“I’ll ask her to bring Brooks into the city for lunch tomorrow.”
“Huh,” she puffed out (which meant in Deanna-still-kinda-annoyed-at-you speak “okay”).
With that, she strutted out of my office.
I watched her then went to my phone on my desk.
Deanna wants to meet you, I texted Johnny.
Almost immediately I got back, Knew that was coming.
She’s good people, I shared.
Figured that, he replied.
Saturday at my place? I asked.
I’ll be there, he answered.
See you later.
You absolutely will.
I smiled at my phone.
Then I got to work.
I hurried in the back door of Home and saw there was only a smattering of people, Johnny one of them, sitting on the stool he sat on the night we met.
It was not lost on me I had attention well beyond people turning to look and see who was coming in the door.
I just ignored it as I made my way quickly to Johnny.
“Sorry,” I said, sliding between him and the stool where I’d sat when we met. “You been waiting long?”
“Babe, I’m at a bar with the game on. It’s not a hardship to sit here and drink beer.”
I grinned at him.
He stared at me.
“Everything okay?” I asked, setting my purse on the bar and hefting my behind up on the stool.
“You are totally not with the program,” he muttered.
“Sorry?”
“Babe, kiss me,” he ordered.
That sent the trill up my spine.
I leaned into him and touched my mouth to his only to have him cup the back of my head, making the kiss longer, sweeter, but keeping it light.
He let me go and murmured, “Have a good day?”
I nodded.
“You want a glass of wine?”
I nodded.
“What you want?” he asked.
My eyes trailed away as I mumbled, “Um . . .”
“Sally, you got a wine list?” Johnny called.
Sally, the bartender, looked at him like he’d gone crazy.
Johnny looked to me. “It’s house red or house white, and maybe if you’re lucky, house rosé.”
“White,” I said.
Johnny turned back to Sally. “Can you get my girl a glass of white?”
“Sure thing, Johnny,” she said and moved to the wineglasses suspended upside down over the bar.
Johnny took a tug of beer.
After he swallowed, I asked, “You have a good day?”
He’d been positioned facing the bar through all this and only then did he twist on his stool toward me, put a forearm on the bar, fingers still wrapped around his beer.
“The goal for having a GM is that people bring in cars. I fix them. I know they’re not gonna like how much it costs so I can tune that out. They drive away with something fixed. I work on the next car. In other words, being able to tune out the only shit I might take, I don’t have to deal with any shit. So, sp?tzchen, it’s rare I have a bad day.”
I smiled at him. “That’s cool.” Sally put my glass in front of me and I turned my smile to her and said, “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it,” she murmured and moved away.
“News about Addie?” he asked.
I took a sip, put my glass down and told him, “She still hasn’t shared.”
“How long is she staying?” he queried.
“Maybe forever?” I replied in a question and saw his brows go up. “She hasn’t said how long she’s staying but she’s gone so far as to unpack in my guest room and set up a makeshift nursery for Brooks in my office. And she brought a lot of stuff, Johnny. She’s a waitress. It’s at a high-end place so she makes a lot on tips. But she’s hourly. She doesn’t get paid for vacations.”
“This isn’t getting better,” he muttered.
“No,” I agreed.
“You good with her staying forever?” he asked.
“Totally,” I answered.
His lips hitched. “Figured that was a stupid question.”
I leaned toward him, scooting my wineglass closer, and grinned.
“You talk about your mom, Izzy, know your sister, what’s up with your dad?” he asked.
I leaned back, scooting my wineglass away, and my grin died.
“Iz?” he called as I lifted the glass and took a sip.
I swallowed it and requested, “Can we keep tonight light?”
“Sure. But just to say, baby, I’d like to get to know you better and talking about your sister’s possibly disintegrating, possibly already crashed and burned marriage isn’t exactly featherweight.”
“I don’t see him,” I declared.
“Your dad?” he asked.
“Yes,” I answered.
“Your choice?” he asked.
“Absolutely,” I answered. “However, there is the small fact that Mom took us, ran away from him, and after making her life miserable for about two months, we never heard from him again, so it was his choice first.”
Johnny’s hand came to rest on my thigh, the warmth of it immediately melting through my jeans.
It gave me strength.
So I shared, “This is probably because he found another woman to beat bloody.”
I saw a flash in his eyes before he hid it and whispered, “Sp?tzchen.”
“My grandfather hated my dad, ordered my mother not to marry him, and she rebelled. She was eighteen, head over heels in love, and pregnant, the last part my grandfather was really not hip on. She took off to be with the love of her life. That’s just the way things go, I guess. Therefore, when Mom took us from him to them, my grandfather closed the door in her face. Apparently, he was that kind of guy. I don’t know. I don’t really remember him and Mom never talked about him. Though from the little I do know, mostly how my grandmother behaved, even though I didn’t know her either, my mom found her father and married him.”
“Fuck,” Johnny clipped.
“My grandmother found us before we had to skip town and gave Mom her milk glass. Told her to sell it. Mom never sold it. It was the only thing she had of her mother. So she kept it. And Gramma would send cash as often as she could but it wasn’t very often. Still, we were so poor, whenever she could, it helped.”
“Izzy,” he whispered.
“Government cheese,” I said.
He leaned into me, his fingers digging in.
“Izzy,” he hissed.
“She worked all the time. She’d find places close to school so Addie and I could walk if she couldn’t take us. Every time we moved when we were young, she’d walk us back and forth, back and forth. ‘Remember this, girls. Don’t go a different route, my queens,’ she’d say. ‘And don’t talk to strangers, not ever. Get yourselves home, fast and safe, and then you call your momma to let her know you’re locked in tight.’”
Johnny said nothing.
“She’d open cans of soup so I could heat them up for Addie and me if I had to make dinner. Soup and cheese sandwiches. Night after night. All I could make but also all she could afford. She’d call to make sure I turned off the stove. I was seven.”
His hand slid up my thigh as he got closer but he said nothing.
“I graduated to grilled cheese sandwiches when I was nine. You like my guac, you should try my grilled cheese. It’s to die for.”
“Don’t make light of this, Izzy,” he said gently.
“We were happy.”