"I don't know about you," I say, wiping my face with my shirt, which is a lost cause at this point, "but I could eat a cow. How do you feel about burgers?"
"That sounds good."
I fire up the flat top in the bar kitchen and pull two patties from the walk-in. Hand-formed, half-pound each, seasoned with my dad's recipe, which is salt, pepper, garlic powder, and a secret ingredient that I will take to my grave. I told Sheila once and she said it was just onion powder, and she's right, but it's the onion powder that makes it.
"My daddy invented this burger recipe," I say, pressing the patties onto the grill where they hiss and pop and fill the kitchen with smoke that smells like heaven. "Back when he first opened this place, he spent three weeks straight trying to perfect the burger. Three weeks. He'd make a batch, take them out to the parking lot, and hand them to whoever was walking by. Bikers, tourists, the mailman, it didn't matter. He'd hand them a burger and say, 'Rate this on a scale of one to ten and don't lie to me because I'll know.' He could always tell when someone was being polite. He didn't want polite. He wanted ten out of ten."
I flip the patties and start slicing tomatoes. "The mailman finally gave him a ten. My daddy picked that man up off the ground and hugged him. Full bear hug, lifted him right off his feet. The mailman didn't deliver to our address for two weeks after that. I think Dad scared him."
I glance over. Stormy is sitting on a prep stool near the door, watching me cook with those blue-green eyes. He's got his arms crossed over his chest, which is his default position, but his shoulders are lower than they were this morning. Not relaxed. He's a long way from relaxed. But lower.
"Anyway," I say, laying cheese on the patties, "the recipe hasn't changed in thirty years. Same burger, same seasoning, same everything. People drive from Destin to eat these. I had a man tell me once that he scheduled his vacation around our open hours. I thought he was joking and then he showed me his calendar and there it was. 'Big Tex's burger, Wednesday' written right between 'beach' and 'parasailing.' I've never been more honored."
I plate the burgers with fries and slide one across the counter to Stormy. "Eat. That's an order. And don't you dare call me sir, because you're already on dish duty from this morning. I don't know if you can cook and I'm not ready to find out the hard way."
He looks at the burger and then at me. And then the corner of his mouth moves. Just the corner, just the left side, barely a millimeter, and it's gone as fast as it came, but it was there. A ghost of a smile. I've heard of mysterious ghost smiles. Now I've actually seen one.
I turn back to the grill so he doesn't see how much that pleases me.
We eat and I talk.
I tell him about the couple who got engaged on our little stage during open mic night, and the groom was so nervous he dropped the ring. It rolled under the pool table and six bikers got on their hands and knees to find it, and when they did, every single person in the bar cheered.
I tell him about my dad's tradition of putting up Christmas lights on the bar in August because, as he said, "It's my building and nobody can stop me," and how the tradition stuck. Now Big Tex's Roadhouse is the only bar on the panhandle that has Christmas lights glowing year-round.
Stormy eats his entire burger and all his fries. When he's done his plate is clean and there's color in his face that wasn't there this morning.
"Good, right?" I ask.
"Great." He pauses. "Thank you."
"Thank the recipe. I'm just the delivery system. My daddy did all the hard work." I start cleaning up and he jumps up to help me. "Alright, we should get some sleep. Peter's coming tomorrow night and we've got another full day of moving stuff and battening down whatever's left. It's going to be a long couple of days. Or depending on what happens with the hurricane it could be a few long weeks."
He nods.
"I mean it about the food," I say as we head upstairs. "Anything in the kitchen, any time. You get hungry at three in the morning, you wander downstairs and eat. You don't have to ask. Like I said before, the only thing I ask is the alcohol. You want a drink, you come to me first. Not because I'm trying to control you, just because I don't know your situation. I've been doing this long enough to know that booze and bad situations don't mix."
"I don't drink much," he says. "Never really."
"Neither do I, believe it or not. A beer now and then. I'm around it all day so the novelty wore off about fifteen years ago."
We reach the third floor. The hallway is narrow, just the two bedroom doors and the bathroom. I'm aware that I take up most of the available space. I try to give him room so he doesn't feel cornered. I don't know why I'm so conscious of it, except that I am.
"Get some rest, Stormy. We earned it today."
"You too." He's standing in his doorway and I'm standing in the hall. The wind is picking up outside, rattling the windows in a way that says tomorrow is going to be a different world.
I duck into the hall closet and pull out a couple of clean towels, thick ones, the kind Sheila insists I keep stocked even though I'd survive just fine with the thin, cheap ones.
"Here," I say, holding them out. I'm careful to extend them at arm's length, not to step closer. I'm learning. "Bathroom's all yours. Go ahead and shower first. I'll go after you."
"Thank you." He takes the towels without our hands touching. I don't know if that's deliberate on his part or mine.
"Night, Stormy."
"Night, Tex."
Tex. Not sir. Just Tex. We're making baby steps.
