“If you’re feeling sad, there’s only one thing to do,” I said.
“What’s that?” Lindsey asked with a sigh as she sipped one of the mimosas.
“We’re going to make our mother’s famous French toast. There is enough fatty, buttery goodness in there to make anyone smile. Besides, it’ll go with the mimosas. We’ll be fancy and call it brunch.”
“That sounds amazing,” Lindsey said. “I’ll help you. Just tell me what to do first.”
I knew the recipe for the French toast like the back of my hand. Our mother made it for us from the time we were little. It showed up on the table on holiday mornings, birthdays, and anytime somebody needed a bit of cheering up. I watched her make it so many times I picked up the ingredients and technique without her ever having to teach me.
“Find me a big mixing bowl,” I said. “And we’re going to need a whisk and some measuring cups and spoons, too.”
I turned on the oven and took out a serrated knife to cut thick slices of bread. Lindsey gathered everything I needed, and I instructed her to crack half a dozen eggs into the mixing bowl. As I talked her through adding milk, heavy cream, sugar, and spices into the bowl, I lined the slices on a baking sheet. They went into the oven to dry out. It only took a few minutes for the bread to get toasty so it would absorb all the delicious custard, and soon Lindsey was giggling as she poured the custard into a baking dish, trying not to let it spatter and drip. I went behind her and put the slices in to let them soak, then took out a griddle to coat with butter.
Lindsey and I worked together pretty well, considering we never spent time in a kitchen together. I tried not to spin daydreams of us in my kitchen cooking. I knew that wasn’t even in the realm of possibility. It was pushing the envelope enough to be spending this time with her now as my brothers cleaned up and dressed.
But it didn’t stop me from having fun with her then. I was frying up the slices of toast, and Lindsey had moved on to bacon when my brother finally came back into the kitchen. She glanced over at Nick and rolled her eyes.
“Took you long enough,” she said. “I swear, you spend more time in the shower and primping than I do.”
Darren and I laughed, and Nick retaliated by snatching a couple pieces of fresh bacon she had just put on a plate. The big, alcohol-infused lunch was a great time with my brothers and Lindsey. We laughed and joked the entire time, and I was happy to carry on an entire conversation with them without even so much as a mention of a wedding, a baby shower, or even racing. It was good sometimes to just be able to step back and enjoy hanging out together and not think about responsibilities or pressures we didn’t use to have. It was like being kids again.
After lunch, Lindsey had to make her way home to get ready for work. She’d only had one mimosa and then a healthy stack of French toast, so she was fine to drive. I, on the other hand, wasn’t trusting it. Leaving my car at Nick’s to pick up later, I decided to walk home. The fresh air would do me good. As I went, I thought about Lindsey. Something had definitely shifted between us. Now I just had to figure out how to make it even more without pissing Nick off.8LindseySunday was my only day off from the bar. I’d made a good number of changes around the place when I’d taken over from my father, but one I kept the same was being closed on Sunday. It was one of those things that just felt right. Especially around Charlotte, North Carolina. People around here had specific ideas about Sundays. They were for going to church, gathering up at Grandma’s house for lunch, then whiling away the afternoon. Depending on the time of year, that might mean doing a puzzle or playing a game with the family, putting up preserves and doing canning, or just lounging around and relaxing. For a good chunk of the year, it meant football.
To some people, that meant I should have changed the schedule and opened at least for a few hours on Sunday afternoon and evening. Some sports bars had sprung up around town and put up huge flat-screen TVs that aired the weekly football games. It lured in a rowdy crowd and brought in good money. But it just wasn’t me. Maybe I didn’t go to church, and maybe my grandma had gone up to the quilting bee in the sky many years ago. But one thing I kept steady was the tradition of closing up the bar on Sunday.