by Robin Hill
I press the heels of my hands into my eyes.
“Sit,” she says, pushing a box of Kleenex toward me. “You want something to drink? Water? Diet Coke?”
I shake my head as I take a seat. “I don’t know why I’m upset. I was fine and then…”
“And then what, sweetheart?”
“And then everything hit me. My cabin. Jane. This place.” I grab a tissue and blow my nose. “I can’t do it. I want to, but I can’t.”
“Can’t do what? Frankie, you’re not making a whole lotta sense right now. You sure you aren’t on a bender?”
I snort a laugh. “I wish.”
“Why don’t we start at the beginning. How was Miami?”
“Miami was great.” I curl my feet beneath me and slouch like I’m trying to disappear into the chair. “But then we went to his island…”
Lucy turns her ear toward me. “His what? Hon, speak up. I thought you said island.”
I relay the story to her, sparing no details. She listens intently, arms folded on her desk, eyes wide and dreamy. But when I get to the Minnie Mouse incident in the pantry, she begins to cry, and she sobs when I tell her about Darian’s grass-stained knees from the cemetery.
“My God,” she says, swiping at her eyes. I push the box of Kleenex back to her. “That poor, sweet man.” She blows her nose so loud it echoes. “If you don’t want him, I do.”
“Lucy…” I unfold my legs and lean forward, pressing my forehead against the hard edge of her desk.
“I know. It’s not that easy.”
“No, it’s not.”
“But it’s not that hard either.”
I slowly lift my gaze.
“You’re in love with him,” she says.
“Yes.”
“He’s in love with you.”
“So he says.”
She sighs. “And you’re scared to follow your heart because you’re afraid he might break it.”
I nod and hide my face again.
“I know math isn’t your strong suit but humor me a minute. Let’s say you stay. You don’t follow your heart. What do you think the chances are of it breaking anyway?”
I let out a moan.
“That’s right, Frankie. One hundred percent. But if you go,” she says, twisting a lock of my straw-blond hair around her finger, “there’s a chance it won’t get broken. Who knows how much of one. It may only be one percent, but isn’t a tiny chance at happiness better than no chance at all?” Her voice softens. “He may break your heart, baby girl, or he may not.”
I look up at her. “I’m scared, Lucy.”
“I know. But you need to get over it,” she says as she stands. “Life is scary, but you still have to live it.” She rounds her desk and sits on the edge, directly across from me. “What about your cabin? Would you put it up for sale?”
“No. And Darian says when the new office is operational, we’ll come back. Not permanently or anything.” I shrug. “I don’t think, anyway.”
“I could keep an eye on things for you,” she says. “Collect your mail. Drive your truck every once in a while. Things like that.”
My face twists in a grimace. “Ugh. I forgot about my truck.”
She pushes off the desk and gives my shoulder a squeeze. “Stay here. I’ll be right back.”
I hear the door to the walk-in cooler open and close. A few minutes later, it opens and closes again. She returns to her office with a large box perched on her hip and a twelve-pack of Shiner Bock dangling from her fingers. She drops them both on her desk and blows out a breath. “Damn, that was heavy.”
“What is it?”
“Your dinner,” she says, sitting in the chair beside me. “You need to go home and make that man Lucy’s famous chicken fried steak.”
I nod toward the Shiner. “And that?”
“That’s beer, honey. You also need to get laid and that might move things along.”
I choke on a laugh. “Lucy!”
“You’re wound tighter than a two-dollar watch. How can you make a decision this big if you can’t relax?”
“What about inventory?”
“I think we both know you didn’t come here to do inventory,” she says. “And it doesn’t matter anyway because you’re fired.”
My mouth falls open. “I’m what?”
“I love you too much to let you use this job as an excuse. If you decide not to go, so be it. But this diner isn’t going to be the reason.”
A short silence falls and I clear my throat. “You really think I should go?”
“I’m not saying that. I just want you to make a decision that isn’t based on fear.” She takes my hand in hers. “But if you do decide to go, you’d better keep in touch. I want postcards. Pretty ones with sunsets and palm trees.”
“You want me to send you postcards? You just fired me.”
“Yes, but I did it out of love,” she says, smiling. “Seriously, though. You’ve been using this job as a crutch for way too long. Be honest with yourself, Frankie. Do you even need it? You wait weeks, sometimes months before you deposit your checks, and the tips in this place aren’t squat. It’s time to move forward. You will always have a job here if that’s what you truly want. But I don’t think it is.”
I stare down at my lap. “I feel like I should know. Like my gut should be leaning one way or the other, but it isn’t.”
“Maybe your gut isn’t what you should be listening to,” she says. “What does your heart say?”
“Shit—let me help you,” Darian says, jumping up from the kitchen table. He’s at my side in an instant, rescuing the twelve-pack from my slippery fingers. “What’s all this?”
“Dinner,” I say as the cabin door closes behind me. I set the box of food on the counter while Darian stashes the beer in the fridge. “Lucy sent it. She wants me to cook for you.”
“I think I like your boss,” he says, turning back to me.
“She also wants me to get drunk and laid.”
He arches his eyebrows. “I definitely like your boss.”
I smile despite myself, but it disappears as quickly as it comes. “I lied to you this morning.” I lean against the sink with my arms crossed, my gaze aimed at my feet. “About needing to go in. Lucy didn’t ask me. I asked her.”
Darian sidles up beside me, mirroring my pose. “Yeah, I figured as much.”
“I needed a little space. To think.”
“Why wouldn’t you just tell me that?”
“Honestly? Because I was afraid you’d give it to me.” I look up at him. “I’m scared of saying the wrong thing. I don’t want to lose you again.”
He pulls my hands free and twines our fingers. “There are no wrong things.”
“Aren’t there? On the boat—”
“On the boat, I was a fool. I made a mistake—one that won’t happen again.” He moves to stand in front of me, both my hands cupped in his and held against his chest. “I’m not giving up on us unless you ask me to. You say the word and I’m gone, but otherwise, I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.” He tilts his head from side to side. “Metaphorically, anyway. At some point, I will have to go back to Miami. But I’d be leaving Texas, not you.”
“When do you think that’ll be?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know yet. I’m doing what I can from here, but things are beginning to pile up. A couple of days? A week?”
Just the thought of him leaving feels like a chisel to my heart.
Imagine what it will feel like when he leaves for real.
I take my hands from his and busy them with the hem of my shirt. “That soon, huh?”
“Hey,” he says, lifting my chin with a crooked finger. “Asking you to live with me—it wasn’t an ultimatum. It’s not all or nothing. You can say no and it not be the end.”
“So you’d be okay with a long-distance relationship?”
He stuffs his hands in his pockets. “I want to see
your face every day when I get home from work. Talk to you in person instead of over the phone. Wake up beside you in the morning.” His small smile wavers. “I don’t want to settle for anything less, but I will. For you, I will.” We stare at each other for a quiet moment. “This isn’t something that has to be decided right this second. If you need time to think about it, take it. It won’t do either of us any good if you jump into something you aren’t ready for.”
“What about you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Aren’t you jumping into something you might not be ready for?” I step around him and get two Shiners from the fridge. “I think we should take Lucy’s advice.” A blush heats my face. “The drinks and dinner part,” I add quickly, “not the…other.” I pop off the caps and hand him a beer, then take a long swig of my own. “Take it easy tonight? Maybe have some fun? We can come back to this tomorrow.”
“I think that sounds like a damn good idea.”
The beer works its magic, but it’s hard to say how much of it is the alcohol and how much is the excuse it provides. Either way, I’ll take it. I’m relaxed for the first time since this morning—for the first time in days, really—and I can tell Darian is too. Actually, he’s better than relaxed; he’s almost giddy, peeling potatoes and singing Barry Manilow into his beer bottle. Without the stress of his proposition looming over us, the evening feels effortless. Like it was when we first met, long before our feelings complicated things. Back when we were just two lonely souls, a little less lonely together.
“Your choice of music never fails to amuse me,” I tell Darian as I dip the steaks in flour.
“You have a problem with ‘Mandy’ now?”
“I don’t have a problem with it. It’s just an interesting choice.”
He picks up his phone and swipes at the screen. After a few seconds, the music stops, and he sets the phone on the table as he pushes out of his chair.
A large grin spreads over his lips, exposing his dimple, and it makes my belly flutter.
I cock my head at him. “What are you doing?”
“Indulge me.”
I wipe my dusty hands on a dish towel, then plant them on my hips. “Indulge what?” The familiar fiddle intro of George Strait’s “Amarillo by Morning” permeates the kitchen, and I smile so wide I think my face might split in two.
Darian offers me his left hand and places his right hand at the small of my back.
I peer down at the flour coating my apron. “I’m a mess.”
“Yes, you are.” He pulls me against him. “And now I am too.”
Taking a step forward, he guides me back, and we start dancing. No, not dancing—two-stepping. And not the kind of two-stepping you can learn by watching a YouTube video. The kind that’s passed down through generations, which I’m having a hard time believing is the case. I’m so surprised, I stop. He laughs, and we begin again.
“How does a Miami boy know how to two-step?” I ask.
“I told you. Mom liked to dance.” His soft olive eyes crinkle at the corners. “You act like I’ve never danced with you before.” He takes me around the kitchen table with ease, spinning me during the chorus, dipping me as the song ends.
The flour that’s caked on his T-shirt crumbles to the floor the second I step away from him. “You look downright fryable,” I say with a subtle smile as I step over the mess to get to the stove.
He lowers the volume on his phone. “I prefer edible.”
The words seem to hang in the air between us, the innuendo a bit too familiar for where we are right now. I glance at him over my shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “That was…”
“Stupid of me,” I finish. “I shouldn’t have—you know what? No.” I spin around. “This is stupid. We’re having fun. Yes, Darian, you do look edible. With or without a layer of flour.”
His eyes widen as he presses his lips together, suppressing a grin.
I pick up the tray of breaded steaks and turn toward the stove. “Those potatoes aren’t going to cut themselves.”
By the time we finish cooking, almost every surface of the kitchen is dusted in flour and splattered with grease, so we eat in the living room, hunched over the coffee table. I smile in amusement as Darian devours his food, the second meal today he didn’t think he’d like. I’d spent the whole evening under his watchful stare, fascinated as he was at the idea of frying steak.
“I don’t get it,” I say. “You’re from Florida, not the UK. There’s chicken fried steak in Florida.”
“There’s sushi in Texas and I know for a fact you’ve never tried it.”
I wrinkle my nose. “Point made.”
He cuts off a small piece and holds it up to inspect. “Seriously, though. You took a perfectly good rib eye, battered it, fried it, and smothered it in gravy.”
“Comfort food at its finest,” I tell him, “and FYI, rib eye is the exception, not the rule. Most people make it with cube steak.”
“What the hell is cube steak?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
We finish eating and I carry our plates to the sink with Darian trailing behind me. He stops at the table, and I hear a small chuckle leave his lips as the tail end of “Larger Than Life” by the Backstreet Boys cuts through the quiet kitchen.
I turn around to his outstretched arms and quirk a brow. “You want to dance to this?”
“I think it’s safe to say that whatever plays next will top it.” But what plays next is REO Speedwagon’s “Can’t Fight This Feeling.” Darian’s shoulders shake with laughter. “And clearly, I spoke too soon.”
He pulls me into his arms, and I fall into step with him as our feet glide slowly across the linoleum. We sing along to the cheesy eighties ballad, but after the first verse, our feet still and we sway silently to the music as the lyrics begin to sink in. By the end of the second verse, it isn’t so cheesy anymore.
Darian lifts his hands to my face, holding my gaze steady. “It’s killing me to know I’m going to leave here soon and you aren’t going with me.”
I stop moving. “Darian—”
“I know,” he says, his chin falling to his chest. “I swore I wasn’t going to bring it up and fuck if I didn’t do it anyway. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.” The swaying resumes as another verse plays. I stop again, my hands gripping his shoulders as I look up at him. “I want to say yes. You know that, right?”
“I do,” he says, his arms wrapping around me. “I do.”
We stay that way until the song ends, and then I yawn against his chest, breaking the silence. He takes his phone out of his pocket and powers it off.
“I didn’t get much sleep last night,” I mumble into his shirt, “and the beer didn’t help.”
He presses a kiss to the top of my head. “Why don’t you get to bed and I’ll clean up this mess.”
“Leave it. It’ll still be here in the morning.” I take a step back, crossing my arms at my waist as his fall to his sides. “I’m not saying no or never; I just can’t…I’m…”
“I understand,” he says softly.
His arms go around me once more, pulling me into a tight hug. I don’t want him to let go, and when he does, my whole body mourns the loss.
“Okay, well, I guess I should try to get some sleep.” I lift up on my tiptoes and kiss his cheek. “Goodnight.”
He shuts his eyes with a sigh. “Goodnight.”
End of the Night
Amanda: Call me when you get a minute.
Darian: What’s up?
Amanda: Has World Music contacted you?
Darian: No. Why?
Amanda: It’s probably nothing. When will you be home?
Darian: A week, maybe less.
Amanda: We’ll talk then.
Frankie
Familiar trepidation stirs inside me, but I can’t quite put my finger on why. Maybe it’s this theater. Aside from Ja
ne and me, it’s empty. Strange for a Friday night—if it is in fact a Friday night; I can’t be sure.
I glance over at my best friend, who’s mindlessly scrolling through her phone. The light it emits is glaring. I reach across the armrest and hold my hand over the display.
“Cut it out, Frankie.”
“Do you have to do that here? It’s distracting.”
She makes a show of looking around the theater, waving her arm over the vacant seats. “It’s just us,” she says, stuffing her phone in her coat pocket and grabbing the tub of popcorn from my lap. “And this movie sucks. Didn’t you say it was supposed to be a romance? Because that plane is going to crash.”
“That’s what he told me.”
Who told you, Frankie?
“Who told you?”
I shrug.
“Well, a plane crash doesn’t really scream happily ever after.”
I turn back to the screen, only it isn’t a screen. It’s just the plane, hovering above the first several rows. I know at once what’s happening, and my skin prickles.
You’re dreaming, Frankie. Wake up.
“Jane, this isn’t real.”
“Of course it isn’t real,” she says, sliding thick-lensed glasses over my eyes. “It’s 3D and crappy 3D at that.” Jane hands me the popcorn as she stands. “I’m going to get another Coke. Want anything?”
I shake my head without looking at her, my gaze locked on the plane. Passengers screaming. A child crying. Fists pounding on plexiglass. The intensity of it makes my stomach churn. I pull my knees to my chest and hide my face as the popcorn floats from my lap.
He was wrong. This isn’t romantic at all.
“It could be, you know.”
My head jerks up at the sound of his voice, calm and quiet, yet clear, despite the noise thundering through the theater’s surround. “Darian?”
“The one and only.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m on the plane.”
I scan the length of it until I find him, his face framed in a single passenger window. My breath catches in my throat. Behind him, it’s madness, but he doesn’t seem fazed. I swallow hard.
