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Chapter 5
On the spectrum of things that were sexy and things that were patently not sexy, Walker had always seen food as being much closer to the latter than the former. He’d never gotten the appeal of licking whipped cream off of warm skin or dipping strawberries into secret, very delicately balanced places. Just the thought of trying to swallow down hot fudge while trying to get his rocks off made him kind of queasy.
That said, watching Aja Owens devour one of Kenny Mack’s giant cheese-covered burgers made him strangely, shockingly hot. The restaurant was a sports bar—loud and a little rowdy, with TVs covering almost every square inch of wall space. Since it was Wednesday and not a game night, it was a bit quieter than it probably was usually, but it wasn’t what he would have called cozy. The hostess had sequestered them in a small booth off to the side where he got to sit close enough to smell Aja’s honeyed perfume and see the brightness of her eyes. He didn’t care that they were surrounded by half-drunk fools stinking of bloomin’ onions; he was having a great fucking time.
“You’re not hungry anymore?” Aja asked after a swallow of her peach sweet tea.
He had managed to take a knife to his burger, cutting it down the middle so it was easier to eat, but he hadn’t gotten more than a couple of fries down. How was he supposed to focus on beef and lettuce and onion when the woman across from him looked more appetizing than anything on his plate? For however good his meal proved to be, he was willing to bet she tasted better.
“I just got a little distracted is all,” he replied before taking his first real bite of food.
Aja kept her expectant gaze on him as he chewed. He made a show of it, working his teeth a little slower than normal, savoring the flavor of the food as well as the feeling of her eyes on him.
“Good, huh?” she asked once he’d finally swallowed.
“It’s a damned good burger,” he said. “Not the best I’ve ever had, but very good.”
She seemed to mull this over a little bit before conceding with an agreeing nod.
“I agree actually.” She paused to eat one of the tater tots she’d gotten on the side. “When I was little, my brother and I would beg my mama to get us McDonald’s when we were out. Sometimes she did, but more often than not she’d be like ‘I can make a burger better than that at home.’ And then she’d whip up these fat patties in the cast-iron skillet, all filled with fat chunks of onions and green peppers and stuff. Back then, you couldn’t have paid me to say those burgers were better than McDonald’s but thinking back… I’m not sure I’ve ever had a burger that’s lived up to the ones she made.”
“Gram used to do that with chicken nuggets,” he chuckled. “She wouldn’t even let me have the little frozen dinosaur ones from the grocery store. If she even got a whiff that I wanted some, she’d go tearin’ into some poor chicken breasts and bread and fry them up like she did on Sundays with the legs and wings. They were definitely better than anythin’ she could have bought me.”
Aja’s expression was fond, her eyes looking towards him but still far away.
“It’s so weird to think about what we took for granted when we were kids,” she said. “Me and my brother used to bitch and moan about those burgers she made us eat all the time, and now I wish I could go back and flick seven-year-old me on the ear for being ungrateful.”
“I guess that’s the nature of kids,” Walker commented. “Self-centered as hell until somebody teaches them not to be. Seems like it worked for you though.”
“I guess…”
She went quiet but looked like she wanted to say something else. He kept his mouth shut, patient.
“I think I’d rather eat paint chips than be a kid again, but there are things about it that I miss… the freedom, the unabashed happiness, the lack of… worry,” she pinched her lips together. “I mean, I know not everyone had that type of childhood, but mine was… really good. And I miss it, you know?”
Walker didn’t say anything. He couldn’t relate. When he thought about himself as a kid, he didn’t see someone running free, entrenched in innocence. He saw a little boy who was quiet and buzzing with anxious energy. One who felt more comfortable huddled in the back of a closet than he did anywhere else.
The first ten years of his childhood had been tumultuous and damaging. What adolescence he’d maintained after he’d gone to live with Gram had been mostly eaten up by the aftereffects of what came before. The past few years had been good to him. He felt stable and happy. Work was good, his personal life was… fine. He wasn’t perfect, and his PTSD sure as hell wasn’t gone, but he was managing it for the first time in his life. It didn’t matter how content he felt, how well he was doing, he had never been able to look back on his childhood with much fondness.
This was something he’d been working on in therapy, developing a more rounded view of his life. The process was slow and agonizing, and even he didn’t know how his therapist had been able to sit through the hours of him lamenting. About seven months before he’d gotten Gram’s call for help, Dr. Guthrie had informed him that he was going to stop seeing patients to spend more time with his husband and children. Walker had seen nearly a dozen therapists since, and none had fit. Too cold, too familiar, too invested in trying to get him to incorporate Christianity into his treatment plan when he’d explicitly said he wasn’t interested. It got to a point where the search for a counselor just became another anxiety trigger. He’d been adjusting… fine. But he knew he couldn’t go on forever without some help.
One thing at a time, he figured. He’d continue the search when he got home. He could already tell he was going to have a lot of shit to unpack.
He nodded at Aja, trying his best to convey empathy for desires that he didn’t actually possess.
They finished the rest of their food in silence. The quiet between them wasn’t exactly tense, but it made his knee shake under the table anyway. Walker ate slower than he normally would have. The conversation between them hadn’t really gone the way he’d expected. It was much less flirty and much, much more intense. But he still wasn’t ready to leave. He found that sitting in silence with her, leg shaking and belly full of grease, was more appealing than spending the evening with his eyes glued to his phone in his old bedroom. As long as she was willing to sit there with him, he was willing to keep his ass parked in that booth. He was even considering ordering an outrageously large milkshake as an excuse to sit there longer.
“Are we ever going to talk about it?” Aja’s voice shocked him out of his dessert menu perusing, and he looked up to see her leaning across the table with that round jaw clenched. He tried not to glance at the soft-looking cleavage that glowed golden brown even under the harsh light above. He failed. Spectacularly.
“Uhh… what ‘it’ are we supposed to be talkin’ about?”
She sighed, leaning back and narrowing her eyes at him. “That night in the grocery store, Walker. It’s weird that you haven’t brought it up yet.”
Walker cursed under his breath. “I didn’t think you’d want me to bring it up, to be honest.”
“Well, I didn’t, but you not bringing it up feels even weirder than if you had.”
He couldn’t make heads nor tails of her reasoning. All he knew was that he had plenty of experience with having panic attacks in public places. And he’d always hated it when the people who witnessed the attacks treated them and him like some kind of fucking sideshow after. He didn’t know Aja, not then and not really now either. He didn’t know whether she would want him to acknowledge it, so he hadn’t. It definitely hadn’t seemed like a new experience for her, so he figured the last thing she needed was to rehash a traumatizing moment with a stranger.
