Page 26 of Hot Mess Express
And those baby blue eyes of his are stabbing me right now.
Stabbing me like a steak knife.
Wishing I wasn’t here.
You and me both.
“Welcome to the Kitchen.” Anthony wrinkles his face up, then shakes his head. “Uh, sorry, no. To Gran’s Kitchen. Gran’s Kitchen House. K-Kitchen Home. Home Kitchen—fuckin’ hell—Gran’s Home Kitchen.” His eyes flash when he belatedly notices I’m not, in fact, here all by my lonesome. “Trey, Cody … Reverend Arnold, Ms. Davis …” His face goes red. Did he just realize he cussed in front of both the currentandpast reverends of Spruce? “Sorry about that. Fillin’ in for someone. I’m happy to see you all here. Hello. H-Hi.”
“Evening, Anthony,” says Trey, the first to acknowledge him, in his warm and all-forgiving tone. He sits in the middle across from his husband, with me and Pete on one side at this end of the table, Reverend Arnold and Ms. Davis on the other. “Was very nice seeing you again this morning.”
“Oh, yeah, I was there. OfcourseI was there,” Anthony repeats with emphasis. “I never miss a sermon of yours. Your words, they always … they always inspire me and … and seem to … to …”
“Put you to sleep?” I offer helpfully.
Anthony’s cold gaze strikes again.
I return his glare with a hardened look of my own, enjoying his torment despite showing nothing on my face at all.
“Have you met our friends here from out of town?” asks Trey. “This gentleman, Pete, he served alongside Cody in the Army, now discharged.”
“You look familiar,” says Pete, squinting an eye as he points a finger at Anthony.
“Thanks for your service,” says Anthony, not addressing that.
“And across from Pete is Bridger,” finishes Trey, “his friend,also recently discharged.”
Anthony looks me over. “Bridger,” he mutters, as if trying my name out like some shirt off a rack at a store. “Bridger …Bridger.” Each time he says it, he says it weirder. “Bridger, Bridger,Bridger. Don’t look much like aBridgerto me.” Under his breath he adds: “More like the guy who burns bridges.”
“I meant to ask,” Trey goes on, arms folded on the table, his voice warming with concern, “how’s your mom doing, Anthony? I heard about her little fall from Dr. Emory and the ladies. Glad she didn’t break anything, seemed to bounce right back up.”
When I look up at Anthony, his face is frozen. “Uh … yeah.” He shrugs, then fumbles with the pad and pen he just pulled out of his apron. “Y-Yeah, she’s … she’s doing fine. Just spoke to her an hour ago, actually, yeah, doing great. Thanks for asking.”
That faraway glint in his eyes. That split second of confusion.
He’s lying. I can tell. I’ve seen it a hundred times in a hundred sets of eyes.
I wonder if he even knew about his mom.
The next instant, I wonder why I care. Am I forgetting who in the hell this bozo is?
“Such a sweetie,” says Cody’s mother from the other end of the table, smiling so big her eyes go away. “Tell your mom I said hello, would you?”
Anthony nods stiffly, chokes on a few words stuck deep in his throat—I think they’re “yes, ma’am”—then nods at the table. “Do you guys know what you want yet?”
“Drinks would be nice to start,” says Cody, slapping a hand playfully on the table. “Our glasses are empty.”
“They are,” notices Anthony. “What, uh … uh, what would you like to—”
“I think we can order our food, too,” says Trey. “If I hear my father’s stomach try to talk at me one more time …”
And just like that, everyone gets to throwing their orders at a very overwhelmed Anthony, whose face retains a scrunched-up, uncomfortable expression the whole time, like he’s constipated, his pretty blue eyes in a permanent squint. “You want what now?” “Uh, yeah, I can get you that, I think.” “Sure, on the side? Uh …” “Right, how do you want that cooked or whatever?” “No, I dunno any special discounts for that, I gotta ask.”
I watch Anthony shifting his weight from leg to leg, over and over. He keeps taking breaths, wiping imaginary sweat off of his forehead, scribbling away on the pad, scratching out things, then squinting some more. Everything is confusing and too much.
“Alright, got it, get all that out for you soon,” says Anthony in a state of bewilderment, then turns to head off.
Until he realizes I’ve gotten hold of the corner of his apron, stopping him. “Forgot one.”
