“Actually, I’ve heard about worse. It was very sudden and I never saw it coming. It turned out I didn’t have good coping skills. My brother and I have suffered some losses, significant losses. Our parents. First my mom when I was just little, then our dad later. Rob was married by the time we lost our dad and I was in school and pretty much on my own. I was focused on school. Then Rob’s wife passed away. She was twenty-nine. They had two little kids. Sudden onset heart disease. An infection. She was on a transplant list but...” She shrugged helplessly. “It all sounds so horribly pathetic, doesn’t it?”
“Sounds horrible, yeah,” he said.
“I don’t know what Rob has told people but I don’t like to go through that whole sad story so I’ve only told a few people... Mary Jacob is relentless. She wormed it out of me. I have a couple of friends from the bar. But if you wouldn’t mind...”
“I don’t have that many people to talk to,” he said.
“Just on the off chance you decide to talk to Alyssa or Neely...”
“I don’t think so, Sid,” he said.
“Can we talk about you now?” she asked.
“As soon as we order cake.”
“I thought you wanted pie.”
He flipped open the dessert menu and showed her a picture of a three-layer slice of chocolate cake served with ice cream and whipped cream.
“That looks evil,” she said. “And perfect.”
When the waitress came back to refill their coffee, he asked for the cake—two pieces.
“Are you afraid to let me dip my fork into your cake?” she asked.
“Absolutely not,” he said. “I’m just afraid you’ll dip it too much.” Then he grinned.
“You had your teeth whitened, didn’t you?” she asked.
“No. I brush and floss.”
“Okay, what’s your story?”
“I’m not that interesting.”
“I’ll be the judge,” she said.
It was his turn to pause, trying to decide how honest he wanted to be. The whole story might be overwhelming but he could give it a start. She’d trusted him. He could return the favor.
“As you know, I grew up with Cal. I grew up with California, Sedona and Sierra—our parents considered themselves hippies. But we grew up humbly on a small farm in Iowa and there wasn’t much to spare so each one of us had a plan to break out of that poor existence. My plan was the military and I enlisted the second I was out of high school. I liked the military. I liked the standardized routine. It worked for me and I gave it my full attention. But eventually I burned out, just like I should have known I would. So I discharged, but without a plan. I went to Australia to visit friends and see the country, then came here because I am now an uncle. Because Sierra and Cal are both here. God knows I didn’t want to settle in a small Iowa town and my plan was just to visit and get my head together, but this place? This is a real good-looking place.”
“And your parents?”
“Getting old and still back on the farm. They don’t farm it, however. They lease the land.”
“How many times has your heart been broken?” Sid asked.
“How far back should we go?” he asked. “Pam Bishop ripped my heart out when I was fourteen. I’m not sure I’m over it yet. There were others but then I broke a few hearts, too. I never meant to.”
The cake arrived and Dakota picked up his fork. “Things don’t always work out the way we want them to.”
“No,” she said. And she lifted her fork.
“You’re beautiful,” he said. “I’m sure you’ve left several broken hearts in your past and you probably disappointed more than a few eager young studs.”
“If I did I was unaware of it.” She took a big bite of cake with a dollop of ice cream. “I never dated much.”
“How is that possible?”
“You’re flattering me, that’s all. I was shy, I guess.”
“You’ve definitely overcome that,” he said. He ate some more chocolate cake. “You’re a smart-mouthed wiseass.”
“Well, I work in a bar. We’re supposed to act like we’re having fun. Most of the time I am. Plus, I have overcome a lot of my shyness. It was necessary that I either get over it or spend the rest of my life in a dark closet. With the door closed.”
He shook his head. “It’s hard to imagine you as shy. Nobody gets the best of you.”
“Not even you, Mr. Jones,” she said, licking her fork.
“See?” he said with a laugh. “See? You’re a hard case. So tell me, how often do we go to the soup kitchen?”
“You don’t have to go back to the soup kitchen, Dakota. I’ll have coffee with you again even if you don’t.”
“I want to. I like it. I’ve done similar things, usually as part of the job, rescuing and helping the disenfranchised. That’s something the military is pretty famous for. We might be in pursuit of the enemy but the war-torn civilian communities need our help. Fills the well,” he added, scooping more cake into his mouth. “Now, wasn’t this a good idea?”
“I love cake and ice cream. Did Rob tell you?”
He shook his head. “I have no insider knowledge. I’m just very intuitive.”
“I don’t want a boyfriend, Dakota,” she said.
“I don’t really want a girlfriend, either, but sometimes I just can’t help myself. So—the soup kitchen. How often?”
“For the next month I’m on the schedule three Saturday nights. I’m taking one Saturday night off. I have plans.”
He did not ask what kind of plans. “They keep a schedule?”
“Mary Jacob needs to know how many bodies she has for serving and cleaning up. If she runs short at the last minute she has to call emergency volunteers.”
“Maybe I’ll just go every Saturday night,” he said. “Tell me about some of those people,” he said.
“The volunteers?”
“Yeah, sure. And what do you know about the people who come to eat?”
“Oh, they’re all so different and interesting,” she said, lighting up a little. There were more than a few kids who lived on the street, some elderly people whose social security wouldn’t cover their expenses, a family who had enjoyed prosperity when both parents had been employed, but then their company downsized, leaving them unemployed. There were a few vets who weren’t adjusting to civilian life, some PTSD going on there, and she went on. She talked about how Sister Mary Jacob tried to funnel these people in the best direction to get all the help they needed from counseling to government assistance.
Dakota asked a lot of questions and they finished another cup of coffee while Sid ran the tines of her fork over the plate to mop up every bit of chocolate.
“If you lick the plate, I won’t be embarrassed,” he said.
She laughed at herself and pushed the plate aside.
After he paid the check, he walked her to her car. “I’ll follow you until I make my turnoff,” he said.
“Okay. I’ll go slowly for you so you can keep up,” she said.
He laughed and then she stood still and looked up at him. “So, if you don’t mind me asking, just how did you get over all those broken hearts?”
He was quiet a moment. It was dark in the parking lot. He looked down at her pretty, upturned face and sighed. “Who says I got over them?” he said softly. “Maybe there were one or two that made me cry like a girl every night for a year.”
A very small smile curved her lips. “Well, hell’s bells, Dakota. I believe that was not a bullshit answer.” She gave his cheek a pat. “Thank you for that.”
“Don’t let this get around but some of my family calls me Cody.”
That made her smile broadly. “See you around. Cody.”
* * *
Dakota had not lied to Sid, he just managed to tidy and abbreviate his autobiography. He might as well have said, Ah, I had my ups and downs. He might be coming to terms with the truth for a long time to come. He’d found his teenage years torturous and humiliating and the pain of those years was still festering somewhere deep inside him. He’d been razzed, pranked and tricked. Pam Bishop really had hurt him, but it had not been as benign as he described. He’d asked her to a school dance and she had accepted, but as a joke. And when he went to meet her at the dance, she was with some other guy, a guy who had buddies. They all laughed at him for being stupid enough to think some cool girl might want to be his girlfriend. Dakota had gone alone, not with friends, and he had left alone, walking home. Miles and miles. With hot tears burning his cheeks, he schooled himself on what was and was not cool. There were other tricks and jokes, endless battering he took because everyone knew his father had secret friends, the kind only Jed could see or hear. He found his locker lined with tin foil, the kind Jed sometimes wore on his head to keep the government from reading his mind.
He felt like his throat ached in want of tears for four straight years. He’d remained mostly friendless and ashamed. And he was so angry.
And then he found his escape. In the military he was able to have his new beginning, spending the power of his anger on his physical performance. He became the Army’s shining star and he was opened to a whole new world of friends. He might’ve been the only soldier he knew with a schizophrenic father but there were plenty of men and women escaping painful childhoods of poverty, abuse, homelessness and unhappy and disjointed families. He had taken comfort in their existence, feeling for once he was not the only one, the only square peg in a round hole.
There were women. Finally, there were women. In fact, most of them seemed honored to be noticed by him. He wasn’t sure how he had gone from being the local town fool to the resident McHottie. He kept looking in the mirror and seeing the same long face, large teeth, bushy brows, nose with a bump that he found slightly too big, and yet the girls were suddenly breathless and eager. He even met a few who lasted, who he thought he might one day settle down with, who wrote or Skyped with him every day while he was deployed. There were also a few military women he spent time with here and there. It wasn’t unusual to have a girl back in the States and a girl on deployment. It was just the way of the world, he thought.