Page 22 of Just One More Thing

The pink Holey Moley box sits on the bartop, cheerful and completely unaware it knocked the breath out of me thirty minutes ago.

Written across the center of the box:

THE CENTER OF EVERY DOUGHNUT IS FAT FREE

Maddy’s joke from way back. Her way of making fun of the nineties diet fad.

One corner of the box is crushed in. The flap’s ripped. There’s a glaze smear on the dark wood floor, marking the exact spot where my past came crashing back.

I brace both hands on the bar and lock my elbows, pushing my weight through my arms trying to force some distance between me and what just happened.

Doesn’t work.

I let my head hang and breathe out slow. At my feet, Hank licks his chops. “What’d you get into, mister?”

He looks up with his bottom teeth out, face arranged in that bulldog expression that somehow says I regret nothing and I’ve done nothing wrong at the exact same time.

I huff a laugh and rub a hand over the back of my neck.

I’m a grown man. Thirty-one years old. Former NFL quarterback. Crabber. Restaurant owner. Bulldog dad. I’m not a twenty-year-old kid anymore with big dreams and zero coping skills for emotions that show up loud and uninvited. But when she cried into my chest, the ache I’ve been carrying around for ten years eased. Then she walked out the door, and I felt it start creeping back in.

Only this time it feels different.

She didn’t bolt. She didn’t joke her way out of it. Didn’t laugh like it was nothing. She cried. She stayed in it. Then she left slowly. Slow matters with Mo.

Every part of me wanted to stop her. But she’d already given me more than I expected today. More than I think she meant to. So I stayed where I was and let her go.

Only this time it didn’t feel like losing her.

I slide the doughnut box farther from the edge of the bar, more careful with it than I ought to be.

Hank leans against my shin, falling asleep with one eye open and the other squinting. “Okay,” I tell him. “You can have the lap.”

I lower myself to the floor with my back against the bar. Hank climbs up and settles across my thighs with a long, satisfied sigh heavy enough to count as a statement. “Comfortable?” I ask.

He shuts one eye and leaves the other cracked open. “Glad I could be of service.”

The kitchen door swings open. Bethany steps out and stops when she sees me on the floor with seventy pounds of bulldog in my lap. “Hey,” she says.

“Hey.” I keep my voice low for Hank, not that it matters. He could sleep through a hurricane if it happened in a room where somebody was willing to give him a lap and snuggles.

Her eyes go over me, then the room, then back to me again. Old habit. She’s one of the few people I know who can scan a space without making it obvious she just did.

“What?” I ask.

“Nothing.” She reaches behind the bar for the specials notebook. “You just look like you got sacked on a scoring drive.”

I blow out a laugh. If there’s one person who’ll call you out without warming up first, it’s Bethany. She knows what stress looks like. She also knows when to mind her business.

Usually.

“I’m fine.”

“Sure.” She flips open the notebook, skims a page, then says, “The grouper at Hart’s looked tragic yesterday. If it still looks depressed when I get there, I’m switching us to shrimp for tonight.”

“That’s fine.”

She glances at me again. This time her face softens just a notch. She’s watched enough people carry old wounds aroundto know what one looks like when it starts moving again. “She okay?” she asks.