Page 4 of Blue Moon Love

That girl was hotter than a stolen tamale. She was the sexiest thing walkin’ on two legs, and she seriously had no clue about her appeal, which only made her even sexier.

In all the years I’d known Kenna, I’d yet to see her naked. In real life, that is. She’d been in countless dreams without any clothes on. She was the woman of my dreams. Literally and figuratively.

“Sammy Whitlock.”

I opened my eyes and saw Tami Lynn standing behind the register.

Her hand rested on her chest, the red acrylic of her long nails in stark contrast to the white Greasy Spoon T-shirt she wore. “Every time I see you, it takes my breath away. You are the spittin’ image of your daddy.”

If I had a nickel for every time someone told me that, I’d be a millionaire. That wasn’t me being facetious; I would literally have a million dollars in the bank. Since I could remember, people told me I was a replica of my dad, the spitting image, his twin, his mini-me. They’d said it before he died, when I was twelve, and they hadn’t stopped in the twenty-four years since he’d been gone.

It had definitely amped up the past few years though, but I think that’s because I was the same age now as he was when he passed. In fact, tomorrow was my birthday, which meant I was going to be older than my dad ever was.

I wasn’t quite sure how I felt about that.

Tami Lynn shook her head in awe, as if she hadn’t seen me at the Pit Stop gettin’ gas last week. “You look exactly like him.”

I knew that when people said things like that, they meant it as a compliment. My dad had been a good-lookin’ guy. Six foot two, thick brown hair, strong jawline, athletic build, deep dimples, and a “panty-melting” smile. That last part was a direct quote from Tami Lynn herself.

Right before Tami Lynn settled down with her husband, Emmitt, she’d dated my dad. I used the term loosely. She’d hooked up with my dad. I remembered because he used to bring me to the diner, and the two of them would sneak off in the back. I was only five or so at the time, but the memories were as clear as if it had happened yesterday.

My dad walking up behind Tami Lynn and wrapping his arms around her waist. Him nuzzling into her neck as he pulled her down the hallway. Her giggling as she pretended to fight him. Them both laughing as they went into the back. Me sitting in a booth eating chocolate chip cookies and drinking milk.

Their encounters only stood out because of the cookies, not because she was the only woman my dad cheated on my mom with. That number was easily in the hundreds.

“And your daddy was quite the looker.” She winked at me.

“Thank you, ma’am.”

She smiled widely. “And so is my Emmitt.”

“I hope Emmitt knows what a lucky man he is.”

“He better, I tell him every day. What about you? When are you gonna settle down and stop breakin’ hearts in Clover County?”

“I s’pose when the right lady makes an honest man outta me,” I lied.

The truth was, never. And I had my genes to thank for that. Maybe if it were just my dad, who was a ladies’ man, I’d chalk it up to it just being isolated behavior, but it wasn’t.

My grandpa, Archibald Samuel Whitlock Jr., otherwise known as Witty, might even be more of a womanizer than my dad had been. He turned ninety a month ago and lived in a retirement home, but that hadn’t slowed him down one bit. He had a ‘roster’ of women at all times. He had a starting lineup and women waiting on the bench. The thing that was crazy was that they all knew about one another, and none of them seemed to care.

Maybe it was an age thing. They’d given up on trying to change him and make him faithful. They accepted him for who he was.

Thankfully, my grandma Louise died before I was born, so I hadn’t had to witness what Witty’s ways did to her like I had with my own mom. My mom loved my dad so much. Too much. She drank and took pills to numb the pain his extracurricular activities caused her. Ultimately, it was what caused her death. The official cause of death was an accidental overdose, but I wasn’t convinced it had been an accident. Either way, the actual root of the cause was the same; she was miserable because my father couldn’t be faithful and live up to the promises he’d made to her on their wedding day.

And if it was just Witty and my dad, I might not think I had tainted DNA, but it wasn’t. Legend had it that my great-grandfather, Archibald Samuel Whitlock Sr., or Baldy as he was known, was even more of a ‘scoundrel’ than my dad and grandpa combined. He was a traveling salesman who was living out the Ludacris song “Area Codes” fifty years before it topped the charts in the early 2000s.

Baldy had a different woman in nearly every state. He had even started families with a few of those mistresses. At one time, he was married to three different ladies who each had multiple children by him. In the early 1960s, he was prosecuted and convicted of bigamy. He should have served one to two years in jail, but he managed to sweet-talk the judge and got probation and community service.

Unfortunately, a slap on the wrist from the justice system did nothing to slow him down. When he passed away ten years after being convicted, two new ‘wives’ showed up at the funeral, besides the three he’d had at the time of his trial.

Harriet, his first wife, and my great grandma was the only marriage that was legal. She was able to bury him and receive all of his benefits from his time in the Army. The two new wives knew nothing about his other three wives, and vice versa. The introductions didn’t go well. The police had to be called to the Wishing Well Community Church during the service, and three of the women were detained for fighting.

My own father’s funeral hadn’t been much better. There were a dozen women in the front rows, bawling their eyes out. They all pulled me aside to tell me how much they loved my daddy, and how much they were going to miss him, and how special he was. There was even a punch thrown after two women both tried to get the last seat on the front pew, like a game of musical chairs.

But I think my mom’s funeral was even worse. All those women who attended my dad’s a funeral year later, showed up at her service and did everything they could to comfort him. I walked in one of them, comforting him in the bathroom, before we went out to the cemetery. It made me sick.

If it weren’t for Kenna, I don’t know how I would have gotten through either of my parents’ funerals. She was glued to my side both times, and every time I started to feel overwhelmed, she’d slip her hand in mine, and I could breathe again. If it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t have made it.

---