“Because you’re size Manorexic.” Garth waved a French fry at me before popping it into his mouth. “I mean, Christ, I can practically count your ribs through that shirt of yours.”
I knew better, but I still glanced down to check. I was in my standard white tee, same brand and size as I’d worn for the past five years, but now that I was actually paying attention, it did seem a bit looser. It didn’t quite pull around the chest like it had, and more material floated above my belt than ever had before. I hadn’t been on a scale in over a year, since my last physical, but I guessed I’d lost some weight. “So I’ve lost a few L.B.s—big deal. I’d like to see how you fare when Josie is carrying you two’s first child.”
Garth was in the middle of peeling his wrapper back from his burger. He stopped long enough to give me a look that led me to believe he thought I was mental. “A few pounds? Yeah, right. And I’ve got a shot at entering through Heaven’s Gates when I kick the bucket.”
I kicked the toe of his boot before settling down on the porch beside him and reaching into the fry bag. They were still warm. Starting to get a little soggy from the grease they were swimming in, but still warm and wonderfully salty. I felt the granules rolling between the pads of my fingers. “Fine. So you’re on the Fatten Jesse Up bandwagon now too. I guess you’re in good company since it seems like everyone in my life is doing the same thing.” I tossed a few fries into my mouth and found they were every bit as good soggy as they were fresh from the fryer. At that point, my stomach wasn’t discerning about texture so long as the grease and salt packed a punch.
“Hey, I’m not trying to fatten you up,” Garth said around a mouthful of burger. “I’m trying to keep you from becoming a skeleton with skin.”
I washed down another handful of fries with a drink of milkshake. They were the old-fashioned kind, made with real ice cream, so a person felt like they would pass out from trying to get the first bit of milkshake up the straw and into their mouth. Somehow, all of the effort made the shake taste that much better.
“You know, I’ve always been more of a fan of silence when I eat. How about you?” I unwrapped one of my five burgers while Garth tore into the rest of his.
“I’ll shut up if you eat, how ‘bout that?” he said before going to work on his own colossal milkshake.
I didn’t hide my smirk when I noticed the pink liquid dotted with red flecks of strawberry finally making its way up his straw. “What about that pristine reputation of yours?”
Garth shot me a glare but kept working at his shake. “Summer strawberry is the shit,” he said around his straw. “Shut up and eat already, Skelator.”
IT WAS A good thing I’d forced myself to down all of one burger, most of an order of fries, and half of that milkshake. After the day Garth and I’d spent raising the roof, literally, I needed all of the energy I had. I’d spent plenty of hard days doing manual labor, but today’s checklist had me wishing I kept a bottle of pain relievers in my truck. I’d have been reaching for it right about now.
Like me, Garth was trying to disguise the fact that we were so bushed we would have been content to crawl into the beds of our trucks and fall asleep. However, the day wasn’t done. Working on the roof had taken a couple more hours than expected, but Garth didn’t know how to quit a job that wasn’t complete any better than I did. So we stayed and finished what we’d started. We each downed another burger and what was left of the cold fries on the porch before packing up and heading for Garth’s place.
He told me to head home and get some sleep—that his washer and dryer could wait until tomorrow—but I couldn’t do that. He’d busted his ass for the past ten hours with me at my place; I could give him an hour of my time.
From Rowen’s and my place, Garth and Josie’s was only about a thirty-minute drive. But barely ten minutes into the drive, I felt my eyes burning with exhaustion right before my eyelids seemed to grow a mind of their own. They kept wanting to close and stay that way. I’d never come close to falling asleep at the wheel, not even during all of my journeys back and forth from Montana to Seattle, and some of those journeys were made late in the night. Sure, I’d been tired and bordering on exhausted, but I’d never felt like this—like the act of falling asleep wasn’t voluntary. Like my body would betray itself and fall asleep on its own. That scared me. I’d driven past a small handful of wrecks that had been caused by the driver falling asleep at the wheel. Back then, it had always seemed so far-fetched that I could ever fall asleep while powering down a highway, but right now, feeling as if an elephant were pressing down on my eyelids, it seemed far too likely a reality.
I rolled down the window, stuck my head out, and sucked in a few deep breaths of cooling summer air. I should have known better. On my third breath, a bug kamikazed into my mouth and was swallowed before I could spit it out. After that, no one could accuse me of not getting my protein.
I kept the window down but stuck my head back inside. I proceeded to turn on some Cash. Well, I blasted Cash to the point that Old Bessie’s speakers were rattling and sounded about to explode. With a few violent shakes of my head, just as many neck cracks, and twice as many bounces in my seat, I made it. Garth and Josie’s place might have looked more blurry than clear and my head was swimming like I’d spent the day drinking instead of working, but I’d arrived in one awake piece.