Chapter 16
THEO
Becca reaches for a beer-battered shrimp and dips it into the sauce that makes Reba’s so special.
“It’s not like I’m not happy for Mia,” she says before taking a bite.
“I am. Aaron has totally won me over. It’s just the uncertainty that’s killing me.
We’ve usually signed a contract long before now.
It’s weird not to know what I’m doing next. ”
When I asked Becca about Mia and the guy she’s dating, the conversation led us here. And I get it. For as long as Becca and Mia have been traveling together, it has to feel weird for their plans to be put on hold.
“It’s a matter of logistics too,” she continues. “Indigo gets home right after our contract ends, and she’ll want her place back. We can’t just pretend like we aren’t going to be homeless.”
“Please come sleep in my guest room before you actually become homeless,” I say, hating the reminder of how little time Becca has left in the city. “You and Mia both.”
She smiles. “Thank you. That mattress is comfortable enough that I’m genuinely tempted. But I’ll need a job too.”
“Could you just pick up another contract in Atlanta?” I ask as I reach for the last hushpuppy. “I mean, for Mia, obviously,” I add, sensing I might sound a little overeager. “So she and Aaron have more time to get to know each other?”
“I mean, maybe,” Becca says. “But the pay is so much better in California. Without free housing, staying in Georgia might not be the wisest choice. Also, if you eat the last hushpuppy, I may never speak to you again.”
I freeze seconds before the hushpuppy hits my mouth and grin. “This hushpuppy?” I ask, holding it up. I move it a little closer to my lips.
“You wouldn’t,” she whispers.
I definitely wouldn’t. I’d give this woman anything she wants. The last hushpuppy is easy. But I do like teasing her, so I move it a hair closer, watching her eyes widen the whole time.
“They are good, aren’t they?” I say. “Something about the bite of the jalapeno. And the hot honey Reba drizzles over the top. Makes them sweet and spicy.”
The flash in Becca’s eyes tells me she’s on to me, but I’m still surprised when she stands and leans over the table, eating the hushpuppy right out of my hand.
Her lips brush against my fingers, her face only inches from mine, and suddenly, I can’t breathe.
I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to breathe again.
“You’re right,” Becca says as she pulls back and sits down again. “Sweet and spicy.”
My fingers are still tingling from where her lips brushed against them, and I curl my hand into a fist, pressing it against the top of my thigh in an attempt to regain my composure. She’ll be my undoing if this keeps up.
“Little thief,” I say. “You’re lucky I like you so much. There were six in that basket, and I only ate two, which means you just ate my last hushpuppy.”
“I did not.”
“You totally did,” I say, and her eyes widen like she’s thinking back.
“Did I? Oh my gosh. I did!” She bites her bottom lip and offers me an apologetic smile, but it looks more like a smirk, so I don’t think she’s actually sorry. She nudges her still half-full basket of shrimp toward me. “Here. You can help me finish these. I’ll never eat them all.”
I nudge the basket back. “Not until you’re sure you’re finished.”
She picks up one last shrimp. “I’m basically there. I’m too full of hushpuppies. Besides, I’m saving room for the papaya paradise you promised me.”
“You won’t be sorry about that.” I reach for her leftover shrimp. “It’s even better than the hushpuppies. So, would you and Mia ever break up the band?” I ask, steering us back to our earlier conversation. “If one of you wanted to keep traveling and the other didn’t?”
“If we had to,” Becca says. “Though neither of us wants to travel forever. I’m only doing it to pay down my student loans. Another eighteen months, and I’ll be ready to go back to grad school.”
“Grad school,” I say. “That’s the plan?”
She nods. “If I’m a nurse practitioner, I can assist with surgeries and handle pre- and post-op rounds. I love what I do, but I don’t get a lot of patient interaction as a scrub nurse.”
“Assist with surgeries,” I say. “So like, you’re the one holding the scalpel?”
“I could be,” she says. “Obviously only with a surgeon present, but yeah. That’s the goal.”
“I love that,” I say. “Have you applied to any programs yet?”
“Not yet. I need a little more time to pay down my student loans before I take out more debt.”
I finish off the last of her shrimp. “Okay, Miss Full Scholarship. You can’t have that much student debt.”
She chokes out an uncomfortable laugh, and something shifts in her demeanor. She reaches for her water and takes a long drink, but when she puts down the cup, she doesn’t make eye contact.
I clearly said something wrong, but what?
“Hey,” I say gently, and she begrudgingly lifts her gaze to mine. “What just happened? What did I say?”
She quickly shakes her head. “You didn’t say anything. Don’t worry about it.”
I think back over our conversation.
She did have a full scholarship. I remember that part distinctly because we were together when she got the email. Maybe she wasn’t able to keep it?
She already said nursing school was brutal. If she lost her scholarship and that’s why she had to take out additional loans, then I really put my foot in my mouth.
“Theo, I can hear you thinking,” she says from across the table. She reaches over and squeezes my hands. “I promise I’m fine. You didn’t say anything wrong.”
“I did,” I say, hoping she doesn’t hate me for pushing back. “Your body language changed.” I pause before asking, “Is it because I mentioned the scholarship? Because if you lost it, that’s nothing to be ashamed of, and I’m sorry I stuck my foot in my mouth.”
She tugs her hands back, her shoulders dropping as they fall into her lap.
“It’s not that. I mean, I did lose it. But not because of academics.
” She takes a deep breath, like she’s resolving herself to a conversation she didn’t actually want to have.
“I lost it because I didn’t go. At least not at first. It’s never easy to say this out loud because I know that what I experienced pales in comparison to losing your dad.
But I still had a really hard time the summer after we broke up.
I’ve since learned through therapy that it’s called disenfranchised grief.
I lost you, and I wanted to be sad about that, but you lost something bigger.
So I felt guilty for my own sadness and just …
bottled it up. I stopped talking to my parents, stopped going to see my grandma. ”
She pauses, fidgeting with her napkin, lining it up perfectly with the knife and spoon she never used.
“I lost weight,” she continues, “even though I was hardly leaving my room. I basically just shut down. My parents were obviously worried, but they kept talking about school like it would be the thing that fixed everything. I’d snap out of my funk, make some friends, maybe start dating again.
But I never made it to Austin. Move-in day came and went, and I was still home. Still stuck.”
An ache formed in my chest the second Becca started this story, and it’s only grown worse, expanding, tightening around my ribs and making it hard to breathe.
It’s my fault.
I hurt her so badly that she couldn’t even go to school.
“Becca, I…”
“Please don’t say anything,” she says. “This is why I didn’t want to tell you. I knew you’d feel responsible. But I don’t blame you.” She hesitates. “At least, not anymore.”
“You were right to blame me,” I say. “I don’t even know what to say. I just wish I’d known. I could have—”
“You could have what, Theo?” she says, her tone gentle. “You were dealing with your own grief. You didn’t need to be saddled with mine. It wouldn’t have changed anything.”
Whenever I thought about losing Becca, I convinced myself she was better off without me. I imagined her in college, attending classes, hanging out with friends. In my mind, she was always happy. Always thriving.
To find out that wasn’t the case, at least not at first—it’s the worst kind of gut punch.
No wonder she didn’t want to see me.
I didn’t just break up with her; I derailed her entire life.
“I think my grandmother getting sicker had a lot to do with it as well,” she continues.
“I just felt like everything was slipping away, you know? I did eventually climb out of the fog. But by then, I’d missed too much school to catch up.
So I lost my scholarship, and then Nana had to go into memory care, which was so much more expensive than we expected, and Mom and Dad couldn’t really help pay for school.
I probably should have done community college, but I knew I’d need a BSN to qualify for grad school, so I went to Austin like I planned and took out every loan I qualified for to make it happen.
That’s why I’m travel nursing. The money is so much better, and right now I need all the help I can get. ”
“I’m so sorry you went through that,” I say. “And I’m sorry about your grandmother. I know how much she meant to you.”
Tears well in her eyes. “Yeah. The timing was rough. By the end, it felt like a relief when she died. She couldn’t remember any of us.”
“That had to be hard on your dad,” I say, and she manages a small smile.
“Honestly, he was the toughest of all. Most of us stopped visiting because she’d get agitated if we acted like we knew her or like she should know us.
But Dad started telling her he was the gardener taking care of the rose beds at her memory care facility.
” She lets out a little chuckle. “Dad couldn’t grow a rose to save his life, but Nana could.
She was always willing to talk to him about her roses. ”
“I remember her rose bushes,” I say. “They were enormous.”
“Except for the one you drove over when you came to pick me up there one Saturday.” She smiles again, and it goes a long way to ease the ache in my chest. “Do you remember?”
“That was one serious scolding your nana gave me,” I say.
Becca reaches over and takes my hands again, giving them an encouraging squeeze. “I don’t want you to feel bad about this,” she says. “It was a sucky situation all around. But it’s behind us.”
“Not entirely,” I say. “You’re still paying down your loans. Which, come to think of it—” It’s a wild idea, but I can’t stop myself from saying it out loud. “You should let me pay those off for you.”
She huffs out a disbelieving laugh. “Um, yeah. That’s not going to happen.”
“Why not? I have the money, Bec.”
“I’m sure you do. But it’s your money, and I haven’t been working this hard to have someone swoop in and solve my problems for me. Thank you for offering, but I’ve got this.”
“Looks like y’all are ready for dessert,” Reba says as she stops beside our table. She lowers two paper serving boats onto the table, heaped high with some sort of cobbler-looking dessert. “Papaya paradise on the house.”
I don’t know if the timing of our dessert was a coincidence or if Reba was really tuned in and could tell we needed a break, but I’m grateful for the distraction. At least, temporarily.
I watch and wait as Becca scoops up her first bite and lifts it to her mouth. Her eyes widen as she chews. “Oh my gosh,” she finally says. “This is the best thing I’ve ever tasted.”
“Right? I told you it would be.”
She lets out a little moan of pleasure as she takes her next bite. “Don’t make me do this alone,” she says, nudging my dessert toward me. “And don’t tell me you’re too full. I’m the one who ate all the hushpuppies.”
I grin and reach for my spoon. “But I ate half your shrimp.”
“You’re also twice my size,” she says before taking another bite. “Actually, you don’t have to eat yours. Because I’m going to eat all of mine, and I might want more.”
I tug my dessert toward me so it’s fully out of her reach. “Oh, you aren’t getting mine. But you need to be a little less distracting, please.”
“Distracting? How am I distracting you?”
I take my own bite of papaya paradise and let out an exaggerated moan of pleasure.
Becca gasps. “That is not how I sounded.”
“It’s exactly how you sounded.” I take another huge bite. “How’s a man supposed to focus on his food with that going on?”
Her cheeks turn an adorable shade of pink, but she’s smiling, eyes bright as she polishes off the last of her dessert.
Maybe she won’t let me pay off her student loans.
But if she’ll give me the chance, I’ll never stop trying to make it up to her.