Page 42 of With Spite

His mom gave me enough shit about not eating my vegetables. I was sure that she shared that I hated the food she catered for the shop.

I was a meat, potatoes, and bread girl. And if there was a salad, it damn well better be smothered in ranch and cheese.

When he opened up the boxes, I found that the salad was, indeed, smothered in ranch.

And so much cheese.

Extra cheese on top of more cheese.

Just the way that I liked it.

The chicken-fried steak also had the gravy on the side.

“You ordered it at Hopps once,” he said. “I was at the bar when you came in to place the order.”

I felt his stare on me as I opened up all the boxes and started to dig in.

I wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth.

I was once a starving child.

Deep down inside, I would probably always be that starving child.

I never, ever wasted food. I always took that food home if I couldn’t finish it, but most of the time I stuffed myself to the absolute brim until I was miserably full.

I also made sure to coupon, ensuring that I always had a little bit of everything on hand so if the world came to an end, I could still make bread. Anything was possible with bread, right?

I still remember being in the one-room apartment we shared with my mother, asking my brother when my mother was supposed to come home and feed us. He’d given me this look that said that I was so naïve, and then left to come back with food.

It would only be later when I realized that Creed had gone out and stolen that food for us.

“Thank you for bringing me food,” I found myself saying. “There was this one time that Creed stole us some food from this fancy restaurant. And by fancy, I mean Texas Roadhouse. A couple had just left and had this bag of leftovers on a park bench while they posed for a photo. Apparently, they’d gotten some food to go for their son. It had this massive chicken-fried steak in it smothered in white gravy. Mashed potatoes. Corn. And all of these rolls and butter.”

“That why you like it so much?” he asked, watching me devour the meal.

He’d brought me exactly what I ordered from Hopps. However, no offense to Hopps, but nothing would ever hold a candle to that Texas Roadhouse chicken-fried steak.

Hell, at this point there probably were places that could make a better chicken-fried steak, but that place would forever hold a core memory inside of my brain that would never be superseded.

“Chicken-fried steak?” I shrugged. “I don’t know. I think it’s more of a comfort food at this point. I know there are way better things on the menu. I don’t even necessarily like fried things. They make me bloat and I get gassy. But when I’m feeling down, this is the meal that I order.”

He didn’t say anything more, just sat there while he watched me eat.

He never took his eyes off of me the entire time I was eating.

I ate fast, too.

Yet another habit that I’d probably never break.

You ate what you could before you were caught. Or before it was stolen. Someone couldn’t steal a roll out of your belly.

“I can’t finish another bite,” I groaned, looking down at the box of food in front of me.

He pulled the plate toward himself and downed the other half of the food. He ate the steak in three bites. The macaroni was gone in two. The corn in three.

He cleaned off the rest of the box with the rest of the bread, leaving an almost clean to-go container on the table in front of him.

“Were y’all ever poor and hungry?” I asked.