Except normal just moved my hand away from a man who flew across the state to sleep in my bed.
The inch isn’t shame. The inch is the space I’m putting between Benji and a target. Because if someone in this bar looks at my hand touching his and decides they have a problem with it, they won’t come for me. I’m in a wheelchair. He’s the man with the makeup. He gets the punches and I can’t get out of this chair fast enough to stop it.
The afternoon unfolds. Benji doesn’t notice any of it. Or he sees all of it and doesn’t care, which is more likely, because Benji has been walking through rooms full of dirty looks his entire life and he doesn’t flinch. He’s never made himself smaller for anyone. I admire the hell out of it. It terrifies me in this bar.
The bar fills for the dinner rush. Benji slides off his stool and starts helping Sheila without being asked. He cannot sit in a room where there’s work to be done and not do the work. He buses tables, runs food, refills the sweet tea station. He moves through the bar like he belongs in it. He does belong in it. That should make me proud. Instead, I’m watching every table he walks past.
Benji finishes a round and turns to me. He’s enjoying himself.
“You okay?” he asks.
His hand reaches for mine on the bar top. I let him take it. His fingers wrap around mine. I hold it for exactly the amount of time it takes to squeeze once and then I let go.
“I’m fine. Just tired.”
He nods and accepts it because Benji trusts me when I say I’m fine. I’m lying to his face.
Sheila catches my eye from behind the bar. She’s pouring a draft and looking at me over her glasses and the look says I see what you’re doing.
I look away. Because she’s right.
Chapter 35: Benji
The next morning, Mickey tells me we’re going to his mother’s house for lunch. He doesn’t ask. He doesn’t frame it as optional. He says, “We’re going to Mama’s. Sheila’s sending a cooler,” the same way he’d tell me the weather or the time, like meeting the woman who raised him is just the next thing that’s happening today.
My stomach has other opinions about how casual this is.
I spend forty-five minutes getting ready, which is thirty minutes longer than I need and fifteen minutes shorter than I want. Dante is on a video call giving me instructions from Miami.
“The light blue shirt,” he says. “Not the white linen. The white linen says I’m trying to impress you. The blue says I’m already impressive and I came anyway.”
“What about the eyeliner?” I ask.
“You’re asking me if you should take off the eyeliner to meet his mother?”
“I’m asking if it’s too much.”
“Benji. If you walk into that woman’s house without the eyeliner, you’re walking in as somebody else. She’s meeting you. Not a version of you that’s been sanded down for approval. You. The whole beautiful thing. If she doesn’t like it, that’s information you need. And if she does like it, that’s the only approval that counts.”
He’s right.
Mickey’s parents live in a small house twenty minutes from the Roadhouse. The house is white with green shutters and a ramp over the front steps that wasn’t there before the shooting.
“Tex built the ramp,” Mickey says from the passenger seat. “He came out on a Saturday with Stormy and they had it done in four hours.”
I pull the rental car into the driveway. The ramp is solid, wide enough for the chair with room to spare, and the handrails are sanded smooth. Tex-quality. I get the chair from the trunk and set it up beside the passenger door. Mickey transfers himself, hands on the seat, one push, swing the legs. It’s not graceful and it takes longer than stepping out of a car ever did but he does it on his own. Mickey wheels up the ramp and through the front door.
There’s a man in a recliner in the living room watching the Weather Channel at a volume that suggests he’s been watching it for several hours and will continue watching it for several more. Mickey’s father. Silver hair, thin frame, eyes that are focused on the screen.
“Hey, Dad,” Mickey says.
His father looks at him. The eyes land on Mickey’s face and stay there for a second too long. The second where Mickey doesn’t know if his father sees his son or a stranger in a wheelchair. I watch Mickey’s hand tighten on the wheel rim.
“Mickey,” his father says. “You’re in a wheelchair.”
“Yeah, Daddy. For now.”
“Did you get hurt playing football?”
