Page 6 of Another Last Call
“Being a Taurus doesn’t give you the right to be full of bullshit.” She glared up at me. “The only option is to ask Big Tim or Steven to handle it. They will always have your back.”
“I don’t need Tiny Steve to look out for me.”
“Please stop calling him Tiny Steve.”
I rolled my eyes. “It’s meant to be ironic.”
“It’s meant to be emasculating, you mean.” Mom looked at me, her eyes tired. “I know you’re not a huge fan of me dating Steven, hon, but he’s good to me. I wish you could see that.”
“It’s not that you’re dating someone. It’s that you chose to date a guy named Tiny Steve.”
“You’re the one who started calling him that.”
I tried not to laugh, especially since Mom didn’t seem to be lightening up. “He likes it when I call him that. It’s our thing. It’s funny because he’s not tiny.”
“Mags, things are getting more serious with me and Steven.”
I raised my eyebrows, stunned at her sudden admission. “Okay.”
“He’s kind. He’s always been here for me. And for you, hon.”
“I know, Mom.”
“He makes me happy.” She drummed her fingers on the counter. “I’m thinking of asking him to move in.”
That didn’t surprise me all that much. Tiny Steve had been a bartender at The Sea Glass since Mom first bought it. He only worked the bar a few evenings a week because the rest of the time, he worked on motorcycles in his local shop. Between their two schedules, Mom and Steve didn’t see each other as often as I knew either of them wanted to.
Despite Mom’s assumption that I didn’t like her dating Steve, I didn’t know why it took him so long to admit he was in love with her. I knew he was, and I knew he had been for a long time. And that was good; I wanted her to be with someone who loved her like that.
But she was my mom. She was protective of me, but I was protective of her, too.
I had to be. She was all I had.
“Do what makes you happy, Mom. If you’re ready for Tiny Steve to—”
“Maggie—”
I held my hands up in surrender, trying not to laugh. “If you wantStevento move in, I’m happy for you.”
She smiled the genuine, bright smile that made people in Marble Beach fall in love with her. “Thanks, Mags.”
Suddenly, it was back to business. “Now look, you have to stop dumping things on customers. I know they’re pigs. I know they’re saying horrible things to you. I know it isn’t right. But not only are you wasting product, I’m also losing the money on their bill and the bills of everyone around them.” Mom’s expression was forlorn. “I’m sorry, hon. If I could make them stop harassing you, I would, but this is the last time I’m warning you.”
She sent me home for a while after that, probably so Wanda wouldn’t have a conniption when I returned to the bar, with instructions to come back with my guitar around eight-thirty so I could play my usual live music set. Luckily, home wasn’t far. After running her through my remaining tables, I hung up my apron in the office, then trudged up the stairs in the back of the building to the apartment above the bar.
Growing up, I’d lived in the small house with my mom just a few blocks away from The Sea Glass. She owned the building and had known about the apartment upstairs, but only ever used it to store away things she promptly forgot about.
As a teenager, I’d stolen the key from our junk drawer one day and turned the apartment into my personal hiding space. I’d cleaned it up, brought a few blankets and pillows and other miscellany up there to turn it into a little nest.
I spent hours hiding up there. My friends and I would sneak up and get drunk off booze stolen from their parents’ liquor cabinets—not mine, since I was an only child and it would be far too obvious if I was taking liquor from my mom. I’d lost my virginity up there, at least twice if either of the boys had believed me, even though neither of them was my actual first.
When I finished high school, I begged my mom to let me move out. We had that perfectly good storage room above the bar, I argued. I needed independence and she couldn’t very well expect me to take over the bar for herandlive at home for the rest of my life.
I hadn’t needed to argue, though. She was more than happy to get me out of the house. Part of me wondered if Tiny Steve had something to do with that, but the more realistic part of me figured Mom wanted to make sure I could take care of myself before she left the bar to me one day.
Because that was what my life was going to be. The Sea Glass was everything Mom had.
Looking back, I’m sure she knew I was using the apartment as a teenage hangout. She wasn’t stupid. Mom was barely twenty when some rich white boy whose parents owned a nearby lake house knocked her up one summer. Once they found out, his parents sold the lake house and gave Mom a ridiculous amount of money to keep the boy’s name off my birth certificate. That was the money she’d used to buy our house and the bar she worked at from the soon-to-retire original owners.
