I sighed. “Do you have any other family around?”
“My mother.”
“Are you close?”
“Yeah.”
I bit back tears. “I’m glad.”
“What about you?”
I shook my head. I filled him in on my parents and grandmother, ending with Clarence and the purchase of the diner. “I choose my family now.”
“I’m really sorry you’ve had to deal with all that, honey,” he said.
“I have a really great life, Scooby. And, yes, it’s sad that they’re gone, but it’s not something I can control.”
“You have help getting to that place?”
I let out a quiet snort. “Years and years and years of help,” I admitted.
“You got friends?”
“Yep.”
“I just haven’t seen them around,” he said.
“Yes, you have. You’ve met them,” I countered. “Dusty and Monty.”
“Any friends who don’t work for you?”
“Murphy.”
“Who’s Murphy?”
“He owns the convenience store two doors down.”
He sighed. “Anyone who isn’t thirty years older than you, or works for you?”
I shrugged sheepishly.
“Right,” he said. “We need to expand your circle.”
“Expand my circle, how?”
“I think it would be great if you met a couple of the club women. Sierra and Violet would be a good start.”
I shook my head, waving my hands in the air. “No, I’m good. I don’t do well with women my own age. I really don’t need that level of stress.”
“Well, that’s one thing you’ll need to figure out because our women are tight, and they need to be.”
I swallowed. “I can’t.”
“Baby, what the fuck happened to you? You stood up to me, face-to-face in front of my brothers, but the thought of meeting a group of women makes you look like you might pass out. This doesn’t track.”
“Girls are mean. And I was the sad girl whose mom died in middle school, so I was kind of ostracized anyway, but then I moved in with my grandmother, so I went to a different high school than planned, and the girls just got meaner.”
“The pretty girls are always picked on,” Scooby said.