I took the bag gratefully, but made a token noise of protest anyway. “It’s hard to keep track of every little thing that early in the morning,” I joked back, even if it was true. Sometimes, between trying to feed the cows and put the milk away and clean the porch, handling fiddly things like my own meals tended to fall through the cracks.
Ma just laughed. She had the kind of laugh that made everyone want to laugh with her, and I found myself chuckling along.
“Well, I’ll start moving it to the counter if you keep forgetting it,” she said. Then, she took a step back toward the door. “I should be going, though. I got a shift in just a few.”
She worked really hard, too. With a nod, I raised my free hand and waved. “Thanks for bringing my lunch.”
“Of course, Jeff,” she replied, and then smiled once more. “See you tonight.” With that, she swept back out the door and headed to her parked car.
I turned to take my food to the back room so I could store it in the fridge. On the way there, I heard a few voices. “…It’s a shame about Jack.”
Ah. That was my dad’s name. Despite myself, I froze where I stood. In the stillness, it sounded like those voices were ringing loud and clear.
“Cancer, of all things … geez,” said one. I could identify it as belonging a regular customer, but couldn’t put a name or face to him. Maybe he’d been close with my old man? Everyone in town seemed to be, to some degree.
“Can’t believe it’s already been five years,” said the other voice, thick with pity.
“It really isn’t the same without him. What a loss.”
That was enough to kick my feet back into motion again. I gritted my teeth and made it the rest of the way into the back room and shoved my lunch into the fridge, trying to ignore the negative feelings that swept over me as those words echoed through my head again and again.
2
Tarek
When the sun rose on Nitter Valley, I never really had the chance to take a look at it.
Rather, I always hit the ground running as soon as I opened my eyes –- or so it felt. Whether it was because I double-booked my own schedule, or because there were too many things running back-to-back in a single twenty-four-hour period, I always felt like a chicken running around with its head cut off.
Today was definitely no exception. My alarm woke me up bright and early as usual, but when I tapped it off, I noticed a new notification on my phone. Strange … my siblings and I had only moved here a few weeks ago, so I didn’t get texts very often.
I opened the text, which read: Tarek – short-staffed this morning. We need you in.
The text was from my manager. As I checked the time stamp, I realized that it had been sent … over an hour ago.
That was all it took to have me bounding out of bed in a flash. Panic immediately surged through me and shook those hazy threads of sleep out of my head.
You have got to be kidding me, I thought. I’d just started working at that coffee shop a week ago, and now I would already have a tardy on my record? Not good at all.
Before I zoomed off to start getting dressed, I shot a text back to my manager letting her know that I would be in soon. I just had to make sure Rajal and Neri were up and ready to face the day.
At seventeen, Rajal could mostly take care of himself by now. Neri, on the other hand, was only eleven. Even though we had all been getting by without our parents since she was two, and had had to grow up pretty fast, there were some things that a kid her age just couldn’t do on their own. And besides, I still liked to help out with where I could.
After I had washed my face and buttoned my work shirt up, I ran down into the kitchen to slam some bread into the toaster. I liked to make bigger, heartier breakfasts when I could, but our kitchen was still woefully bereft of food, except for the basics. Restocking an empty kitchen from scratch was pretty expensive, after all.
“Neri!” I called down the hall. “Breakfast will be ready soon!”
Silence greeted me. Neri was normally the hungriest of all of us in the morning, so not hearing the immediate patter of her feet was pretty strange. My brow furrowed. Leaving the bread to toast, I started to walk down the hall.
“Neri?” I called out again, which was followed by more silence. I knocked on her door once I got to it and listened for a few seconds to see if I could hear any noises coming from inside. It, too, was quiet.
“Neri, I’m coming in.”
I pushed the door open a few seconds later when I wasn’t met with any complaints or refusal. The blinds and curtains were still drawn shut, keeping the room mostly in darkness. From her bed, I could hear Neri as she groaned and rolled over.
“Tarek…? Ugh. Is it time for breakfast already?”
Neri sounded exhausted, which was unfortunately par for the course these days. Her allergies started to bother her as soon as the weather shifted, and it always took her a while to adjust to new houses. She probably hadn’t been sleeping well.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to address that while I was already running late. Like every morning that had come before, this one would be a flurry of activity, with me hopping from one to the next at warp speeds.
“Hold on, I’ll be back in a second,” I said, keeping my voice low. I always felt bad when I had to leave my siblings feeling less-than-stellar, but it wasn’t like I could help it. Someone had to make money to support the household.
I rushed back into the kitchen, and my timing was perfect since the toast had just popped out, nicely browned. Dry toast was a great food to snack on, after all. From the fridge, I pulled Neri’s favorite flavor of yogurt and a few pieces of pre-cut fruit from the salad we’d had the night before. It wasn’t a grandiose breakfast in bed, but it was the best I could do.
One by one, I started to carry as many of the items as I could into her room. I arranged them on the table next to her bed, which was empty of everything except a clock, telling me that fifteen minutes had already passed since I texted my manager.
“Here,” I said after I had finished arranging everything. She made a disgruntled sound and turned away, shielding her eyes from the light now pouring in through the hallway.
“I brought you some breakfast to help you wake up … I have to go to work now, but you know where to call me if you need anything.”
I had posted my work number and cell phone number via sticky note to the fridge days ago. That way, no matter what, they could always get ahold of me in an emergency situation. It hadn’t happened yet, and I hoped it never would. Especially not now, when we had only been here for such a short time.
Neri shook her head a little, finally sitting upright with a little huff. “I’ll be okay … thanks, Tarek.”
I offered a smile that wasn’t entirely genuine, since I was too worried and frazzled to manage anything else. But I couldn’t afford to lose any more time, so I patted her head and stood again.
“Feel better soon,” I said, and walked to the door. “We’ll get you some allergy medicine tomorrow.”
Apparently, you had to be working as a barista for a minimum of two weeks before the health benefits kicked in, and it would be a tight squeeze to fit medicine on my current paycheck. Especially when I was already handling rent, electricity, food, and, of course, my ridiculously expensive tuition.
All I wanted to was be done with college already, and graduation was so close. One of the biggest hurdles standing in my way was the cost of it, which I scrambled to keep up with every semester.
Consumed by these thoughts that were almost always with me, I ate my breakfast in such a mind-numbing hurry that I didn’t even remember what sort of topping I’d put on my toast. Once I was done, I went to wash my hands and dump out the remains of Rajal’s breakfast, mentally reminding myself to scold him for leaving dirty dishes unattended.
But of course, bad things tended to come in threes, and the third one was on its way. As soon as I flipped the switch for the garbage disposal, it made a nasty grinding noise, and
a fountain of water spewed up from the drain.
“What the heck!?” I yelped and quickly jumped back. Fortunately, I moved fast enough to keep my work shirt from getting soaked, but that didn’t save me from the biggest problem at hand.
I glanced at the disposal and back at my phone, and then sighed and picked it up. Quickly, I texted:
Had a couple of emergencies. I’ll be in in 30.
All I could do now was hope that they weren’t too mad about my delay, but I couldn’t leave the disposal like this if I was leaving Neri on her own today. I didn’t want her to freak out if she ended up having to use the disposal, only for it to start spewing gunk and making horrific noises.
Fortunately, I’d had to become a handyman out of necessity over the years, since no one else was around to patch things up when they broke. I could do everything from caulking bathtubs to cleaning out gutters, fixing light bulbs to broken electronics, and figuring out every which way a power source could possibly break. As it turned out, both houses and apartments had a lot of things in them that could go haywire, so knowing how to fix it all was invaluable.
After I popped outside quickly to get my toolbox, I opened up the door underneath the sink and slid under to look around. I’d dealt with almost this exact same problem before, so it didn’t take me long to find the point that needed fixing.
Still, my half-hour was almost up by the time I finished with the last bit of work. I slipped back out from under the sink and wiped my forehead free of sweat.
“Phew … all right, anything else feel like breaking on me today?”
As I glanced around the room as if waiting for a reply, my phone vibrated in my pocket. That was my ten-minute warning, which was fortunately about all the time I needed to get into work. Living near the town center was good for that, if nothing else.
With one last check of my shirt, I nabbed my apron off the hook by the door and scooped my keys up from the bowl they rested in on the kitchen counter. I grabbed my name tag, too, and stepped outside to greet the blustery morning. The sun was nice, but not very warm. Not that I had time to complain about, or enjoy, the weather pretty much any day of the week.
Ten minutes later, I was just pulling into the parking lot of my store when my phone went off again. As I pulled it out of my pocket, I felt immediate concern when I saw that it was Rajal texting me this time.
What now? Was Neri okay? Had the disposal broken again, somehow? Or worse, had something else broken too?
I opened the text with some trepidation. It read:
You forgot to feed the chickens.
Damn. It was always something, wasn’t it? I cursed under my breath and started to text back to ask him if he could take care of it. As I was typing, he sent another message.
I got it done, don’t worry. I’ll keep an eye on Neri, too.
Relief immediately washed over me. Being able to rely on Rajal for things like this took a big chunk of worry off my shoulders. Back when both of my siblings were too young to even cook for themselves, it felt like I was carrying the weight of the world.
These days, it … was still a lot to deal with, honestly. I felt tired so often, especially as I had to add more jobs and longer hours to my workload in order to make enough money for all of us. But it was better than nothing.
After shooting back a quick thank-you text, I headed in to work.
3
Jeffrey
By the time things finally wound down at the store, the sun had already dipped below the horizon. I sighed and wiped my brow, unsurprised by the film of sweat that clung to it.
It seemed that even as the days cooled down, the work was still enough to make me overheat. Not that I minded too much. It was the slow days that got to me more.
When things were slow, it gave me too much time to think, and I almost always got stuck on the same things. I would think about the stuff I needed to fix on the farm once I got back, or whether or not Ma was holding up okay on her own. I would think about my old man.
Today, especially, it was difficult to keep my mind off him. Try as I might, once those well-meaning shoppers had brought him up, I could only think about how much everyone — everyone in the town — seemed to miss him.
I also couldn’t help but think about how I stacked up against him in the end. He’d done so much for everyone, and even though I was spreading myself so thin, it still felt like I wasn’t getting anything done compared to him. I was trapped in a rut, and I hated it, but there was nothing that I could do. I couldn’t talk about it, or complain to anyone, since that wasn’t something to dump on any of my friends and Ma already had enough on her plate.
I shook my head, trying to clear the gloomy considerations away once I realized I had delved back into them. With a sigh, I picked up the mop that I had set aside and started to clean the floor with renewed vigor.
That was when the bell rang again.
I was a little surprised. Not many people came in this close to closing time, unless they were people like me, who started work early and didn’t get out until late.
When I looked up, to greet what I could only hope would be our last customer for the day, my breath caught in my throat.
I had never seen this guy around town before. He had the kind of face you wouldn’t be able to forget, even if you tried. His jawline was perfectly shaped, and his cheekbones rose high and proud. His nose was straight and well-proportioned, leading up to finely-shaped brows, thick and dark.
His equally dark hair was swept to the side in a style that looked simultaneously effortless and high-fashion. His eyes, a deep honey color, swept across one side of the shop to the other before they landed on me.
When he headed my way, I was momentarily shocked, having forgotten I was the only person on the floor wearing a uniform. “Hey, uh … this is my first time here,” he explained, looking a little sheepish. “I need some chicken feed. Do you mind giving me a hand?”
I nodded reflexively and gestured for him to follow me as my feet automatically guided me down the aisle with the best feed. As we walked into it together, we ended up evening out our pace somehow, so that I wasn’t the one leading. Instead, the two of us walked nearly side-by-side.
We bumped into each other as we turned the corner, and I could feel a curious little spark in my chest that I had to actively fight to ignore. At least I could focus on the feed bags once we got there.
“What type are you looking for?” I asked, more to fill the silence than anything. “We’ve got some corn-based ones down this way, but the best stuff is up here.”
I patted a few of the smaller bags. Naturally, the more expensive and “better” feed came in smaller portions for a heavier cost, but I’d heard enough farmers swear by it to know that it at least deserved a mention. For me, personally, I felt like regular old cornmeal did the trick just fine.
The newcomer looked over the bags, seemingly trying to decide which of them he was more interested in. “Hm … I think cornmeal is fine,” he finally said, pointing toward a bag that just happened to be my go-to brand of choice. “That looks close to what we used to get.”
“This one here? You got it,” I said, and leaned down to start pulling the heavy sack from the shelf.
He was still standing close — close enough that I probably would have tried to reclaim some space if it were any other customer. Instead, I just felt my heart thrum in my chest. Almost like I was in a trance, I watched his lips move, and only realized two seconds too late that he was addressing me again.
“…are you listening?”
My eyes snapped back up toward his eyes. He was looking amused, and had taken a step back to observe me.
I was immediately flustered and my cheeks flushed, which was unusual for me. Fortunately, I was able to regain my mental balance quickly. “Yeah, sorry. Sorry, it’s just been a real long day, you know?”
My apologetic look and jest seemed to be accepted as an explanation, and he gave me a sympathetic look in turn, laughing a little. “
Yeah, I get you, man. Those long shifts are rough, huh?”
“Yeah,” I said in agreement, and mentally scolded myself for letting my thoughts wander so much. I shook my head to clear it for what felt like the hundredth time in the last hour, and continued down the aisle toward the counter with the cornmeal in hand. We bumped shoulders a few more times in doing so, and I tried my best to ignore how it made my toes curl.
I made a bit of a conscientious effort to stand at a small distance when we stopped at the counter. After I rang up his stuff, I held out the receipt.
“Do you need help carrying that to your car?” When he paused to look at the bag, I added, “It’s heavier than it looks.”
My tone was somewhat jesting, but serious enough to make it clear that I was giving a very real warning. That was the reason I was here in the first place; they wouldn’t need someone to load up the carts, shelves and cars if they weren’t worried about getting sued for some customer’s back injury someday.
“Then, yeah, if you don’t mind.”
I smiled. “Nah, it’s my job.”
After he took the receipt, I reached down for the bag, lifting it up and resting it partially on my shoulder as I had been taught to do. Supposedly this kept your back from taking on all the pressure by itself, but to be honest, I’d never really noticed a difference. My back hurt the same at the end of a hard day of work no matter how I went about it.
As we entered the parking lot, our one dingy lamp finally flickered on, reacting to the darkness. It illuminated the blacktop with an annoying buzzing sound that I ignored, already too used to it to care.
The stranger led me toward one of the only other cars in the lot and popped the trunk. It was, quite fortunately, very spacious and clean. You wouldn’t believe the number of people who expected me to fit giant bags of feed into trunks that were already full to the brim.
“Thanks,” he said after I had neatly set the bag into the car. It barely bounced from the movement with how lightly I managed to set it down.
Dr. Perfect: A Contemporary Romance Bundle Page 54