“I don’t know.” I wipe my forehead, and sure enough, my palm is now coated with wetness. “Do you want to go over to the diner?” I ask her, changing the topic to get away from the sudden uncomfortableness in the room.
She bites the inside of her cheek and casts a glance at the locked door that we aren’t allowed to enter through. “It’s okay, I asked my dad,” I assure her and rise to my feet, shrugging my backpack over my shoulders.
We hurry out of the grocery store as the attendant eyes us warily because, for the first time in four years, we’re without our dads. Crossing the street, we finally enter the small diner with vinyl seats and metal rimmed tables. I grab a booth in the back corner by the bathrooms. She slides in across from me and doesn’t pick up her menu.
“Do you know what you want?” I ask her, flipping through the menu myself.
“Um …” She stops and then inhales a hefty breath. “Dex, I don’t have any money.”
“No need, I’m paying. The winnings from two weeks ago,” I explain and continue to study the burgers, milkshakes, and sandwiches the diner offers, like this isn’t anything unusual for us.
Her fingers wrap along the top of my menu, and she pushes it down. “I won’t let you,” she informs me and the determination of Chrissy’s eyes shows her need to never want people to feel sorry for her.
“Yes, you will.” She leans back, crossing her arms, and stares out the window.
When the friendly middle-aged waitress wanders over in her frilly apron, she smiles and giggles before asking us what we want. I order two hamburgers with fries and milkshakes. Realizing I’m ordering for her regardless, Chrissy finally chimes in. “Not chocolate, strawberry, please.” The woman notes the change on her pad with a smile.
I follow the waitress’s walk back behind the counter with my eyes, watching her whisper to another waitress, who glances our way with a small amused smirk. They probably think we’re on some kind of date.
“Thank you, Dex.” Chrissy’s voice interrupts my thoughts and I turn her way. Again, Fourth of July booms in my stomach.
“You’re welcome,” I mumble, and we sit there in silence again, watching the cars pass by the diner, probably on their way to somewhere that has nothing to do with the hidden life that Chrissy and I have experienced.
We eat our lunch with barely any conversation between the two of us. For some reason, watching her eat brings a happiness to me that I can’t explain. At first she was slow, taking a fry, dipping it into ketchup, and then wiping her hands on the napkin, but once she witnessed my very caveman scarfing-down mechanics of eating, she changed her course to match mine.
Sitting on the crappy, ripped, vinyl-covered benches, we watch what everyone believes is the grocery store across the street. Some men leave with their heads down and hands in their empty pockets, a sure sign that they lost. Others have wide and huge smiles showing they won.
Eventually, we leave with the realization that our dads will be finished soon. We exit the restaurant and stand on the cracked-up sidewalk in the most rundown part of town. It’s a surprise everything isn’t boarded up by now. Her hand is on my forearm before I can react and then her lips are on my cheek even faster. “Thanks again,” she softly says before stepping back, leaving me in my own personal space.
This time it’s not my stomach that’s exploding to life.
14 years old
“MIKE IS COMING with me,” I tell my friend, Heidi, who is currently packing for a trip to Cedar Point with her family. I’ll never understand why she befriended me earlier this year when we both were thrown into high school. She’s middle class; I’m poor. She’s pretty enough to be a model, and I’m girl-next-door-tomboy. The list could go on and on to our differences, but it’s nice having an escape when she invites me over to her house.
My dad moved us for many reasons, one being an eviction notice from the one-bedroom place we’d called home for years. Lucky, though, I now have my own room, well, a curtained off section. But more privacy than the bed in the corner of the family room in our last place. Not that I have to worry too much, since my dad is rarely home. You know that goes along with actually being a parent.
Since I’ve grown older, I rarely go with him to the Saturday games, and if I do, it’s with the chance that maybe Dex will be waiting there in one of our chairs. But usually a heaviness would take over my body if they were empty when I arrived because he doesn’t go much either. He has obligations like most kids our age. Sports and friends keep him busy in his big house on the opposite side of the world from me.