EPISODE 8 — Tuesday Becomes a Habit
The first Tuesday after, Tank almost didn’t go.
He sat on his Harley outside Harlan’s for twenty minutes, engine off, helmet in his lap, arguing with himself. What if it was a fluke? What if the old man had just been being nice? What if everybody stared?
Then the door opened, and Denise stuck her head out.
“You coming in, sugar, or are you paying rent on that parking spot?”
Tank laughed — a real one, rusty from disuse — and went in.
Cole was in the corner booth. Rex was working through his bacon. There was a coffee already poured across the table, waiting.
“You knew I’d come,” Tank said, sliding in.
“I hoped,” Cole said. “Hoping’s better than knowing. Less pressure.”
That became the rhythm. Every Tuesday. Coffee, breakfast, talk. Not therapy — Tank would have run from therapy. Just… two men and a dog, telling stories.
Tank told Cole about the lumber yard. About his mother’s ham. About Buddy riding shotgun with his ears flying.
Cole told Tank about Duke, the shepherd before Rex. About the desert. About the two years he’d spent wearing his own guilt like a second uniform.
“You ever get over it?” Tank asked once. “Really over it?”
Cole scratched Rex’s ears. “No. But it stops being the whole story. It becomes a chapter. There’s a difference.”
Tank thought about that all the way home. A chapter. Not the whole story.
He liked the sound of that.
