5. Stephen
5
STEPHEN
Another Friday night, another dinner with my parents. I'm not complaining. My mom is a fantastic cook and it's not like there's much else to do in town in the evenings. There's The Dugout–the one and only bar in town–but until people start filtering in for the holidays in a few weeks, the only company to be found there on a Friday night is the over-fifty crowd.
The over-fifty crowd and Mandy, a woman who swears she's in her thirties but is somewhere near my parent's age and has been trying to get me and every other young man with a pulse into her sack the moment they turn eighteen.
Yeah, I'll take a few cold Budweisers. They're free, because Dad bought them. I'll take the chicken picatta, too. That's also free, because my mom is making it. I’ll take that over frozen mozzarella sticks and $5 You-Call-Its with the Baby Boomers of Fox Hole any night.
"Think The Crushers are gonna take it all the way this year?" I ask my dad as I hand him a bottle of Bud and plop down on the other side of the sectional in the living room. It's my favorite room in my childhood home. The entire first floor is completely open concept, so the kitchen, dining room, and living room are like one big space. It was great place to be growing up. After school, either Mom or Dad would be in the kitchen cooking dinner, depending on whose turn it was that night. Delilah and I would be at the dining room table doing our homework, usually accompanied by Delilah's best friend, Ivy.
Since it was all right there, we could chat with each other, with Mom and Dad. We could get help with our math homework and sneak bites of food while dinner was being prepped. After we'd all sit down and eat together, we would typically migrate over to the couch and continue to hang out as a family, watching TV or playing games. Sometimes with mine and Delilah's friends, sometimes just the four of us.
It's still my favorite place to hang out with my family.
Dad turns the volume up on SportsCenter just a touch as I settle in, a quiet indication that he's not in a very chatty mood. That’s typical for my dad on a Friday night. He works his ass off all week, every week, doing construction. He started Hudson Family Construction before I was born, and even though I've been ready and willing to take over for him for years, he has yet to hand over the reins to me.
I can't figure out why. I know he's tired. I know he's ready to slow down and spend more time with Mom. He knows I'm more than capable of handling the business on my own. I've only been working for him since I was tall enough to reach the accelerator on the forklift.
And yet, he keeps on working.
"With McKenna's boy leading the pack? I have no doubt," Dad grunts, lifting the brown bottle to his lips just as a smile starts to tilt up at the sides. Dad downplays it, but he’s a lifelong fan of the Knoxville Crushers football team. I know it makes him giddy that their current star quarterback is a hometown boy who used to throw the ball around in the backyard with Delilah and I. Hell, Dad has been in a bowling league with Jay McKenna, Dean's dad and former Crushers quarterback, for as long as I can remember, and he still fangirls over the guy.
I take my cues from Dad, answering with a silent nod and twisting the cap off my own bottle of beer.
Just as I bring it to my lips for the first sip, there's a call from behind me.
"Stephen!" Mom yells a little too loud. I know she doesn't realize just how unnecessary her own volume is, given that she's got her favorite podcast going through her headphones. I turn and see her standing at the kitchen counter, hands coated in what I'm assuming is flour and egg wash, given the various bowls and a plate of raw chicken in front of her.
"STEPHEN! I NEED YOU TO RUN TO THE STORE FOR ME! I NEED-" she stops talking as I approach and pull the AirPod out of her left ear .
"Inside voice, Mom. I'm right here," I smirk, and she nudges me with her hip.
"I need you to run to Liquor World and pick up a bottle of Pinot Grigio. The cheap stuff, please. I need it for the sauce," she says, holding her messy hands up to show how she is currently incapacitated. I take a longing look back at my open, soon to be ruined bottle of Bud that I left on the coffee table. I should have known better. Mom forgets some imperative ingredient for nearly every recipe she ever makes, and the one way to guarantee you'll be the one to retrieve it for her is to open a fresh adult beverage.
"Yes mother, I will run to Liquor World for you. Anything else you need while I'm out?" I ask, and she shakes her head. I pat my pocket, making sure I have my phone before I go for when she inevitably remembers something else she needs while I'm gone. I whistle, gaining the attention of Daisy May, my golden retriever who was just asleep at Mom's feet with her head tucked under her paws but is now up and tilting her head at me.
"Wanna go for a walk, girl?" I ask, and her tail wags furiously behind her.
With Daisy May leashed up, we head out. It takes us six and a half minutes to walk from my parents’ house to Liquor World, a fact I only know because my own apartment is across the street above Mr. Carmine's Trains & Hobbies shop. The old man gives me a stupid good deal on the rent since he retired, leaving the shop in the hands of his grandson while he spends his days at his cabin up in the Great Smoky Mountains. One bedroom, one bathroom, a kitchen, and a grassy area outback that's big enough for Daisy May to run around for only four hundred dollars a month. Plus, a promise to inform Mr. Carmine if I ever catch the grandson smoking weed around the model trains.
Technically, dogs aren't allowed in Liquor World unless they're service dogs, but Daisy May is notoriously well behaved. She's welcome everywhere in Fox Hole. Probably more so than I am. She stays dutifully by my side as I push open the door and give a smile and quick hello to Mrs. Johnson, who just barely bothers to look up from the crossword puzzle book in her hands. Daisy May and I cross the store, headed for the wine section in search of the cheapest bottle of Pinot Grigio on the shelves, when a flash of blonde hair stops me in my tracks.
I might be looking at the back of a head, just a bunch of hair attached to a woman in an oversized hoodie and black leggings, but it's a bunch of hair that I'd recognize anywhere. A mess of whitish blonde, pulled back with a blue clip shaped like a butterfly.
It's the hair I'd stare at when it was right in front of me during almost all of my classes senior year. English, calculus, world history, that hair was all I saw. Hair so tempting and soft looking that I sometimes had to sit on my hands to keep from running my fingers through it. Hair that I watched float through the air as I chased her through our backyards when we were kids. Hair that I held back when we were sixteen after we stole a bottle of my dad's bourbon, and she spent the better part of the night with her head in the toilet. Hair that I know once smelled like raspberries and sunshine.
Hair that I dug my fingers into and held onto as I buried myself inside of her for the very first time, promising to love her for the rest of our lives.
I'm awestruck as I watch her turn, slowly. I can't explain it, but I know she knows that it's me. There's no way she can't. The time, the distance, none of it matters. The connection is still here. I feel it, the electric pull that first dragged me into Dottie Lynn Hart's orbit when I was seven years old and watching her eat pepperoni pizza with dirt under her fingernails. It pulses between us like a heartbeat. It echoes off the walls. It makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
I know she feels it, too. I can see it in the way she suddenly stiffens. How she turns so slowly, deliberately, like she's steeling herself for what's to come.
I've seen her over the years. Never in person, of course. As far as I know, she hasn't been back here since that day in June all those years ago. But Dottie Lynn Hart, the model turned influencer is hard to miss, even for someone like me who doesn't do all that social media crap.
I didn't watch TV for six months last year when the makeup commercial she starred in was on every single ad break. She was so fucking gorgeous, it hurt my eyes to look at her. That and she had me convinced that I needed whatever mascara she was peddling. I'd buy anything from her .
I thought she was beautiful on the tiny iPad screen I use to stream NFL Redzone , but her online presence has nothing on the flesh and blood version of her.
She's fresh faced, all round, apple cheeks and dewy skin. Her blue eyes shine bright, a lovely contrast to the sun-kissed spray of freckles across her nose. Even under the baggy hoodie, I can make out the soft curves of her. The flat belly I used to lay my head on as we gazed up at the stars from the bed of my truck. The full hips I once spent hours running my hands over, gripping, kneading her warm flesh.
She's all woman now, but she's still just as I remember her.
I smirk as she pulls her bottom lip between her teeth, her eyes roaming over my body like I'm the prime rib at an all-you-can-eat buffet. She opens her mouth, then closes it again, so I take the opportunity to get the first words in.
"Hey, Dorothea."