Me.
"I sure am glad you're hanging around to help me with the rebuild," he says. He's looking at the water, not at me. His voice is quieter than usual. "Don't know how I'd do it without you. What a mess I'd be in, if I was here by myself trying to do all this. Not to mention the prep we did before the hurricane."
I take a drink of the warm beer. It's flat and body-temperature and tastes like it's been sitting in a non-air-conditioned building for three days, which it has. It's the best beer I've ever had.
"I'm not going anywhere," I say.
I don't know where it comes from. I didn't plan it. I don't make promises because promises are things people hold over you, leverage they store up for later, weapons disguised as gifts. But the words come out of my mouth and they feel true. And I don't take them back.
Tex turns to look at me. The sunset is behind him, and his face is half gold and half shadow. His brown eyes are tired and grateful. For one second, he doesn't say anything. Tex, who always has plenty to say, who fills every silence like it's a personal challenge, just looks at me and says nothing.
Then he smiles at me.
"I can't tell you how happy it makes me to hear that, Stormy."
We stand on the roof, drink our warm beers, and watch the sun disappear into the water. When the sun dips below the surface, Tex hands me his beer.
"Hold my beer," he says, then he starts clapping.
"Why are you clapping?"
He shrugs. "The tourists always do it when the sunset is over. Feels right, you know. Being able to come out here on my roof, anytime I want and watch the sunset is a gift. Clapping is a way to show appreciation."
I nod at him. He's right.
Standing here watching the sunset with himdoesfeel like a gift.
Chapter 7: Tex
The cooler makes its case early the next morning.
I open the walk-in cooler in the kitchen. The cooler's still holding some cold, but the temperature's creeping up and I can smell the clock running out. The insulation bought us time, but that time's about up. After three days without power in a Florida July, and my entire food stock is living on borrowed time.
I stand in the doorway and take inventory. Twenty pounds of ground beef patties, hand-formed and stacked between wax paper. Two racks of ribs I was marinating for the weekend that never happened. A case of chicken thighs. A five-pound tube of breakfast sausage. A tray of hot dogs. Buns, cheese, condiments. All of it leaning toward warm. All of it maybe twelve hours from being garbage.
I close the door, lean against it, and think.
Twenty pounds of burgers. Two racks of ribs. Enough chicken to feed a small army. In a normal week, that's three days of bar food, maybe four. Right now, it's a decision. I can try to cook some of it for Stormy and me and throw the rest away, which would be the practical thing, the financially responsible thing, the thing a smart business owner would do when he's already looking at six figures in hurricane damage.
Or I can drag the smoker grill into the parking lot and cook every last ounce of it and feed whoever shows up.
I think about the power crews I saw on the road yesterday, working in the heat, eating granola bars from their trucks. I think about the couple two streets over whose roof is gone. I think about the first responders who've been running twelve-hour shifts since before Peter made landfall. I think about what my dad would do, which is a stupid questionbecause I already know what he'd do. He'd already be firing up the grill.
Stormy comes downstairs. He always shows up earlier than he needs to. He's wearing the black sweatpants and the Property of Big Tex's Roadhouse t-shirt, which he keeps choosing over the other options. I try not to read too much into that.
"Morning," he says, sliding onto his stool.His stool.He doesn't sit anywhere else anymore.
"Morning. I've got good news and bad news. Bad news is we're about to lose all the food in the cooler. Good news is we're throwing a party."
He looks at me over the coffee I've already poured him.
"What kind of party?"
"The kind where I drag the big smoker into the parking lot and cook everything we've got and give it away to whoever needs it. Power crews, first responders, neighbors, anybody who can make it here. We've got enough food to feed a hundred people if we do it right, and it's all going bad anyway. We might as well make sure it goes into stomachs instead of a dumpster."
He doesn't blink or ask why. He doesn't calculate the cost or question the logic. He just sets his coffee down and says, "Okay. What do I do first?"
Warmth lands in my heart when he says that. This kid who showed up with nothing except a duffel bag, a bike I highly suspect was stolen, and a dull knife. Who has less than anybody I've ever met. And his first response to "we're giving everything away" is "tell me how to help."
