Dub
“Pleeeeeease?” Dub begged. He knew Wes would give in eventually. “Just one burrito. All that basketball made me hungry.” Dub had spent the last two hours playing in a drop-in game at the Y while Wes sat in a nearby Starbucks, grading exams. “I’m a growing boy. I need nourishment.”
“You can hardly say a fast-food burrito is nourishing,” Wes said. “We’ve got plenty of healthy stuff in the fridge at home. Spinach. Broccoli. Brussels sprouts. Tofu…”
The grin on Wes’s face told Dub his foster father was only teasing. Sure enough, Wes turned his Civic into the drive-thru lane at Taco Bell.
They waited as a woman with what looked like an entire girls’ soccer team in her SUV placed a long and complicated order, turning back to the girls several times to discuss the “hold this’s” and “extra that’s.”
“Girls,” Wes said, rolling his eyes.
Dub emitted a grunt of agreement, though actually, their pickiness aside, he thought girls weren’t bad at all. Unlike Mark Stallworth, the puberty fairy had visited Dub early, tapping him quite hard with her magical sparkling wand. He’d had facial hair by age twelve and was often mistaken for an adult. The guy who’d come to their door the other day trying to selling them new gutters hadn’t asked to see Dub’s parents. He’d assumed Dub was the owner of the house.
Their team’s order finally done, the woman drove forward and Wes pulled up to the menu board.
A woman’s voice came through the speaker. “Welcome to Taco Bell. What can I get you today?”
Holy shit.
That Tennessee twang was unmistakable. What happened Sunday night could land Dub in a world of trouble, and so could the woman whose voice had just come through the speaker.
Wes leaned his head out the window. “One bean burrito,” he called.
The woman repeated the order and gave him a total. Wes thanked her and began to pull forward.
“Wait!” Dub cried.
Wes slammed on the brakes. “What is it?”
Dub opened the passenger door. “I’ll be right back. I need to go inside and use the bathroom.” Dub hopped out the door and slammed it behind him.
He did not want the woman working the drive-thru to see him. He couldn’t let her see him. If she did, everything he’d worked so hard for would be over.
Yet he wanted to see her.
Needed to.
Dub pulled the white hood of his Tornadoes sweatshirt over his head and walked into the restaurant. He turned left into the dining area rather than right toward the food counter. Keeping his face ducked, he circled around to the drink machine. Taking a deep breath, he dared a look behind the counter.
There she was.
Standing inside the drive-thru window was a small black woman, barely five feet, wearing a colorful Taco Bell uniform. She wore her dark hair in a springy Afro. She’d never been able to afford to have her curls relaxed. Dub was glad about that. She looked cute this way, more real, younger and less processed and pretend.
She turned to talk to one of her coworkers. Her face had no bruises or cuts, no swollen mouth. She still had the thick scar on her upper lip where it had been split open a few years ago, but that had healed as much as it ever would. Her eyes looked clear. She’d put on some weight, too, no longer looking like one of those half-starved refugees on TV.
Thank God.
Relieved, he turned to go. He was nearly to the exit door when her voice came again.
“Wade?” she cried. “Is that you?”
He stopped in his tracks but didn’t turn around. Everything in him told him to run. To run as fast as he could out to Wes’s car and to never look back. To get away from her and to stay away.
But he couldn’t do it. Had never been able to do it.
Slowly, he turned around.
By this time, she’d stepped up to the front counter. He saw tears in her deep brown eyes.
“It is you!” Her smile revealed an incomplete set of teeth. “I knew it!”
She was out the door that led from the food prep area and standing in front of him before he could even take a breath.
And he knew right then it was all over. The basketball at the Y, the B average in school, the bedroom and bathroom he had all to himself.
He was no longer blessed, but damned.
Damned straight to hell.
And, this time, he could blame no one but himself.