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John’s brow furrows, his eyes glinting hard. “Are you serious?”
My smile breaks free. “Nah… not about the Porsche, but I do want a tattoo.”
“Fuck off,” John mutters.
“All joking aside… I do want a tattoo. I want to get the names of the Titans who died on the plane.” I point to my ribs. “Right here.”
I didn’t think it possible, but John’s expression softens to a tenderness I didn’t know he possessed. “Yeah, sure… I’d be honored to do that. Let’s set it up.”
To my surprise, John pulls his phone out, and we coordinate our schedules.
“All right,” I say, finishing the entry. “Week after next. December 29, ten a.m.”
“Bring breakfast,” he says as he tucks his phone away.
“Doughnuts?”
“Works for me,” he says and then nods. “Here she comes.”
John stands and I follow suit. We walk to the porch steps and watch as Stevie’s car slows down the closer she gets. Her normal path would be to hang a left at the next intersection, then another left to access the alley behind the block of houses. Instead, she stops in the street and rolls down her window.
Her jaw hangs open as she takes in the lights all over her house. “Oh my God, you two! Did you do all this?”
I put my arm around John’s shoulders, knowing it probably irritates him. “Your dad helped me.”
He shrugs off my arm. “It was his idea, but I did most of the hard work.”
Stevie smiles, and even from this distance, I see her eyes dampen. She coughs to clear her throat. “I guess I better cook you two a really good dinner, huh?”
“We’ll meet you inside,” I say, and she rolls up her window, driving past the house. I nudge her dad with my elbow. “We made her cry.”
“That is something to be proud of,” he acknowledges.
“Come on… let’s go drink another beer while she waits on us hand and foot… like kings deserve to be treated.”
Except when we get inside, we don’t sit back and let Stevie serve us. We join her in the kitchen and she directs us on how to help.
Stevie pulls out fresh ingredients from the fridge for us to put together individual flatbread pizzas, and I hold up the bag of thawed peas I find on the counter. “Are you putting this crap on the pizzas? Because if so, I’m out of here.”
Stevie looks over her shoulder at me. “Oh, no… I left that out earlier and forgot to put it back. You can just toss them.”
“Hurt yourself?” John guesses as I dump them in the garbage.
“Um… yeah, hit my knee on the stair banister coming down. It was quicker than making up an ice pack.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah… fine. How’s work been going?”
I frown at Stevie because something in her tone doesn’t sit right with me. She seems tired, but there’s a tension about her. Did she just change the subject from peas to John’s work a little too quickly?
Maybe not. She slips into easy conversation with her dad about one of his workers who’s apparently quite young and keeps hitting on him.
“You need to fire her,” Stevie says.
“You’re just saying that because you don’t like her,” John says as he slices pepperoni. I’ve been put on onion duty, which means I’m low man on the totem pole.
“It’s true. I don’t like her, and that’s because she’s my age and dresses provocatively for the sole purpose of getting your attention.”
“Unfortunately, she’s a damn good artist,” John laments with a shrug. “But I’m going to have a talk with her and tell her to cool it. I don’t need that shit in my workplace.”
“Say the word and I’ll talk to her,” Stevie says with an evil laugh.
And yeah… she seems fine.
“That won’t happen.” John turns his attention to me. “Rory get off okay?”
“Yeah… we had lunch, and she left after that.” I blink at the tears from the onion.
“She coming back anytime soon?” he asks.
Stevie and I exchange a look punctuated by matching smirks. I play stupid. “Nah… didn’t say when she’d be able to.”
“You should’ve just asked for her phone number, if you’re so interested,” Stevie teases.
“I got her phone number,” John retorts, and Stevie and I exchange raised eyebrows at this revelation.
Stevie shrugs, and I return to cutting onions. John’s interested, but I can’t figure out if he’s playing hard to get, or if he doesn’t know how to handle Rory. Regardless, I find it hilarious he seems a little off-balance.
“You talk to your mom lately?” John asks Stevie.
Talk about a change of subject.
“What?” Stevie exclaims as her body jolts. “Why would you ask that?”
And there it is again. She’s tense about something, and that sure as hell was a trigger.
John must sense it, too, as he stops slicing and glowers at his daughter. “It’s just you usually see her every week or so and talk to her a time or two more than that. You haven’t said much about her lately, and I was wondering if she disappeared on you. It’s her thing after all.”
