Mrs. Tucker is on me the moment she catches a whiff of him. “Oh, is that the new boy? Hmm.” She squints at him through the window separating the restaurant from the kitchen. “Seems sweet to me! Comp the sweet boy’s meal. A newcomer to Spruce needs to feel the welcomin’ Spruce spirit, don’t he? Hey.” She leans in close to me. “Is he a boy you’re chasing? Are you taking my advice?” My face goes red as I politely retort in a low voice, “No, Mrs. Tucker, he is just a friend, new to town, and … we sort of clicked right away.” To that, she just gives me a knowing smirk, says, “Yeah, yeah, Mr. Has No Options Here In Spruce,” before swatting my arm with a menu and heading out the door, likely to introduce herself to Vann and do that invasive, maternal thing she’s so known for.
The night flies right on by, and all of the things I normally find stressful don’t seem stressful at all tonight, not with Vann sitting at that booth in the corner reminding me of what I have to look forward to once eleven o’clock rolls around. I catch Mick staring at Vann through the window while doing the dishes, his big blank face wrinkled up with confusion, mouth hanging open in the way it does. “Something on your mind?” I prod him as I wash my hands in the nearby sink. Mick just grunts, shrugs, then asks, “Is he gonna order a dessert or somethin’? Been sittin’ there for an hour or two just drawin’ stuff,” before resuming his dishwashing in a lip-hanging daze.
When the rush dies down after ten, I join Vann at his booth briefly to see what he’s drawing. He flips his sketch around to show me. It appears to be another muscular demon, but this one has a giant head of a viper instead of a human one. “What a … slitheringly sexy fellow you’ve made there,” I tease. “Kinda wish I could see him in color.”
“Nah, I don’t do color,” says Vann, flipping his sketch back to face himself as he adds more scales to the demon’s neck.
“Color is all I do,” I throw back. Then it hits me. “We should totally collaborate on something. You could draw it, and I’ll paint over it, giving it color.”
“Hmph,” is all Vann says to that.
At last, the time comes to leave, and I clock out officially with Mrs. Tucker. Before heading out the door, however, Vann goes up to her when she’s standing at the cash register. “Thanks,” he tells her. “For dinner.” She appears genuinely surprised by the thanks, and touched, as the smile that graces her face is warm and bright. “You come back anytime,” she tells him. “Bring your whole fam if you like. Try one of our specials, on the house. A friend of Toby’s is a friend of the Tuckers.”
Outside in the darkness of near-midnight as we make our slow way to my house, Vann asks, “Who are the Tuckers?”
“The lady you talked to, Mrs. Tucker, she’s Billy’s mom. Billy is Coach Strong’s husband.”
Vann takes a second to process that. “And she likes you? Even though her son-in-law runs a team full of meathead morons?”
“It’s more complicated than that,” I try to explain to him. “I mean, I am buddies with Coach Strong’s little brother Jimmy, who keeps in touch with me from his place in Arizona. He’s bi and married to—well, do you really want the whole story? There’s a lot of luggage to unpack there, if you get me.”
Vann chuckles dryly to himself, shaking his head. “None of it makes sense to me. Everyone knows everyone. Everyone is some other person’s in-law or cousin or mortal enemy—or combination of all those things.”
“Welcome to Spruce, Texas.”
The atmosphere between us changes the closer we get to my house. When we make it there and slip into the shed, I feel all of my nerves twisting up with anticipation—while Vann immediately makes himself right at home by dropping his backpack by the foot of my bed, then kicking back in my computer chair and flipping on the TV. Clearly not as relaxed as he is, I hang up my apron stiffly, awkwardly kick off my shoes, then sit on the end of my bed to join him. I keep going back and forth in my mind about whether to ask if he still wants to go over the script, or if we’re too exhausted to. Isn’t that why I invited him over to hang out afterwards? To get more comfy with the awful, horrible, no-good script? Just say something. Be bold. Take the advice of literally every person in your life—Jimmy, Mrs. Tucker, even Vann himself.
“Do you want to—?” My throat closes up. I fight it and get my words out with more force than I intend: “Do you want to go over scene four in the script?”