We parked at Roy’s, then Luke planted himself at a corner table to watch over the customers and glower at them. “Tell your boyfriend that if he wants to sit at a table, he’s gotta order,” Roy told me. “And where’s your shirt?”
I was wearing a grey University of Michigan t-shirt that left a lot more to the imagination than the neon one of his design. “It got a lot of blood on it, from my arm,” I explained. “I can’t wash it out.” Which was true: I couldn’t really wash out the blood when the shirt was at the bottom of the trash can in Nana’s garage.
He made an angry huffing sound. “Maybe for the best. Maybe you got too much attention in that getup.” He scowled at me. “I’m not letting that piece of shit pretty-boy in again, so don’t worry. I’ve always got my girls’ backs in my place. How’s the arm?” Roy, at 5’7” and about 130 pounds, was notsomeone who filled me with confidence in the protection game. But he had come up big for me the previous night.
“Thanks, Roy. My arm is fine. Don’t worry, no workers’ comp claim.” He looked horrified, and I went to get a beer to put on Luke’s table.
Everything was going much more smoothly than the night before. The regulars, who had seen the dust-up the previous night and who were curiously eyeing Luke, gave me a wide berth.
Towards the end of my shift, I heard the tired sounds of my least favorite Australian band. “Roy!” I hollered across the bar at the end of the night. “AC/DC!”
Hank was leaned over the jukebox, “Hells Bells” blasting away. “You take it this time,” he ordered me.
I went over to Hank, and shook his shoulder. “Hank, you know our AC/DC policy. Three songs tops, then you’re cut off.” I shook him harder. “Hank!”
He leaned off the side of the jukebox, and vomited all over my legs and feet.
“Ugh!” I stood in shock, puke-covered shock, as Hank gracefully sank to my feet. Again, everything in the bar stopped, all eyes turned on me.
“You just can’t catch a break, can you, sugar?” Roy said, handing me a bar towel. He reached and turned Hank on his side. “I’ll get his wife. LAST CALL, EVERYONE!”
I was still standing frozen, jeans and Docs covered in hot, beer-filled barf. It was in my apron pockets. I gagged, and almost threw up too. I wheeled around and went into theladies’ room, and emptied the paper towel dispenser trying to clean myself up. It was useless. The smell of me was absolutely revolting. I fruitlessly pulled my jeans away from my skin, trying to dry them, and in the confines of the dirty bathroom, with the garbage can filled with paper towels covered in puke, I nearly retched again.
When I came out into the bar, it was empty except for Roy and Luke. “I let him stay,” Roy hooked a thumb at Luke. “Now both of you get out. I have to hose down the floor.”
We walked across the parking lot to his car. I kept my distance.
“Emmy, sweetheart, maybe you should take off your boots and your pants before you get in. We can put them in the trunk.”
Why? Why was he always seeing me when I was a wreck? And tonight, going to Luke’s for the first time when I was going to be super sexy and feminine and sensual, now I was covered in Hank’s beer puke.
I looked up at Luke. He had seen me in my absolute worst. And he was still standing there, right now with a garbage bag in his hands for my clothes, ready to help me. Sudden tears flooded my eyes. Puked on by Hank in the ongoing AC/DC battle. Well-played, Hank, this round went to you. I clapped my hands over my mouth. A time to cry and a time to laugh.
Snorts of giggles escaped through my fingers. Luke looked at me, then started laughing too, in a sort of amazed, perplexed way. I leaned against his car and crossed my arms over my stomach, shaking with it. Then I took a deep breath in through my nose to calm down, and it was a big mistake. I stunk like, well, the floor of Roy’s Tavern. “You ok?” Luke asked. I nodded. “You’re going to ride bottomless. Sit on thebumper, and I’ll pull off your boots and jeans with the garbage bag.”
We rode the whole way to his house with the windows wide open. Every time I looked over at him, I smiled.
“You’re in a good mood for a woman who just got puked on,” Luke commented.
How could I not be, when he unlaced my nasty Doc Martens and thoughtfully shook off the spew for me? “It’s not the first time I’ve been down Vomit Road. Charlie used to puke on me all the time. Well, spit up and puke. Pee, other substances.”
“Charlie? Is this recently?”
“No, no, I mean when he was a baby. He and Cassie lived with me until they moved up here with Nana.” I leaned my head out of the window. Holy mother, I stunk. “He was such a cute little guy. I had to drop him off at day care to go to my classes and the lab and work, and they would hold him up to the window to smile at me, his little gummy smile.” Thinking of Charlie as a baby felt like a hug. “I loved him so much as a baby. I love babies.”
“Oh, yeah?”
I turned back to look at him so quickly I almost got dizzy. “No, no, I didn’t mean it like that. Like, in any way. I’m not looking for babies. Or marriage. Or even anything, like relationship-wise.” Maybe I should stop talking.
Luke was nodding calmly. “I wasn’t around Macdara much as a baby. When I visited when she was born, Annie expected me to hold her, and it scared me to death. I thought her head was going to wobble off.”
I nodded too. I remembered holding Charlie for the first time in the delivery room, feeling like I might pass out. But I thought it was the impending responsibility that had made me lightheaded.
“But it will probably be different with my own kids, spending more time with them, being there all the time. I hope I’ll know what to do, a little bit more,” Luke remarked casually.
“It will be different with your own kids,” I answered, looking out the window again. I could feel myself smiling from ear to ear. He didn’t jump out of the car and run away screaming when I talked about babies. He wanted them, too.
Luke made a left, then another, then turned into the dirt driveway to his house. I supposed I had been expecting something like Annie’s modern colossus, but Luke’s house reminded me a lot of all the older lake cottages in our area, with a big front porch and lawn dotted with mature trees. It was large, but not gigantic like Annie’s house. It looked old-fashioned, and welcoming, and I loved it.
