I get the last tab up and ease the backing off. Underneath, the photo is damp but intact. It's stuck to the glass at one corner and I work it free with my fingernail, slow, patient, millimeter by millimeter, while Tex watches without breathing.
The photo comes free. I hold it up.
His dad. Behind the bar. Opening night. Smiling like a man who just pulled off the best trick of his life.
"Got it," I say. "It's okay. Not even torn."
Tex takes the photo from me, and for a second his fingertips brush mine. The contact is so brief it barely qualifies as touch. A graze. A whisper of skin against skin. But I feel it everywhere, this tiny point of warmth where his finger crossed mine, and I don't flinch. My hand doesn't pull back. My body doesn't recoil.
I just feel it.
He's looking at the photo. His eyes are wet. He blinks once, hard, and clears his throat and says, "Thank you, Stormy. I mean that."
"Your hands were too big," I say, because I don't know what else to say and because it's true. And because the alternative is commenting about the way his fingertips felt against mine.
"Story of my life," he says, and his voice has that rough quality it gets when his feelings are too much to show."Too big for anything delicate. These hands were designed for flipping burgers and intimidating people at arm-wrestling tournaments. Not for tiny metal tabs on picture frames. Sheila always said that God gave me the hands of a lumberjack and the heart of a man who wants to do scrapbooking. It's a cruel combination."
He sets the photo on the bar top, propping it up against a bottle. His dad grins at the wrecked room like he's in on the joke.
"Speaking of Sheila," he says, pulling his phone from his pocket. "She called earlier. Service is spotty but she got through. She wants to come check on the place as soon as the roads clear enough."
"Who's Sheila again?" I remember him mentioning her before in stories, but I was so terrified at the time, I don't remember everything he said.
"Who is Sheila? She's the bar mama. She's been bartending here since before I took over. She's basically my second mother. You'll love her. More importantly, she'll love you, and once Sheila loves you, you're family. That's just how it works. There's no appeals process so don't even try. I tried to appeal once. She overruled me. I tried to appeal the overruling. She gave me a look that could curdle milk from across the room and I sat down and never mentioned it again."
He dials her number and puts the phone to his ear. He walks toward the open doors where the signal is stronger. I hear it ring twice before a woman's voice picks up, loud enough that I can hear it from ten feet away.
"Tex, you better tell me my bar is still standing."
Tex's body changes when he hears her voice. His shoulders drop. His spine loosens. He leans against thedoorframe and his face does this softening that goes deeper than his usual warmth. He looks like a kid talking to his mom, and the affection in his voice when he answers is naked and unguarded.
"Hey, Mama Sheila. Yes, the bar's standing. She took a beating but she's standing."
I listen to him talk to her. He laughs in a different register, more private. He says "yes ma'am" and "no ma'am" and "I promise" in a tone that makes it clear this woman owns a piece of his heart that nobody else has access to.
A weird feeling moves inside me. I don't recognize it at first because it's foreign. It takes me a minute to identify it, and when I do, I almost laugh at myself because it's so stupid and silly.
Jealousy.
I'm jealous. Of a woman I've never met, whose voice on a phone made Tex go soft in a way he hasn't gone soft around me. I'm jealous of whoever Sheila is and whatever she means to him. And the easy, uncomplicated love in his voice when he talks to her.
This is crazy.
I'm supposed to be making myself useful, not feeling things. I'm supposed to be earning my place here, not getting jealous of an older woman named Sheila who makes him sound all sweet and Southern polite on the phone.
"Yeah, I've got help," Tex is saying. "A guy named Stormy. Picked him up right before the hurricane. He's been incredible, Sheila. You're going to love him. Can't wait for you to meet him."
There it is again.You're going to love him. Said to Sheila the same way he said it to me about her, like it's a foregoneconclusion. Like the people in Tex's life are going to absorb each other because that's just how his world works. Everyone gets folded into the circle. Everyone belongs.
"He's quiet," Tex says, laughing. "Yeah, I know. Imagine that. Someone quiet around me. I didn't know it was possible either. Of course, I don't give him much chance to talk. You know me. He's also better at my job than I am, which I'm choosing to find charming instead of threatening. He organized my gift shop, Sheila. With categories. I didn't even know I had categories. I had piles. He turned my piles into categories. It was like watching a miracle happen in slow motion."
The jealousy fades. Not because I'm over it but because I'm listening to him talk about me. And the way he talks about me to this woman who clearly matters to him, the warmth in his voice, the pride, the genuine affection, it replaces the jealousy.
He's proud of me.
I can hear it. Not just in the words but how he says them. He's telling Sheila about me like he told the community about me yesterday. As if I matter to him.
I turn back to the wall I was working on. My eyes are burning and my throat is tight. I'm not going to stand here and fall apart because a man told someone he was proud of me. That's pathetic. That's weak. That's the kind of need that gets you trapped because you'll do anything, accept anything, endure anything, just to hear it again.
