The woman he had to understand I was so he’d understand I was the woman for him because with each passing day it was becoming clear he was the man for me.
That woman being the woman he already knew.
The woman who was made for him.
“When I was eighteen, Dad did a huge festival in the UK. I went with him.”
Deke turned eyes from plate to me.
“We stayed in Bristol,” I went on. “Pretty harbor city on the Bristol Channel.”
“Yeah?” he asked when I quit talking.
I nodded my head. “Yeah,” I told him and carried on, “There was a promoter in the city. He really wanted to work with Dad. He took us out to this restaurant on the harbor, cool place, lots of windows, great views.” I tilted my head playfully. “Though it was all boring to me seeing as, by then, eighteen-year-old girl who traveled everywhere with her rock star dad, I’d seen it all and knew everything. Very worldly.”
“Bet you were,” he said, his eyes crinkling with his tease in a way I’d never seen but I liked very much.
I drew in a deep breath to settle what that look and his tease did to the flutterings of my heart and kept talking.
“Opened the menu, didn’t understand a thing on it.”
His head cocked to the side. “Was the restaurant foreign?”
I shook my head. “Nope. Just everything was gourmet. It was like I opened that menu and it was one of those talking cards saying ‘You are about to eat food that’s way too good for the likes of you, for the likes of anybody, it should only touch the lips of God.’”
Deke gave me another smile with his eyes while he kept eating and I kept blabbing.
“I was embarrassed, you know, being worldly and knowing everything, so I didn’t ask the waiter about anything because I didn’t want to expose the fact I actually didn’t know everything. Dad liked his food and didn’t give a shit what anyone thought of him, so he asked. That was the only way I knew what to order. I got something that was chicken. I figured no one could really fuck up chicken.”
“Let me guess, they fucked up chicken,” Deke remarked.
I nodded, having a feeling I was at least twinkling my eyes at him because I felt them smiling.
“Yup. Totally. I took one bite of that stuff and my taste buds didn’t know what to do with it. It was an explosion of flavors, not a pleasant one, everything trying to beat out the other. The sauce. The spices. The textures. It was terrible. I didn’t finish it.”
“Sounds shit,” Deke muttered.
“It was,” I confirmed. “Dad got something else and he didn’t finish his either. Then after dinner we went back to the hotel and hung out, watching British TV. Rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle. Hard to beat.”
That got me another grin but through it Deke just kept eating.
I kept blathering.
“There was a cooking show on, a famous chef, and at the end of his program, he had some celebrity in his restaurant kitchen for a cook off. The celebrity made something, a family recipe his mom made, and the chef made the same thing, except all chefy.”
Deke shoveled more chicken in and did it watching me.
I kept talking.
“After they were done, they took the two dishes out to random people in the restaurant and made them taste test it. The celebrity made a chocolate pie. The chef made a chocolate hazelnut tart with some special crust and a dollop of some fancy cream. The random people tasted it. Everyone picked the chocolate pie. When they did, Dad said, ‘Like that fuckin’ restaurant. Stupid. Never overcomplicate somethin’ that’s good from the start.’ And I knew Dad felt like me. It wasn’t us that didn’t deserve that food because we weren’t connoisseurs. It was a menu that was a mess because it was created by a chef who’d convinced himself he was an artist above everybody, but actually, he had something to prove. All art should be accessible, even if the people consuming it don’t quite get it. At the very least, they should get something out of it. No one is ever above it. If you think that, you’re the one who doesn’t get it.”
“Jussy,” Deke said softly, and I had a feeling he was getting me.
“But for Dad and me, it wasn’t even about that.”
Deke said nothing.
“We Lonesomes like simple pleasures,” I whispered.
At that, he sat back and dropped the plate to his lap, his expression changing from warm and interested to closed off.
And it hit me what I’d said.
“I’m not saying that you’re—” I started quickly.
“I get you, Justice,” he interrupted me.
I leaned toward him. “No, I think you—”
“Babe, you think I didn’t get you that first time you stomped out while I was buildin’ your fire pit in those silly-ass boots to bring me coffee?”
I leaned back, not certain what he was saying.
Fortunately, it was Deke’s turn to talk.
“There are folks who’d eat that chicken you ate, they wouldn’t like it, but they’d say it was phenomenal just so people wouldn’t think they didn’t get it. Then there are folks who’d convince themselves they like it just ’cause, if they admitted they didn’t, they think they’d be exposin’ the fact that their lips are not the lips of God who deserves that kind of shit and they’re sure their lips are the lips of God. And both those folks would look down on anybody who says they’d rather just have fried chicken because it is what it is. A whole lot better than some pretentious dish that tastes like shit.”