah, but not now.” He looks at his plate and keeps eating. Okay, things are weird now.
“Tyler!” Elizabeth’s voice calls across the room and soon she is at our table, bringing the scent of her perfume with her. “You can’t come to dinner, but you can stop for this crappy food? You have explaining to do, mister.”
Tyler looks up, turning his head to the left so she can see his bandage. “Oh wow,” she says, her sparkling hand covering her mouth. “What happened?”
“I got injured. Eight stitches and three hours in the emergency room. Sorry I missed your dinner.”
“Shit, that’s crazy! I guess I forgive you then.” She looks at me. “Hey Robin, I’m sorry. I totally would have invited you but I didn’t know what was happening tonight. Robert planned this wh
ole fancy dinner in town and all of our friends were there, except for Stitches over here.” She pushes his shoulder playfully. “And it was a total surprise and Robert proposed!”
Here comes the obligatory left palm down and outstretched showing off of the ring. It’s a pretty huge diamond for someone who wears wife beater tank tops and has amateurishly done tattoos on his arms. “It’s beautiful,” I say.
“Thanks, Robin. Tyler, you’re not even looking at it.” Elizabeth moves to his side of the table and wiggles her fingers. Tyler gets this smile on his face like he’s looking at a child’s crappy drawing but doesn’t want to disappoint them. “It’s nice,” he says. Elizabeth seems pleased with our responses and dashes off to show her ring to an older couple at the table next to us.
“She’s extra bubbly today,” I say. Tyler takes his wallet out of his back pocket and puts a few bills on the table. “Sorry Robin.” He pushes his chair back and stands up.
“Sorry for what?”
“Just sorry.” He shoves his hands in his pockets. “I have to go. I can’t stay here any longer.”
Miranda, never the one to stay tight-lipped about something, bites her lips closed as I talk. We’re sitting on the floor with a stack of DVDs from the cheap movie bin at the corner store. The film we’ve chosen to watch tonight is on the TV, its menu screen playing continuously in a loop as I talk. I tell her every detail of tonight, from the stink bait to the hospital and how his middle name is Vernon. Then, although I hate recounting it, I tell her about how he ditched me at the diner. Finally, when it feels like I’ve talked for an hour straight and can say no more, I sigh and throw up my arms in defeat.
Miranda rocks back on her heels and parts her lips with her tongue. This is the longest I’ve ever seen the girl stay quiet and with every second that passes, I find myself more desperate to hear what she’s thinking. Finally, she says, “You know what this means, right?”
“It means he hates being around me?” I say. We’ve made a huge pot of queso for our movie night, and suddenly the cheese covered chip in my hand looks gross and inedible.
Miranda takes my hand and squeezes it. “It means he likes Elizabeth.” Her words fill my head and swim around in my thoughts, blurry and incomprehensible at first.
“That’s…” I want to say impossible, but the word stops on my tongue. I think back to the way Tyler seemed normal all night until she walked in the door. He held his head and looked down the whole time. I thought it was just the loud voices hurting his head. And she had mentioned that they all went to dinner—”Oh, shit.” I drop my head to my knee. “He kept saying he was glad I sent him to the emergency room because he wanted to get out of this dinner. He would have been at that dinner tonight when Robert proposed to her.”
Miranda frowns. “I’m sorry, Robin.”
All night I’ve sat around the house, waiting for Miranda to get home so I could pour my heart out about how he doesn’t like me. But it never occurred to me that it’s not me he doesn’t like. It’s Elizabeth he does like.
Not knowing what to do with the cheesy chip in my hand, I go ahead and eat it. The cheese is cold now and the chip is soggy and it’s about all I can do to chew it up and swallow instead of spitting it on the floor. This realization that Tyler, my secret excuse to stay in Salt Gap, has a crush on someone else is a pretty big emotional blow. My chest aches, and I can’t remember the last time my chest physically hurt over the loss of a guy. It was probably back in high school.
In a completely involuntary action of my body, like breathing or blinking, hot tears form in the corners of my eyes. I blink, quickly trying to ward them away, but it only works for a second before the tears are falling down my cheeks and I’m crying. Crying on the floor of a rental house in Salt Gap, Texas.
It doesn’t get much more pathetic than this.
Miranda takes the remote out of my lap and presses play. She slides across the floor and rests her head on my shoulder. With every traitorous tear I wipe off my cheek, another one quickly takes its place. “I can’t believe I’m crying,” I say. “I don’t even want to date. I already turned him down, but I guess—god, I don’t even know what I think. I hate men and I hate dating.”
