Tilly #2
“Holy shit,” Nash says, pulling him away. “I thought you'd gotten too big for your britches to show your face in here.”
“It's called adulting, Nash. You should try it.”
There is nothing strange about his voice. That, alone, might be the strangest part.
Deuce gets up next and grabs him by the shoulder, pulling him into one of those half-hugs men do when they want everybody to know they would rather be punched than admit they missed each other.
“Sit down and have a beer. Seriously, where have you been? Are you still in New Orleans? You better say no, because if you are and you don't answer our texts for a beer, then we're going to have to take this outside.”
“I've been working, dickhead.”
Deuce recoils dramatically. “That sounds awful.”
“It is. You should avoid it as long as possible. Why didn't someone convince me to do a fifth year?”
“I tried to tell you guys. No rush for me.”
Rhodes laughs, and the sound goes through me. I jostle my cup and pour another piece of ice into my mouth. By the time I realize what I’m doing, I’m crunching it hard enough to chip a tooth.
Jo's knee presses lightly against mine under the table, but I don't look at her.
Rhodes says something to Nash about somebody from school, and for another few seconds I almost think he might leave it there. Say hello to them, never acknowledge me directly, and let us both pretend that's the normal thing to do.
“Hey, Jo,” he says, looking down at us.
“Hey.” Her voice is easy. “How are you? It's good to see you.”
“Good. Ford treating you right?”
“He's being a gentleman.”
Rhodes smiles. “Tell him I said hey.”
Then his gaze comes back to me. His eyes move over my face once, quick enough that I could pretend I imagined it. “How've you been?”
“Good. School's been busy, but good.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Last exam tomorrow, then I'm heading home. Well, it's a lab, but it's our biology exam.” Why am I fumbling over my words? This is so weird.
He nods. “Charleston?”
“That's the plan.”
“Nice.”
I wait for the ache I used to associate with him to crack open wider, but it doesn't. The tension in my shoulders shifts, lightening slightly, although it's definitely still there.
“What about you?” I ask.
His brows lift slightly, like he didn't expect the question. “Work is slow this time of year, so I thought I'd come in here. I figured I'd bump into these yahoos.”
“Working at Stone Intermodal? Looks like things are going well.” Whatever the hell that means. He's wearing suit pants and a starched shirt. That must mean things are going well with work. God, I'm such an idiot.
“Actually, I decided to take a job with the company Cain works for. It's similar, but different.”
There is a confidence in his expression when he says it. Not the shrug he used to give when somebody asked what he was doing after graduation. He sounds like he has an answer now.
“Do you like it?”
“I do, actually. I've been traveling more than I expected, but it's good. I'm learning a lot.”
“I'm happy for you.”
“Rhodes, did you know Nash owns nine shirts?” Deuce rescues us without knowing he is doing it.
Rhodes looks at him. “I didn't know you could count to nine.”
“See?” Nash points at Deuce. “This is why I didn't miss him.”
Rhodes pulls an empty chair from the table beside ours and turns it around before sitting on it backward at the end.
I toss back the last of the mostly melted ice now.
The conversation slides around me for a few minutes. Rhodes asks Nash about his internship, and Deuce tells him about Nashville. Jo gets dragged into explaining why she spends every weekend on I-10 now, which Rhodes finds funnier than she does.
Jo catches my eye once, and I give her the smallest nod.
I'm okay. I actually am.
I also don't want to spend another hour finding out how easy it might be to slide back into the friendship we had before we crossed a line we couldn't uncross. It's late, my early lab is tomorrow, and Charleston suddenly sounds very far away.
Jo checks her phone.
“Oh, shit.”
Deuce groans. “What now?”
“I really do have to go home and pack.” Jo slides out of the booth.
I reach for my purse. “Same. I need to be packed before my lab.”
Deuce frowns at me. “You said you were already packed.”
“I haven't loaded my truck. I'd rather not do that at six-thirty in the morning. Plus, it's almost midnight. I have an eleven-hour drive after lab.”
“Shit. You should have been in bed by eight, then.”
“Thank you for your concern.”
Jo is already pulling on her coat, saving me from having to explain anything else. Nash stands to let us out. “Safe drive tomorrow.”
“You too.”
I hug Deuce, then Nash. Jo does the same, adding a threat to Deuce about texting her if he finds out anything about some professor I stopped listening to twenty minutes ago.
Then there is Rhodes. He stands up with everyone else. For a second I don't know whether we're people who hug or shake hands or what.
Apparently, neither does he. So we don't do anything.
“Have a good Christmas, Tallulah.”
“You, too.”
Outside, the cold hits my face hard enough to make my eyes water. Jo waits until the door shuts behind us.
“You okay?”
“Actually, that was better than I thought it might be. I'm thinking a couple more of those, and we are totally fine.”
She hooks her arm through mine as we start toward the street.
We decided to do Christmas morning at Dad's house and then all of us out here through New Year’s. There’s something really special that the first day of the year starts on this water. We’re all here and relaxing almost like old times. It's much less solemn than Easter was.
Grandbank is inside arguing with Cooper over football. Dad left an hour ago to take Libba home because she has somewhere to be tonight. She begged me to come, but I told her I just want to be here with the water and Mom and everything this day of the new year represents.
She didn't like it, but she understands.
The marsh is silver under a low winter sky, and the wind coming off the water has enough bite to make me pull my coat tighter around me as I cross toward the shed.
Dale, the foreman Grandbank put on the restoration in August and who has not taken a full day off since, is already there with a clipboard tucked under one arm.
“You didn't have to come out here on the holiday,” I tell him.
He glances up. “This is my happy place. Plus, I really want to talk to you about what we're dealing with.”
“That doesn't sound good.”
I step inside behind him. The shed smells like damp wood, mud, and old shell, the same way it always has. There are new racks along one wall now, part of the work we approved over the summer, and three pallets of bagged shell sit near the far door waiting for the next placement.
Dale taps the top sheet on his clipboard. “Our shell supplier is tapped out. Our last orders took most of what they had stockpiled, and they can't fill the next one.”
I exhale, frustrated. “Surely they aren't the only source between here and North Carolina. Charleston goes through enough oysters to pave the city with shell.”
We grow oysters, but that doesn't mean we keep the shell.
Ours leave our farms whole and come back into the world one restaurant, oyster roast, and recycling bin at a time.
Getting enough clean, cured shell back in one place for restoration is a completely different business, and apparently a scarce one.
“I've called twenty places from Jacksonville to the Outer Banks,” Dale says. “I can piece together the quantity, but not from one supplier. That means separate loads, separate schedules, and more freight. We lose the bulk pricing and make the whole job harder to control.”