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He shakes his head.
“And you married someone else?”
“Yep, briefly, and it wasn’t one of my finer moments. We meet in class and eloped that summer, but it ended amicably about six months later when we both realized we were too young and weren’t ready.”
“What happened to her?” I ask.
“She re-married a couple years ago and has a set of twins.”
“Fascinating,” I mutter.
“Not really.”
“Where did you go to college?” I ask.
“Chattanooga State Community College. It was the closest that offered a degree in fire science. And you? Did you go to college?”
“I did actually. I have an associate’s in applied science from Baltimore City Community College.”
“Applied science?” he asks.
“Yeah, I wanted to be a physical therapist. After I got my degree, I started working as a PT assistant for an accident and injury clinic in Baltimore. The doctors were a husband-and-wife team who owned the practice together, and I loved it. They even paid to send me back to school for my myotherapy certification.”
“So, how did you end up tending bar for a living?” he inquires.
“I had signed a two-year noncompete contract when the clinic hired me, and about a year into that contract, she caught him sleeping with one of our patients.”
“No!”
“Yes. For legal reasons, they had to remain in practice together during the divorce, and it got ugly. If I did anything he asked me to do, she got pissed, and if I did anything she asked me to do, he got pissed. All of the employees in the place were walking on eggshells. The day I was cursed out for pulling X-rays for him before finishing clinical notes for her, I had enough. I quit on the spot, but I still had eleven months on my noncompete and couldn’t go to work for another doctor’s office. So, I put in an application for waitressing just to get by until that time was up. While working as a server, I was trained as a bartender and found that if I was in the right place, I could pull in almost double what I was making as a PT assistant, and it freed me up to live wherever I wanted. There are bars in need of help all over the country. The rest is history.”
Servers show up with our dinner and set the plates in front of us.
My eyes go wide.
The cowboy rib eye is a bone-in cut, and it is as big as my plate.
“Excuse me, how big is this steak?” I ask.
“Twenty-four ounces, ma’am,” the server answers before cracking the lobster tail open for me.
I look at Corbin, who is already slicing into his meat.
“Twenty-four ounces? You didn’t tell me we were ordering an entire cow. We could have split one,” I exclaim.
“Hell no. I can finish every bite of this.”
I narrow my eyes.
Is that a challenge?
“Great. Now, I have to too. Glad I wore a dress instead of skinny jeans,” I grumble.
“You don’t have to eat it all just because I do. Leftover steak and eggs make an excellent breakfast.”
“Are you offering to make me breakfast, Corbin Tuttle?” I tease.
He leans in and looks me in the eye. “We’ll see where the night takes us.”
