Coming Home to Texas--A Clean Romance Read online

  “I said, smile! Turn that frown upside down. You’d be a pretty girl if you’d smile, but if you’re not careful—” he gave her a wink “—your face might freeze that way. Anyway, it takes more muscles to frown than it does to smile.”

  “Oh? Says who?”

  The guy blinked a few times. Most women probably responded to all that tripe with a nervous laugh because they were taken off guard and didn’t know what to say or do. Well, she was about to take this guy down on their behalf.

  “Everyone,” he said. “Everyone knows it.”

  “Everyone,” she repeated.

  “Yeah. Everyone. Don’t tell me you’ve never heard it before.”

  “Oh, I’ve heard it. I’ve just never been given any convincing empirical data. Why is it better to exercise fewer facial muscles? What’s wrong with exercising your face, anyway? You’d think that would be a good thing. What are the names of the muscles used in smiling and the muscles used in frowning? Who conducted the study that showed this?”

  The guy made an aw-shucks kind of face. “I don’t know why you have to be like that about it, darlin’. All I said was smile. I’m just trying to help make your life a little more pleasant. Everyone knows life is better when you smile.”

  “Do they?”

  The aw-shucks face dissolved. “Sheesh. You really do need to lighten up.”

  “Really? Well, who am I? Do you know my name? You don’t? Then how do you know what I need? The truth is, you don’t know me at all. You don’t know what kind of day or week I’ve had. You don’t know if my dog just died or I lost my job or my house burned down or I got a terminal diagnosis. It might be taking everything I’ve got just to function at all with any kind of look on my face. But, no, you’re right. It’s my facial expression that’s the real problem here. All I have to do is change the position of my lips, and everything will be just dandy.”

  She bared her teeth at him in an aggressively exaggerated smile.

  He drew back. “Okay, okay! You don’t have to bite my head off.”

  He picked up his beer and walked away.

  Dalia did feel a little guilty then. But why should she feel bad? He was the one who started the whole thing. She’d been sitting there minding her own business, trying to keep from falling apart, and he’d intruded on her. Was she supposed to take it, just because he came from a different generation that thought it was perfectly acceptable for men to give random flippant orders to women who were complete strangers to them?

  “Here you go, ma’am.”

  The Mahan kid was back, with a brown paper bag folded over at the top. He set it on the counter, saw Dalia’s face and took a step back.

  “Um...sorry about the wait,” he said.

  She felt horrible then, for turning her full death glare on the kid. He didn’t deserve that; he hadn’t done anything wrong at all. Maybe she should apologize. But what could she say? Sorry, I didn’t mean to glare at you. I’m just tense because I’m about to try to make up with my ex-boyfriend and some stranger just told me to smile.

  Silently, she put her card in the cube. She left the kid a big tip.

  Then she waited for the quizmaster to announce a break so she could make her next move.

  Stage Three: go talk to Tony.

  * * *

  TONY PICKED UP his beer stein but set it down again before he could raise it to his lips. Suddenly it didn’t seem worth the effort.

  Nothing did, really.

  He was all right as long as he was working, as long as he didn’t allow himself any downtime. But he had to knock off at some point, and once he did, he crashed hard.

  He hadn’t wanted to come tonight, but he’d wanted even less to stay home alone. Maybe the social noise of Trivia Thursday would drown out the constant replay of all the things Dalia had said to him that awful night after the rodeo. So he got himself cleaned up, put on a smile, went to Tito’s, ordered a beer and did his best to focus on some trivia.

  But it all seemed so...trivial. His mind kept wandering, and Alex had to repeat the questions for him two or three times before he could even get them into his head.

  What was his problem? There was something weary and worn down and discouraged inside him that hadn’t been there before. It didn’t used to be this hard to pretend. Maybe he was just getting old.

  And then he looked up from randomly scribbling in the trivia notebook to see Dalia, actually there in the flesh at the counter of Lalo’s Kitchen, not twelve feet away from him.

  He felt like something had grabbed him by the throat and stolen the breath right out of his lungs. Bad enough he had to cope with seeing her day after day at her mother’s house while trying to get his work done. But here? Here, at least, he ought to be safe from Dalia sightings. Dalia at a bar? No way.

  Though technically she was in a restaurant and not a bar. Still, the businesses shared a pass-through, and customers freely moved from one to the other, ordering from both of them, paying at whichever cash register.

  What weird fluke had brought his twice-ex-girlfriend to the one place in town where he happened to be? It wasn’t fair. This was his turf. Maybe she was picking up a food order. Maybe her mom sent her.

  He sat there, frozen and miserable, waiting for her to look around like a normal person would and see him sitting there four yards off in the bar. But she didn’t do that. She just...stared at the wall.

  Was she shunning him? She had to be. The wall wasn’t that interesting—even an exposed Flemish bond brick wall like that one.

  Then R. J. Nash sat down on the other side of her, blocking her view, smiling in that dumb way of his. He even saluted her with his beer. Tony rolled his eyes. R.J. was always trying to chat up the ladies. It would be sad if he wasn’t so obnoxious. Well, this should be interesting.

  R.J. made some opening remark, and Dalia said something back. Tony couldn’t hear, but he saw them go back and forth for a bit. It didn’t take long before R.J.’s smile sort of froze.

  Then Dalia really lit into R.J. She didn’t raise her voice or anything, but Tony could tell by the set of her back that things were getting pretty intense. R.J.’s smile disappeared. He said one last thing to Dalia—something snide, from the looks of him—and got up and walked away. Tony had never seen that happen before.

  He felt a rush of pride. You tell him, Dalia.

  Then Luke Mahan came back from the kitchen. He handed her a bag, then sort of stepped back, looking confused and a little hurt. Did Dalia snap at Luke? That was not okay. Luke was a nice kid.

  Oh, why was he even watching her this way? What was wrong with him?

  Alex shook him. “Hey. Hey! Are you listening? Do you know the answer to question seventeen?”

  Tony didn’t know the answer to that question, or to the next. The rest of the tech round went by without the Royal Quizzers getting a single answer. Tony wasn’t even pretending to listen anymore. He filled the margins of his quiz notebook with spiral doodles and didn’t lift his eyes from the page. At least he hadn’t given Dalia the satisfaction of looking over and seeing him staring at her with all this hurt in him. She must be long gone by now, back to La Escarpa with her take-out order.

  The quizmaster announced a five-minute break. Tony pushed his notebook and pencil away, straightened up—and saw Dalia standing right across the table from him, staring somberly at him and clutching her take-out bag.

  Alex stood up. “I’m gonna go to the bar,” he said.

  He was on his way before he finished the sentence, leaving Tony and Dalia staring at each other in silence. Then Tony spoke.

  * * *

  “WHAT DO YOU WANT?”

  There was a bite in Tony’s voice that Dalia had never heard before, and his face looked hard.

  “I—There’s something I have to say to you,” she said.

  “Oh, yeah? Did you think of more things that
are wrong with me? Why don’t you make a list and stick it under my door? That way you don’t have to look at me. That’s what you said, isn’t it? That you didn’t want to look at me any longer than you had to?”

  He ripped a page out of his quizzing notebook. “Here, I’ll get you started with some of the things you said last time. Idiotic. Infantile. What else you got?”

  His eyes were so cold. She’d seen him mad before, but not like this.

  “Why are you being so combative?” she asked.

  It was a dumb question, in light of how she’d treated him the last time they’d spoken, but she didn’t know what else to say.

  “Ooh, that’s a good one.” Tony wrote down combative.

  This was going all wrong. “If you would just stop being so hostile, and listen to me—”

  “Hostile,” Tony said, writing it down. “And bad listener. Also not a real cowboy. Oh, and let’s not forget unsafe driver with limited peripheral vision.”

  Dalia didn’t know what to say. Was she really that critical and difficult a person? Was there anything she could possibly say now that wouldn’t make things worse?

  Well, yes. She could say I’m sorry.

  Which, in retrospect, was probably what she should have led with.

  “Tony, I—”

  “Whatever it is, just don’t. Please.”

  He didn’t look cold anymore, just sad. “I can’t do this anymore, Dalia. I’m keeping it together so far, but I am right on the edge, and I cannot afford to fall off. So whatever it is you think you have to say to me, just know that I’ve probably already said it to myself. I get it. I’m no good for you. Maybe I never was, or maybe things are too broken between us to ever be made right again. So please just walk away, and steer clear of me at the house, and let me finish my work, and after that we don’t have to see each other anymore. Okay?”

  Dalia’s throat swelled, and her eyes stung. Things are too broken between us to ever be made right again.

  “Okay,” she said, and walked away.

  So much for Stage Three.

  * * *

  TONY DOWNED THE last of his beer and joined Alex at the bar.

  Tito was there, polishing glasses with a soft white cloth, looking snazzy in his white shirt and black vest. Here was a man who took pride in his work.

  “You okay?” Alex asked.

  “Course I’m okay. Barkeep! Pour me some of that añejo tequila.”

  Tito nodded approvingly. “And for you?” he asked Alex.

  Alex hesitated a second, then said, “Same.”

  It was a nice gesture. Tony knew Alex liked good tequila as much as he did, but the good stuff was not cheap, and Alex was a lot tighter with his dollars than Tony, so he didn’t often indulge. It was a show of support, having a drink with his brother in his hour of need.

  “Look, you don’t have to worry,” Tony told Alex. “I’m okay...more or less. And if I was gonna get wasted, I’d do it on something cheaper than añejo.”

  Alex visibly relaxed. “Okay.”

  Tito took down the bottle and poured.

  Tony picked up his glass. He swirled the golden liquid and watched the tears run slowly down the sides. Then he took a sip, swished it around his mouth for a few seconds and swallowed.

  Tito chuckled.

  “What’s so funny?” Tony asked.

  Tito pointed. “The two of you just sipped your tequila in exactly the same way, at exactly the same instant.”

  “How ’bout that?” said Tony, punching Alex on the shoulder. “I guess you are my brother after all.”

  “Yeah, who knew,” said Alex.

  “It makes me happy to see people drinking quality tequila, and drinking it the right way,” said Tito.

  “We get that from our dad,” said Tony.

  “No, we don’t,” said Alex. “I mean, yeah, we do, but only because he taught us. Not because there’s, like, a tequila-sipping gene or something.”

  “How do you know there’s not a tequila-sipping gene? I bet there is, and I bet you and me both have it.”

  “Actually,” said Tito, “studies of identical twins separated at birth have indicated that there is a strong genetic component to a lot of weirdly specific nonphysical traits. Mannerisms, food preferences, stuff like that.”

  “There, see?” said Tony. “Tito agrees with me.”

  “Of course, that doesn’t mean all of personality, or even physiology, is entirely due to heredity,” Tito went on. “The nature-versus-nurture debate has been raging since ancient times, but modern scholarly consensus is that heredity and environment influence each other so inextricably that the dichotomy is meaningless.”

  “Ah, now you’re just talking noise,” said Tony.

  Some other customers sat down at the end of the bar.

  “If you gentlemen will excuse me,” Tito said, and he glided over to wait on them.

  “Too bad we can’t get him on our trivia team,” Alex said. “We’d kill it for sure.”

  “Seriously, though,” said Tony. “What do you think?”

  “What do I think about what?”

  “Nature versus nurture. Which is more important?”

  “Didn’t you hear? Tito said it’s a meaningless question.”

  “He has to say that. He can’t take sides—he has to do his whole friendly-barkeep thing.”

  Alex took another sip of tequila. “Well, nature versus nurture isn’t the whole story, is it? It can’t be. What about hard work? That’s the most important thing of all. Hard work can overcome a bad genetic package or make the most of a good one. It can help you rise above a not-so-good home life, too.”

  “But where does hard work come from?” said Tony. “Is it part of environment? ’Cause that’s just another word for nurture. Or is it hardwired into your personality from birth? ’Cause that would make it part of nature. Which means it all comes down to the same thing.”

  “Mostly environment, I’d say. A solid work ethic comes from good home training. But there’s more to it than just nature and nurture. There’s got to be. They’re both things that happen to you. There comes a point where you take a hard look at the hand you’ve been dealt and take charge. It’s called growing up. I’m not saying the right attitude can overcome anything, but it can overcome a lot. We’re not just at the mercy of all these forces beyond our control, whether it’s genes or our personal history.”

  “Well, then that’s a whole other thing, isn’t it? A...whatever Tito called it—a dichotomy. Not just nature versus nurture, but fate versus free will.”

  Alex sighed. “I never thought I’d tell you this, brother, but you’re overthinking.”

  “And what exactly is work, anyway? We’ve got to define our terms, right? Like, someone might say, ‘I worked hard in football practice today,’ but someone else might say, ‘Well, technically, sports isn’t work, it’s play. Entertainment. You aren’t really working unless you’re producing something of value, like crops or livestock. Football isn’t valuable, Tony. It’s just a game.’”

  “Well, I—”

  Tony kept going. “And then the first someone might say, ‘Oh, yeah? Who made you the authority on what words mean?’”

  “Uh...”

  “And the second someone might say, ‘Don’t take things so personally, Tony.’ Well, you know what? It feels pretty personal to me.”

  Alex rubbed his chin. “Hmm. I feel like there are three people in this conversation. Or maybe just two, but I’m not one of them.”

  “Yeah, it used to be this whole thing between Dalia and me, during the first run of our relationship.”

  “I figured.”

  They sat in silence for a while. Then Tony said, “Okay, let’s take you and me. We grew up in the same environment, but we turned out so different—tequila sipping aside. And that’s got to be
nature, right?”

  “We didn’t have the exact same environment. We had two major differences.”

  “Really? What were they?”

  “Each other. By the time I was born, you were already there. You didn’t have yourself for a big brother.”

  “Ohh, so that’s what made the difference. I was like a cautionary tale to you. That’s why you turned out better than me.”

  “What? No. Stop putting words in my mouth. I didn’t turn out better, just different. Part of that is who we are, our basic personalities. Part of it is our history, which includes us interacting with each other. And part of it is what we choose to do with all that. You have to try. The world is full of people who have lots of abilities and opportunities but don’t put them to good use. And there are just as many other people who don’t have much but make the most of what they do have and succeed, anyway.”

  Tony swirled his tequila again. “Okay. But even if everyone’s trying their hardest, someone still has to come out on top, right? Which means you might go all out and do your best and still fail, and then where are you? You didn’t hold back, and you still weren’t good enough. You just didn’t have the stuff.”

  “But you can’t live your life that way, keeping score. It doesn’t work. Life’s not a contest. There’s always going to be someone better and there’s always going to be someone worse, if you’re looking for that, and the people who are better in some ways might be worse in others. You’re never going to know enough of someone else’s story to make the right judgment about it. And you’re not responsible for any of that, anyway. You’ve just got your own life, and you’ve got to make of that what you will.”

  “But—”

  Alex turned, grabbed Tony by the shoulder and faced him head-on. “But nothing. Listen to me. It happened, okay? You took a dive off a hotel balcony and hurt your eye and ended your football career and your college career. But who’s to say that’s totally a bad thing? Life is about more than how much money you make and how famous you are. Would you really want to go back to being preaccident Tony? I’m not talking about the opportunities you had back then—I’m talking about the man you were. Think of everything you’ve learned, all the ways you’ve changed. You’re humbler now. More compassionate. Preaccident Tony wouldn’t be able to talk down belligerent drunks or comfort children the way you do in firefighting calls. He wouldn’t be a volunteer firefighter at all. And who’s to say that’s not a truer calling for you? You’re a builder now, too. Look at these two buildings that we renovated. We did that, you and me. Look at all the people who come here to eat and drink and hang out and relax. Maybe that was the goal all along, who you were meant to be. A guy who comforts people when they’re hurt and rebuilds things when they break. Yeah, you might’ve gone on to have a long rewarding pro career if you’d never gotten hurt. But maybe not. You could’ve gotten hurt a lot worse in a game. You could’ve gotten mixed up in drugs and gone down the professional-athlete death spiral. You just don’t know. And none of that matters because it isn’t real. It’s not out there like some alternate reality. This, here, today, is what you have. Good health overall. An honorable way to make a living that you’re good at. People who care about you. A future. That’s a lot. And you need to stop seeing it as second best.”