“I’ll bet they are,” I said.
Timber nodded and sucked in his cheeks a little bit. That only made his cheekbones look higher. He had always had such a sculpted face, it just took him a while to grow into it. In school he had looked more like a skeleton, his features were so defined. The phantom of the high school. He wore a cape one year for Halloween and eyeliner and mascara and it was just spooky. But now I could see what he had become: a tall, slender, extreme-looking man.
I placed my order and Timber handed it to Papi in the back. They spoke to each other in Spanish briefly, and Timber laughed. “Loco,” he said. He always had a nice laugh. It rolled right over you, like fingers kneading skin. Papi went back to his work silently. Everything felt like it had shifted a little bit in the diner. Timber seemed bolder, like there was a spotlight on him. I was happy for him. He had earned this moment in his life. And then—damn Thomas to hell!—I suddenly pictured Timber at that glory hole at the dirty magazine store. Timber bent down on his knees, facing the hole. No way. I shook it off.
I had known him my entire life, practically. I could not recall him ever being the slightest bit deviant. He had gone out with a few girls in high school, and none of them had a cruel word to say about him. And they were the smartest girls from our class, too. Penelope Davis had gone all the way to Massachusetts for college, this very important and prestigious all-girls school there. She was in law school now. I had run into her there at the diner, when she was home the previous Christmas. She wanted to help people, to fight for their rights. I am not sure which people and what rights, but that does not matter. The point is, he had dated quality girls, girls of substance. That meant Timber was all right, that he was not someone about to bend over in a dirty magazine shop, even if it was a pretty-sounding name like “glory hole.”
Timber leaned forward on his elbows in front of me at the counter.
“We didn’t see you last week,” he said. It was true; Thomas had been nervous the day before the surgery, and did not want to see anyone he knew.
“Thomas has been under the weather for a bit,” I said.
“I heard, I heard.” He nodded slowly. “Some of the guys putting in your pool were around here for lunch the other day. Sounds like you’ve been doing a lot of work over there.” He winked at me. “Lots of money being thrown around.”
“Like it’s going out of style,” I said. “It never ends.” I do not know what happened next, except that I started crying a little bit. I think because I felt comforted there. I had been in that diner a million times. It was a safe haven. Like a church.
Most of our neighbors actually went to church—there were at least twenty in town. There were a lot of faithful people around. Not me and my husband, though. “Church is boring,” Thomas had said more than once. “All that sitting and paying attention. It feels like class to me.” I agreed with him. I did like to pray by myself though. I liked to shut out all the noise and have a clear space in my head. So there was enough room for me and God, who did not want anything from me but just to listen and help me feel better. Growing up, I only ever went at Christmas and Easter, and Thomas’s dad had abandoned his faith entirely to the love of his farm. No one was missing us at church.
But Timber would miss us, and we would miss him making us breakfast every Sunday morning. I counted on feeling good at the diner. And yet there I was, tiny hot tears making their way down my cheeks. I had gone from hot to cold to hot again, all in one day. I did not like the change in temperature.
Timber handed me a paper napkin from the dispenser. I wiped my eyes. Then he put both of his hands on my free hand.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. I looked to see if anyone was looking.
“No one’s in here,” said Timber. “They’ve all gone home. You’re okay. Come on. You’re going to be fine.”
“It’s just . . . change is hard,” I said.
“No one ever enjoys home improvement,” he said. “It’s a lot of work. You got all those people in your house, there’s all that noise. And it always takes longer than they say it’s going to take.”
“I know!” I said. I was happy to talk to someone about it all, even if we were having two different conversations.
“Pop says I’m crazy, but I’m going to redo this place. I could really do it up.”
“You should,” I said.
Papi rang a bell in the kitchen. Timber squeezed my hand and winked again. “Your order’s up,” he said.
I wiped my eyes again, and pulled a twenty-dollar bill out of my wallet. I laid it on the counter. Timber came back with our food in a plastic bag that said, “Thanks for your order” on it. It was coming out of the mouth of a smiling cartoon dog wearing a chef’s hat.