CHAPTER TWO

      “DESHAWN!”

      He’d barely stepped inside the restaurant when—wham—there was the tackle hug. Sadie Martin nearly knocked him over. He returned the exuberant hug, lifting her off her feet for a moment. Aw, Sadie. Seeing her was good medicine. He’d been feeling low, falling into that woulda, coulda, shoulda trap, but all that fell away as soon she’d crushed his ribs with her trademark Sadie Squeeze. He was glad to be home. Happy to return to Charleston. Where he had friends he considered family. “Boss-Lady Sadie,” he said with a smile.

      She gave him an appraising look, a single worry line between her eyebrows. “You look skinny,” she said, after a moment’s pause. Then: “Are you eating?”

      “Sure, I’m eating. Just don’t have to maintain the muscle mass required for my previous employment.” He rolled his shoulders and puffed his chest out, flexing just enough to make her laugh, keeping it light.

      “That’s all right, that’s all right,” she said. “Blame me for you being too lazy to work out. I see how you are.”

      “God, I missed you, Sadie.”

      “Glad to be home?”

      “You don’t even know.”

      “How’s that ankle?”

      The ankle. The stupid accident had held up his entry into the army but had opened a new path for him. It had been a momentary lapse in concentration, one slight misstep on a ladder followed by five months of casts and surgery and rehab. If he hadn’t been careless, yeah, well...woulda coulda shoulda, right?

      “It’s fine,” he said. “I’m back up to full speed. Thinking about doing the Cooper River Bridge Run this year. But the ankle, yeah...it does predict rain very accurately. There is that.”

      He looked around the bustling restaurant. Busy Friday night. It was new. The West Ashley area of Charleston was booming. Booming could be a good thing. Lots of work. But the traffic—the traffic was definitely not an upside. New houses and apartments going up everywhere he looked, from out past Summerville all the way up to Mount Pleasant. Used to be scenic drives out to those places, nothing but green trees and Carolina sun. Now it was a slow roll through bumper-to-bumper traffic. Still, the scent of barbecue was making it hard to dwell on all that. He was here now and his stomach growled. The hostess led them to a booth in the back.

      “The potato salad is to die for,” Sadie said. “It’s made with horseradish.”

      “Is it hot?” he said.

      “Surprisingly cool and creamy. Just enough of a zing to let you know it’s the good stuff.”

      “Huh.”

      After the waitress brought them each a glass of ice water, jotted their orders down with a few quick swipes of her pen and walked off toward the kitchen, Sadie turned serious.

      “How’s the job?” She leveled her eyes at DeShawn. It was her business look. It was a kind professionalism, to be sure. Sadie was good people. But business was business.

      “Good. I like it. It feels a little odd. I’m actually doing the things I studied in school. Who would have expected that? But I’m excited.”

      “You’re part of the navy base transition?”

      “Yep. Working on the new I-26 and Cosgrove interchange.”

      “What does that entail?”

      “Right now, a lot of walking around in the cold and measuring things.”

      “Sounds divine. I’m glad you’re happy. I was worried about you.”

      “You always worry about everyone.”

      “True. But I was extra worried about you.”

      He took her hands and looked her in the eyes. “I’m fine. You know, not gonna lie. I was disappointed that I couldn’t go into the army. That hit hard. But it’s okay. I love my job. I still get the opportunity to travel. And I’m in the Army National Guard. It’s still everything I wanted. Just...scaled down a bit.”

      She nodded. “So, it’s going well?”

      Her tone was casual but her gaze was locked on him. She could win her a staring contest. That was a fact. That was how she climbed to the top of her business. Made it with sheer determination, absolute focus. Resisting the urge to squirm when the silence stretched too long, DeShawn shrugged. “Yeah, okay,” he said. “So there’s a learning curve. But that’s normal right?”

      “Yes.” She drew the word out into at least four syllables. “Spit it out, DeShawn. What’s wrong?”

      That made him laugh. Momma Bear. That was what he and the other guys in the Cleaning Crew would call her. She could smell a problem from three miles away.

      “It feels weird,” he said. “I feel weird. I look around at my coworkers and they know everything. They’re just going around doing their jobs and I feel like I’m acting in a play.”

      Her expression softened and she bobbed her head. “I know that feeling well. When I have to go to those professional women’s meetings, I feel the same way. What in the hell am I doing here?”

      He nodded, tapped his fingers on the table. “Well, okay, so that’s what it is. But how do I fix it?”

      “Keep showing up,” she said. Her right eye got a little twitchy. She looked down and to the left for a heartbeat, then met his gaze directly. “That’s how. Eventually it wears off. Well, it gets better. Just a twinge now and then.”

      He nodded along with her and smiled. It did make him feel a little better, being on the same page with Momma Bear. Sadie was his biggest role model. She’d gone from being essentially homeless—she hadn’t even had a high school degree—and from that place and time in her life, she’d went on to build an award-winning cleaning company. She’d even made herself rich along the way. It wasn’t the typical outcome one would expect. Sadie was definitely an outlier, definitely two or three standard deviations from the mean at least. But she was also right here in front of him—real, honest, relatable—and it gave him hope. He thought about that a lot these days. Hope, and what it meant to people. The difference it made in their lives, having it. Thought about the crazy idea he’d been bouncing around in his mind. About how he could maybe start spreading some of that hope around.

      “I never really thanked you,” he said to her. “For all you did. For me. For a lot of people.”

      She frowned, her brow wrinkling slightly. “What do you mean?” she said. She picked at a corner of her napkin.

      “For hiring me,” he said. “That was crucial. That was more than just a cameo role in the story of my success.”

      “I gave you a job, DeShawn. That doesn’t make me a hero.” She cleared her throat and took a sip of water, watching him over the top of the glass.

      “No, you did more than that. The only job I’d had before that—before you took a chance on me—was washing dishes in a diner. You showed me how to take pride in a job well done, how to behave like a professional adult.”