I grabbed forks, knives and the bottle opener, asking, “Dessert?”

He was pulling stuff from the bags and taking it to my fridge as he answered, “Chocolate peanut butter sundaes.”

That sounded awesome.

“What’s that?” I asked, looking over my shoulder at him moving around my kitchen (and liking what I saw) while setting out the silverware.

“Ice cream, loads of syrup, a huge whack of peanut butter, whipped cream, ground peanuts and cherries. My Ma used to make ‘em for me.”

Simple but undoubtedly amazing.

I mentally subtracted one slice of pizza from my evening’s intake and added another “whack of peanut butter” to my dessert intake as I reached for the bottle of wine he’d put on the counter.

I was preparing to open it when I found my hands empty of wine and corkscrew and my head tipped back to look at Chace to see he had both.

“My Dad didn’t teach me a lot. One thing he did teach me was that a woman doesn’t pour her own drink,” he explained.

Ella Mae started singing in my ear again.

“Oh,” I mumbled.

“Set out the pizza, baby,” he ordered gently. “I’ll take two slices to start.”

“Okay,” I kept mumbling then set out the pizza.

I hefted my booty on a stool while Chace poured my wine. He set the glass by my plate, grabbed a bottle of beer out of the six pack, put the rest in the fridge, used the bottle opener end of the corkscrew to open his beer then he joined me at the counter.

I stared down at the pizza taking it in for the first time. It appeared to be meat lovers in the way that Outlaw Al liked canned meat. That was to say I saw pepperoni, sausage, bacon, hamburger, ham, pancetta and what appeared to be chorizo. It also had mushrooms, olives and peppers.

I was celebrating the fact that I was still only twenty-nine and had yet to suffer from heartburn as I nabbed the parmesan cheese and started sprinkling.

It hit me we had silence as it hit me I was the hostess at the same time it hit me that it was kind of important Chace found me interesting. Part of being interesting was being a good conversationalist. We’d never really had problems talking but we’d also never been in a normal situation that would require normal conversation.

I was suddenly nervous again.

Therefore I started talking.

I did this to my pizza as I cut into it.

“You said your Dad didn’t teach you much. Are you two not close?”

“I hate him with everything that’s me.”

I blinked at my fork spearing the pizza and my knife sawing at it, turned my head and looked at Chace to see he was not a fork and knife pizza person. He had the slice in his hand and he was chewing.

“You hate him?” I whispered.

Chace swallowed and aimed his eyes at me.

“With everything I am.”

“That’s, uh… definite,” I noted.

“Yep,” he agreed then bit off another mouthful of pizza.

I went back to mine, muttering, “Sorry, I shouldn’t have asked.”

I’d forked it into my mouth when Chace asked, “We gettin’ to know each other?” And I looked at him again.

I chewed and nodded.

He nodded back and kept talking. “Then that’s somethin’ to know about me. Hate my Dad. Tight with my Ma but she’s sensitive. A little flighty. She forgets shit, gets wound up about it, gets clumsy, breaks things, gets wound up about that then she takes a pill or has a drink, lies down for a while and it’s all good again. It’s just her. When she’s not like that, she’s sweet and loving. She does a lot of charity work because she likes it and means it. It isn’t a way to pass the time and get in the society pages. She genuinely wants to help. She doesn’t have a lot of friends not because she’s not friendly. But because she doesn’t have the constitution to put up with people that are full of shit, users, manipulators or backstabbers and there’s a lot of those in her circle. So she focuses her energy on people who matter and give good energy back. She isn’t stupid but she doesn’t always do rational shit and most of the time it’s funny but some of the time she gets herself jacked up, which also gets her wound up.”

He took a bite of his pizza chewed while I watched, swallowed while I watched then finished.

“She loves me, I love her. I don’t get to spend the time I’d like with her ‘cause she lives two hours away and my father is an ass**le so if he’s there, I’m not. And she makes f**kin’ good sundaes.”

“Well, there you go,” I said quietly and he grinned.

“There you go,” he mumbled and took another bite of pizza.

I turned my attention back to mine and had shoved some in my mouth when he asked, “Your folks?”

I looked at him, chewed, swallowed, put my knife and fork down and grabbed my wine. After I took a sip, I put my elbow to the counter, held my wineglass aloft and answered.

“My Dad is awesome. He’s wise. He’s funny as all get-out. He loves me. He loves my sister. He loves my brother even though he wants to kick him up the backside a lot. And I love him. My Mom is also awesome. She’s wise but in a quieter way than Dad. Same with her being funny. She loves me. She loves my sister even though she wants to wring her neck a lot. She dotes on my brother which I’m no psychologist but I think that’s why he does stuff that makes my Dad want to kick him up the backside a lot.”

“Where do you fit?”

“Middle,” I told him. “My sister, Liza, is three years older. My brother, Jude, is three years younger.”

I took a sip of wine while Chace grabbed his second slice and asked, “Why’s your Dad wanna kick his ass?”

I put the wine down and went back to my pizza, answering, “Well, he doesn’t anymore. Jude joined the Army a year ago. Dad went to the Catholic Church when he enlisted and did a hundred Hail Marys in gratitude and we’re not Catholic.”

I heard Chace chuckle, shoved pizza in my mouth, turned my head and smiled at him while chewing.

“So why did your Dad wanna kick his ass?” he amended his question.

I swallowed and told him, “Because Jude was a pain in his and everyone else’s. I love my brother. He’s a fun guy. He’s the fun guy. But he takes zero responsibility for anything. He got kicked out of college. He got fired from his first three jobs. He’s lived in four states in six years. He’s had seven thousand girlfriends. All of them nice, sweet, smart and beautiful and any of them we met, the family loved them. A winning combination that’s hard to find. But Jude tossed them aside like they were skanky, drunken, one-night stands he picked up at a Blue Oyster Cult concert when he was blotto and woke up to a fifty-three year old woman who’d been drinking a bottle of vodka for breakfast and smoking three packs of cigarettes a day since she was thirteen.”