Page 34 of Divorced from Number Thirty-Eight
“She okay?”
That right there…
The concern Smitty has for a woman he’s never met paired with the fact that he’s not pissed about my after-midnight call is why he’s my friend.
My family.
It’s why I’ll take his loudness, his brashness, the shit he’ll stir up, his nosiness.
Because he cares.
Because he’s helping me make the Grizzlies what I’ve wanted them to be for a long, long time.
“She lost her grandma’s banana bread recipe and her baby pictures and her parents’ wedding photo,” I whisper.
“So, she’s not okay.”
“No,” I tell him, “she’s not okay.”
“You’ll get her there.”
I tense. “Smitty.”
“Courtney isn’t you,” he says quietly.
“Court and I are finally done,” I say just as quietly back. “She signed the papers, is engaged to someone else.”
“Thank fuck for that.”
Since I thought that very same thing, I don’t comment further.
“She isn’t you,” he semi-repeats.
“Ten years of fucking around with her makes that hard to believe.”
“Gray—”
“Need you to focus on Faye,” I mutter. “She needs clothes and conditioner and moisturizer and all the other girl things I don’t have at my place. Oh, and baking shit—flour and sugar and baking soda and one of those Kitchen Aid mixer things.”
Smitty’s quiet—a rare feat.
“She likes baking,” I find myself explaining.
“Got that,” he says after a moment. “We’ll get her set up.”
“Right,” I mutter.
I push off the wall, turn for Faye’s room.
“Smitty?”
“Yeah, bud?”
“Thanks.”
I hang up, and maybe I should go home, let her sleep, should get some rest in my own bed.
But I don’t do that.
