"We're low on about six things and you already know what they are because you've got the inventory memorized."
"Maybe I forgot."
"You don't forget anything."
I rub my thumb across his skin then I take my hand off his back. I can feel his eyes following me across the parking lot, and I let him look the way he let me look. The current between us hums.
Later, when the rush slows down and Tex is at the grill telling a group of bikers about the time a heron stole a whole rack of ribs right off his platter, Sheila finds me at the serving station.
"Walk with me," she says. It's not a request.
We walk to the edge of the parking lot, toward the dark stretch of beach where the sound of the waves replaces the sound of the crowd. She's got another glass of sweet tea in her hand. She drinks that stuff like water. She takes a sip and looks out at the water.
"I need to talk to you," she says. "And I need you to hear me, not as your boss or as the bar mama or as someone who's going to tell you what to do. Just as someone who loves that man over there and has loved him since he was a child."
I wait. The waves roll in and out. Somewhere in the parking lot, Tex laughs, and the sound carries to us on the salt air.
"When you were in the water today," Sheila says, "and he realized what was happening, I have never seen fear like that on a human being's face. I've known Tex his entire adult life. I was there when his daddy got the diagnosis. I was there when his daddy died. I watched that boy grieve and rebuild and grieve some more, and I have never, not once, seen him look the way he looked when he grabbed those binoculars and saw you out there."
She pauses and takes a sip.
"He went out of his mind, Stormy. He was out the door and out of his clothes and in that water before I could finish dialing 911. He didn't think about it. He didn't calculate the risk. He just went. Because it was you. People die on these beaches every year when they go in to save someone caught in a rip current. More people die trying to save someone than the ones who get caught first. I don't know why it happens like that but it does. He didn't question it."
My throat is tight. I knew it was dangerous for him to come in after me, but I didn't know it's common for the rescuers to drown every year. Doing the same thing he did.
What if he'd died trying to save me?
"I've never seen Tex like this," she says. "I've seen him care about people, because that man cares about everyone he meets and that's the beauty and the curse of him. But I have never seen him the way he is with you. The way he watches you across a room. How still he holds himself around you, so careful." She turns to me. "That man has the biggest heart I've ever seen, and he doesn't protect it. He gives it away whole. He gives it to strangers and strays and anyone who walks through that door, and he never holds anything back. If it breaks, it breaks all the way. There's no halfway with Tex. There never has been."
Tex's laugh carries across the lot again, big and warm and full of everything he is.
"I need you to be sure," Sheila says. Her voice is quiet now. Gentle but serious. "Be sure about him, baby. Because he's already sure about you. He's been sure since the day he brought you here."
"I'm sure about him," I tell her.
I mean it more than I've ever meant anything.
But after she nods, and walks back to the bar, I stand at the edge of the parking lot. I look at the dark water and I think about what she said. He gives it away whole. If it breaks, it breaks all the way.
The stolen bike I rode here is upstairs. Parked on the second-floor landing where we put it before the hurricane. I took it from a bad man. And bad men don't let things go. They don't write off losses and move on. They come looking. And when he comes looking, and he will come looking, the bike won't be the only thing he wants back.
I've spent my whole life only having to worry about myself getting hurt. That was the one advantage of being alone. The blast radius was small. One person.Me. I could take a hit because I'd been taking hits my whole life and hits only land on the person standing there.
But now there's someone else standing next to me. Someone with a big heart and no armor and a habit of giving everything away to people who walk through his door. And if my past comes through that door, it won't just hurt me.
It'll hurt him.
When the man I ran from finds me, he'll find Tex too. And Tex will do what he always does. He'll step between me and whatever's coming, the same way he stepped between me and the biker, the same way he stepped into the water. He'll put himself in the blast radius because that's who he is.
That thought terrifies me more than the drowning.
I need to tell him everything. The whole story. He deserves to know what's coming so he can decide if he still wants to stand next to me when it arrives.
Not tonight, though.
Tonight, I'm going to work. I'm going to be grateful that I'm alive and that he's alive and that whatever this is, it's real.
But soon. I'll tell him soon. About the man. About the bike. About all of it. Because Sheila's right. He gives it away whole. And I will not let him give it to me without knowing what it's going to cost.
