Read Online Walk on Water by Josephine Garner - Free Book Online Page A

around had made Mommy too uncomfortable to enjoy the food, and even in her Sunday best she had fretted about the way she had been dressed compared to the other patrons.
    “You come here a lot?” she had asked me after deciding on the grilled chicken breast with rice pilaf and steamed vegetables—the cheapest item on the red leather-bound menu.
    “Not a whole lot,” I had assured her. “Just for special occasions. Mommy, please have the blackened mahi-mahi. It’s really good.”
    “I’ve had it before.”
    “They prepare it really well here.”
    “Fish is fish. They cook it the same way everywhere.”
    “Not exactly, Mommy,” I had said although I had chosen not to explain the meaning of award-winning chefs and five-star ratings.
    This afternoon luckily our wait wasn’t too long at the Red Lobster, and we were even seated at a booth this time, which didn’t happen all the time because we were just a party-of-two and booths were generally reserved for parties of four or more. Now when I went out with Luke we never sat in a booth, and one of the chairs always had to be quickly removed.
    As Mommy debated aloud whether or not to get the Seaside Shrimp Trio or the Admiral’s Feast , I silently selected the stuffed flounder and closed my menu. At a table near us, a busboy swept up a catastrophe of breadcrumbs, balled-up napkins, and spilled ice-cubes. At another table another busboy was hastily and so noisily throwing dirty plates, glasses, and flatware into a dirty plastic bin. The crashing sound the items made as they collided in the bin was barely audible over the din all around. A harried-looking waitress arrived at our table, setting down brown glasses of ice water. The word glasses was a euphemism in this case because they were the typical food-service plastic. The actual glassware was reserved for beverages ordered from the bar, which we wouldn’t be having today, since Mommy took the Baptist Covenant quite literally even if her daughter didn’t, and hadn’t for a long time.
    By the time our entrees came, I had eaten my salad and two cheese biscuits, so I wasn’t very hungry. That was the thing about Red Lobster, you could almost always count on taking home a doggy-bag. When I went out with Luke and didn’t finish my meal I always forgot the box on the table. I didn’t do that with Mommy. She would remind me, and besides I usually ate more in the first place. As I started in on my third biscuit I told myself that I would work very hard at the gym the rest of the week to pay for it.
    No matter how much I denied it, Corrine held fast to her theory about me getting ready to get naked in front of somebody—that somebody being Luke.
    “I don’t know what you’re killing yourself for,” she had griped. “He’s the one with a body image problem.”
    Maybe she was right, but I had found her comment insensitive and insulting.
    “He’s disabled,” I had replied heatedly. “Not disfigured.”
    “And you’re curvy,” she had shot back. “Not disgusting. And anyways, from what you shared with me he’s got the hots for you too just the way you are. As much as he can have the hots that is.”
    “Disabled people are sexual beings just like the rest of us, Corrine.”
    “I know that. They have their ways.” Then she had grinned almost wickedly. “So you really think you’re ready for a little versatility in your repertoire?”
    “What part of ‘just friends’ don’t you understand?” I had snapped.
    But I had already been online researching what the that with Luke might be like. Maybe he’d have to rely on his hands more than anything, making it kind of like my own basically unsatisfying attempts. I couldn’t picture him putting his mouth on me, not down there. Besides, when other men had, including Robert, I had never experienced what all the hype was about.
    The main message from my research was that each spinal cord injury was different. The incomplete diagnosis had not left Luke enough