Naomi froze in place for a moment, staring at me like I was a fascinating puzzle to be figured out.
I just flashed her a small smile before turning away to help Gavin set the table. I kind of liked being a mystery.
I was impressed with the way Gavin did what was expected of him without having to be asked, like setting the table and washing his hands before dinner. It showed me Naomi had been consistent in her rules as he was growing up, teaching him how to behave.
The dining room table was a small square with straight hardback chairs. It looked like the kind of thing she probably bought at a big box store. There wasn’t necessarily anything wrong with that, but it added to the bigger overall picture. Nothing she owned looked new; even the furniture that was in the best shape appeared to be old and second-hand.
It suddenly occurred to me that I knew very little about Naomi herself. I’d been so interested in Gavin that I hadn’t even asked her what her job was. So, as we settled down at the table and Naomi put plates in front of us, I decided to change that. “You’re going to school again, right? What are you studying?” I asked, deciding this was a universally safe question, one that shouldn’t cause more trouble between us.
“I want to become a social worker.”
“Wow. I hear that’s a tough field to go into. What made you choose it?” I took a bite of macaroni while I waited for her to answer. My eyes rolled back in my head, and I stifled a moan. It was delicious, creamy and cheesy.
“Actually, I grew up in the system, so I wanted to do something to help other kids that were like me. I want to make a difference for them.”
I knew without being told that she put getting her degree on hold to raise Gavin. I knew she’d been a student the night we met and now, all these years later, she was finally going back to school. She might have made a mistake when she kept the pregnancy from me, but I realized she’d put aside her own dreams and plans to raise him, and had done a hell of a good job. I felt that I finally could try to really forgive her. “And you work too?”
“Yeah, in the evenings. What about you? You’re in a motorcycle club?”
The change of subject seemed jarring and I wondered why she didn’t seem to want to talk about work. “Yep,” I replied. “Rebel Saints. I’ve been one of them for seven years, once I started riding and realized how much I love it.”
“You wear a helmet, right? Because bikes are dangerous.”
“It’s Mississippi law, so yeah, I wear one. I don’t need to be stuck paying a fine every time I hop on the bike.” I turned to Gavin, wanting to include him in the conversation. “And what about you, G? What do you want to study in college someday? What do you want to be when you grow up?”
“I think I want to write comic books.”
“Wow. That’s awesome,” I said, meaning it.
“I’m not great at drawing, but I figure I can write the stories and find someone else to draw them.”
We were eating as we talked, and I devoured every bite. Naomi created a classic brown sugar glaze for the ham, and I couldn’t remember the last time I had such an amazing home-cooked meal. I could cook well enough for myself on my own, but nothing fancy. Certainly not homemade macaroni and cheese. I used the stuff out of the box with yellow cheese powder.
The conversation flowed easily between the three of us, and I made a mental note to thank Bones for his advice later. Every time there was a lull in the talking, Naomi stepped in and nudged the two of us in a different direction, so that by the time we were done eating, I had learned more about Gavin than I had in all the time we’d spent together before this.
“You know, Gavin, maybe you can tell Smoke about your video games,” Naomi said when a silence fell over us.
“You like video games?” I asked.
“Of course, who doesn’t?” Gavin asked, like it was just common sense. “You play, right?”
“Not for a very long time. Back in my day, I learned to play on an original NES.”
“What’s that?”
So, this is what being old feels like.
“Never mind,” I said. “What games do you have?”
Gavin rattled off a list of game titles, most of which I’d never heard of. I hadn’t played in years, so anything currently popular or had just came out recently wouldn’t be familiar to me.
“But I can download pretty much any game that’s in the online store onto my Switch,” he finished.
I grinned. “Well, let’s see if you’ve got anything familiar on this device,” I suggested, but then my eyes landed on the table, loaded up with our dirty dinner dishes. “After we help clean up.”
“No, don’t worry about it,” Naomi said, standing and starting to collect the dishes.
But I did worry about it. I wasn’t the type to sit around on my butt while someone else cleaned up after me. It was probably another thing deeply ingrained into me from growing up with my strict father, but for once, I actually appreciated the influence he had on me.