Althea and Oliver Read Free Page A

“Waffles, waffles, waffles” in a little-boy voice she hasn’t heard him use since there were still training wheels on their bicycles. She had known he would be upset when this second episode was over, but she wasn’t expecting a peculiar, childlike regression.
    â€œDid you just wake up? Does Nicky know?”
    â€œWaffles, waffles, waffles.” Already he has repeated this word so many times that it’s in danger of falling apart and losing its meaning. Althea’s goose bumps spread to her arms. The sofa shudders with the force of Oliver’s insistent rocking. This is all totally unlike him, but she’ll do whatever he wants if it means he’ll stop this creepy chanting.
    â€œAll right,” she says slowly. “Quit with that shit and we’ll get you your fucking waffles.” She slides off the couch and pulls on her jeans in a dark corner of the basement. “How is it outside?” she asks.
    â€œCold,” he says, but when she reaches for her car keys, he stops her. “Let’s walk.”
    On their way out the back door, she pulls her hair into a ponytail with a black rubber band. When she’s done, he takes her hand and stuffs it into his own pocket. He won’t answer any of her questions, but she has missed him so much that right now it’s enough to be walking with him under the streetlights, see his breath bloom in the cold, and have their thumbs wrestling in the pocket of his black hoodie. The night is clear and smells like the ocean.
    Oliver doesn’t talk. He sings “Welcome to the Jungle” from start to finish twice, pausing occasionally to play air guitar for emphasis, the tendons in his neck straining with the effort.
    â€œAre you feeling okay?” she asks when he finishes his encore. It’s a stupidly pedestrian question, but she’s compelled to say something.
    â€œI’m hungry,” Oliver says.
    The Waffle House sign is made of letters like enormous Scrabble tiles. Inside it smells like syrup and cigarettes. The dozen other patrons are mostly truck drivers and college students, engrossed in their own nocturnal conversations. Althea and Oliver settle into a booth next to each other, Oliver against the window, and put their feet up on the other seat, tennis shoes squeaky against the vinyl. Their legs are the same length. Althea was taller through the first half of high school, but Oliver caught up over the last year. The jeans she’s wearing actually belong to him.
    The waitress approaches, a tiny redheaded woman with a gap between her front teeth, her arms and face covered in freckles. She takes their orders. “I’ll be right back with your coffee,” she says.
    Oliver gives Althea a frantic look, tugging on her pant leg with canine urgency. “I’m starving.”
    â€œI understand.”
    Finally Oliver’s food arrives and keeps arriving—pecan waffles, a cheese and bacon omelet, scattered and smothered hash browns, and grits. Althea drinks her coffee while he eats, his arm wrapped protectively around his plates, as though he is afraid at any moment she might try to take them from him. He eats noisily, without looking up or pausing to make conversation, chewing big, sloppy bites with his mouth open. A briefly masticated bit of waffle falls back to his plate, landing where the maple syrup and grits overlap. Althea stifles a gag and looks past him, out the window at the traffic rumbling by on the highway and her own ghostly reflection staring back at her.
    When he’s finished, the waitress clears and leaves the check on the table. Apparently sated, Oliver yawns, stretching his arms over his head. “Jesus. I’m so tired.”
    â€œYou just slept for a week.”
    Even as she lodges her complaint, he rests his head on her shoulder. His breathing turns heavy, and Althea realizes too late, a mile from home, without her car, in the middle of the night, that she was