11. Alex
Trixie lifts her head,so I know company is incoming. Sure enough, Kit rounds the corner into my office, puts his hands on his hips, and gives me the stink eye.
He was with me when I called Gran back, which was stupid. I should have waited until I was alone because when I made up excuses not to come to family dinner, Kit looked at me quizzically. I’d said that I had to work, and then also that Kit was here, and then tried to ignore the disappointment in Gran’s voice.
She’s not lonely, I tell myself. Grandad’s gone, but she’s got Colleen living with her, and Ethan and Lia are in the cabin and even Molly’s nearby in her van.
Maybe I should be jealous of Gran. When Kit’s not here, it’s just me and Trixie and it gets pretty quiet.
Once I’d hung up, Kit had protested. He wanted to go to my family’s farm for Sunday night dinner, but while Kit often gets his way with his charm and smiles, I just as often get my way with my staunch responses. And I really didn’t want to see my family.
Now, though, Kit tosses my truck keys in the air. “Come on, buddy. You said you were spending time with me, so let’s do it.”
“I also said I was working,” I point out.
“And now you’re done. We need to eat, and I’ll take a beer.”
When I emerge from the barn, it is later than I thought. The sun’s down, dusk hangs in the air, and a light drop in temperature marks the end of the day. Kit tosses me the keys over the truck bed, and we climb in. Trixie hops into the back seat, and we drive into the only establishment open this late in Fork Lick: Tiddy’s.
It’s a dive, and not a place made for dinner. It serves the kind of food that keeps you from getting too drunk. I move Trixie’s bed from the back seat to the truck bed, and she leaps over the tailgate to get in. She’ll be snoring before we hit the front door.
At the bar, we order from Franklin Tiddy, the owner. Kit and I order tots and nachos, but Kit adds on an order of the wing burger—a charbroiled-from-frozen patty smothered in wing sauce.
We also order beers. There’s baseball on the lone TV, and a few of the locals, who nodded at me when we walked in, are engrossed in the game.
The tots come out hot and greasy, and Kit pops one in his mouth before it can cool enough and plays an internal version of hot potato, sucking wind and fanning his mouth. I hold a tot up and blow on it until I’m out of breath. Then, inhale and blow again. And again.
By the time Kit can swallow and talk, I’ve popped my tot in my mouth and it’s perfectly cool enough to eat. “Every time,” I say.
He takes a big gulp of his beer to cool off. “So, we gonna talk about your family?”
“Nope.”
“Come on. I know it’s been hard since your grandpa died. I bet you’re worried about Ethel. Don’t you want to see her?”
When I shrug, Kit kicks me under the table. “Fine. I barely saw Grandad the last few years, even though we were practically neighbors. And now, being around my family…it just brings up bad memories.”
Kit nods. “Like your grandpa telling you to get lost.”
I focus on swirling a tot through the ketchup. “Yeah.”
“Look, I know what your grandpa did was shit. The man didn’t have a lot of tact, especially when it came to raising a bunch of kids. The method wasn’t good, but the message was. You’re a successful farm manager, you run everything by yourself, and that never would have happened if he hadn’t, uh, suggested, you go elsewhere.”
I snort. Suggested is putting it nicely. Grandad reached the end of his rope when I was fifteen and Ethan and I were fighting about farm work again. Teenage boys have a way of getting physical when they need to figure things out, but this fight wasn’t that kind. It got nasty. Ethan and I lost our tempers, and Grandad snapped. There was a lot of yelling about how it was his farm, and his word was the law and who did I think I was to argue with him and Ethan? That was the day it became me against the two of them.
The next day, Grandad came to talk to me alone and told me I needed to think about what I was going to do when I left the farm. I hadn’t even considered it. This was my family’s farm. Where else did I belong?
To pull a line from the English aristocracy, Ethan was the heir, and I was the spare. There were too many chefs in the kitchen.
Kit’s pretty good at looking at the bright side, though. “Yeah. True.”
This time, when his foot hits my leg, it’s an affectionate nudge, not the physical equivalent of calling me an idiot.
“Did you call your brother back?”
I roll my eyes. God, Kit is nosy.
“No.”
I move my leg before Kit can kick me again, and then I deftly change the subject. “What about you? Sick of farm life yet?”
He grins like a pig in shit. “Hell no.”
“Not that I’m kicking you out?—”
“Of course not. You love me.”
“—but any ideas about what you want to do?”
Kit’s wing burger arrives, and he takes a huge bite before answering. “I’ve been talking to my friends back home in Here.”
I nod. Kit has some high school buddies that still live back in the small town of Here, which is about an hour west of here. Any time I go to Here with Kit, we spend time with them.
“I have a job offer from Booker to help him with the construction work he does. I enjoy keeping my hands busy. When you kick me out, I might go do that.”
“I’m not gonna kick you out,” I grunt.
He ignores me. “But I enjoyed talking to customers in the farm shop. So, I wish there was something I could do with people too.”
We spit-ball ideas for a while, and when the food’s gone, we pay our tab and leave. We’ve each only had a beer, so it’s safe to drive. Kit moves Trixie’s dog bed back inside, calling her “spoiled princess” just loud enough for me to hear.
We drive past my family’s farm on the way back. It’s hard not to notice the house all lit up, and I can just imagine the Rockwell scene inside; Gran’s home-cooked meal, my brother with his first love presiding over the table, Colleen and Lia getting along like a house on fire.
Molly’s probably in there too, charming my family like she charms my customers.
It makes it all the more depressing when we turn up the driveway to my empty and dark farmhouse.