This Close to Okay(18)

The waiter stopped by their table, refilled their drinks.

(The waiter’s name is Greg. Greg has short brown hair. Greg is wearing blue-and-yellow running shoes, jeans, a white T-shirt, a red half apron with buttons on it. One of the buttons reads ROCK AROUND THE CLOCK TONIGHT. Another button is a fluffy pink poodle drinking a milkshake against a black-and-white checkered background. Another: ASK ME ABOUT POODLE SKIRT REWARDS POINTS.)

“Can we get two beers and two shots of bourbon?” Emmett asked the waiter before promising Tallie he’d give her money as soon as they got back to her place.

“Uh…um. Okay, look. Swear you’re not an alcoholic?” she asked after the waiter was gone.

“I’m not an alcoholic, Tallie. Are you an alcoholic?”

“No. I’m not. But day drinking is rarely a supergood idea.”

“I’m breaking all the rules,” he said.

“Mmm-hmm…and you had the nerve to ‘Easy, tiger’ me last night. Oh, wait! You’ve never been here before, right?” Tallie asked.

Emmett told her no, he hadn’t.

“Then you have to try their dipping sauce. Sometimes you have to ask for it…I’ll get it for us. It’s so good. I almost forgot! You have to try it,” she said, politely waving the waiter back over.

Tallie doing something small like that made him feel loved. The costumes, the food—someone else was taking control, even about tiny decisions. For so long with Christine he had to make every decision, check every lock, pay every bill, make every breakfast, every lunch and dinner. All of it had wrung him out, but he didn’t have to worry about that anymore.

Christine: a bucket filled to the top that he’d been asked to carry through a war zone, over fiery coals, in a hot air balloon, on a shaky roller coaster. Their relationship, doomed from the start. She spilled out and over, and there was nothing he could do about it. The inevitability of it had borne down and crushed him. But now, Christine was gone, and none of that mattered. He missed her. And the mere pinch of any kind of forgiveness or mercy flooded his heart with watery light.





TALLIE




Emmett began to cry and used the paper napkin to wipe his nose. He pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes and left them there.

“Did I say something that upset you?” she asked as his chin shook.

Client cries easily, is tenderhearted. Demeanor quicksilvers.

Too many questions? Or was he thinking of the letters, those women? Or his parents, the letter he’d written them? Guilt? Remorse? It could’ve been anything. On the drive to the outlet mall, she’d asked him again if he wanted to try to intercept the letter and he’d shrugged, said he didn’t think so. She couldn’t persuade him otherwise. His poor parents. Once they got that letter, they would think there was nothing they could do. She hated imagining the depthless doom of it. But there he was in front of her, perfectly alive and safe.

Tallie was an empath. She closed her eyes, put her hands out, read the braille of her clients’ hearts. It was a gift she had; she’d made an entire career out of it! She was soul-connected to Emmett already, instantly. He’d cried easily but was surprisingly not needy, not in the way so many of her clients were. Not like the ones who craved constant reassurance and coddling. A part of Emmett seemed confidently depressed, resigned to it, but he also had clear instances of buoyancy and boyishness that led her to believe there was still a lot to work with.

The waiter brought their drinks and the sauce for Emmett. He downed his shot immediately, chased it with two big draining gulps of his blond beer. And although she wasn’t sure exactly why, Tallie did the same thing to keep up with him. The waiter had only just made it to the next table when Emmett motioned for two more shots of bourbon.

“It wasn’t anything you said. I’m all right,” Emmett said. He dipped a bit of his burger into the special sauce and ate it. Told Tallie how delicious it was before turning his attention back to his beer.

“Um. You…we shouldn’t drink too much. It’s bad news,” Tallie warned. She’d never go to lunch with a client or let a client spend the night at her house. And of course she would never drink with a client. Even the thought was absurd. It would’ve been unprofessional, borderline unethical! She always held herself to such strict boundaries of living, but really…what had it gotten her in her relationships? Hadn’t it left her feeling alone? No one else seemed to follow the rules, so why should she? What was the harm in a teeny-tiny act of rebellion? What right did she have to tell a grown man what to do? “I mean…no more after this. That’s enough, don’t you think?” she tacked on the end.

“Sure. I gotcha. I’m going to step outside and smoke. I think that would make me feel better,” he said, like he was asking for her permission. And something about him doing that made him seem so small in the moment, even though he wasn’t.

Coping mechanism: aha! Cigarettes, as suspected.

He stood and touched his pocket, went in and found the treasure of an almost-empty soft pack.

“Okay. Whatever you need. I didn’t know you smoked. I thought, maybe, but you didn’t smell like it, and you haven’t smoked since we met. Have you? Maybe you smoked while I was sleeping?” she asked. She looked up at him, awash with the absurdity of having her feelings hurt because she didn’t know this one specific thing about him. She knew absolutely nothing about him outside of the little he’d told her. And those could’ve been lies. But the purloined letters—which he hadn’t noticed were missing yet, or at least hadn’t mentioned—those weren’t lies.