Page 20 of Indescribable

“I know.”

“Good. Hungry?” he asks, changing the subject like the amazing friend he is.

“Starving.”

“We eating out of these or dirtying up some dishes?”

“I’ve got a dishwasher, I’ll grab plates.” I look at the containers and notice he brought fries and onion rings, too, so I ask, “Still like ranch dressing and ketchup for dipping?”

“Is there any other way?”

“Sure there is.”

“But none are as superior as the kranch combo.”

“Kranch?”

“Ketchup and ranch, duh.”

I snort. “Dork.”

“I know you are but what am I?”

“Oh my gosh, are we eight?”

“I kind of miss those days, don’t you? Everything was simple. We weren’t attached to these things,” he says, lifting his phone in the air and wiggling it back and forth before dropping it to the counter. “We went to school, complained about having to learn some new math problem or read an extra book for our book log, stood in line for someone to serve us food that was actually decent because the southern mamas here wouldn’t let us eat crap, rode our bikes to wherever we wanted to go, spent our summers at the pool… I could go on but hell, we had it made then, didn’t we? Didn’t know it, but we did.”

“We totally did. The best feeling in the world to me was when those first few days of spring hit. We’d be outside all day and by the time we got inside, we’d be exhausted but the smell of the air was still stuck to my skin and in my hair. I loved that. I still do. It brings me back to when we were kids and like you said, we didn’t have a care in the world, really.”

We settle with our plates in the living room in front of the television and start diving into our food like savages. I didn’t realize how hungry I was until the scent of the burger hit my nose.

“Remember our first grade teacher Mrs. Taylor?” he asks me around a mouthful of his own burger. “She was so mean! Mom told me she got in trouble for smacking kids with a ruler when she was in school.”

“No kidding?” He nods and I gasp when a memory hits me. “Holy crap! I just remembered when she took Sammy by the ear and yanked him out of his chair because he didn’t know the answer to something. She told him he would never amount to anything and wouldn’t have her name associated with his education.” I snicker. “Gosh, if she knew he became a neurosurgeon, she’d probably roll over in her grave.”

Brock laughs loudly. “He told me at recess that it didn’t even hurt when she was pinching his ear but he was squirming to get away because of how bad she smelled.”

I shudder. “That smell still haunts me. I swear it got stuck in my nose holes for the entire year. Even when we left school for the day, I would still smell it on me. I would get home and change my clothes and take a shower every single day. It wasn’t until parent-teacher conferences that my parents realized how serious I was.”

He nods, dunking a few fries into hiskranchcombo and tossing them into his mouth. “I’ve never figured out what the smell was, you?”

I scrunch my nose. “I think it was a mixture of cat pee and nasty perfume that was bottled in the sixties and smelled like shit even then.”

He makes a gagging sound. “If that’s what it was, no wonder she wasencouragedto retire at the end of that year.”

“For sure. Well, that, and the fact that she was mean as a snake.”

“One bad teacher aside, we really did have it made, didn’t we?”

“Hell yeah, we did. I’d love to do nothing but go to the pool and ride my bike all summer.”

“Me, too. Would it be as fun now, though?”

He smirks. “Probably for like a week. I don’t know, maybe it would but this being an adult thing is for the birds. So much stress and responsibility.”

“So. Much. Responsibility. However,” I say, grinning myself, “I went to the store yesterday and it was actually fun. I don’t want to only talk about Wyatt and the divorce but when I was shopping I realized I could get whateverIwanted and didn’t have to consider anyone else. That was kind of fun.”

He looks at me like I’ve lost my mind, which I sometimes feel like I have. “You thought going to the store was fun? Maybe youdoneed a vacation by a pool.”

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