Page 86 of This Loving Feeling (Mirror Lake)

CHAPTER 19

“I hate you, I hate you, Ihateyou!” Stevie stomped his feet and planted them in the middle of the front aisle of the grocery store. Thank God it was Friday afternoon before rush hour and not too many people were around.

“Stavros! Geez, cut that out!” Lukas said. They’d just walked in. Actually, it was not really walking. It was more like something out of a cartoon, with Lukas trying to tug Stevie into the grocery store and Stevie putting the brakes on, and they were getting a thousand dirty looks.

“I’m not going. I wanna stay here.”Herewas the entrance to the store, but Lukas knew what he meant. He wanted to stay in Mirror Lake. How the hell was he supposed to tell this kid that everything he’d come to love would now be taken away? He’d screwed up everything in a big way. More proof that he wasn’t cut out for relationships of any kind.

Yet who else did Stevie have? No one. Just Lukas. So Lukas released him and dropped down to Stevie’s level. “I know you do.”

Stevie turned big watery eyes on him, making him feel even more like shit. “Then why can’t we stay? I miss Sammy. Why didn’t she come over last night, Uncle Lukas?”

They hadn’t seen her for two days, but if felt like two years. “She’s just ... very busy. She said for us to stop by the theater before we leave.” The big theater benefit was tomorrow. The bus was already packed. They were about to head out today for the Stones’ concert tomorrow.

“I miss Sammy.”

Yeah, kid, tell me about it.“Look, Stevie ...”

“Areyougoing to leave me?”

Lukas pulled him into a hug that was probably a little too tight. “Never, Stevie. Never. I love you and love is forever. It’s just that I have this job, and the job is telling me we’ve got to go back on the road.”

Love is forever. Geez, did he just say that? He couldn’t even take his own advice.

“Tell the job no.”

“I wish it were that easy.”

“I have friends. And Sam’s like my mom and you’re like my dad.”

“Look, we’ll be able to come back after the tour. Besides, you like the bus, don’t you? We’ll see fun places and get McDonald’s and you get to have a top bunk.”

He could tell from Stevie’s expression that he wasn’t buying it. And he just couldn’t tell him the whole truth, that Sam and he had broken up and that they weren’t coming back to Mirror Lake for a long time. “Right now we just need to go into the store and grab a couple groceries. Okay?”

Just then, a nicotine craving hit him like a ton of bricks. He’d reached the end of his rope. He had to have a cigarette. One or two or twenty, if he could just survive this.

At least no one was hounding him for a picture, or taking one of Stevie tantruming. As if reading his mind, Gertie, the owner, who was manning the central register, pulled out her iPhone and pointed it his way.

“Don’t you dare,” Lukas said. “Or I’ll tell everyone that you and Hank Masterson used to get it on after hours behind the vegetable displays.”

“Sorry, Lukas, old news.” She waggled her left hand so he could see her diamond ring. “We’ve been married for three years.”

“Come on, Gertie. Give me a break. I’ve just got to get a couple things for dinner.”

She put down her phone and sighed. “Oh, all right. Being as you were a decent bag boy way back when, I’ll have mercy on you.” She walked over to Stevie, putting on her glasses, which dangled from a bejeweled neck strap.

“Hey, Stavros,” the buxom gray-haired woman said, stooping down and looking at Stevie through her bifocals.

Stevie stood sullen and red faced, with arms crossed. Royally pissed.

“This grocery store always brings out the worst in babies and children. How about we get some ice cream while your Uncle Lukas gets what he needs.”

“No.” He gave Gertie, who wore a brightly colored flowered smock, a look likewho the heck is this lady?

“A chip off the old block, huh, Lukas.” Gertie chuckled. “Rebel Mini-Me. Okay, I hate to pull out the big guns, but I’ve got ice-cream cake. Chocolate and vanilla, with a chocolate cake layer in between. What do you say?”

Stevie’s eyes softened even if his posture didn’t. Gertie must have seen it, too, because she winked at Lukas. Steering Stevie by the shoulders to her office in front of the store, she tossed Lukas a wave. “Take your time. See you after checkout.”

Lukas mouthedthank youand wiped his forehead. God, this parent stuff was tough. Stevie would probably eat no dinner at all after being bribed with the slice of ice-cream cake but he didn’t even care. He was grateful for the breather to get some sanity back. At the entrance, he grabbed a shopping basket from the stack but on impulse, got in the twelve-items-or-less line and bought a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. Then he headed to the back of the store and out the storeroom entrance, which he knew well from his bag-boy days. In the alley behind the store, he sat on an old metal folding chair—probably the same one from years ago—and lit up. He watched in fascination as the cigarette ignited and started to burn. Watched the gray ash form and build and flare as if he’d never seen it before. But for some reason, he didn’t put it to his lips.

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