[Sunday, February 21]

"You like breakfast for lunch, lady?" Mr. Taylor asked Tami the moment Eric opened the kitchen door.

She stepped into the breakfast nook. The man was at the stove, frying bacon. He also had an electric griddle plugged in on the counter, and there was pancake batter bubbling on it. Mr. Taylor was actually wearing an apron. The man Tami was used to seeing in a heavy, masculine tool belt had a white apron tied around his front.

"Sure. I love breakfast for lunch," she said.

"You want blueberries or chocolate chips in your pancakes?" Mr. Taylor asked her. He took a sip of what looked to be a mimosa and then set it back down on the counter.

"I can't have both?" she asked.

Mr. Taylor laughed. "Watch this one, Eric. She's going to be a lot of work. Then again, you get what you pay for."

Eric smiled apologetically at her. She smiled back and shrugged.

"Flip those pancakes, son." Eric walked over to the griddle and began flipping them. "And put the blueberries and the chocolate chips in that uncooked side, Eric, quick! Give your girl what she wants! Always give your girl what she wants."

"Yes, sir."

Mr. Taylor slid the bacon on top of a paper towel on a plate and wiped his hands on his apron. He drained the rest of his flute. He walked over the refrigerator, opened it, and pulled out a bottle of orange juice and a half empty bottle of what looked to be champagne. "You like mimosas, Tami?"

"Uh…" Should she remind him she was underage for drinking? She knew he let Eric drink beer, and he was entitled to in his own house, but she wasn't his daughter. She didn't think it was actually legal in this situation. "Sure. I love mimosas."

"It's just cheap sparkling white wine," he said, popping the bottle open, "but who can tell with the orange juice anyway?" He pulled down another flute from a cabinet and filled it half full with sparkling wine and half full with orange juice. Then he made another one for himself. He handed the fresh flute to Tami and took his in his own hand. He raised his glass to her, "To your steady progress in Algebra II."

Tami smiled and clinked his glass. "Thank you," she said before she sipped, somewhat surprised he even remembered what Eric was tutoring her in.

Tami didn't drink much. She didn't need to be buzzed to have a good time, and she sometimes wondered how much alcohol had contributed to her poor decision to have sex with Paul. She had been Mo's designated driver for the bulk of their relationship. She was going to have to pace herself with this mimosa.

"Hey, where's mine?" Eric asked.

"You're grounded, son. You don't get a mimosa. And I have a long list of chores for you to accomplish after your tutoring session. A long list."

"That's not fair," Eric grumbled.

"Son, I believe what you intended to say was, Yes, sir. Thank you, sir, for your leniency. I deserve worse."

"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir, for your leniency. I deserve a thrashing."

"Don't get mouthy with me, it'll be two weeks."

"It's just," Eric protested, "I didn't start it. I didn't start the fight. You always told me, don't start, finish."

"You want to argue with me? You want to go for three weeks?"

"No, sir. Wait. Does that mean I'm up to two weeks?"

"No. Not yet. Set the table."

Eric complied. Mr. Taylor drained his mimosa while his son was putting the plates on. He put the glass down on the counter, took off his apron, balled it up, and set it on the counter top before fixing himself yet another mimosa. "You ready for a second?" he asked Tami.

"No, sir," she said. She'd only taken two sips of the first.

"This is my first full day off in two weeks," he said. "So I'm enjoying myself. No work at all today. Well, I might possibly have to run out for an emergency repair later tonight. Those sometimes come up."

Tami covered her mouth to hide her laugh.

"But while I'm doing that, Eric here will be mopping the kitchen floor and dusting and waxing all the furniture. Won't you, son?"

"Yes, sir."

"And it better be pristine when I get back."

As they were eating, Tami said, "Thanks for helping my mom out, Mr. Taylor. You know, with the fourth Saturday special."

"Single moms have a harder time of it," Mr. Taylor said. "People are always judging them. Me? People say, what a great dad! You actually clothe your child!"

Tami chuckled.

"This young man," said Mr. Taylor, pointing to his son, "Will accomplish what I never did. He'll be a professional football player one day. He's going all the way to the NFL. Aren't you, son?"

Eric seemed a bit nervous. "I'm going to try."

"Even if he never goes pro," Tami said, "I'm sure he'll accomplish great things."

Eric smiled at her. He looked like some of the tension had suddenly drained out of him.

"Well, better things than I have, I hope," his father said.

"You have accomplished a great thing," Tami assured him, looking fondly at Eric. "You've raised a fine son."

Mr. Taylor raised an eyebrow, but he didn't respond. He proceeded to ask Tami a lot of questions: How long have you lived in Tyler? When did your dad die? How did he die? What does your mom do for a living? What's your favorite subject? How many hours do you work at Chili's? How long have you worked there? She felt like she was at some kind of interview. Maybe Mrs. Hernandez was right. Maybe he'd just used this grounding as an excuse to get to know her.

Had he grilled Laura like this too? What did he think of her compared to Laura?

"What are your post-graduation plans? " he asked.

"Umm…." Laura had gone to a four-year college, Tami thought. She had nothing so impressive to offer. "I'm concentrating on making sure I do graduate. And when I do," she was done saying if, "I'll probably do what Eric suggested. Enroll in an open enrollment community college, do my best, try to transfer to a four-year in a couple of years."

"I should have taken that football scholarship from Georgia State," Mr. Taylor mused, "instead of playing in the amateur league. I was mentally lazy. I didn't want to hit the books, and I didn't want to leave my high school sweetheart behind in Texas. But maybe I should have. She took off eventually anyway. And if I had gone away to college, then I never would have - " He looked at Eric and suddenly stopped speaking.

Eric gritted his teeth. Tami felt horrible for him. She already gathered he was sensitive to the fact that his conception had set his father down another trajectory. She didn't know if that sensitivity came externally from the things Mr. Taylor said, or internally, from Eric's own misguided sense of guilt. It was probably a bit of both, though Mr. Taylor seemed to regret the potential implication of his present words. The man cleared his throat. "Son, are there more pancakes over there?"

When brunch was over, Mr. Taylor cleared out to his "study" to let Eric tutor Tami in the kitchen. "Remember you're grounded," he told his son. "This is not social hour."

"Yes, sir."

Eric cleared and washed the plates while Tami unpacked her book and Friday night homework. He pulled his chair over next to her on her side of the table, which was facing the rest of the kitchen. "Sometimes I think he wishes I'd never been born," he muttered.

"I'm sure he doesn't, Eric. It's pretty clear to me he loves you. You were important to him before you were even born. He talked your mom into having you. Isn't that what you said?"

"Yeah. I don't know why though. My grandparents were Catholic. My grandmother was super devout. He grew up with that. Probably some kind of guilt complex about abortion."

"Well, whatever the reason, Eric, he raised you. You told me about all the stuff he does with you."

"Yeah. But I think he thinks a lot about all the stuff he could have done without me." He sighed. "Sorry. I don't know why I brought this up."

"I'm your girlfriend, Eric. It's okay to talk to me about your feelings."

"I'm a guy," he said. "I don't have any feelings."

She laughed.

"It's so weird, all of it," he said quietly. "She'd been accepted to UCLA, my mom. This is what my aunt told me, anyway. So in April, when she gets the acceptance letter, she tells my dad she doesn't want to date him once she moves to California. He was a year older, already out of high school, already working and playing amateur ball, but they'd started dating when he was a senior. So they broke up that April. A week later, she realizes she's pregnant. I guess I'm lucky she even bothered to tell him she was pregnant. She could have just gone ahead and had the abortion without his input. But he convinced her to delay her acceptance for a semester and stay in Texas and have me."

"Wow. Why...why didn't she want to keep dating him?"

"My aunt says he was a C+ student in high school. Their parents were working class, barely. They grew up poor. But my mom, I guess, was a straight-A student, had a doctor for a father. Her parents expected big things of her, really big things, better than fooling around with an amateur football player and part-time handy man she'd met in high school. She expected big things of herself too. She was going to go to law school after college. And she graduated high school in 1969, so it was a bit unusual, her plan, you know. My aunt said they were never compatible, her and my dad, not really, that she always thought it was a weird relationship, but they had some kind of...inability to resist each other."

"Sounds like a television drama."

"Yeah."

"And you really have no idea where she is now?" Tami asked.

"She terminated her rights, Tami. Clean slate. I'm not even sure she's still alive, though I don't know why she wouldn't be."

"Do you know her name?"

"I know her maiden name. But she might be married now. And I have no intention of ever trying to track her down." He pointed to her book. "We should be working on this."

It was clear he didn't want to talk about this subject any longer. "Okay," Tami said softly.

They sat almost shoulder to shoulder as they worked. A few minutes into the tutoring, he leaned over and kissed her, softly at first, and then more deeply.

Tami pulled away, smirking, and said, "This is not social hour."

"I kissed you because you got that problem right. Every time you get a problem right, you get rewarded with a kiss. It's an incentive program. Every good tutor uses rewards as encouragement."

They played this game for about fifteen minutes and four kisses when she began struggling with a problem. "What do I get if I miss a problem?" She rested an arm against his back and toyed with his hair. She leaned over and nibbled his ear lobe for a while before finally whispering into his ear, "A spanking?"

He drew in a sharp breath. "Damn, Tami. Why did you have to give me a hard-on when there's no chance for relief? It hurts!"

She moved her hand from his hair and fake pouted at him. "Poor, Eric. I'm sorry. Can you help me though?"

"Give me a minute." He sat starting at the stove 60 seconds. He looked down at the book. "Okay, so take the first half of this equation…"