She brings her hand to her heart and breathes out heavily. “You have no idea how helpful that would be. Thank you so much.”
Heath and I go to the kitchen, and thankfully it goes better than the first time. I pop a couple of potatoes in the microwave while I heat up the flat top and whip the eggs. Thankfully, Heath has the ready-to-cook tortillas, so I get those going as I cube the cooked potatoes and toss them with some olive oil and Tony Chachere’s on the sizzling flattop to crisp them up a bit. Finally, I add the whipped eggs to the potatoes and cook till almost done, adding cheese as a flourish right at the end. Meanwhile, Heath is pulling several shots of espresso and fixing Ashley a go-cup.
We finish about the same time and get Ashley on the road, who again effuses her thanks. She also gives me the world’s most inappropriate up-down—because I still haven’t found my shirt—and shoots Heath a look while stage-whispering, “Well done, buddy.” He scrubs his hands through his beard and gives me an apologetic shake of his head, which makes me and Ashley laugh pretty hard.
We pull the kids around the table, where they go to town on the food. Luna, the youngest, drags her plate over next to mine and sits in my lap, happily separating her breakfast taco into its component parts and then using her fingers to eat each item. I hug her to me, and it is the most natural feeling in the world.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Roly
Oh my god, I’m so excited. I mean, we’ve done this all backward, but… it’s our first date. I feel the same chills about tonight as I did the first time I saw Heath walking down the hallway at school. I can’t wait to make newer, better, more naked memories with him.
I’m wearing my dark-wash skintight jeans with a pair of gorgeous leather oxfords, and a royal blue button-down with the cuffs folded back a couple of times. I nervously knock on the door, and Heath answers seconds later wearing perfectly pressed khaki shorts, a white T-shirt with Dorothy holding Toto, and a navy blue blazer, which he’s finished off with a pair of really sharp boat shoes.
“Fuck, you’re sexy,” we both say at the same time.
“Jinx.”
His laugh is brilliant, and I realize that he’s trimmed up his beard, and the overall effect is casual, sexy bear. I have to stop myself from trying to convince him to cancel the date, because what I’d really like to do is tell him we should go inside his house and get naked together. But we’re trying to do something serious here, so I hold my tongue. Barely.
We head out together in his fancy SUV, and it feels like the beginning of something special. Every moment with him has felt like the beginning of something new. Everything we do is marked with possibility, because on every level we just fit. After about thirty minutes of driving through the west Austin Hill country we arrive at Ski Shores, a little place just off the lake, popular with locals. It used to be just glorified pier, but they’ve expanded, and now there’s places for a band and additional covered seating, not to mention the best damned burgers on the planet. Fight me.
He gets the veggie burger with avocado and mushroom, and I get the Tex Mex burger with extra guac and extra jalapeños. We share bites of each other’s fries (he got sweet potato, I got regular), and I decide that I like his beer better than my cider, so we switch and it all feels so easy.
Easy feels weird, and it’s hard not to fall into the trap of feeling like I don’t deserve all of the good things that are happening. For weeks I’ve been on edge with not enough to do and too much going on in my head. But to sit here with him, just looking at the water, not even really talking to one another… I’ve never experienced that before. I didn’t know that you could sit in silence with somebody and have it be so meaningful. I knew that he was sexy as fuck; what I didn’t quite get was that his calm, easy demeanor could make me so happy.
The band we’re listening to is playing South American Jazz, and it manages to be both relaxing and danceable at the same time. Heath and I sit back and watch the couples move together on the dance floor. We smile at each other, and he pulls me onto his lap, and it just feels right. We’re in a place where we’re lucky enough to be physically affectionate with one another without having to worry. And it is in that exact, perfect moment that stupid fucking Eileen Stevens, original high school mean girl, walks up on us.
“Oh. My. God. What is going on here?” she asks, as though she’s just found the best bit ofchismeshe’s ever seen.
“I think that’s pretty obvious, don’t you, Eileen?”
Heath stiffens under me, and not in a good way.
Her poorly lined lips smirk up in a way that is doing her no favors. “Didn’t you used to make fun of him in high school?”
“Yeah, I was a real asshole back then,” I say, knowing that she did exactly the same thing. “Thankfully, I’ve grown up since, and Heath here is a kind and forgiving man.”
“Heath? Don’t you mean Heavy?” She snorts at her own joke, which, again, isn’t flattering to her overall aesthetic.
I wiggle my finger at her. “Sorry, Eileen. The only one who can call him Heavy is me, and I only do that in private.” I say this with a raised eyebrow, hoping beyond hope that she’ll get the hint and move on.
She does not get the hint.
“So, what are you? A chubby chaser?” That’s when my brain reminds me that she was one of the shitty people who made me feel like I couldn’t date a bigger guy. I look at her and see the person I could have become had I not changed my trajectory so dramatically, and all of a sudden, I feel nostalgic for those wacky guys and their beat-up Dodge Caravan.
“If you’re asking whether or not I find my boyfriend incredibly sexy, then yes, absolutely, every inch of him. If you’re implying that my affection for him is somehow wrong or less than, or worse, thatheis wrong or less than, I’d be happy to direct you to any number of adult websites where you can buy the tools with which you can go fuck yourself,” I say, giving her my most blinding smile.
She chokes, I assume on her own spit. “I-I-no! Never!”
“That’s what I thought. Have a nice evening, Eileen.” I dismiss her and turn my attention to my beautiful, brilliant boyfriend, whose hair is a fiery red in the fading light. “I’m sorry for that,” I say, kissing him on the lips. There’s another chicken sound behind us, and Eileen’s mouth is open in a way that makes her jawline look terribly unappealing.
“Eileen, darling, you’re staring.”
“Oh yeah, okay, sorry. Goodbye,” she stutters out, then leaves.
Heath and I laugh, then join the rest of the couples dancing to the sound of jazz overlaid with woodwinds and pan flute.
