Tara was thirteen, and her school was about six blocks from the shop, so she came here for the last two hours of Lindsey’s shift most days, because Lindsey didn’t want her to be home alone. It had begun a few years ago when I’d hired Lindsey, and Tara was too young to go do anything by herself after school. But though Tara sometimes complained, it was clear she liked coming here because when her friends started doing things like going to the movies, or…whatever teenagers did these days, Tara nearly always came here.
“Hey, love,” Lindsey said as Tara dumped her stuff behind the counter. “How was school?”
“Blah,” said Tara, and though she was a small girl, she managed to collapse into an empty chair with all the drama of a tranqued rhino collapsing on the savanna.
“Oh, sure,” said Lindsey, nodding and handing her a banana. “Care to specify?”
Tara sighed and peeled the banana absently. “So, what’s the deal with people who, like, get off on drinking each other’s blood during sex?” she asked.
Marcus choked on his coffee and started coughing.
“Honey. Inappropriate topic of conversation for a place of business.”
“There’s no one here.”
“Fine.” Lindsey specified, “Inappropriate topic of conversation for a thirteen-year-old, in public, in general.”
“Whatever, I’ll just google it,” Tara said. I could see the smile in her eye because she knew that Lindsey couldn’t stand the idea of her daughter getting bad information.
Morgan winked at me. It was no secret that Tara delighted us both, though for Lindsey’s sake we tried not to encourage her too much. Well, not in front of Lindsey anyway.
✕ ✕ ✕
My last appointment of the night was a no-show, so I left earlier than I had in days. I was too exhausted to paint but a little too wired to go to bed. I’d made headway on the painting yesterday morning, even if it had seemed like I’d spent half my time finishing off the bagels and cream cheese before the shop opened and I’d feel obligated to share with M&M. Hey, everyone knew bagels were best fresh! It definitely had nothing to do with the fact that when I was eating them my mind naturally wandered to Christopher, lingering on his broad shoulders, rough hands, and incredible eyes that crinkled at the corners.
Instead of going upstairs, I wandered up South Street to Tattooed Mom, my favorite bar (the name was a coincidence). My friend Turner would be working and I hadn’t seen her in a while. In the before times (before Daniel left, or BDL as Marcus lamented), Morgan, Marcus, Daniel, and I would go in for drinks after closing the shop on Saturday nights. But with me working on my paintings for the show, and Marcus trying to get home earlier lately, it had been some time since we’d done it. I made a mental note to try and get the gang together soon, for something non-shop-related.
“Ginger!” Turner yelled when I walked through the door, and she came around the bar to hug me. Turner’s hugs were like body slams and I grinned every time I found myself on the receiving end of one. Now that she was almost six months pregnant it was more like squeezing a zeppelin.
“How’s all this going?” I asked, indicating her belly.
Turner rolled her eyes dramatically and made me a drink. “I can say with zero percent exaggeration that it’s the effing pits. I’ll spare you the rundown of which parts of my body are no longer under my control, which parts hurt, which parts are twice their normal size, and which parts I haven’t seen in a while. I’ll also spare you a disquisition on my moods, which at the moment are tending toward a sense of horror and dread. And lastly, I’ll spare you the description of what I do when I wake up in the middle of the night—because apparently it’s not enough that I grow life, I must also do it without sleep—which is contemplate the horrors of this already overpopulated world and wonder for the thousandth time what hallucinogenic plant matter or self-help pabulum I could have consumed to made me decide it was a good idea to bring another human into it. Other than that, I’m excited. I’m gonna be a mom. Yay.”
I squeezed her hand where it lay on the bar. “You’re gonna be a fucking epic mom,” I told her. “I know this.”
Turner’s smile lit her whole face. “Thanks, G.”
For all that Turner had a brutally honest approach to pregnancy, it was something she’d considered for years. And now, at thirty-nine, she’d gone for it, and had been over the moon when it took.
“Hey, how’s my favorite tattooed mom?” Liam brought another flat of Yuengling from the back and nudged Turner with his elbow.
“That joke was bad the first six thousand times you made it, Liam,” Turner said, but she smiled at him. It was impossible to be mad at Liam. He was incredibly nice and incredibly stupid, and the combination really worked for him.
“You guys, I totally just got the hottest guy’s number,” Liam said.
“God, do people seriously get numbers? Like, that’s a real thing?” I asked.
Turner and Liam nodded. They worked in hookup central, so I guessed I’d take their word for it.
“Huh. I’ve never asked someone for their number in my life.”
“Good thing too, since you don’t even call your actual friends,” Turner said.
I flipped her off with a smile while signaling that she should get me another drink.
“Oh, it’s easy,” Liam said. “You just ask.”
“Yeah, I get the general principle, babe. It’s just never occurred to me to use it. I mean, I barely want to talk to most people in person, so I can’t imagine wanting to talk to them on the phone.”
“You don’t call them,” Liam said, like I’d suggested he eat paint. “You text.”
Turner and I exchanged fond, mildly exasperated looks as Liam started unloading the beer.
“Hey, how’s your other half?” Turner asked.
“He’s in fucking Michigan, T. Michigan! I mean, I ask you! Like, what’s in Michigan?”
“Well, there’s the automobile industry, Motown, the Great Lakes.” Turner ticked them off on her fingers.
“Ugh, whatever, that stuff.” I leaned forward across the bar and stabbed a finger toward her. “Do you know the main claim to fame of northern Michigan?”
“The Michigan tart cherry, I believe,” Turner said mildly.
“Number one, how the fuck do you know these things, and number two, why would anyone want a tart cherry!”
Turner smiled as she slid beers across the bar to some guys who’d come in while I was tipsily yelling at her. “Number one, as a child I enjoyed knowing facts about the states, and number two, dried tart cherries are absolutely delicious. They have a uniquely complex flavor not unlike a fruity red wine.”
I gaped at her. “I’m…a little in love with you right now and I a little bit want to hit you.”
Turner nodded like this was a common sentiment.
“State bird of Missouri!” one of the guys called out to Turner from down the bar.
“Eastern bluebird.”
The guy checked his phone.
“Whoa! Okay, okay, state flower of Indiana?”
“Peony.”
“Daaaang! State motto of Montana!”
“Oro y Plata.”
“Omigod, okay—”
“Oy, dude, this isn’t a freaking sideshow. Find a trivia night,” I called down the bar.
The guy scowled like I’d stomped on his sand castle and went back to his phone.
Liam arched an eyebrow at me. “Making friends, I see.”
“She misses Daniel,” Turner said, like it was an explanation for everything.
“Sigh, Daniel.” Liam’s voice was dreamy. “Did you guys ever…”
“No. No way. He’s like my brother.”
“Girl, if my brother looked like that? Just saying.”
I snorted and shook my head at him. “Well, you can do whatever you want with your brother. Sorry to kill the dream, but Daniel totally met somebody.”
I’d never seen Daniel anything like this over a guy before; he was really gon
e on Rex. They’d met in February, when Daniel had gone to Michigan for his job interview, and accidentally crashed his rental car into a tree when he swerved to miss a dog (which was, incidentally, so totally vintage Daniel that I couldn’t even). Rex lived nearby and had found Daniel wandering around in the dark, carrying the dog. It was a ridiculous meet-cute, and I’d teased him about it for months, with him shrugging it off every time. But when he’d moved to Michigan for the job and they met again, Daniel finally admitted how much he’d thought about Rex since then. Now they were dating, and from everything Daniel had said—which was, admittedly, less than I wanted to know—Rex sounded hot, kind, and way more into Daniel than he believed.
Liam seemed shocked to hear this, but Turner just nodded her enigmatic nod.
“What?”
“Well, I could always tell how much he needed you,” she said. “How much it meant to him to have someone he could look over at and know they got the joke. Exchange a look when you both had the same thought about someone. All that stuff. And it makes sense that when he was truly on his own, away from you and everyone who thought they knew him as one thing, he would find someone he could have that with romantically.”
My stomach felt hollow. Everything Turner was saying was probably true. And god knew I was happy for Daniel and hoped that this thing with Rex worked out. But hearing myself described that way—like a stand-in until Daniel could find a romantic partner—made me feel pathetic.
I knew Daniel would never think of it that way. I’d just been especially raw since he’d left, and I’d realized how lonely I was without him.
Raw, and maybe feeling just a little bit sorry for myself.
“Oh sweetie, shit, I didn’t mean it like that,” Turner said as her words settled.
“No, it’s okay. I know.”
Turner put another drink in front of me. “How about you? Any love in the air?”
I was surprised when my mind went immediately to Christopher. After all, our entire encounter had only lasted five minutes, and he’d been handling cream cheese for two of those. But I couldn’t get the picture of him winking at me out of my head. Or the way his hand had felt in mine. Warm, and lightly calloused, and a bit electric.
“Um, well, I went out on a date a couple weeks ago. Lindsey made me,” I mumbled.
“Do tell,” Liam said, and he and Turner leaned on the bar.
“Oh man, Lindsey sold him to me so hard. ‘Ginger, he’s a teacher, he has a cute dog, he’s smart and nice and handsome, and blah blah blah.’ Well, to be fair, he was handsome.”
“What’d he look like?” Liam asked
“Uh, he looked like—what’s that store that always smells so strongly of disgusting cologne when you walk past it that you wanna puke?”
“Abercrombie & Fitch,” said Liam.
“Yeah. He looked like a more boring version of one of those models, I guess? Like, toothpaste commercial teeth and the kind of dude who’d own a windbreaker. So wholesome he looked like a manifestation of the American flag. Not my type, obvs.”
Liam was shaking his head at me like I was causing him physical pain.
“So, how was it?” Turner prompted.
“Oh, it was fine,” I sighed. “Like, the dictionary definition of fine, though, meaning wholly without delight or horror. Which, just saying, I kinda like the horrible ones better—at least there’s a good story to tell. This was just…he was…pleasant?”
Turner snorted. “Ah,” she said in a prim English accent, “pleasant.” She mimed sipping a cup of tea, pinky in the air.
“Yeah, exactly. He was nice, I was delightful as always, duh, and we talked, and it was fine, and I thought, ‘Oh, this is a mildly pleasant conversation that I could have with almost any human on the planet.’”
Turner nodded along with me in sympathy.
Liam just shook his head. “Yeah, if a guy is hot but boring, that is really not the strategy I’d recommend.”
“You’re probably right,” I said. And he probably was. I shrugged, and was surprised to find myself thinking about Christopher again. About how he was definitely hot, and seemed like he was probably not boring in the least.
⌃ ⌃ ⌃
J,
I was right. The sweet and sour pork sandwich turned out amazing and I’m adding it to the menu, only on sourdough instead of rye (duh).
Listen man, I feel like a jerk sending all these emails about damn sandwiches, but since you don’t write back it’s kind of been all I’ve wanted to say. But okay, here:
I have a crush on this girl. Yes, I realize that makes me sound fourteen. But it feels ridiculous to use the word “woman” in the same sentence as “crush,” like pairing caviar with cotton candy. And I can’t really call it anything but a crush since I’ve only seen her a few times and spoken with her once.
And maybe I said it like that so you’d have warm, fuzzy feelings about how I said the exact same thing to you when I was fourteen. Uh, not that you really had warm, fuzzy feelings that year. Anyway, if you don’t write back I guess you’ll never get to hear about my crush, huh?
Write me back, okay bro? Just even to tell me you’re reading these.
Love, C
Chapter 3
The next morning I found myself in a position that was becoming disturbingly familiar: lying on my back on my own floor, staring at the ceiling and cursing my alarm clock. Only now it was worse because I was hungover and it felt like my head was going to explode. It was frankly shocking that I’d even remembered that I wanted to get up early to paint again, much less that I’d been able to set the fairly fiddly alarm mechanism on the robot-dog in my intoxicated state last night.
I groaned in self-pity but it just hurt my head more, so I slowly rolled myself up and gingerly made my way to the kitchen to make coffee, the only thing that ever helped when I was hungover. I got terrible migraines, had ever since high school, and in comparison with those this wasn’t the worst. But I definitely couldn’t paint like this.
Only, in the kitchen I was faced with the realization that I hadn’t bought a new coffeepot yesterday.
“Holtzman,” I muttered, “desperate times call for desperate measures.”
I pulled the carton of coffee ice cream out of the freezer. It was the one thing that I always had on hand even when there was nothing else to eat in the whole apartment. It was the perfect food and right now it was going to save my life. No way could I eat enough fast enough to get the caffeine without adding brain freeze to my hangover headache, so I scooped it into a pot and melted it on the stove. I mean, coffee ice cream was just coffee and cream and sugar, right? And I put cream and sugar in my coffee, so…what was the difference?
I couldn’t believe I was about to put the best ice cream on the planet in the position to fail at being coffee. I mean, when something was great at being ice cream, what more could you possibly ask of it? But here we were. I poured the melted ice cream into a glass, swore an oath that even if it didn’t taste good as a coffee substitute, I wouldn’t stop loving it in its frozen state, and gulped it like medicine. Hunh. It definitely lost something by changing states, but surely it was better than nothing?
I took another sip. Uh, maybe. But not better enough. I was going to have to leave the house.
I sniffed the clothes I’d worn to paint the other day and they seemed okay—a wide-necked black and white striped T-shirt and oversized black overalls. I stepped into my no-lace black Docs, because who has time for laces in the morning, grabbed my canvas jacket off the back of the couch, and slunk outside, shaking my head at Daniel’s voice in my head that said maybe—just maybe—I’d purposely forgotten to buy a new coffeepot the day before because it meant I had an excuse to see Christopher again.
“Shut up, Daniel, you Psych 101 know-it-all,” I muttered, and sent him a text that said, After much study, scientists conclude that melted coffee ice cream is not a viable substitute for coffee :(
Within seconds of being outside, I felt better. It was a c
ool, sunny October day. My favorite kind of day. I could smell damp and sun-warmed leaves, cinnamon and sugar from the roasted nuts in the bodega on the corner, smoke from someone burning garbage, and the clean bite of a cold snap coming but held off for another day.
My phone dinged with Daniel’s reply: Tell me you didn’t.
I was desperate! I texted back.
Then I was in front of Melt and I caught an unexpected glimpse of myself in the gleaming windows. It was always disconcerting when I was reminded that what people saw when they looked at me wasn’t the same as the picture I had in my head.
In my baggy overalls and oversized coat, I looked short and a bit rumpled, and the side of my hair that wasn’t shaved was an utter mess, dark curls flattened in the back and sproinging madly around my face and shoulder in the front. My sunglasses covered what I’m sure was clear evidence of my hangover, and I looked mad. I always looked mad, people told me. My mouth naturally turned down at the corners, so even my neutral repelled the world.
As a kid, grownups had been solicitous: “What’s wrong, sweetie? Are you okay?” My seemingly evasive answers of “Nothing” or “I’m fine” were taken as stoicism at best, and a bad attitude at worst, though I had been telling the truth.
I hadn’t understood why they always asked. Why just going about my business made people think that something was wrong with me.
For a few years when I was in my early teens I’d worked hard to counteract it, taking care to plaster my face into a neutral expression that felt like a smile. It hurt my face and triggered my migraines, and though it was a massive effort to maintain, it looked to the world like my face was merely a blank.
I ran a hand through my hair but there was really nothing for it. It was thick as hell and curly, and trying to get it to do anything except be thick as hell and curl where it wanted to was futile. Then I realized that I was basically staring in a window, Breakfast at Tiffany’s style—only without the coffee and croissants, which were the best part—and grinned, imagining “Moon River” playing over my entrance instead of the tinkle of bells.