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I look at him, and his eyes are warm and a heartbreaking mix of sadness and hope and something I don’t want to even touch on before I nod, a small smile I can’t fight pulling at the edges of my lips.
“Your favorite,” I say, remembering the mornings we’d ride our bikes and then later Riggins’ car to the bakery and make sure we got one for him and a strawberry frosted sprinkle for me.
His eyes burn on me, and I want more than anything to break eye contact, but instead, I nod and smile fully.
“Yeah,” I say, and with that, his smile spreads too, like melted butter on toast across his face, warm and inviting. He squeezes once on my wrist before letting go, right where that small heart tattoo is. When my hand drops, the spot where his fingers were is cold and uncomfortable, but I don’t let myself think too much about it.
“Thanks, Stell,” he says, with a tip of his chin.
I don’t reply.
I just nod and walk back into the diner.
When I come back out, Riggins and Gracie are gone, but a twenty and a photo are tucked under the plate again.
This one shows a grown dog, not a puppy, but with no grey on her snout. When I turn it over, in Riggins’ thick, masculine handwriting, it says,
Gracie, 4 years old.
All my love.
I tuck the photo carefully into my bag before going about my day, my head in the clouds and lost in beautiful, comfortable memories that until recently, were covered in a thick layer of dust.
10 PART OF ME
NOW
STELLA
Dinner with the man my mother thinks would suit me goes exactly as I had anticipated: unbearably and miserably boring.
He picks me up at exactly five pm, knocking on my door like a true gentleman, but before I even get a hello out, his eyes are glued to my tits in the scoop neck dress I’m wearing, and they don’t leave the entire night. I’m not fully sure what that says about him either, considering calling my boobs B cups is being incredibly generous.
Parker takes me to the lone restaurant in Ashford my mother would approve of, where the waiters all wear ties, and there are candles on every table—the fake, battery-operated kind, which my mother deems plebeian, but in a town this size, you can only have your expectations so high.
The dinner goes about as well as one could expect, though fully devoid of any real conversation on my part or enjoyment, for that matter. He asks me about my job, to which I tell him what he already knew from my mother, and then he spends the next forty minutes telling me all about his job at an accounting firm, which sounds like the world's most boring career in the world.
When he pays for the meal, I’m starting to plan how to get out of a goodnight kiss at my door without him taking it as an insult to report back to my mother when he looks up at me with a smile.
“Okay, now that this is done, how about we get a drink at The Atlas?” I feel my jaw clenching, trying to think of an excuse, but unfortunately, tomorrow I don't have work in the morning. The last thing I need is my mom calling me on my fucking day off, giving me shit.
“Look, I know you got dragged into this same as me,” he says, catching me off guard. “We both need to give our mothers a good story about this date, and I could use beer. Then I’ll take you home, easy as that.”
“You got dragged into this too?”
“You’re gorgeous, Stella, but the whole town knows you’re not looking for anything close to serious, and I’m too young to settle down, you know? A man’s gotta sow his oats.” He gives me a shit-eating grin, and I fight the eye roll and gag because, in truth, he’s helping me out.
“Yeah…” I say instead.
“So let’s grab a drink next door. I think there’s music tonight. Then we have a full story for the pushy moms and can say we were having such a good time, that we extended things. That should buy us each a couple of weeks before they get on our case again.
For the first time all night, I give him a genuine smile. “Yeah. That would be cool.”
We walk into the bar next door and he’s right, music is in fact playing, a band on the small stage and instantly, it makes my chest tighten.
I avoid live music at all costs, and for a moment, faced with the opportunity to avoid my mother’s wrath for a bit longer, I forgot why.
It’s the way the crowd feels, the way the bass pounds in my belly. The way a room of strangers can suddenly feel like they all have a common goal, a common love.
