Page 57 of Bet on It

Chapter 19

The Piggly Wiggly was packed out the ass with people. The store was so old it didn’t have any self-checkout lanes, and the three cashier lanes they did have open had lines so long Walker briefly considered herding Gram out of the store and one town over to Beaufort, where they had one of those Walmart supercenters.

One glance at his grandmother and he knew that she’d never go for it. She’d been coming to this store for decades and outright refused to shop anywhere else out of pure loyalty. It wasn’t normally like this. Usually he could come in with whatever list she provided, pick up the items, and be loading the groceries in his truck in thirty minutes flat.

Right now, everyone was doing their Fourth of July shopping and it was extra hectic. Walking down the bread aisle, he felt a special kind of tingle in the back of his brain. One that told him he might have to wrestle somebody’s hapless husband for the last package of hot dog buns.

Like most small Southern towns, Greenbelt took the Fourth of July very seriously. In recent years, the celebration had less to do with patriotism than with giving everyone a good excuse to gather and be merry. Each year, there was a town-wide festival that took place at the Mayor’s mansion. The town events-planning committee put it together, making sure the start time was agreed upon and supplies were secured. There was always a smoke station for the meats and a huge cake provided by Castillo’s Bakery, but everything else was done potluck style. Gram always, always made baked beans and macaroni salad. But, in addition, she made sure to bring extra buns and utensils, just in case.

Walker had only been once. The year after he went to live with Gram, she’d pressured him into going. She’d bought him a new outfit and everything, waking him up, making him wash behind his ears, and dressing him in the cargo shorts and T-shirt she’d picked up. He’d spent the entire first hour following behind her like a lost puppy, hiding in her skirts. There had been no choice but to separate from her once she’d sat down to play a round of cards with her friends though. This was not a scene where children older than five could be “deep in grown folk’s business.” So he’d wandered off, trying to find some business of his own like he’d been ordered to. It only took him a few minutes to find a peaceful, shaded spot under a big tree, and an even shorter time for some of the other kids to find him.

Like in school, he’d been quiet. Reluctantly taking them up on their offer to play, running after them as they’d enjoyed the picnic, happy to hang out on the margins, relatively unnoticed. Then, like the snap of two fingers, things became much less agreeable. One moment, he’d been fine, only to look up and find himself surrounded by his new “friends” and tons of adults as they prepared to light the sparkling candles on the big cake. The other bodies were packed so close to him that he could barely see the sky. The sounds were loud and unfamiliar, the scent of meat smoke was making his eyes water. It was too much—so overwhelming that he started to panic.

His breaths came hard and fast, and his vision got blurry. He’d gotten so worked up that he’d vomited his lunch all over his new shirt. Looking back, it was one of the first panic attacks he’d ever had. A year removed from his father’s care, and his brain was finally reeling from the effects. Walker had been so embarrassed when someone had been forced to carry him over to Gram, and even more so when she’d cut her celebration short to take him home.

His panic attack also made the rumors resurface. By the time he got to school on Monday, the entire building had been buzzing with talk of what had gone down. The new “friends” he’d made regaled their classmates with fake tales about him kicking and biting the man who’d carried him off. Someone said that he’d only started panicking in the first place because someone tried to stop him from biting the head off a live rabbit. It was almost hilarious how he’d gone from baby meth addict to animal torturer over the course of one afternoon.

The only upside to the rumors becoming more unhinged was that they made others keep away from him. If he had to hear the rumors, he’d rather hear them from a distance.

He’d spent every other Fourth of July since at home on the couch, waiting until Gram came home with a foil-covered Styrofoam plate filled with delicious food. He planned to do the same this year.

“Do you think Aja’s comin’ to this year’s picnic?” Gram asked lightly, poking at bags of dark brown sugar to find the one she wanted.

“I don’t know, I haven’t asked her.”

What he didn’t say was that he seriously doubted it. He wasn’t about to tell Gram all of Aja’s business. It was her choice alone to tell people about her anxiety disorder, not his. And if she’d decided that she didn’t want Gram to know, he wasn’t going to go against that.

“Well, you should.” She pointed to the two bags of brown sugar she wanted, silently telling him to put them in the cart. “It might be nice for her to meet some more people in town. I’m sure there are plenty of handsome young men who would like to meet her.”

He gritted his teeth as he grabbed the bags. He’d be good goddamned. He had no right to feel the possessiveness that was welling up in his throat, making him ill at the very idea of her with another man. But he felt it anyway.

“Well, maybe you should tell her about it.” It took a ton of effort to tone down his smart-assed remark.

“Or maybe you could.” She pushed her glasses down the end of her nose as she browsed her paper list. “All that time you spend with her, you’d think it’d have already come up.”

Walker’s brain shorted out and his tongue followed, leaving his jaws flapping but soundless. He hadn’t told Gram that he’d been hanging out with Aja alone, outside of Monday-night bingo. He hadn’t been forthcoming about them getting dinner sometimes, going to the drive-in together, and certainly not about going over to her house. Frankly, he’d kept it from her because he didn’t want to hear her running her mouth.

Nor did he want her to keep entertaining the fantasy that he was going to fall in love with Aja and come running back to Greenbelt, pretending history was nothing in the face of newfound love. Plus, just the thought of the type of questions Gram wouldn’t be shy about asking sent a shock of fear up his spine.

He tried to recover as quickly as possible before she took her eyes off the jarred relish that he had held up to her face. He’d fold immediately under her gaze, and he didn’t want that yet—even if it was still inevitable.

“I don’t think I’m the right person to invite her when I’m not even goin’.”

“You’re still on that?” Gram huffed. “You don’t think you’d like to try comin’ again this year? Even for a little bit?”

He shot her a bland look, and she pursed her lips.

“Well, I know for a fact Minnie’s is supplying peach cobbler this year.”

“What?”

Normally answering her that way would have earned him a cuff on the ear. This time she just smirked, her eyes still on the jar.

“Yep, we’re still doing the pie competition, but this year, instead of that big cake, Mayor Harris is treatin’ everyone to cobbler. I figure he had to put in orders for at least thirty of them.”

“Do you think you could bring me home a piece?”

She looked at him, finally. “You know how much people love that cobbler, Wally. I have no doubt somebody would knock my old behind over if they saw me trying to sneak an extra piece. The only way for you to get some will be to come.”

---