Chapter 5
Ty gave his phone a glare as it blared out his mother’s ringtone. He’d already interrupted his conversation with Winnie to talk on the phone with his brother, Bryan. Maybe he hadn’t exactly been enthusiastic to help his younger brother propose to his girlfriend.
“On Saturday afternoon, the one time I have a date,” he grumbled as he wiped his hands on a dish towel and reached for his phone as it started to shriek for the third time.
His momma was not an easy woman to put off, though Ty had tried many times in the past. He swiped on the call, tapped the speaker button, and moved the phone closer to the stove.
“I’m cooking dinner, Momma,” he said.
A beat of silence came through the line, and then she said, “Dinner? You just got soup from me a couple of hours ago.”
“Yeah, and I ate it. Then Jacob brought home some steaks that Mitch got from his daddy up at Shiloh Ridge.”
“Oh, well, you can’t beat steak from Shiloh Ridge.”
Ty smiled at the obvious happiness in his mother’s voice. “You sure can’t.” He glanced over to his roommate, who looked up as if sensing Tyson’s gaze. Jacob raised his eyebrows, and Ty simply shook his head. He didn’t say anything else, because his momma had called him, and Ty already knew why.
“Bryan said you were...short about coming out to Three Rivers on Saturday.”
“Yeah, Momma, it’s a long drive,” he said.
“Your brother is proposing to his girlfriend,” his mother said, as if no more important thing in the world could be done on Saturday.
“Yeah, I heard,” Ty said. “I don’t know why I have to be there.”
“He needs you, Ty, to get the table all set up out in the fields.”
Ty could have made any excuse about how he wouldn’t be able to make the drive from Signs for Success in time, and Bryan had already told him he would time it according to Tyson’s schedule. “I don’t know why you and Daddy can’t do that.”
“Because we have to act like it’s a regular workday,” she said. “And I’ve got two clients coming on Saturday.”
“Well, maybe Saturday’s not a real great day to do it,” Ty barked out. “Did he ever think of that?” He held the tongs in his hand and watched as the steaks sizzled in the pan, his grumpy attitude about his younger brother getting engaged flowing through him and infecting every cell in his body.
“What’s really going on?” Momma asked.
Ty sighed and let the irritation he had allowed in seep away. “It’s nothing,” Ty said. “I’ll reschedule.”
“What do you have to reschedule?” Momma asked.
“I just said it was nothing,” he said, because he wasn’t ready to tell anyone that he’d actually asked Winnie out to lunch.
I’d call it a date, ma’am.
The words rang through his head, and he liked that she hadn’t been upset with him for calling her ma’am, and she hadn’t balked at their lunch on Saturday being called a date, either.
Ty’s face heated. He put his hand on the towel over the handle of the cast iron skillet and gave it a little shake.
The steak didn’t move, which meant it wasn’t ready to turn.
He could be patient, and he glanced at the clock, knowing he had less than sixty seconds to flip this thing and keep it at a medium temperature.
“Is this why you’re calling?” he asked. “To make sure I have a good attitude on Saturday?”
“It would be nice,” Momma said. “It’s not like your brother’s going to get engaged every weekend or anything.”
Ty rolled his neck and wanted to blast her with a grumpy sigh. He repressed it and said, “You know, I’m allowed to be upset if I have to change my plans to accommodate him with less than forty-eight hours’ notice.”
“He acknowledged that,” Momma said. “Did he not, Ty?”
“Yeah, he did,” Ty admitted. “He said he could do it anytime that worked for me.”
“So if you have plans, you just need to say,” Momma said.
“I already told him it was nothing that can’t change,” Ty said. “But I don’t get done at Signs for Success until eleven-thirty and I gotta have time to eat.”
“I just got off the phone with him,” Momma said. “And he’s hoping to get there around two o’clock. As long as you’re there about fifteen minutes before him, you’ll have plenty of time. Libby is going to help too.”
“I’m aware, Momma.” Ty reached to turn over the steak. It came up easily, and he flipped it, the satisfying sizzling meeting his good ear and making his mouth water. “I already talked to Bryan about all of this. Why are you micromanaging this?”
“I just want to make sure everyone’s happy,” she said.
“We’re all just fine,” Ty said. “We’re grown adults.”
“He doesn’t want to cause a problem,” Momma said. “And I know this is already going to be hard for you, and I just want you to be okay.”
Talking to death wasn’t going to make it okay.
Ty wanted to tell her that, but that would only spark more conversation.
Instead, Ty stepped back from the hot skillet and then reached to turn the flame off underneath it.
The steaks could finish in the pan in the next couple of minutes.
Then they’d eat, and with his belly full of really good beef, he could text Winnie and ask for a rain check.
“Momma, I’m okay,” Tyson said.
“Bryan’s worried that you’re going to be upset about the engagement.”
“Well, I don’t know how to fix that,” Ty said. “Am I super jazzed both of my siblings are going to get married this year, and I don’t even have a girlfriend? Of course not. Would you be?”
“No one thinks anything of it,” Momma said.
“I think something of it, Momma.”
“Well, maybe you don’t need to,” she fired back at him, and it was no wonder Ty had a grumpy, fiery streak. His daddy had one too, which meant Ty had been doomed from birth.
“Besides, I heard you had a date to the Glover wedding next weekend,” she said, her voice moving into that fake this-doesn’t-matter-to-me-but-so-does tone.
Ty dang near dropped his tongs. “How in the world did you hear that?”
“Janice Mulberry was at the New Year’s Day brunch today,” she said. “And I guess she overheard something. She didn’t know who it was with, but as I was taking the last of the leaves out to the greenworks bin, she caught me and said something about it.”
Ty pulled the cast iron skillet off the stove and turned to the peninsula behind him. “I’ve forgotten where I live,” he said. “Dear Lord, is there any way to escape the rumor mill in this town?”
Momma laughed, and Ty turned to get down two plates and picked up the phone from beside the stove. “I heard that,” she said. “But you definitely moved away from the phone.”
“That’s because our dinner’s done,” he said. “Do you have more lecturing you need to do, or can I go?”
“I didn’t call to lecture,” she said.
“I know,” he said. “I didn’t mean that. I’m sorry. I’m going to be fine on Saturday. I will be there. I will be in my best clothes. I will smile, I will be happy, I will cheer the loudest.”
“Oh, you’re not going to make it a show,” Momma said. “Bryan won’t like that either.”
“Momma,” Ty said. “I will act so normal you won’t even know what hit you.”
“I don’t even know what your normal is anymore, Ty,” Momma said with a huff. “All right, go enjoy your steak. If you’re not going to tell me who you’re taking to the wedding….”
Ty thought about it for a moment. As he removed the steaks from the pan and set them on a plate to rest away from the heat, he said, “You know what? No, I don’t want to tell you right now.”
“Well, it’s not that far away,” Momma said. “I’m going to find out.”
“Yeah, everyone’s gonna find out,” Ty said. “And maybe it’s not that big of a deal.”
“Well, if it’s not that big of a deal, why don’t you tell me who it is right now?”
“Because you really seem to want to know,” he said. “And it might just be a friend date or a safe date, so that I don’t have to be by myself, with my sister and her fiancé, and now my brother and his fiancée, and everyone else in the world who has someone else to be with.”
His chest hurt, and he took a deep breath. “My steak’s done, Momma. I’m fine. Everything’s gonna go amazing on Saturday. Bryan and Ellie are going to be engaged and blissfully in love. We’ll have another wedding on the calendar this year. What could possibly go wrong?”
“I can think of a lot of things,” she said. “And they all start with T-Y-S-O-N.”
“Okay, Momma.” He rolled his eyes and turned to the fridge to get out the condiments.
“I already talked to Bryan about this, and he was fine.” He signaled to Jacob and signed that their food was ready.
“Love you, Momma. See you on Saturday.” He ended the call and tried to remember how to sign medium for Jacob, who got up and pulled a pan of potatoes out of the oven.
They moved around their apartment in silence, though Jacob could speak; he simply rarely did. Ty was still learning sign language, but he could communicate well enough to say dinner was ready.
They sat back down at the bar, and Jacob doused his potatoes in ketchup and his steak in A-1 sauce, and then Ty did the same.
Jacob put his first bite in his mouth and moaned, his eyes rolling back in his head. So good, he signed, and then he pulled his phone closer and tapped a message for Ty.
What are you taking to the Signs for Success party tomorrow night?
Ty blinked at the phone, having completely forgotten about the Signs for Success party tomorrow night. He’d be back at work at Lone Star, and he looked up at Jacob. He seemed to be able to read his expression, no signs or words needed. He started to laugh and then said, You forgot.
Ty grinned at him and nodded. “I forgot,” he confirmed, saying the words as he signed them. “I don’t even remember what I signed up for,” he said next, and that took him to his own phone, where he went to his calendar, sure he’d made himself a note.
He had, and he saw that he’d signed up to bring rolls for the Signs for Success company potluck dinner tomorrow night. The new semester didn’t start until Wednesday, and a lot of students had gone home for the Christmas and New Year’s holiday.