“He was twisting your arm?” Mac explodes. “He had his hands on you?”
“I don’t need you to step up and make it look like something it’s not!” Katrina snaps. “My life is already a mess, and I don’t need a man walking in thinking he has big balls and making my shit worse. I had Zeke under control!”
“I didn’t know he was your ex, Katrina. I just knew he was coming down from something; he was crashing and angry, and his hand was on you.”
“Do I look hurt?” She throws her arms up and spills coffee onto her apron. “Did I look like a sniveling little idiot, or did I have it under control?”
“Well… I dunno.”
“It was under control!” Storming forward, she slams the coffee pot back on the warmer and pins me with a glare. “It was under control, but now I gotta replace a broken door, deal with phone calls tomorrow while Zeke pretends he has a lawyer, and in between that, I gotta talk to my kid and help him come to terms with the fact he pushed his own father tonight when he should have been at home in bed!”
“Mom…” Stepping forward while he wrings his too-big shirt between his hands, Mac places himself between me and his raging mother. “You don’t have it under control. We have a broken door at home because he was a pushy dick last week too. Phone calls tomorrow are better than eating breakfast with him when I find out he slept on the couch because he’s homeless and crashing. And the car is a mess because he said he could fix it, but he made it worse. You don’t have this under control; you just keep slapping Band-Aids on it like that’ll protect me.”
“A thousand days to go, baby. A thousand! Then we’re free.”
“I’m not gonna wish the next three and a half years of our lives away in hopes he doesn’t try to step up as a father. Zeke is a deadbeat, Mom! He’s not gonna step up. He literally can’t afford to, so you’re pausing your whole existence for something that doesn’t exist.”
“I’m not pausing! I’m working, eating, sleeping, trying to raise a decent human being.”
“And now you’re crazy-lady-screeching in the diner in the middle of the night while Franky holds a rifle and your own customers wipe up the coffeeyouspilled. How’s that working out for you?”
“Stop being a smart ass!” Pointing a dangerous hand toward an unoccupied table, Katrina swings past a still-loaded Franky and slaps a slice of pie onto a plate. “Sit down, eat, be good. It’s time to start cleaning, then we’re going to bed.”
Accepting the plate with a shrug, Mac turns and faces me with a small grin and makes his way to the booth with a limp. “I’ll be waiting, Mom. Then I’ll walk your stubborn ass home and make sure you get inside without any weirdos jumping out of the bushes and scaring you.”
“You are fourteen, Macallistar!” Snatching up the burger I ordered what seems like forever ago, Katrina swings by my empty booth and slaps the plate down. “Eat your damn food; don’t leave a mess, then get out. Don’t step up for me again. You made it worse.”
With narrowed eyes but the good sense to go back to my booth, I slide in so Mac and I are back to back, and when Katrina helps her elderly customers up and through the broken door, Mac lifts to his knees and peers over my shoulder. “My mom can be a little cranky sometimes. She’s proud, and if Zeke had his hands on her, you stepping up would make her feel like a girl. She doesn’t like that. But I’m on your side. You can keep stepping up if I’m not around. You won’t get attitude from me about it.”
I turn with a frown and meet a pair of green eyes exactly like his mother’s and a boyish grin. Extending a hand over the back of the seat, Mac flashes two cute dimples and a whole lot of trouble. “Macallistar Blair. The psycho is my mom, but fourteen years means I know how to press her buttons exactly right.”
I accept his hand with suspicion. “Hi, Macallistar Blair. I’m Eric DeWhit. I’m just an innocent bystander.”
“That’s what they all say,” he snorts. Releasing my hand, he reaches forward and snatches one of my fries. “I know who you are, too. They call you Cap; you’re a cop, and you eat here all the time. You also smile when my mom walks through and laughs at one of Ray’s jokes.”
“Most of that is true.”
He narrows his eyes. “Retired cop. Retired badass motherfucker. You’re friends with my friends, so we can be pals so long as you don’t break my mom’s doors.”
“I promise to never break any doors.”
“Then we’re square.” Turning, he drops down and clangs his cutlery together while Katrina pulls out a heavy roll of gray tape and secures the broken glass door. “Don’t help her, Cap. Don’t offer. Let her be proud for tonight. She needs control like she needs air.”
I guess I can relate.