Free Talk of the Town by Mary Kay McComas

part of the dress code.
    It better have great food, Gary thought, amazing himself at how much he wanted to impress her. Their gazes caught above the menus and she smiled, but he could see she was uncomfortable.
    "This isn't a great place, is it?" he asked, leaning across the table and speaking softly. "We can go somewhere else."
    She bent over her menu to whisper back. "Don't you like it? I've never been anywhere as nice, but if you want to go somewhere else . . ."
    "No, no. I like it fine. I just thought you . . . well, you look a little uneasy."
    She smiled and lowered her eyes away from his.
    "I am," she admitted, looking back at him. "I don't do this very often. I'm afraid I'll spill something."
    "You don't eat out?" Where had she been all her life?
    "Sure I do. Every chance I get. At Lu's or McDonald's. Not in nice places like this and not with . . ."
    "Not with what?"
    "A date. A man."
    His smile was slow in coming to his lips, as his body was suddenly tingling with excitement. Her confession aroused a sweet ache inside him. He'd never had better news.
    "Don't worry about spilling. If you do, I'll spill something, too, and then we'll both look stupid. How's that?"
    She laughed softly. "I'll be careful."
    His hesitation to say more was so brief, she hardly noticed it.
    "As to your being here with me, I guess I could probably tell you not to think of me as a real date . . . or as a man, but then I'd be at cross-purposes, wouldn't I?"
    A trick question, she decided, and left it unanswered.
    "Tell me about your furnace," she said hastily.
    "My furnace?"
    "The thing you're building that's making everyone mad."
    "Oh," he said, leaning back to relax in the arms of the chair.
    The waitress came before he could start. He ordered salmon and Rose asked for flounder.
    "Would you like wine?"
    "Wine?"
    "To drink with dinner?"
    "No, the water's fine, thanks. But you go ahead."
    "You don't drink." It was a statement.
    The waitress was walking away. Rose shook her head slowly and bowed her head.
    "My dad drank enough for both of us," she said impulsively, instantly regretting it. What would he think of her now? Not that she cared, she reminded herself, then added fuel to the fire. "He drank himself to death, in fact."
    "I'm sorry."
    He was sorry. She could see it in his eyes. There was sorrow and something else. It was as if he understood that it hadn't been her fault, that it had nothing to do with her, that the sins and diseases of the father weren't always delivered on the children.
    "My mom died in a car accident when I was nine and . . . and my dad got worse than ever after that. Earl was more of a father to me."
    "Does he ever talk?" he asked with enough insight into her growing years to know that dredging them up would spoil her evening.
    "When he wants something," she said, smiling. "He likes you."
    "He told you that?"
    "Of course not. But he does recognize your comings and goings. Harley and I just sort of fade in and out of his peripheral vision while he's watching TV. He saves up his requests for when we happen to pass by."
    "Was he always like that?"
    "Pretty much," she said, fondness softening her expression. "He likes to pretend he's deaf so we won't bother him, but he's always the first to show up when we need him."
    "That's when it counts," he said, wanting to dig further and further into her life. Aware, suddenly, that he wanted to be the one to show up when she needed someone. "And what about Harley's father? Where is he?"
    She shrugged indifferently. "I have no idea."
    "He doesn't help out?"
    "Why should he?" Gary looked startled. "Harley was my choice. He left some money to help pay for the abortion, but . . ." She shrugged again. Harley was the best decision she'd ever made, and nothing else about him mattered.
    "I thought you were divorced," he said, more to himself than to her, recalling finally that Earl, Rose, and Harley all had the same last name. It had explained her reluctance to get involved with another man.