Page 64 of Tiger Queen

The two men embraced.

“And who is this cute little thing?” he asked.

“This is Rachel. Rachel, meet Bobby John. He’s an old friend.”

Bobby John scoffed. “Boy, we were more than just friends. We were teammates on the Central Carolina High School football team! Mighty pleased to meet ya, Rachel. I like that name. Like Rachel from Friends. You don’t know a Phoebe and Monica do ya?”

I couldn’t help but smile at his unrelenting cheerfulness. “I went to school with a Monica, but we weren’t friends.”

“Too bad. That’d be funny.” He elbowed Jake and said, “You’re better lookin’ than most of the girls he dated, I’ll tell ya that.”

“Oh, we’re not dating,” I quickly said. “We work together at the zoo.”

“Right. You work together.” He gave me an exaggerated wink.

Jake handed him the bottle of whiskey. “Brought you this.”

“Aww. You shouldn’t have. Let’s have ourselves a taste. Bad luck not to share a gift bottle with those who brought it. You like whiskey, Rachel?”

“I do.”

“She’s not drinking,” Jake cut in. “She’s my DD.”

“Smart man! Lucky to have a woman like her.”

“I’m not his woman,” I repeated.

“Right, right. You’re just colleagues. I forgot,” Bobby John said like he was keeping a secret.

The interior of the house looked like it had been remodeled in the seventies. The kitchen appliances were green, and he had orange shag carpeting in the living room. But it was cleaner than I would have expected from someone who looked like Bobby John, and it smelled like lemon cleaner. We sat at the dining room table and our host brought us three plastic cups, one of which was filled with ice water.

“Thanks,” I said. “Why’d you call him Jumping Jake?”

Jake groaned. Bobby John grinned widely at his embarrassment.

“Why, Jakey here was the star running back on our football team. Was famous for hurdling the defenders who tried to tackle him. Course, he was only good at what he did because he had good blockers up front. The offensive linemen are the real heroes of any ground game.” Bobby John leaned toward me and whispered, “Yours truly was a right guard.”

“I figured as much,” I said with a smile.

Bobby John opened the bottle of whiskey, filled the other two cups, and then toasted. “To old teammates reuniting.”

They both chugged the drinks like they were beer. I blinked. There had been at least four shots of whiskey in each glass.

“So what’ve you been up to all this time?” Bobby John asked while refilling the cups. “You’re not on the Facebook. So we’ve all been wonderin’.”

“Oh, this and that,” Jake said. “Bouncing around Ohio most recently. Working in a distribution center. Driving a forklift. Before I came home, I mean.”

Bobby John sighed. “Welcome to the dead dad club. Sorry you had to join.”

Jake shrugged.

“Couldn’t believe the news when I saw it,” he went on. “Your pops was an asshole, but he was a character. World ain’t the same without him. You know? Like livin’ in a world without… I dunno. Evil Knievel. It ain’t right.”

“You know he’s dead, right?” Jake said.

“Who?”

“Evil Knievel. He died like ten years ago.”

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