Page 53 of Sweet T
Tucker heard the sizzling before she arrived to place a giant griddle of steaming fajitas in between them. Evan moved their refreshed drinks out of the way for a backup server to land two additional plates, a condiment platter, and a fresh basket of chips.
“Everything looks good?” the waitress asked.
“Fantastic,” Evan answered. “Thank you.”
She smiled. “No worries, Señor. I’ll check back later.”
Once she was gone, Tucker said, “I don’t know about you, but it’s hard for me to keep talking with all this food in front of me.”
“It’s OK. I’m hungry too.”
They busied themselves with the food, Evan giving Tucker some space by not pressing the subject any further. They built messy, overstuffed tortillas, loaded with broiled steak, onions, peppers, and all the condiments aside from what Tucker referred to as “rabbit food.”
About midway through the meal, just when Evan had resigned to perhaps readdressing the subject another time, Tucker spoke again.
“Emmett Walker was a friend of mine in high school. Transfer student. We met when we were assigned to be partners in biology.”
“Let me guess—frog dissection?”
“No. Much harder. We had to carry an egg around for a week without breaking it.”
“I never had to do that, but I knew others that did. Something to do with having a baby... the fragility of life.”
“Yeah, but usually it’s a boy and a girl. There weren’t enough girls in our class, so we ended up together.”
“Aw.” Evan crunched into a tortilla chip. “That’s sweet.”
“Yeah, I thought so. I think he did, too. And no one gave us any shit, at least not to our faces because—”
“Because you’re a big guy.”
“I suppose.” Tucker shrugged.
Evan smiled. He liked the way Tucker was looking at him, as if recounting the story to an old friend, someone he trusted.
“So you guys met and suddenly you’re having a kid together.”
“Yeah. Exactly.”
“Was the experiment successful?”
Tucker looked confused.
“The egg-baby?” Evan clarified.
“Hell no. We broke at least three.”
“So you bonded over a bad grade?”
“Nope. We got an A. Emmett kept a half dozen eggs in his locker, just in case.”
“Shrewd.”
“I thought so. Anyway, that’s how we met. He was a little more outgoing than me. He was on the wrestling team.”
“How did he look in a singlet?”
Tucker’s face went crimson.