Dishing Up Love

I sniff once, getting my emotions under control before he allows me to extract my hand to take a sip of my coffee. “As I said. Hot. Mess. Express. They were doomed from the start really. I did a paper on them in college, so if you want, I can go into way more detail than Ronnie did on the tour.”

He holds his hand out, palm up. “Please. I love hearing you talk.”

I choose to ignore the compliment instead of making a joke. Baby steps.

“Zack Bowen was a charmer. He was a bartender here in the Quarter, a super good-looking young man who left an impression on everyone he met, according to people who knew him. He grew up in California as well, so he had the laid-back way about him, like you do. He married young, to a woman ten years older than him named Lana. They had two kids, and in order to take care of them, he joined the Army for the benefits. A lot of stuff happened overseas, and that’s probably more tragic than what ended up happening at the end of Zack and Addie’s story,” I say quietly, leaning forward to take a bite of a beignet. I dip it in the powdered sugar that had fallen off onto the plate and hold it out for Curtis, but instead of taking it from me, he leans in a takes a bite, his eyes closing. How the man could still look so fucking sexy, even with white powdered sugar all over his face as he groans in delight, I have no idea. I smile at the simple pleasure.

“My God, that’s delicious.” He licks his upper lip, and my pussy clenches. “Why do you say that’s more tragic? What happened while he was deployed?”

“Well, one of his fellow soldiers he was close to was killed, and then a child he befriended while he was overseas was murdered for speaking to American soldiers. It really fucked him up, understandably. And it may seem silly to add but is actually pretty important to the story—he developed a really painful case of hammertoe because of his army-issued combat boots. Seems like small potatoes, but physical pain on top of high emotional distress can be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. It was all a terrible mix of shit that turned his once sunny outlook on the military into something he begrudged. Lana was sick with Hep C and alone with their two kids, and he was lonely, and in pain, and missed them terribly. So he started failing PT tests on purpose until he finally got discharged. This is the part that hurts my heart the most when it comes to Zack Bowen. No one helped him. No one took the time to care for the guy. No one made sure he got the medical attention, both mental and physical, that he so desperately needed. They just discharged him and sent him back into the civilian world with a slap on his ass, like ‘Good luck to ya!’” I shake my head. I can’t help but think about how if he’d just gotten treated for his depression and PTSD, there wouldn’t be this awful story to tell all these years later.

“Anyway, enough about the depressy stuff. Because I could go on and on about shoulda-couldas and what-ifs, but there’s nothing we can do for him now. I do what I can for people who come into my office with the same diagnosis, and in my head, that’s my way of trying to make up for the people who failed Zack,” I say, taking another bite of beignet before I move along the story. “So Zack comes back to NOLA, and he self-medicated the way a lot of veterans sadly do—with drugs and alcohol. He takes odd jobs to try to make money for his family, but eventually, Lana leaves him, adding to his depression. Until he meets Addie Hall.”

“Dun-dun-duuuun,” Curtis singsongs before taking a sip of his coffee, making me smile.

“Right? Addie was known as a free-spirited, feisty, and independent artist who found herself in the bohemian New Orleans lifestyle after a rough childhood in the Northeast. She was a poet, artist, dancer, and bartender here in the French Quarter with a lot of friends. She was hesitant about relationships with men—”

Curtis clears his throat at that, pinning me with a look. “Must be a NOLA girl thing,” he murmurs with a playful lift of his brow.

I choose to ignore him. “—because of the abuse she experienced in her past. She was always looking for the perfect muse for her art, and then she finally found it in Zack, all the while battling her own demons and addictions.”

“Oh shit. You weren’t joking when you called them the perfect storm. Even if I didn’t know how their story ends, I could tell you right there that these two would probably not be good for each other,” he says with a wince.