“They do today.”
She turned to look at him, and something in her expression had shifted into the focused pleasure of a person who had found exactly what they were looking for. “I want the chicken hearts, the liver and onions, and about half of their side dishes.”
“I’m getting the liver and onions, and probably their mega-burger.” Or maybe the country-fried steak. Decisions, decisions.
But she wasn’t stuck on decisions, and a woman who knew what she wanted and didn’t negotiate herself out of it was rare. He filed that away alongside everything else he’d been filing away all day.
They took a table by the window, and a twenty-something young woman came to take their order. Tuesday ordered without opening the laminated menu. “I want the liver and onions, and… how many chicken hearts are on a plate?”
“It’s a half pound. I don’t know how many that is.”
“Two orders of chicken hearts, collard greens, mashed potatoes, fried zucchini, pinto beans, fried okra, a bowl ofchili, and…” She looked from the chalkboard back to the waitress. “Is the mac-n-cheese from scratch, or from a box?”
“Ain’t nothing here comes out of a box.” She paused and added, “’Cept the corn starch, but I guess we don’t sell that to you d’rectly, so it probly don’t count.”
She rattled the order off and was walking away when Knife started in with his order. Clearly, the waitress thought Tuesday was ordering for both of them.
The young woman blinked, and Tuesday said. “We hiked. We’re hungry.”
Knife wasn’t going to apologize for what he wanted, so he told her, “I’ll have the liver and onions, country-fried steak, mega-burger with extra bacon, pinto beans, and a double order of tater tots.” He paused. “And what the hell, some mac-n-cheese, too, since it’s actual cheese.”
The waitress wrote it down, repeated it back, and then asked what they wanted to drink.
Tuesday finally opened the menu, looked it over, and asked, “Water with lemon?”
The waitress nodded, and Knife told her, “Half sweet, half unsweet tea.”
When they were alone again, Tuesday asked him, “How’d you find this place?”
The question hit like a punch in the gut because he couldn’t tell her. It seemed innocuous enough — Horse, the club’s ride captain, set it up for them to eat here when the club took pretty much the same drive he’d just taken Tuesday on, old 41 Highway along the Tennessee River andthen up Monteagle, except they’d stopped at Foster Falls on the way up; a one-mile hike instead of a ten-mile trek.
He hedged and told her, “Came up here with a group.”
It cost him, not being able to share with her, and the look on her face told him she knew.
He considered what she might have figured out, and he realized he hadn’t tried to mask his scent, which meant she’d likely picked up on his regret, and probably the deeper ache beneath it, the whole damned thing reminding him she’d never be able to fully know him.
Part of him wanted to apologize, but he wasn’t going to. Still, he had to say something, so he blew out a breath and said, “Not really a secret, but…”
“It’s fine. I get it.”
Thankfully, the waitress brought Tuesday’s chili and set it before her.
Before she even picked up the spoon, Tuesday sniffed it and pronounced, “Southern style, to its core.” She poked and prodded at it with her spoon. “With plenty of beans, as any good chili should have, crazy people in Texas notwithstanding.”
She took a bite and then lifted a piece of cornbread from the dish in front of her and crumbled it into the bowl.
“I hate to eat in front of you. Want to share? It’s excellent. Plenty of beef, lots of tomatoes, perfectly spiced, and it’s simmered long enough the beans have soaked upallthe flavor.”
She took another bite. “Whoever made this has been making it the same way for a damned long time. You can taste the confidence in it.”
He hadn’t thought about food that way, but he knew what she meant the second she said it. The same way he could tell when a carcass had been broken down by someone who’d done it ten thousand times versus someone who was still thinking about where to put the knife.
“That’s a good way to put it,” he said.
She shrugged. “Food either knows what it is or it doesn’t. This knows.”
The liver came on two oval plates, the onions caramelized dark and soft, the brown gravy pooled around the edges. She pulled her plate toward her and inhaled before she picked up her fork.
