Epilogue
Norris had never experienced true Texas sun . . . until now. All his sweating, all his suffering these past seven months had been from their excuse for winter and spring. July was another beast entirely. It was a dry, punishing heat that turned every other thought into a groan. One hundred eleven degrees of nonsense. Austin was in full drought, and the trickling rivulets around Red River were now dusty canals of hardened mud mixed with rocks and dead branches. The locals did not seem to mind; this was simply life in Austin. There were no evacuation notices, no noticeable drops in traffic or festivals, and no alternative work schedules. Occasionally Norris would spot a Stay Hydrated advertisement with an anthropomorphized water bottle under it, reminding people to twist its skullcap open six to eight times a day.
Norris’s body had stopped sweating, perhaps in rebellion against these unholy circumstances. Judith was relieved.
“Your body has gotten used to it.” She’d waved him off when he brought the matter to her. “Thank God! The electric bill was out of control with the daily wash loads.”
For Norris, this meant that his body had reached a point in the microwave cycle where the cheese stopped bubbling and blackened into a crust, devoid of any moisture. Texas was overcooking him.
To make matters worse, his days were spent exposed to the elements in a small, smelly car, floorboard now littered with mini–water bottles he amassed at every possible venue where they were handing them out for free. The Bone Yard’s brand-new delivery car (“thirdhand brand-new,” to quote Big Jim) came with less-than-reliable AC.
Norris slammed his door shut on the driver’s side of the “Bone Yarder,” which today was being a complete vehicular dick.
“How are you not dying?” he marveled, plugging the behemoth, turn-of-the-century credit card machine into the car charger.
“I cracked a window,” Liam answered. The best thing about Norris’s position was the new employee who had joined the Bone Yard family on a whim, picking up Norris for a movie after work one day. It turned out that Norris wasn’t the only one who could interview well.
“The window lets the outside air in,” Norris pointed out. “That actually doesn’t help.”
“I like heat,” Liam replied, checking one more delivery off their list. He was in his summer tank top phase, no longer concerned with hiding his tattoo. His hair was longer, and verging dangerously close to a man bun. They would need to have a talk soon.
“It’s really conducive to this new micromeditation I found online. It activates the spiritual essence.”
Norris pulled the car (yes, he’d finally gotten his provisional license) out of the small office parking lot where they had just dropped off a piping hot tray of wings and lost the game of Rock-Paper-Scissors by which he and Liam decided who was in charge of making the actual trek to the door. “Please don’t kill me when you finally snap.”
“Why couldn’t I stay in the car again?” Liam asked as they climbed the wooden stairs up to the restaurant.
“Buffer,” Norris explained. “You’re needed.”
Maddie was holding court in her father’s office with Meredith and Trish. Norris could hear their giggling chatter from the lobby as he and Liam snaked through a crowd of burnt orange–clad customers waiting to be seated. Navigating the family restaurant was second nature to him now; Norris would have missed it had he been unable to grovel his way into getting his job back. Not that he would ever admit it—especially not given how things currently stood.
The girls instantly fell silent when the door opened, turning to Norris in a way that definitely wasn’t reminiscent of the velociraptors in Jurassic Park. Even though the AC was on full blast, all three wore bikini tops and short-shorts. Maddie swiveled back and forth on her father’s office chair. Her smile dropped at the sight of Norris, which was par for the course these days.
“Three deliveries down: two debit, one cash, already put it in the till downstairs,” Norris summarized.
“You’re running late,” Maddie noted coolly, glancing at the schedule on the computer screen.
“Car pileup on Guadalupe.” Norris placed a stack of receipts on the desk. “We’ll make it up on the next run.”
She pursed her lips then turned to Liam, flipping from sour to sweet.
“Hi, Liam,” Maddie greeted him. “How are you settling into the groove of things?”
Liam smiled, amused by the entire thing. Dick.
“Good,” he said. “Settling. Grooving. Norris has been a good supervisor.”
“Oh, he’s not your supervisor. In fact, you outrank him. Feel free to get drunk with power.” Maddie smiled acidly.
“Uh,” Liam said, as if actually considering it.
“Great! It can be a lot to take in, so let me know if you need anything, okay?”
“Will do, thanks.”
Big Jim and his wife were currently on a cruise at his wife’s insistence (really an ultimatum), and Maddie was in charge. There had been grumbles that she was too young, but two weeks in, everything was running smoothly. She signed for deliveries, managed the employee timetables, and still had time to invent fun ways to make Norris’s “probation period” as goddamn punitive as possible.
“By the way, Norris . . .” Maddie paused to sip her lemonade, staring at him over her sunglasses. “I’m going to need you to make a stop in Pflugerville on your way out. Order of key lime pies placed yesterday. I hope that won’t be a problem.”
“Since when?!” Norris sputtered. “I just drove past Pflugerville to get back here!” Norris snarked. “Why didn’t you tell me beforehand? This is such a waste of gas.”
“Norris . . .” Liam warned in singsong. “Buffering?”
Maddie took another sip. “Slipped my mind.”
“This is still your family’s business, y’know,” Norris said. “Is sabotaging it worth making me miserable?”
“Oh yes,” she replied.
Meredith was taking an obscene amount of pleasure in watching this unfold. “You could always quit,” she offered helpfully.
“You could always give me another shot,” Norris countered. Really, she was being unreasonable.
Meredith snorted from her seat on the couch, which prompted Norris to snort back loudly in her general direction. This would be much better without audience participation.
“Who’s that?” Norris asked.
Maddie shook her head and turned her phone around for him to see.
“Diego,” she said coolly. “New transfer from Trinity next year.”
“And apparently, smitten with our little Maddie here,” Meredith added. “He couldn’t stop talking about her after meeting her downstairs.”
Norris took in the photo of a tanned, olive-skinned shirtless guy with a jersey wrapped around his head, glistening in the sun, baseball bat high and at the ready. It was the sort of candid that looked vaguely like a pornographic calendar. An eight-pack. Kid had an eight-pack. Norris also suspected Diego to be very profoundly stupid in person. “Clinical case study” stupid.
“Congratulations,” he simply said with a grin instead. “He’s really good-looking. Let me know if you need dating lessons.”
Maddie’s face almost—almost—broke into a smile.
“You’re going to crack, y’know,” Maddie told him, rolling her office chair over to the printer and handing Norris the new address.
“Watch me,” Norris said. “Three hundred four days.”
“What’s in three hundred four days?” Trish asked, confused.
Maddie rolled her eyes. “Senior prom.”
“He’s actually insane,” Meredith noted through her own sip of lemonade. Her nails were orange for the summer. “She’s not going to prom with you again, you ridiculous person.”
Witch.
Witch who Norris could no longer openly berate lest it cost him points with Maddie.
“Aw, actually I think that’s sweet,” Trish cooed.
Norris snapped his fingers at her in gratitude. “Thank you, Trish. I always liked you! What corsage do you think she’ll want?”
“Depends on the dress,” Trish considered, assessing Maddie. “She’s gorg in anything coral.”
“Don’t encourage him.” Maddie sighed.
Too late. Coral. Noted.
She hadn’t said no. Norris had three hundred four days to turn those eye rolls and scoffs into a yes. Their first actual date would happen. He’d make sure of it. And if the yes never came—because there really was a healthy chance that Maddie would never look at him that way again—at least they were on their way to being friends again. Norris had received his first text from Aarti since she left for vacation just the other day, and between the photos of her fashion-forward little cousins and the updates on his “key lime delivery lifestyle” situation, “just friends” was a pretty good place to be. As far as Norris was concerned, that was closer to “everything” than just “something.”
It wasn’t the happy ending he wanted but, then again, there were no such things as happy endings. Happy endings were artificial things manufactured out of less-than-ideal circumstances. A divorce wasn’t the end of family, nor was someone moving away the end of a friendship. These things could be endings, but only if you decided to make them so. Otherwise, things just added up and continued forward, across the map, in new shapes and iterations.
“All right, pin in the corsage discussion. Liam: onward,” Norris declared, rubbing his hands together. “We have a stop in Pflugerville to add to the schedule.”
“This is all . . . very mature,” Liam noted as he and Norris packed the car with another row of steaming tinfoil trays, three key lime pies, and a cardboard box of utensils and fixings. Quinceañera in Cherrywood.
“Aren’t you always going on about visualizing your desired reality or whatever?” Norris asked, wrapping his hand into his T-shirt to avoid burning it on the car door.
“Yes, but—”
“Well,” Norris preempted. “Picture this: Me and Maddie, Meredith and Patrick, I guess, and you and your own date—Trish was definitely giving you hot-tub eyes up there—in a limo at prom, with a regional hockey trophy in the trunk. How’s that for a picture-perfect American prom night?”
Liam’s eyebrow quirked. He was getting pretty fluent in Norris-speak and Norris, for his part, had learned to align himself to Liam’s wavelength. It wasn’t that far-fetched.
The future—his future, in Austin, Texas—was only just beginning. Norris was looking forward to it. Diego and his eight-pack would be a footnote in history.
“Pretty good picture,” Liam admitted.
“Got that right,” Norris confirmed. “It’ll be goddamn glorious.”
THE END
But also, like, not really.
That’s kind of the point.