finger, that was for sure. Married fifteen years, three kids, and he still looked at her like she was the Crown Jewels.
I sighed as I walked into the Beach Pub, already crowded and smelling of chicken wings and cigarettes. You couldn’t technically smoke in bars anymore, but technically doesn’t always pan out. Just like normal, Robin was in her leather jacket, Janet was in some sort of tight T-shirt she was too big to be wearing, and Cheyenne was in a crop top she was too old to be wearing—even though she looked damn good in it.
There was a big margarita waiting at my usual spot at the Beach Pub. The night was off to a good start. I could sip it real slow and not spend a penny.
“Your breakup special,” Robin said with a wink.
Cheyenne stood up and hugged me. “I’m so sorry, baby. Why didn’t you tell us? Why won’t you ever let us help you?”
Why wouldn’t I ever let them help me?
I waved her off. “Oh, Cheyenne, you know good as anyone I can take care of myself. Always have.”
“But maybe we want to take care of you sometimes, Di. Like you take care of all of us all the time.”
I did take care of them. Lord knows I did, but it wasn’t with heavy stuff like this. I was always helping Cheyenne memorize lines for whatever local play she’d decided to try out for. She was pretty, but the woman could not memorize a line to save her life. And Janet and Ray were always working, so I picked their kids up from after-school care or took them to basketball or something. And Robin had got this wild hair to sell jam at the farmers market and sometimes I’d help her on Saturdays when I wasn’t working.
But that’s what foster care had taught me. To take care of other people but never, ever depend on them to take care of you. Because they wouldn’t. In the end, no one would take care of you but you.
“Girl, where are you staying?” Janet chimed in.
This was the big moment. I had to tell them. Any one of my friends would take me in for a few days without a second thought. Of course they would. I almost said it, that I was staying in my car. But then Robin said, “Di, I respect the hell out of you. You never let this shit get you down. Not breakups, not job stuff. Nothing. You just keep rolling and you always land on your feet.”
She was right. I always landed on my feet. A cat with nine lives. Maybe more. I might have nothing—not one thing in all this world—but I had these girls, and, what’s more, I had their respect. And that meant more to me than hot water and a clean towel in the bathroom or getting dressed in front of a mirror. It meant more to me than sleeping in a real bed with sheets and covers and a pillow.
I didn’t answer Janet. I just said, “I called and checked on Phillip today, and the nurse put him on the line. He talked a little to me.” I could feel myself beaming. If Phillip was okay, I was okay.
“You’re gonna get him out one day, girl,” Cheyenne said. Once a cheerleader, always a cheerleader.
“Oh yeah,” Janet said. “If anybody can do it, Di, it’s you.”
“Speaking of…” Cheyenne pulled a napkin out of her bag and handed it to me. There was a drawing on it.
“What’s this?” I took a sip of margarita.
“Kevin drew this up for you. He’s been saving all his scrap wood and metal and roofing for your beach shack. But then he got to thinking.… You know that hideous houseboat that washed up on the island across from the Cape Carolina docks that nobody’s done anything about?”
“Yeah,” I said, not quite following her.
“Well, he talked to the city, and they said if we could rehab it and you would pay the slip rent, you could keep it.”
I was still confused.
“Your restaurant, Di,” Robin said, filling in the blanks for me.
I picked up the napkin, staring at it with my mouth open. “So what you’re saying is that he’d take this side out, and this would be the window where people ordered?”
She nodded.
“Like right there on the dock?”
She smiled and nodded again. “And he said it’d be real easy to rig up everything you need for a commercial kitchen in there because there’s already a