Page 9 of Shake the Habit

“Thirty-four.”

I heard my nana’s voice say, “And still not married. I’ll put that down to wild oats.”

“You would have gone to school with some of my cousins, then,” I said. “Do you remember a girl named Jia? Jia McCourt? And Mary and Aubree, too. You probably know more of my boy cousins. Did you play football?”

“No, I didn’t, and I didn’t go to the high school here,” he said. “I was at boarding school.”

“Oh, like a fancy eastern one? Or military?”

“In Chattanooga,” he told me. “This is delicious. What is it?”

“It’s my aunt Leanne’s spoon bread,” I answered, but I had more questions now. “Why did you go to boarding school so close by? It’s a little bit of a drive to Chattanooga, but not that bad.” If Iwent at my normal pace and didn’t have a tire blowout, I made it in thirty-five minutes. It took forty-five if I had my dad in the car with me as he pumped the imaginary passenger brake and clutched at what he called the “save-me-Jesus handle” above the door.

“My mother wanted me to board,” he answered. “She was busy.”

“Oh,” I said, nodding as if that made sense. It did not. “So, what are you doing now in Tennessee? Are you still working on your financial services?”

“I am, and I’m trying to bring my mother’s farm back to life. She had a lot of fruit trees, mostly apple and pear. She was also trying for peaches, but she wasn’t taking care of much of anything in the last few years.”

“And you want to return it to how it was?”

He was looking at his plate of food, which was almost empty. “I want to improve it,” he told me. “She had a vision and I’d like to make that happen. But there’s a lot.”

I asked him more questions, and he had some for me. He wondered about my family, those million and two McCourts. He asked about my job, how I managed the office and how I’d learned to do that.

“Not in college,” I said. As he’d driven us in his truck, I’d read more about him and his business, and I’d seen that he had a few degrees. “I never went. I’ve worked at a lot of different places and I guess I picked up skills along the way. Not that I meant to,” I added. “This is the first time I’ve cared about whatI’m doing and it’s because Marc’s great. I want his business to succeed.”

“So you work hard, but you don’t play much. You said that a few times and you told your friend that you aren’t doing anything on New Year’s Eve.”

“What friend?”

“The woman at the pet store asked where you were going out, and you said you weren’t.”

“She was someone I knew slightly, many, many years ago. Way back when we were in high school,” I explained. I hadn’t realized that he had listened to our conversation.

“How long ago were you in high school?”

I sighed, because this made me depressed. “I’ll turn twenty-five in not too long,” I told him. “It’s almost a decade since I graduated.”

“It’s probably more like seven years.”

“That’s close to ten,” I said, and as a financial person, I would have thought he’d have had better rounding skills. “Anyway, that girl and I were only acquaintances back then, and that was why I didn’t introduce you. Or, did you want to meet her?” She was pretty and she’d always been ready for fun, but not in the way that Aunt Amber would have meant, like that she was “having fun” with too many guys. “You two could go out, which might be good if you feel like you’re not too busy for a relationship. But who knows if she wants one? Lots of women aren’t interested in that. Maybe she is, or maybe she isn’t.”

“I didn’t want to meet her.” He looked at me. “I can’t remember what I was talking about.”

“New Year’s,” I prompted, and he nodded.

“Right, I wanted to know why you told your acquaintance that you weren’t going out. She seemed surprised.”

“I used to be a big partier in high school and after high school, too,” I explained. “I stopped. I don’t drink or do anything else, not anymore.”

“Ok,” he said, nodding slowly. “If you don’t want to, there’s no reason that you—”

“Because I had a real problem,” I continued. “I was an addict. I mean, I am an addict. So, I can’t drink or smoke or do anything. I had to go to rehab twice. I was a mess and I hurt a lot of people.”

“Ok,” he said. He didn’t nod again.

“That’s why I’m not going out,” I told him. I stood and took my plate and his. “Sir, come say goodbye.”

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