Chapter 31 Stormy
I hear footsteps in the kitchen. Moving fast.
My body locks. Every muscle goes rigid. The rocking stops. I stop breathing. I become the thing I learned to become fifteen years ago. Nothing. A piece of the wall, a held breath in a dark space waiting for the footsteps to pass.
They don't pass. They stop.
"Stormy."
The voice comes from outside the gap. Low and soft and careful. I know this voice. I know it from a truck during a hurricane and a shoulder I slept on. But my body doesn't trust it right now because my body doesn't trust anything. My body is ten years old and the footsteps are in the hallway.
"Stormy, it's me. It's Tex."
The words reach me but they don't land. They bounce off the shell my body has built around me.
Words can't reach me anymore.
It's too late.
I hear him sit down. The sound of his weight settling on the kitchen floor, his back against the wall across from me. He doesn't reach into the gap. He doesn't try to pull me out. He doesn't block the opening. He sits down and he gives me room.
I hear his breathing. Mine. The freezer humming.
"He's gone, Stormy. He got in his truck and drove away. Mickey's here, right outside. Sheila's here. And there's about sixty bikers in that parking lot who would gladly kick that man's ass all the way back to Alabama if he even breathes wrong in this zip code."
Something flickers. My heart hears him. Not the ten-year-old. The twenty-five-year-old. The one who slept on this man's chest and gave him a letter and said I love you.
"That man doesn't get to have you," Tex says.
His voice is steady but there's a tremor, controlled, held in check.
"You hear me? He does not get to have you.
Not ever again. He's a man in a blue shirt who ate some brisket and told some lies and got in his truck and left.
That's all he is. He's a weak man. And he is smaller than what we have. "
The rocking starts again. Slower this time. Less desperate now. The rhythm is changing. I'm coming back. Slowly, barely, but I'm coming back to the sound of his voice.
"I know you're scared," he says. "I know your body is doing what it learned to do and you can't stop it and that's okay.
You don't have to stop it. You don't have to be brave right now.
You can sit in that gap for as long as you need.
I'll sit right here on this floor for as long as it takes.
I've got nowhere else to be, Stormy. Nowhere in this world I'd rather be than right here on this floor with you. Everything else can wait."
A sound comes out of me. Small. Broken. The first sound I've made since the plate hit the tile.
"There you are, darling," he says. "You're here with me now. There's my Stormy. You're coming back to me. Take your time. It's okay."
My arms loosen. My hands release my own arms. The fingernail marks sting.
I lower my arms from my head and I look through the gap.
I can see him. Sitting on the kitchen floor with his back against the wall, legs stretched out, still in his barbecue-stained apron, his face turned toward me.
His eyes are red. And on his face is the look I've seen a hundred times. Patient. Steady. Love.
He holds out his hand. Palm up, fingers open. How he's always offered me everything.
Here you go. This is yours, if you want it. Just take my hand.
I reach over and take his hand.
He doesn't pull. He holds. He wraps his fingers around mine and holds on carefully. The warmth of his hand reaches through the cold of the fear and finds me.
I slowly squeeze out of the gap. My body is stiff and my legs are numb. I move like an old man, cramped and shaking. He's still right there. Sitting on the floor with his arms open. I crawl into his lap, bury my face in his neck and I hold on.
His arms close around me. Tight. The way I told him to hold me.
Not careful, not hovering. Strong. He pulls me against his chest and his hand cups the back of my head.
I'm wrapped in him, surrounded by him, the smell of smoke and sweat and spilled beer filling my lungs and his heartbeat under my ear fast and alive.
"I didn't run," I whisper into his neck. "I didn't leave you. I'm still here."
His breath catches and his mouth presses against the top of my head.
"Yeah," he says. "Yeah, you are, Stormy. You're right here and that's so good, baby. So good that you're here. I'm so proud of you for not running."
We sit on the floor. The party continues outside. His arms around me, my face in his neck, the tile cold under us and neither of us caring.
I didn't run. That's the thing that matters. My brain said run and my body said run and every instinct I've had since I was ten years old said run. But I didn't run. I hid. I froze. I fell apart in an eighteen-inch gap between a freezer and a wall.
But I didn't leave him.
The reason to stay is bigger than the reason to run.
We sit there for a long time. My legs go from numb to tingling to aching. The panic recedes from a roar to a hum, still there, still running, but not in control anymore.
"Talk to me," I finally say. "Tell me what happened."
Tex shifts his weight, pulling me closer against his chest. "He came up to the grill.
Ordered a plate. Made small talk about brisket.
Then he told me he was looking for his nephew.
His sister's boy. Said the kid had drug problems, mental health issues.
Said he found him strung out in a shelter in Tallahassee one time.
Said his sister's been praying for him."
"His sister." A sound comes out of me that might be a laugh if it had any air behind it. "He doesn't have a sister."
"I know."
"He doesn't have a nephew. I'm not his nephew. I'm not his anything."
"I know all that too, baby. I know."
"Everything he said was a lie."
"Every word. And he's good at it. But I had the advantage of knowing the truth before he opened his mouth." His hand moves through my hair. Slow. Steady. "He gave me a business card. Smiled at me. Said he'd be in the area a few days. Then he got in a pickup and drove away."
"He'll come back."
"Maybe. But here's what's going to happen if he does.
He's going to walk into a parking lot where Mickey is watching.
Where Sheila is watching. Where every regular who comes through this bar knows your face and has your back.
He's going to walk into our bar, Stormy.
Ours. This is your bar too. Not just mine.
And I will be standing between him and you.
He does not get past me. I promise you that. "
"He always finds me. He always—"
"He found a dot on a screen. A GPS tracker on a motorcycle that doesn't exist anymore.
The tracker is hidden somewhere in an impound lot.
The bike is in pieces spread across three states.
He's got nothing. No tracker, no bike, no proof you were ever here.
All he's got is a smile and a story about a nephew that doesn't exist, and that story only works on people who don't know the truth. We know the truth."
I press my face harder into his neck. The logic of what he's saying reaches me, filters through the fear, settles somewhere in the rational part of my brain that's slowly coming back online.
"Mickey's running the plate on his truck," Tex says.
"I know what he looks like now. We know what he drives.
He doesn't have the element of surprise anymore.
He's in our territory, Stormy. Not his. This isn't some bumfuck town in Alabama.
This is the place I grew up. The locals knew my dad, they know me. They've got our backs."
I breathe. In through my nose, out through my mouth. The way Tex breathes when he's steadying himself. In. Out. I'm not in a room with a locked door. I'm here.
"Do you want to go upstairs?" Tex asks. "Take the night off? I can handle the grill and Sheila can cover the kitchen. You don't have to go back out there."
I think about it. The part of me that's still shaking, the ten-year-old part, wants to go upstairs and lock the door. That part wants to be small and invisible and safe in the dark.
That was Matthew.
But there's another part. The part that feeds a hundred people on a Friday night without breaking a sweat. The part that pushed through exhaustion the day after almost drowning because Tex and Sheila were working and I wasn't going to sit on a stool while they carried the weight.
The Stormy part.
I climb off his lap. My legs are unsteady and my hands are still shaking. I stand up in the bar where I work, where I belong, where sixty bikers are outside waiting on plates that aren't going to make themselves.
I take a deep breath, shake my hands out and roll my shoulders back.
"I need to get back to work," I say. "I'm okay. I can do it."
Tex is still on the floor, looking up at me.
I can see the war on his face. Every instinct he has is telling him to pick me up and carry me upstairs.
Wrap himself around me and not let go until the sun comes up.
His hands are gripping his own knees, holding himself in place, and I can see what it costs him to stay there instead of scooping me up.
But he doesn't move. He lets me decide.
"You sure?" he asks.
"I'm sure. There's a lot of people out there and the beans are getting cold. If I don't get back on the line, Sheila's going to have to do it. Her hip is bothering her and she won't admit it."
He looks at me then he nods. He stands up, unfolding all six-five of himself from the kitchen floor, and he looks down at me and his eyes are full of love so fierce.
"I love you, baby," he says. "Let's go feed some bikers. I'm right behind you."
"Let's do it." I turn to the food station, grab a towel and wipe down the counter.
I pull fresh containers from the warmer and start loading plates.
Brisket, beans, slaw, bread. My hands are still trembling but the muscle memory takes over.
Scoop, plate, stack. Scoop, plate, stack.
The rhythm steadies me the way it always steadies me. The work is solid and real and mine.
I pick up two plates and walk to the back door. The parking lot is bright and loud and full of people. Somewhere out on the beach road a man in a truck is driving away from this bar, but I'm walking toward it.
"Order up!" I call out. A biker at the nearest table raises his beer, grins and says "there he is, Stormy, where you been?" and I say "making you the best damn brisket in the Panhandle."
I set the plates down and keep moving.