Page 33 of Their Pup to Tame
He was still studying it when the waitress came back with our drinks, so I asked her to please give us a few more minutes while he made up his mind.
“Did you really have to make it so hard to choose?” he grumbled after our waitress left. “I want the ribeye, that much is easy, but whether to get the brisket mac and cheese or the lobster mac and cheese is fuckin’ killing me.”
“Get them both.”
“Maybe, but there are a trio of desserts calling me that I need to pick from too, so I have to leave room for one of them,” he declared.
“True, but everything comes with two sides anyway, so you might as well get them as yours and quit trying to talk yourself out of it when you know you want them.”
“I’m glad it’s mac and cheese you’re peddling and not something bad for me,” he replied.
“You need to steer clear of bad things for a little while.”
“With pleasure. You wanna stand outside and keep them from becoming part of my job? I’m sure we can find a T-shirt in your size. My uncle has them printed up with the club logo on the front and bouncer across the back with our slogan underneath it.”
“Which is?”
“‘We’re all about a good time, just don’t be a dick about it,’” he replied. “My grandmother talked him out of putting an actual dick on the back instead of the word, and by that I mean she told him that he wasn’t to do it under any circumstances or she’d beat his ass. She even borrowed my great-grandfather’s cane and waved it at him.”
“How many generations of your family are still living?”
“Four,” he replied. “My great-grandmother just turned eighty-two a few weeks ago; my grandmother is sixty-four, and my mom is forty-eight in case you were wondering.”
“And you’re twenty-seven, which means she was, what, twenty-one when she had you?”
“Yup. She’s still mad that I waited to come until after her birthday.”
“How far after?”
“The next day.”
“Oh man,” I said, laughing and needing to take a sip of my drink before I could say anything else. “Can you blame her for still being pissed?”
“Not really.”
“My folks had me young too,” I replied. “I couldn’t wait to head for the city where I had a chance to figure out what I wanted to do with my life without my old man in my ear all the time.”
“What did he want you to do?”
“Anything besides modeling,” I huffed, just as our waitress returned to check on us again.
He ordered the ribeye, medium-rare, which I knew he’d enjoy because it was thick as hell, and got both mac and cheeses, as well as the chocolate lava cake for dessert. I couldn’t wait for him to taste the freshly churned French vanilla ice cream they topped each lava cake with, the mini scoops fitting perfectly in the indent in the cakes. A single spoonful was pure perfection.
And that was when it dawned on me that I might have a fellow foodie on my hands. Holy smokes, how much fun would that be to spoil my pup with all kinds of treats?
I ordered the porterhouse, a twice-baked potato with all the trimmings, candied carrots, and a hunk of crusty garlic toast that they made with French bread they baked here too. I stoppedher before she walked away and ordered a second piece, since something told me that he’d want one as soon as he tasted it.
“I left home two days after I graduated,” I said, once our waitress had finished with our orders. “The only reason I stuck around the extra day was because my sister was competing in a rodeo competition the day after I graduated, and I promised to be there to cheer her on.”
“How’d she do?”
“Came in second. She lives across the street from our folks with a trio of sadistic felines. They act like Satan’s bastard stepchildren whenever I’m around.”
“Could it be because you don’t like cats?”
“I like cats just fine. I love cats. I’ve been thinking about going to the shelter and adopting a pair to be my writing buddies,” I explained. “It’s just her cats that don’t like me.”
“You know cats can sense when someone’s sketchy.”
