by Katia Rose
A moment of silence passes, and I’m sure the bus has run me over and backed up to do it again. I’m sure she’s about to walk out the door.
Then her hand starts moving, tracing tentative strokes down my spine. The scratch feels like it must stretch all the way from my shoulder blades to my waist, and my muscles start to relax from the warmth of the cloth even as the cut twinges with the contact.
“Ben, okay. I will tell you. I like all music. It doesn’t really matter to me as long as I can dance to it, you know? But this morning I was listening to...Do you know the song ‘Wolves’ by Selena Gomez? I think that Marshmello guy made it too, but she does the singing.”
“Yeah, I know it. At least, I think I do. It’s the one that goes like...” I hum a few bars before cutting myself off when DeeDee snorts.
“Hey!” I accuse. “I told you I wouldn’t laugh at you. You don’t get to laugh at me.”
“But you are just so adorable.”
Adorable.
They don’t say it to my face, but I know that’s what they call me at the bar: the ‘adorable one.’ The wholesome farmer boy.
My brain flashes back to last night at the bar, when we stood in the dark kitchen and DeeDee told me she didn’t think of me as a man ‘like the ones she dates.’
She hits a particularly raw patch of skin, and I hiss again.
She didn’t come here looking for her next boyfriend. She came here looking for a friend, and maybe that means more. Maybe it’s wrong to want anything else. She came here to be safe, and I’ve got to respect that. It’s enough for me.
It has to be.
Focusing on the floor tiles is easier after that. DeeDee finishes up with the cloth and slathers on the Polysporin before telling me I can stand up. I twist around to get a glimpse of my back in the tiny bathroom mirror. In typical Montreal style, everything about this apartment is tiny. The bathroom can barely hold two people at once.
“Damn.” I take in the sight of the bright red scratch stretching almost perfectly parallel to my spine. My skin is shiny from the ointment, making the cut look extra pronounced. “That’s a nasty one.”
“I still can’t believe you fell over like that.” DeeDee snorts as she leaves the bathroom, and I follow after her.
“Hey, you’re the one who startled me!”
She stops in the living room and puts her hands on her hips. “I was minding my own business!”
“Beezneez,” I repeat, mocking her accent.
“Connard.”
I learned pretty quickly after moving to Montreal that that means ‘asshole.’
“How about some breakfast?” I offer. “We’ll call it a truce.”
I expect her to follow up with another joke, but instead she darts her eyes away from me and starts shifting her weight from foot to foot.
“I should probably go.”
Go where?
I stop myself before I say it out loud. It sounds rude, judgemental, like I don’t think she could possibly have any other options, but she really doesn’t seem to have any other options.
“I don’t work today,” I tell her. “I’m meeting up with Dylan in a few hours. He’s in town visiting, and I’m sure he’d be happy to see you too. I should probably get some ecommerce stuff done before then, and I have a video call scheduled with one of my sisters, but you can use the TV, or...”
I trail off when I notice she’s wrapped her arms around herself, curling inwards and becoming that smaller version of herself I saw for the first time last night.
“I should go,” she says, that husky voice I know so well sounding cracked and raw and far too quiet. “You’ve done so much.”
“DeeDee.”
She doesn’t answer. I watch as she turns and heads into Paige’s room before coming back out with her jacket and purse.
I try again. “DeeDee, I’m happy to have you here. Really. It’s no big deal. Paige is gone all week, so if you need somewhere to—”
“That’s very nice of you.” She hitches her purse strap up and walks past me to get to the front door, where she starts pulling her boots on. “I have to go, uh, do something with all my stuff. Awkwaaaard.”
She sings the last part out in her usual DeeDee way, but it doesn’t convince me she’s okay. If anything, it does the opposite. The atmosphere in this apartment just plummeted to glacial temperatures, and I don’t know what I did to cause it. I don’t know how to fix it.
“As in all your furniture? Do you need help?”
She gets the zipper of her second boot done up and straightens to face me, a grin that’s not quite right stretched across her face.
“I’ll figure it out. I always do, you know?” She reaches for the door handle, and I fight the urge to place my hand above hers and tell her to stay—beg her to stay if I have to. Whatever happened this morning, the last thing I want is for her to feel like she’s not welcome.
“Thank you, Zach.” It’s hardly more than a whisper, and then she’s gone.
I stand there, the skin of my back smarting as my chest expands and contracts with my breaths, and I don’t move for a long time after the door clicks shut.
I never knew how quiet this apartment could be, or how much I could ache for a sound.
“Zach, my man!”
My friend Dylan claps one of his giant hands on my shoulder and steers us into the diner where we’re getting lunch. Everything about him is giant. The guy is built like a linebacker. He used to work at Taverne Toulouse, where we all referred to him as ‘Beefcake.’
“How’s your hangover?” I can’t help razzing him a little. By the looks of it, he was having a very good time at April Showers last night, and it may have caught up with him today.
“Fucking hell,” he groans. “I’m getting too old for parties.”
“Renee must have had a fun time getting you home.”
He started dating one of our bartenders last year—shortly after resigning as Taverne Toulouse’s kitchen manager. It was a bit of a drama-fueled few months, but everyone who looks at them can tell he and Renee are perfect for each other. Now that Dylan’s at school in Ottawa to study radio broadcasting, I only see him when he comes up to visit Renee.
“Ha,” he answers me, voice dripping with sarcasm. “She doesn’t put up with my shit. Apparently I wanted to wait for her after the place closed, but she put me in an Uber and told me the bar was better off without me.”
“Harsh.”
Dylan just grins. “She’s a sassy one. I like that.”
The hostess seats us at our table, and Dylan lunges for the pitcher of water already set out.
“I’m telling you, I just can’t drink like I used to. One day you’ll understand what it’s like to be an old man.”
I scoff. “You’re, what, twenty-nine?”
“And not getting any younger. Don’t waste your youth, Zachary. That’s all I’m saying.”
“You’re an idiot, you know that?”
“If I don’t know it, Renee will tell me.”
I pour myself a glass of water too. “Cheers to that.”
The waitress stops by to collect our order soon after. This is where we usually meet up on the rare occasions we’re not hanging out at Taverne Toulouse, so neither of us even needs to look at the menu.
“So how are things with you, my friend?” Dylan asks after she leaves.
I pause and think for a moment. “Favourable.”
He chuckles. “Haven’t heard that one in a while.”
My parents have this dorky thing where they try to answer ‘How are you?’ with a different word every time someone asks. My sisters and I all do it too. I get teased enough about it at the bar that I should probably stop, but I think the habit’s too ingrained to kick.
“Your family doing all right?” he asks.
“I just called my younger sister before heading over here, the one who’s at school in Halifax. She’s as crazy as ever.” I chuckle at the thought of Hope, my most exuberant sibling. “She’s vis
iting in a few weeks, actually. Emily’s still living in Toronto. Mom and Pop are well as far as I know.”
“And how’s the ecommerce thing going? I still don’t really understand it.”
I have to laugh at that. “I’ve explained it to you about fifteen times.”
Dylan shrugs. “It mystifies me.”
“To be fair, it mystifies most people I talk to about it, but it’s going well.”
Dylan leans in closer. “Give me the run down again. Maybe this time it’ll stick.”
I laugh again before launching into an explanation. “Okay, so, basics of drop shipping: I build and market an online store. The items I sell in that store are produced and housed by a supplier. When a customer orders an item from my store, I forward that order to the supplier, and they ship the item out to the customer. I don’t actually make or ship any of the stuff I sell.”
“I think I’m following. So what are the items you sell?”
“I have three different stores going at the moment. One is for watches, one is for novelty socks, and one is for giant pool floaties.”
Dylan tilts his head to the side. “You sell giant pool floaties?”
“It’s all about market research, as well as trial and error,” I explain. “Pool floaties came out on top when I was considering things that would be profitable. Here, this is my store.”
I feel like a kid showing off a science project, but that doesn’t stop my chest from puffing up a bit when Dylan’s eyes get wide after he takes my phone out of my hands to look at the webpage.
“You made this? Holy shit. This is legit, man.” He scrolls around for a minute and then passes the phone back. “You’ll be a mogul any day now. Monroe’s going to kill us both for leaving the bar.”
I laugh and take another sip of water. “I don’t think she’ll have to worry about me leaving any time soon. With the gaping management hole you left in the staff, it’s been all hands on deck for the OG employees while she gets Lisanne trained as manager. Ecommerce is kind of taking a back seat.”
Instead of laughing along with me, Dylan frowns. “Excuse my ignorance, but if your business is picking up speed, don’t you want to be, uh, jumping on that? That’s why you went down to part time at the bar, right?”
It is why I stopped working full time, and it’s also why I turned down Monroe’s original offer to co-manage with Dylan, along with her recent hint that I’d be perfect at co-managing with Lisanne. The staff is getting large enough that we could use a kitchen manager and someone for the front of house, but I promised myself this job was only going to be a stepping stone back when I first took it. My focus was always supposed to be on my business, on building something and bringing it to life. Slinging fries and pulling pints was only meant to be a way to get there.
What I didn’t know is that slinging fries and pulling pints would end up being so fun, or that the people I did it with would come to mean so much to me. No one’s kidding when they say working at Taverne Toulouse feels like being part of a family.
And you don’t say no to family.
“Monroe needs the help,” I answer Dylan as I shrug, “and god knows she deserves it.”
He throws a mocking smile my way and puts an exaggerated country twang into his voice. “Oh Lord above, god knows she deserves it.”
“Connard,” I grumble.
“But seriously, if it’s affecting your business, you should tell Monroe. She’ll understand. She’s a business owner too.”
I shrug and tell him it’s not a big deal, even as I think about all the tasks that have been sitting on my to-do list for weeks. I shift back in my seat and wince as the scrape on my back rubs up against the booth.
Dylan doesn’t miss it. “What’s up with you? Got too wild on the dance floor last night?”
Yeah, so wild I almost kissed DeeDee.
I don’t remember seeing Dylan dancing last night. I’m pretty sure he was over by the bar the whole time, downing beers and flirting with Renee. He can’t have seen what happened. I’m not even sure what happened, but my face starts feeling hot all the same. I gulp down the rest of my water and start blurting out the story of my fall, just to get off the subject of dancing.
“Actually, I kind of fell over and scraped up my back this morning. DeeDee was sitting on the couch, and she sca—”
“DEEDEE WAS IN YOUR HOUSE?” Dylan pounds his water glass on the table, oblivious to the dozen or so heads that turn our way. “THIS MORNING?”
“Yeah, she—”
“DUDE!” Before I can get another word in, he’s jumping up from his side of the booth and coming over to give me several bone-rattling claps on the shoulder with his beefcake hand. “Dude, finally! Holy shit! Oh my god, I can’t believe this. Finally.”
“Dylan.”
He makes his way back to his seat, ignoring the urgency in my voice. He’s grinning at me like a doped up stoner.
“Well isn’t this the breaking news of the fucking century. It looks like there really is hope for this world. You and DeeDee Beausoleil finally—”
“Dylan!” Now it’s me making people turn their heads. I lower my voice to a fervent whisper. “Nothing. Happened.”
“What do you mean nothing happened? Oh.” His eyes get wide. “Are we keeping this on the DL? I won’t spread the word or anything until you guys are ready. I just can’t believe—”
“We did not have sex, goddammit!”
The father of the family sitting across the aisle clears his throat. I look over and find the mother covering the oldest kid’s ears.
“Uh, sorry. So sorry,” I stammer before turning back to Dylan and whispering again. “No s-e-x occurred.”
He laughs at me and continues speaking in a normal tone. “Okay, so did you, like, spoon? Cuddle? Keep each other warm through the chilly April night? Get to any...bases?”
“No, man!” I let out a groan. “Nothing like that. We’re still just friends. She got home and found her boyfriend cheating on her and couldn’t find anywhere else to stay.”
“Oh.” Dylan blinks a few times. “Oh damn. So...you didn’t even spoon just a little?”
I give up on words and just start throwing salt packets at him. Of course, that’s exactly when our waitress arrives with the food. She takes in the sight of the flying sodium and just shakes her head, putting the plates down and leaving us to continue disturbing the peace.
Dylan and I might need to find a new diner. This one won’t want us back after today.
Over the course of our meal, I fill Dylan in on the rest of the events of last night: how I picked DeeDee up at X’s place, how she seemed pretty shaken by the whole thing. I leave out the staying up together until 4AM thing, but I do give him the rest of the story about my bookcase back scratch and how flighty DeeDee got this morning. It’s been driving me crazy all day, and it feels good to get it out to someone—even someone who repeatedly asks if I’m sure we didn’t spoon.
“I don’t know what the hell happened,” I finish. “I just offered her breakfast, and she like, wilted. It was like a switch flipped somewhere. Should I not have offered? Is that bad etiquette or something? Is ‘breakfast’ some code word I don’t know?”
“Only you would wonder if something was ‘bad etiquette,’ but to answer you, no. I don’t see how anything you did was wrong.”
“So why did she leave like that? I mean, of course it’s not like she had to stay. It’s not like I expected it. She’s got a life to live. She’s got things to do. I just...”
“What?” Dylan prompts.
I attack the remains of my omelette with my knife. “She could have stayed. I want her to know that she could have. I want her...I want her to be safe. I want her to know she’s safe with me.”
“Zach.” Dylan pops a home fry in his mouth and then points his fork at me. “You ever thought about telling her how you feel?”
“What, like, just tell her she can stay as long as she wants? I already did, and—”
“That’s not
what I meant.” He makes a show of rolling his eyes. “I mean telling her how you feel. It’s been years.” He lowers the fork, a mix of frustration and some emotion that goes way deeper than jokes about spooning slipping into his voice. “Don’t you think it might be time?”
Usually I put up a fight and toss out a few denials when anyone insinuates I have a thing for DeeDee, but that seems beyond futile today.
“I’m not going to be anything other than what she wants me to be. She’s got enough shitheads in her life.”
Dylan shakes his head. “You’re always being what other people want, what they need. Sorry for telling it like it is, but it’s true. DeeDee, Monroe, everyone at the bar—even the damn customers. I don’t know if anyone’s ever told you this before, but you’re allowed to have feelings too. That doesn’t make you a shithead.”
“I know, but—”
“Hey.” I get a warning from the fork again. “I know where you’re going with this, and let me tell you, you can be honest with her without coming across as a guy with an agenda. There’s a difference between trying to get in a girl’s pants when she’s vulnerable and genuinely wanting to let her know how much you care about her.”
I let that one sink in. “I do care about her.”
He nods and stares at me with that same frustrated expression, like he’s got a piece of the puzzle I don’t. “I know you do.”
We move onto other subjects for the rest of the meal, but I’m still thinking about his advice by the time we leave the diner and part ways. I make it a few blocks up the sidewalk before lowering myself onto an empty bus stop bench and pulling out my phone.
I open DeeDee and I’s conversation. The last thing there is her text from last night. I feel the same sharp pang shoot through my chest when I read it again.
Hey, do you have a meme about a girl who doesn’t have anywhere to sleep tonight because she just walked in on her boyfriend screwing his ex?
She made a joke out of it—even in the midst of emotional turmoil, she found a way to put her sunshiny DeeDee spin on things—but the thought of her in pain like that makes me feel like tearing a mountain apart with my bare hands just to get to her.