Chapter 4 #2
Cody’s throat tightened. “Yeah, them too.” The material of his polo shirt against his fingers was soft, and he realized he’d let go of the steering wheel and was rubbing the scratches across his chest. He dropped his hands to his lap where they lay in tight fists he had to willfully open.
Throwing a glance across the cab, he saw Jugs staring straight ahead out the windshield.
There was more he wanted to say, a lot, actually.
About Zenona and his concerns about her involvement.
How good she looked these days, better than ever, in fact.
But saying something like that felt like a betrayal, like he was talking behind her back.
She’d been through so much the past year, shouldn’t he be glad she was taking better care of herself?
“Zenona looks good,” Jugs said, and the shock of hearing a portion of his own thought spoken aloud snapped him back to the moment.
“Yeah. She does.” He hesitated, but it didn’t feel right bringing up his…what? Concerns? Suspicions? But how could he have suspicions about Zenona, who’d been fighting beside them, fighting for them, all this time?
A smaller, softer voice in the back of his mind pushed the words forward like it was passing a note in class, being careful and trying not to get caught by the teacher.
Because she’d been involved with Michael Graham, who they’d found out later was a vampire.
Jugs’s phone buzzed, and he shifted to draw it from his pocket, grunting and sighing as he twisted.
That helped Cody push the thought—that note passed in class—back again. He pulled the seatbelt across and clicked it in place. “Is that the little woman?”
“Yeah.” Jugs buckled himself in as well. “She wants to have dinner out tonight.”
“Yeah?” Cody backed out of the spot and headed for the exit. “Is that a good thing?”
“These days, it’s hard to tell.” Jugs slowly turned his head side to side and rubbed his neck.
“Maybe she wants to celebrate you losing the collar and the fact you’ll stop milking it for sympathy.”
As he exited the parking structure, he glanced at Jugs and caught the glare. “What?”
“You’re not right, you know that?”
“I don’t know what you mean.” He stopped at a red light and looked over again, his grin feeling quick and more natural as the minutes ticked past. “We’ve got critters to catch, buddy. Who’s next?”
It had been a long but productive day by the time Cody parked his truck outside the office. He and Jugs got out and Cody unlocked the office door. Jugs used the bathroom then grabbed a Gatorade from the break room refrigerator.
“Hydrating for a night of celebration?” Cody said as he idly spun in his desk chair.
“I’m not responding to that.” Jugs put his back to the door and bumped it open. “Night, Bonker.”
“Stretch first,” Cody called after him, rewarded with a disgusted, “Fuck off,” before the door swung shut.
He looked around the office for a bit, swinging in his chair. The lights were off, and the early evening sunlight coming in through the big window and door behind him made deep shadows.
Cody sat up and propped his elbows on the desk, picking up his phone and sending off a text.
You almost done for the day?
Demmy’s response came back in less than a minute.
Almost. These possums aren’t cooperating.
You’ll charm them, I’m sure. Since you cooked last night, I was thinking of making dinner tonight.
Who is this? Where’s Cody?
I take back what I said about charm.
LOL. What are you thinking?
It’s a surprise.
Okaaaaaay
Cody frowned, but then nodded to himself. Demmy never let him get away with anything. Well, almost never. He sent another text back.
I’m headed to Ike’s. Need anything?
We need cereal.
They bantered back and forth about brands, and when they finally ended the conversation, Cody was smiling.
Although Ike’s was much smaller than the Giant Eagle in Harriettville, Cody preferred the market’s meat counter.
The big guy who managed the deli and meat counter, Paul, liked to talk football with him.
He’d gone to Cody’s games back in the day, and he always had good suggestions about cuts of meat and grilling tips.
At the market, Cody grabbed a cart and pushed it up and down the narrow aisles, picking up cans and two boxes of cereal, one on the healthier side and the other with actual, admittedly artificial, flavor.
His ambling eventually took him to the deli and meat counter in the back corner.
Paul was talking with a couple of elderly women, his big hands splayed across the top of the display case, and the paper hat sitting at a jaunty angle on his thick blond hair streaked with gray.
Catching sight of Cody from the corner of his eye, Paul turned, and his smile broadened even more.
“Cody Bower, number twenty-one, good to see you.”
“Hey, Paul,” Cody said with a grin.
“Ladies, this is Cody Bower, star linebacker—”
“Oh my God, no,” Cody protested quietly as his cheeks burned.
“—of the Barracudas from the early 2000s,” Paul finished.
The two women cooed and nodded as they smiled. One of them said, “My son played football in high school. Did you know him?”
“I don’t know. What was his name?”
“Chester Linkler.” She straightened her posture and her smile widened.
“The name’s not familiar,” Cody said, making a face. “I’m sorry.”
“Martha, what year did Chester graduate?” Paul asked, a gentle smile tugging up the corner of his mouth.
“Oh, fiddlesticks, let me think.” Martha looked at her friend. “He was born in 1970, so he graduated in…1988.”
“Well, that was a little before my time, I’m sorry,” Cody said.
“Oh, I should have suspected that,” Martha said. “But it was nice to meet a fellow Barracuda footballer.”
The women said goodbye to Paul, then Martha pushed the cart they were sharing off down an aisle, her friend following and talking about ingredients they still needed.
“Just a little before your time?” Paul said with a chuckle.
“He graduated the year after I was born,” Cody said, and they both laughed.
“Hey, how’d that filet mignon turn out last night?”
“Really good, thanks for suggesting it.”
“Looking for something different for tonight?”
“Yeah, we’ve had red meat a lot lately.”
After some discussion, Paul talked him into two thick cut pork chops then tore off a small piece of butcher paper and wrote out a recipe for brine to soak them in and spray on during grilling.
“Paul, you’re a prince among butchers.”
“You take care, linebacker. Let me know how those chops turn out.”
Cody wheeled the cart away from the meat counter.
He picked up the ingredients for the brine, some vegetables for a salad, and a variety of berries and vegetables for Trevor, then headed for the checkout.
The cashier was pretty new at the store, Annie Wilkerson, a woman he knew from high school.
She’d been a grade ahead of him and Demmy.
He’d asked her out one time, but she’d laughed at him.
He recalled her hanging out with a pretty tough crowd who scowled around their Marlboro Reds at Cody and his jock friends.
“Hot one out there,” Cody said.
She nodded, not making eye contact as she scanned his items. A man walked fast through the doors, gripping a green apron that matched the one Annie wore.
“You’re late,” Annie said, barely giving him a glance. “Again.”
“I know, shut up,” the man said as he hurried past her register.
The new arrival bore a faint resemblance to Annie, and then Cody remembered she had a twin brother named Andy.
He’d been a skinny kid, similar in build to Demmy, quiet and skittish.
Cody couldn’t remember seeing him with many friends, and while it hadn’t really affected him much at the time, looking back on it now, he felt an empathetic pang of loneliness for the guy.
As Andy pushed through a door labeled Employees Only, the glimpse he caught of the man’s tight, slightly wide-eyed expression made him think about the way Demmy used to look sitting by himself up in the bleachers at Cody’s games.
Annie announced his total, and Cody nodded unnecessarily before swiping his card.
He grabbed his bags, wished Annie a good evening, to which she didn’t bother to respond, and headed for the truck.
He thought about Annie and Andy on the drive home, wondering what had happened to them in all the years since high school, and if Annie still preferred the bad boys.
Once home, he mixed up the brine in a large bowl and submerged the chops, placing it all in the refrigerator.
With that done, he assembled a portion of the berries and vegetables in a smaller bowl and carried it out the side door.
The sun was low now, the birds trilling either goodnights or curses to each other as they headed for their nests.
Someone on the block was mowing their lawn, and the smell of a charcoal barbecue grill floated on the humid air.