by Vesper Young
The look in his eye shifted, no longer trying to figure me out, just seeing me. “Oh, Kara, believe me. I know you can take care of yourself.”
With that he left and went to the back. Julie came back a minute later. Seeing her table empty, I filled her in while I got the next order of drinks ready. She apologized, even though it obviously wasn’t her fault. She also sounded a bit impressed our new boss had kicked them out. Samson hadn’t been a jerk, but he would’ve been reluctant to kick out paying customers unless he was losing money because they were breaking glasses or something.
Lucas came out occasionally coming out to check on things, but he wasn’t speaking to me. I tried to ignore him. Maybe I’d been too harsh before. I wasn’t sure of anything anymore.
A week ago, things had been a lot easier. All of a sudden I was very, very weary.
Tonight, I was on the late shift, which meant I was working ’til closing. Around one, Ethan got off and since it was slow enough, I managed both ends of the bar. We’d gotten through a night of sports with minimal drama beyond what had happened earlier. Apparently it had been a mercifully boring game, so tempers were even.
Marco was at the bar tonight. Marco was a man in his late sixties or early seventies—I hadn’t bothered to card him. He tended to come in late at night. I wasn’t sure what he did or if he was retired, but I liked him. If nothing else, he was fun to chat with on a slow night.
“The usual,” he said.
I nodded. The usual was a Manhattan martini. Marco made up the majority of our candied cherry consumption.
“How’re things going, kid?”
Marco called everyone kid. He’d even called Samson that on the rare occasion Samson had been around that late.
“Things have been good,” I said. I was going to fill him in on Ryan’s latest dream career—I’d let him watch Jurassic Park which went the exact way you’d expect with a nine-year-old boy—but I was suddenly reluctant to discuss my son when Lucas might still be around. I wondered for a moment how many people here knew I had a child. I’d tried to avoid developing the habit some mothers had of talking nonstop about their children, but it was hard. Ryan was the center of my world. Had been for almost a decade. Amelia definitely knew. Possibly Ethan, and maybe Julie. I’d probably mentioned it to Samson when I explained why I avoided the more profitable weekend shifts. “How’ve you been?”
Marco began to fill me in on his latest exploits while I made his drink. Despite his age, he got around, though he was never crass with details. Once he got going, the time passed quickly. At half-past two, he paid his tab, tipping generously. I gave him a real smile for that, especially because with Ethan gone by the time Marco came, I didn’t have to split anything else. By that point, the Rattler was pretty empty so I and the last few other people on duty started cleaning up. I waved goodbye to Julie when Lucas reemerged from the back room.
I wasn’t sure what to say to him, if anything. I pulled on my puffy, red coat as I walked out, not willing to risk lingering at the coat rack in case I ran into you-know-who. The bus stop was at the same corner as the Rattler, which is where I waited. While I stood there, Lucas locked up and came to join me.
It was cold, this late at night, this late in the year. My nose was starting to run, and I suspected I was starting to get a head cold. Ugh. At least I’d made a good amount of tips. I bet Ryan would love some hot chocolate in Central Park this weekend.
“Let me give you a ride home,” Lucas offered.
I was tempted. The bus schedule was notoriously unreliable, and I just wanted to go into bed.
But I couldn’t risk it. My home was where Ryan and I lived. The Rattler was where Lucas and I worked. And never the twain shall meet. At least not until I had time to consider what all this could mean.
To my surprise, Lucas didn’t push when I declined. Normally he’d been big on optimizing for efficiency, and he’d consider waiting for the bus inefficient. He’d never been disrespectful of my decision, but back in college we’d had more than one disagreement-turned-argument-turned-make-out-session spawned by our different approaches.
He also didn’t leave. I refrained from shooing him off. If he wasn’t arguing, neither would I.
Lucas stayed until the bus came thirty minutes later. He stayed until I was on it and was still there when the bus turned the corner and I lost sight of him.
5. Lucas
I told myself it was entirely reasonable, as a new boss, to memorize when certain employees were working. The fact I’d never given a shit when I’d been running my start-up as long as the job got done or the fact I really only memorized one employee’s schedule was a coincidence.
Which basically meant I was pacing around the bar as if it would cause Kara to suddenly appear.
It was five past four on Monday. The Rattler had just opened for the night, and it wasn’t like Kara to be late.
Maybe she’d missed the bus, I reasoned. It could delay her easily twenty minutes. So I forced myself back into the office to do more paperwork—was there anything I hated more? Nope—and waited for Kara to come.
Exactly twenty minutes later, since that was the longest I could stop myself from constantly checking, I went back out front. Still no sign of her.
I did, however, spot the red-headed waitress Kara seemed friendly with. Amanda, was it? No, maybe Amelia. She was punching some orders into the new computer system off to the side.
“Amelia, where’s Kara?”
She turned and looked at me. “Come again?”
“Kara’s on the schedule tonight, but she’s not here.” I sounded impatient. It wasn’t a great tone to take; I didn’t want to be a jackass boss. But I’d been looking forward to seeing Kara, dammit, especially since she didn’t work weekends. Maybe because the electrician had gotten ahead of schedule today so we could begin to remodel the customer-facing area. She could start consulting, and I could spend more time with her.
Which was the exact opposite of what was happening when she wasn’t even at work.
“She’s sick. We traded shifts.”
Sick?
Another waitress overheard. “Oh, did she catch that bug going around? My nephew had it last week. Just about took my brother out with him.”
Amelia nodded, no longer paying attention to me. “I think so. You know she’d work to the bone under any other circumstance, so it’s gotta be serious. Poor thing.”
She abruptly remembered I was there and faced me. “Yeah, she’s out.” Then walked off, no semblance of the flirty waitress from a week ago.
Kara didn’t often get sick, or at least, she rarely did in college. When she did, it was a doozy. She’d loathed missing lectures and falling behind on work. While I hated that she was uncomfortable, I appreciated the chance to do something for her. She had an independent streak a mile wide which, while endearing, drove me up the wall when she would do things like stand out in the cold waiting to catch some drafty bus rather than just let me give her a ride home.
What I did next wasn’t exactly professional. Or even remotely professional. But whatever. I told someone in the kitchen to give me a large to-go container of whatever soup we had and while they took care of that, I looked up her address. Definitely unprofessional. But it was almost unfair of her to expect that. Every time she called me Mr. Northman instead of Luke it was like she was trying to put another wall between us when I wanted nothing more than to tear down every single one.
A few minutes later I headed to the address I’d punched in my GPS. The only issue I had was I didn’t actually know which apartment she was in.
I did, however, have her cellphone number from her paperwork. I punched the number into my phone and after a minute she answered.
“Hello?” Her voice was rough.
“Hey, it’s me.”
“Lu—Mr. Northman?”
I grit my teeth at that. “Yeah. I’m at your building. Amelia mentioned you were sick so I brought you some soup.”
The line was silen
t.
I added, “It’s French onion. With extra saltines.” That was her preference, or it had been a decade ago, anyway.
Silence hung heavy between us. Suddenly, this seemed like an incredibly stupid idea.
“Okay,” she said. She rattled off her apartment number.
I wasted no time heading up. I was eager to see her, if for no other reason than the fact everything was better with her nearby.
She opened the door slowly. I held the take-out bag up as a peace offering. From the way she tracked the movement and kept one hand on the door, she was tempted to just snatch it and go.
I told myself I wouldn’t stay long. She was, after all, sick. I wasn’t a total asshole. But I’d spent a decade wondering what she was up to, where she was living. When we were younger, I’d never imagined those answers would be different from mine.
Seeing that I wasn’t giving the bag up immediately, she opened the door wider.
“Come in.”
That was all the invitation I needed. I looked around the space. Tidy, aside from some blankets nestled around the couch. Nothing else was out of place. Two rooms were at the end of the hall, doors shut.
“We can eat over here,” she said, as if impatient for me to stop looking around.
I obliged and brought the bag over to the kitchenette. It was a semi-open design, so the island connected to the living room. Between the island and the rest of the cabinets and fridge was a small table for two.
I unloaded the soup, which, despite her earlier reluctance, Kara wasted no time sipping. Deeming it too lukewarm, she set it in the microwave for a minute, then tried it again once it was steaming.
“Ahh,” she said. “That’s from the Rattler, isn’t it?”
I nodded.
She snorted. “Can’t even escape work on my day off.”
“Oh, my apologies,” I teased. I reached playfully for the container. “I’ll just take it back.”
Before my hand had moved even a few inches forward, she snatched the bowl closer. Despite being sick, she evidently still had good reflexes.
“Mine,” she grumbled. From the twinkle in her eye, I knew it was playful.
I grinned. That’s my girl.
Of course, I saw the moment she remembered for whatever reason she wanted to keep distance between up. The playful look in her eye dimmed as her gaze darted around the sparse kitchen, looking at anything but me.
Fine. If she wanted emotional distance, I’d switch to professional topis. “The electrician came by today.”
“Anything interesting?” Her lips kissed the rim of the paper bowl, sipping gently and simultaneously triggering a range of images in my imagination. I shoved them aside, refocusing on business topics.
“He gave the all-clear on the front of the bar. It’ll take a couple more days to get to do the kitchen area, but that’s fine. I figure you can come in, once you’re better, say, nine, nine-thirty and we can figure out how to remodel the place.”
She nodded without putting the spoon down.
The Rattler made surprisingly good food, I’d been happy to discover, despite the fact the vast majority of customers only ordered drinks.
We sat in silence for a few minutes. There was an element of unease that had never been there before, and something tentative that could be great. When we’d first gotten together, there hadn’t been anything tentative about us.
Kara finished the first bowl and got up to microwave the second.
“How was your weekend?” I asked when the microwave dinged. That was innocent enough.
Kara had been holding the bowl in one hand, about to gulp down some of the hot soup when I asked. Apparently my question had startled her because she lost her grip on the bowl which spilled on her.
“Ow!”
I sprang up.
“You okay?” I asked.
“Yeah, fine, just burned myself. Crap.” She went over to the sink to run her arms, which had borne the brunt of the soup, under cold water.
I went to her fridge to try and find an ice pack. It was one of those double door refrigerators, so it took me a moment to figure out which was the freezer. I paused when I opened it, surprised. In the refrigerator, there was nothing but a pack of hotdogs, and in the freezer there were just two bags of frozen vegetables and a few ice packs.
She commented she hadn’t had the energy to go food shopping since being sick, indicating my confused look hadn’t gone unnoticed.
I nodded, not asking how it was possible she’d gotten this low on food. We may have been close once, but in Kara’s mind, that was a long, long time ago.
I grabbed two of the ice packs and put one on the counter.
“Let me wrap the ice pack to your hands.” The skin was red where the soup had splashed her. It had to hurt.
Kara hesitated, then extended a hand. “You can use Saran Wrap from that drawer.”
I blinked for a moment, surprised she hadn’t protested that she could do it herself, then I pulled open the drawer she pointed to.
I grasped her wrist tenderly. Even with the inflamed skin, her arm was soft under my touch. It was the first time she’d let me touch her since I’d joined the Rattler. Normally, she avoided me with a deftness that had to be intentional, her eyes catching mine from behind the bar before she’d hasten to deal with the next customer.
She twitched, bringing me back to the task at hand. She was in pain. Fuck. I didn’t waste another moment, gently positioning the icepack on the back of her hand with my own and rolling the plastic around it. She offered me the other hand, which I quickly wrapped. In the end, she was left with two clunky hands that resembled flippers.
“What are you grinning about?”
I gestured to her arms. “Picturing you as a penguin, between your puffy coat and newfound flippers.”
That earned an eye roll. And a small smile, which was no small feat these days. “I’d give you the bird, but unfortunately I can’t do that properly right now.”
I chuckled. “Raincheck, then.”
The floor was sticky from the soup, so I dealt with that. Afterward, it was obvious Kara was exhausted so I decided to see myself out. As much as I longed to return to the days where we were constantly looking to be around each other, dragging out chance meetings on campus, even if it just meant sitting and reading in silence, those days weren’t today.
As I walked out of her building, I turned the brief interaction over in my mind. A part—a large part—of me wanted to pick up exactly where we’d left off. On the one hand, it was insane. We’d dated almost a decade ago. The fact we’d found each other was utter coincidence. Yet despite the insanity, it felt right. I’d been longing for something so long, a person, a place to belong, and I’d searched. I’d tried to find it in my work, in my company, in a half-dozen other ventures, now at the bar.
But once I saw Kara, heard her signature dry remarks, caught her gaze and felt the same electricity between us… I knew. She was everything I had ever craved in life.
I wasn’t completely insane. We’d been apart for ten years. No picking off right where we left off. If I wasn’t at square one, I was damn close to it, considering Kara’s reluctance to let me in. And that killed me a little.
But that didn’t dissuade me the way it once would have. I didn’t give up easily. Maybe once, I’d been young and unsure where my priorities were. I’d had a years to try and find myself. I’d learned a lot in that time, spent time immersed in crippling loneliness when I’d left her behind. I’d figured out what was trivial—business, money—and what I needed.
So this time, I wasn’t going anywhere.
6. Kara
After Luke left, I tried to get some sleep. Mrs. Shubert from across the hall had agreed to watch Ryan for a few hours so I could rest, which was good because I would’ve had no way to explain my son’s presence. I’d barely had enough time to try and hide Ryan’s things before Lucas came up. Doing it through the fog of cold medication was doubly hard.
Did
that make me a bad person? Very possibly. I just wasn’t ready to deal with things. I’d never expected to see Lucas Northman again. I’d read “What to Expect When You’re Expecting” cover to cover several times, but unfortunately Murkoff and Mazel never bothered to write “What to Expect When You Have to Tell the Father of Your Child He is, in Fact, a Father.” Lazy authors.
The soup had done miracles for me. Did he remember French onion was my favorite, or was it a coincidence? Being sick on top of previously missing shifts when Ryan was sick meant I hadn’t had time, or much spare money, to get groceries. The taste was familiar and comforting. And having Lucas come by, fret over me in his quiet stoic way, comically wrapping my hands even though I’d be fine with a little aloe vera.
That had been familiar and comforting too.
Ryan was due for the big elementary school class trip in a couple weeks, a three-day, two-night excursion that I had forgotten about and was suddenly due, so there went the cash I kept on hand. I hadn’t eaten in about a day and a half, though I made damn sure Ryan had enough.
I would need to brave the cold, even if just to the convenience store a couple blocks away for overpriced sandwiches.
A knock woke me up after what seemed like minutes. It was almost eight, based on wall clock. It had actually been a gift from Mindy from a second-hand shop. I’d repainted the handles so they complimented the rest of the decor. The wooden face was wonderful. Sometimes I’d brush my fingers over it.
God, cold medicine was awful stuff. I was about twenty seconds from composing sonnets about an old clock.
I forced myself up and wobbled to the door. I was groggy, but definitely a bit better. My throat wasn’t quite so clogged; my head was a bit clearer. The soup had done wonders. A quick peek through the peephole confirmed it was Mrs. Shubert with Ryan.
I opened the door, about to thank her for bringing him back over when I saw two grocery bags in her hands.