“Your restaurant, Di,” Robin said, filling in the blanks for me.
I picked up the napkin, staring at it with my mouth open. “So what you’re saying is that he’d take this side out, and this would be the window where people ordered?”
She nodded.
“Like right there on the dock?”
She smiled and nodded again. “And he said it’d be real easy to rig up everything you need for a commercial kitchen in there because there’s already a regular kitchen, so the water and electric and everything are hooked up. It’ll just need a few tweaks.”
Tears sprang to my eyes. Not because I was so far away from ever achieving that dream, but because my girl and her man loved me enough to take my dream and make it their own. “It’s not the best time right now,” I started.
“It’s okay, sweetie,” Cheyenne said. “You know he’d do the work for free and get everything as cheap as he could. The city said it will be at least six months before they get it sent over to the salvage yard.”
Six months might as well have been an eternity. But if I could work for Gray for three months before she went back home, maybe even stretch it out to four, and save every single penny, maybe, just maybe I could make it work.
I thought about that boat on the napkin again that night as I crawled into the backseat of the Impala in the parking lot of a bar across town that was full of Thursday night cars, most of which wouldn’t be going nowhere until morning. I lay on my pillow, balling up a shirt and putting it over the seat belt buckle so it didn’t dig into my side. In the morning, I’d drive over to the marina, take out my little duffel bag, take a shower, put on some clean clothes, and brush my teeth. I only had two pairs of underwear left, so I was planning on sneaking them into a loadwith Gray’s stuff. Or if that didn’t work, I’d do a load at the laundromat.
I won’t lie. The fact that the car door didn’t lock made it real hard for me to get settled. But I told myself that fear was a luxury for rich people. Fear is for people who can afford to change their circumstances.
I closed my eyes and felt my heart rate slowing down. I pretended that I was back in that apartment in the projects, all snuggled in the bed when Momma was there and she was acting right and Elizabeth and Charles and Phillip and me were all curled in with her like kittens. Even when he couldn’t be around anybody else, Phillip could always snuggle up with Momma. I let myself be in that moment where I was that little girl and I was something like happy. I didn’t know any better. I had my momma and I had my brothers and my sister, and that was all I needed.
As I felt myself start to doze off, it wasn’t Momma’s voice I heard in my head, as I sometimes did. Instead, it was Janet’s.
If anybody can do it, Di, it’s you.
CHAPTER 5
gray: moonshine
It was Friday already.FridayFriday.TheFriday. The night when I was going on my first date in about a hundred years, my first date since my separation.
When I’d e-mailed one of my favorite fashion blogger friends about what to wear, she’d begged me to take selfies of my options to let her post on her blog as a part of her “Sexy CEOs at Every Size” series. Then she would let her readers vote in real time on Twitter via hashtag. I told her I would sooner die. Although a few hours later I realized that posting my foray into dating for her one million followers might have been less horrifying than having Marcy there to help.
“Marcy, stop it!” I scolded yet again. “I’m not hiking this dress up any farther. It is short enough as it is.”
“I still say it looks better without the Spanx,” she said.
I stood back from the mirror and looked at my simple hot-pink dress with a bit of flair at the waist. I didn’t look half bad.
Marcy was right; the Spanx didn’t really matter. “But,” I whispered, “they kind of make my ringworm not itch.”
Marcy shook her head. “You are so gross. Where is he taking you, fungus fighter?”
I smirked and shrugged, slipping my feet into heeled sandals and tying them around my ankles. “He said somewhere that I’m guaranteed not to see anyone we know.”
“If I was out with someone that hot, I’d want everyone to see,” she said. “You should take him to Full Circle so that the whole town will be talking about how you’re winning your divorce.”
I rolled my eyes. “More like laugh at me for being such a pervy old lady.”
Secretly, though, I did sort of wish that news that I was out with the tennis pro would get back to my ex. He could say it was pathetic or clichéd or whatever he wanted to, but, deep down, a taste of his own medicine would annoy the hell out of him.
“Hey,” Marcy said, “what’s Greg’s schedule like?”
I rolled my eyes. “Well, let’s see. When I’m there to monitor him, he rolls in about ten, works for a half hour-ish, flirts with the interns for an hour or so, takes a long lunch, goes out on a ‘call,’ i.e., home to take a nap, and rolls back in around four fifty-seven to see if anyone wants to do happy hour.”
Suddenly my mood had soured like ice cream left out in the sun. I didn’t want to think about my husband or my divorce or his perky, coed fiancée. I just wanted to go out and have a good time.
“Why do you care?” I added.
