Chapter 31 Frankie
FRANKIE
Texas is big, hot, and full of calories.
Owen did his show in Houston last night, and I stayed with Sam at the hotel so his parents could enjoy being in the audience.
We’re all spending the day at the Brodie residence in this small town about a half hour from the city.
By “spending the day” here, I mean eating and drinking everything Bonnie Lyn Brodie brings out from the kitchen and anything Owen’s father grills out here on the patio.
So far, this has included barbecue chicken and ribs (they apologized for not having a third meat), cornbread, taco salad with extra cheese, ice cream, chicken-fried steak, deep-fried okra, and mashed potatoes covered in gravy.
There has been no discernible break between lunch and early supper, aside from a change of plates and cutlery.
Everything is delicious, and I can’t not eat all of it.
I also can’t keep the button fastened on my jeans anymore.
Or breathe. Or remember what day it is. Because of the bottomless pitcher of Texas Tea for the grown-ups.
I don’t even want to know what’s in Texas Tea, but I’m pretty sure there’s no tea in it. It’s about six different types of liquor, Coke, a bunch of ice, and a lemon garnish. I am definitely making this when I get back to LA.
Sam can no longer sit up, so he’s been lying down beside me on the long bench at the family-size table. This has not stopped him from consuming food or drinking his fifth Dr. Pepper from a long, curly straw. It’s hard not to feel at home in a place where you’re this well-fed.
Mama Brodie has been so busy serving us that I haven’t actually seen her eat or drink anything, but I’d say she’s about one and a half sheets to the wind while still looking like Grace Kelly.
She’s been telling a story about adolescent Owen for the past twenty minutes but keeps getting sidetracked and forgetting details and asking her husband to remind her of the names of people. “Ohhhh and get this, y’all! Owen!”
“Yes, Mama.”
“Remember the time we ran into that actor at that restaurant? What was his name? The old fella from Back to the Future?”
“Christopher Lloyd,” Owen says.
“Christopher Lloyd! He was there eating by himself in that fancy restaurant, and you went over to him and asked for his autograph, and he was so mean to you.”
“That wasn’t Christopher Lloyd,” Joe tells her. “That was Mandy Patinkin from The Princess Bride, and it was at a deli, and he wasn’t mean to him.”
“Oh, I love that movie! Remember the first time you watched that movie, Owen? Frankie, he was so cute. He went around saying, ‘As you wish’ for months afterward.”
Joe calmly shakes his head. “That was Dylan. Owen kept saying, ‘My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.’”
Mr. Brodie’s Inigo Montoya impression is flawless, and he is so handsome it’s just embarrassing to look at him.
It feels like my eyeballs have been blushing ever since we got here.
I’ve seen Miles Brodie in pictures around this house now, as well as his young daughter Macy, and can safely say that the entire Brodie family is so attractive it actually makes it seem normal for them to be that ridiculously good-looking.
Like, it’s the rest of us who are genetically weird for not having jawlines that you could saw timber with.
“Pops” Brodie was a soap star in LA for about twenty-five years, and then he and Mrs. Brodie moved here, to a suburb of Houston, to flip houses and sip cocktails.
I mean, I love my parents a lot, but I would very much like for these people to adopt me.
Mama Brodie is now off on a tangent about how they definitely saw Christopher Lloyd from Back to the Future somewhere and one of the brothers asked for his autograph and he was mean.
Before we’d left the hotel, Owen reminded me that we still need to pretend we aren’t “being intimate” with each other while we’re around Sam or his parents, since his dad still counts as being “in the business” because he’s in touch with his Hollywood friends.
I’m fine with that because it turns out being discrete is half the fun.
We had the car service drive us out here.
Owen and I are supposed to take a cab back to the hotel while Sam stays the night with his grandparents.
We’ve been looking forward to a “nookie night” for ages, it seems. Although I guess technically we haven’t actually known each other for ages. It only feels that way.
Owen winks at me from across the table when his parents are busy arguing with each other about older male celebrities from 80s movies. How’s Sam doing down there? he mouths to me.
I give him the thumbs-up.
“You finished with that Dr. Pepper, Sammy?”
He belches and grins when mumbling, “Don’t call me Sammy.”
It’s our new thing. “Oh, I thought you liked it when I call you Sammy.”
“I do not.”
“Hey, doodlebug!” Bonnie Lyn ducks down so she can see him under the table. “I sure do hope you saved room for chocolate pecan pie, little man. Alla y’all!” She claps her hands together. “Are we ready for dessert? Yay or nay?”
There’s a chorus of nays, even from Sam.
“Lemme help you clean up, Mama. I should get Frankie back to the hotel so she can take a nap.”
“Aw, come on now. Don’t go yet. I’ll make a fresh pot of coffee.”
“We really need to get going. She gets cranky if she doesn’t get her after-supper nap.”
I roll my eyes at him. Hopefully the other Brodies don’t share Owen’s belief that my eye-roll means I want to have intimate relations with him. I mean, I do want that, but that’s not what the eye-roll means.
“Frank?” Sam’s been calling me Frank since lunchtime because he’s too full and lazy to add the “ie” at the end. “Why can’t you and my dad stay here too? This house is so big.”
“Oh, well, we still have the hotel rooms reserved, so…”
“But I counted five bedrooms. And did you see how big the shower is in the upstairs bathroom? You and Dad could both fit in there like in Atlanta.”
Spit-take.
“Whaaat? We didn’t—That never—”
“We don’t—That’s not what…” Owen’s trying really hard to straighten Sam out, but he can’t keep a straight face and also Sam’s right.
We did have a very quiet quickie shower together in the middle of the night in Atlanta when it seemed like Sam was fast asleep.
“Oh, we’re real big on couples shower time around here, hons. Good for the planet.” Bonnie Lyn gives me a long, slow wink just like her son did.
“Not a couple! Lemme help you clear the table.” I attempt to stand up, but the earth starts spinning and the zipper on my jeans opens up.
They’re too tight to fall off and also so tight that I will probably have to ask one of these good people to cut me out of them in around half an hour so I can pee. “Schmeckler,” I mutter.
“I got this,” Owen states, but then he tries to stand up and also plops right back down on the bench. “Fuddrucker,” he mumbles.
“Y’all had best plan on staying the night here,” Joe tells us as he stands up to help his wife clear the table. “There’s plenty of room, in and out of the showers.”
“We aren’t…” Owen is too full and sleepy to complete the sentence with anything other than a groan.
“We didn’t…” I can’t even remember what it is we’re trying to convince people of anymore.
“It’s fine, sugars. Dylan told us not to talk about it with anyone ‘in the business.’”
“It was Miles who told us that,” Joe corrects her. “But yeah.”
Mama Brodie sticks her tongue out at her husband as they carry plates to the kitchen.
“Are you my dad’s girlfriend now?” Sam asks. He isn’t even looking at me. He’s just staring at the Dr. Pepper can that’s resting on his chest.
“Your dad and I have become friends,” I explain to him. “He was just helping me with something in the bathroom that time.”
“More like you were helping me with something,” Owen snickers.
I give him a look—Dude. Seriously?
“Welp. I guess nobody’s helping anyone with anything tonight, then,” I say to Owen. I’m not even sad about it.
“Don’t be so sure,” he says. His forehead is attached to the top of the table.
“I think you guys are funny together,” Sam whispers, barely loud enough for me to hear. And then he falls asleep and the Dr. Pepper can falls to the floor.
I just watch that can roll away, thinking how nice it must be to be able to move.
Sam’s not wrong. Owen and I are funny together. I have no idea if we’ll be funny together once we get back to LA, but I’m having the funniest summer of my life.
I don’t think I want it to end.