I groan. “I can’t tonight. I have to finish baking three cheesecakes and decorate four layer cakes. And make two batches of cookie dough.”
“Maybe tomorrow then?” he asks.
“That works.”
“Excellent.” He backs toward the door. “So now I’m really looking forward to tomorrow.”
“Gourdough’s won’t let you down.”
“The doughnuts won’t be the main attraction for me.”
Heat licks my face. “You say that now, but when you take a bite of a Fat Elvis as big as your head, you’ll say, ‘Linnea? Who’s Linnea?’”
10
MAXINE
Chris and I are in the bed of his pickup truck, leaning against the rear window, Town Lake at our backs. I locate Ursa Major in the clear dark sky, point it out to him with a finger drawing on the chalkboard of the night. He indulges me as I tell him how the light that outlines the bear burned out long ago. I can feel him looking at me the whole time. Like I’m the constellation. His feet are propped on a big metal toolbox in the bed with rust around the latch, a blue tarp folded underneath it. He’s twirling a lock of my hair around his finger like spaghetti around a fork.
“No one should have to live through the day you had,” he says.
I scoff. “Why not me, though? I’m not special.”
“You are, though.” He grabs my hand, kisses my knuckles. His palms are calloused from his work as a welder. I can’t help but think about Ezra’s smooth hand in mine earlier.
“Don’t let me be one of those girlfriends who complains about everything, okay?”
“That’s not you, Max. You don’t have to worry.”
“But what if I—”
“What-ifs never solved anything,” he says.
“I’m officially the worst daughter ever.” Trying to swallow a fresh lump in my throat, I throw back more of the peppermint schnapps he brought me. With each slug, the day gets fuzzier.
“You couldn’t look the other way,” he says softly. “She needs the kind of help you can’t give her.”
“Right. But I don’t have to feel so relieved that she’s not my problem for however long she’s in the hospital.” Shelby’s with the boys tonight. She insisted I keep my plans, pointed out that more than ever I needed some fun. She of course knows what tomorrow is. Knows how much I’m dreading it.
“You have to stop punishing yourself for being human,” Chris says. There’s the sound of something slipping into the water. Probably a turtle. But it makes me think of Harper going under and not coming back up. Her lungs filling with water, her limbs slowing until—
I sit straight up. “This was a bad idea.”
“What was?” There’s alarm in his voice.
“Coming here.” I thought I could honor Harper by being where she was last. Coming to terms with the reality by coming back to the spot. What supreme bullshit those grief “experts” spout. “I know it was my idea.”
“Then we’ll undo the idea,” he says. “You want me to take you home?”
I shake my head. “Not yet.”
“What do you have in mind?” His feet come off the toolbox. He sits up straighter.
Although sex has been a guaranteed way for me to fleetingly distract myself from capital-R Reality, it feels wrong tonight. Plus, when we had sex last time (last week, in the cab of his truck, out by Lake Austin), I’m pretty sure he blurted that he loved me. I’m not ready for that.
And although Chris is my first serious boyfriend, he’s not the first guy I’ve had sex with, even though I’m pretty sure he assumed he was when I told him I’d never had a serious boyfriend. Harmless assumption. After all, nothing about the first time will ever be repeated, and it was wrong from every angle. Not to mention über-complicated.
“You name it,” he says. “Whatever you want to do, wherever you want to go.”
“Ink.”
“As in getting inked?”
I look at him sidelong. “Big strong man brave enough?”
“Hell, yes, my fair lady.” He tips an invisible cap at me.
Either Chris or the booze (or maybe the combo) relaxes me. A white heron skates the breeze above us like a memory from a dark place.
“We’ll get each other’s names,” he says.
I laugh. “Good one.”
For a moment, he looks crestfallen. He couldn’t have meant it, could he? Jesus, I’m only eighteen; he’s only nineteen. The disappointment I thought I saw is replaced with a clowning cross-eyed expression. “I’m hilarious, I know.” He takes a swig out of his bottle.
“Hey,” he gasps, “the needles’ll hurt less if we’re buzzed.”
“Working on it.” I drain the little bottle. “I’m out, though, and you know I hate that stuff you drink.” He’s got some Texas whiskey that’s supposed to make you grow horns or chest hair.
“Hold on a second.” He climbs down off the bed and into the cab of the truck. I hear the glove compartment spring open and then click shut. He’s back, with another mini schnapps for me. “But before you get too wasted, I wanted to give you something.”
It’s small, square, loosely wrapped in grass-green tissue paper. “Go ahead, open it.” He’s smiling, his teeth bone-white against the night.
“Chris …”
“Go on, open it. Don’t say something like ‘you shouldn’t have.’ I care about you, in case you haven’t already noticed.”
I cup his cheek with my palm. He turns his mouth to my hand, kisses it. I hook my fingers around the back of his neck, draw his face closer, dive into him with a hungry, searching kiss. Maybe I’m wrong about not wanting sex tonight.
“Whoa,” he says, laughing, breaking off the kiss first. “You haven’t even seen what it is yet.”
“You’re too good to me. Did I thank you for fixing the dishwasher, by the way?”
“Only about twenty-seven times.”
Tonight Chris noticed it was broken, had the right tools in his truck, and had it fixed in about eighteen minutes (sans Internet), and that’s even accounting for piggyback breaks he was compelled to take when Race crawled on him while he was kneeling on the floor.
“I know tomorrow is gonna be hard, Maxine. No way around it.”
“Yeah. You do know.” That’s something that connects us, Chris and I, grief, even though he always reminds me it’s the surviving it that matters, not what came before. Two months after Harper died, I started going to a bereavement support group. That’s where I met Chris. He was a good listener, a good sharer, empathic. In the circle of chairs, he always took the seat next to me and floated Kleenex onto my knee at the precise moment I needed it. So when, after at least a month more of meetings, he nervously asked if I’d like to get coffee or dinner with him sometime, I was surprised to hear myself say yes.
I turn the package over, find the scotch-taped flaps, start to peel it open with care.
“Religion makes you squirmy, I realize,” he says. “But this doesn’t have to be like that. It’s just a symbol.”
I open the envelope of tissue paper. There’s a small carved wooden cross on a simple brown cord. It’s spare. Smooth. Beautiful. It looks hand-made. “Chris, did you—”
“When I was young I went to this religious camp. They taught us to work with our hands, to fix things, make things. They taught us to make those. After a while it was like meditating, you know? Like just seeing the block of pine and the knife could calm us down.”
“I love it.”
“With every flick of the blade I thought about you. I know you’ll come through the worst of it. You will. I didn’t think I would. I still think about Henry every day, but I’m back with the living now.” He stifles the start of a sob with the back of his hand.
I scoot closer to him, press my leg against his. “Thank you, Chris.” I drape the cord over my neck. “This will remind me I can hope.”
“I’m lucky to have you,” he says. He adjusts the cross so it lays flat over my heart. “Not a minute goes by where I
forget that.”
The moonlight softens his face. He’s what Shelby calls “ruggedly handsome.” She once found a picture of the Marlboro Man to prove her point and told me to imagine the guy twenty years younger, minus the hat and stirrups and perpetual sunlight squint. I see what she means now, something almost craggy in Chris’s features. Prominent jaw. Strong brow. Slight cleft in the chin. His body, too, is the Marlboro variety: tall, broad shouldered, muscular. So different from Ezra, who is tall too, but slight and narrow.
“I don’t feel like I can ever get where you are,” I say.
He tilts his head questioningly. An owl complains from the far side of the lake.
“Strong,” I explain. “Not consumed by the pain.”
Chris nods. “You can. You will. In the meantime, borrow my strength.” He opens his wide hand, offers it to me. I press my palm against his, and our fingers curl together.
“C’mon, sweetheart,” he says. “If you’re serious about getting inked, we’d better hit the shops before they close.”
Although Chris chooses Atlas holding up the earth, I don’t like any of the suggestions on the wall of the shop or in the book the artist offers me. The guy says, “Ladies first,” gesturing toward the back with a sweep of his under-tattooed arm. He’s paradoxically dressed in daffodil yellow but has a black dagger inked onto the side of his neck.
“Actually, could you go first?” I ask Chris. He nods, kisses his fingertips and brushes them against my cheek.
While Chris is under the whirring needle, I make use of the pad and pencil the tattoo artist gave me. Even though I’m still loopy from the booze, I am able to sketch what I want sunk into my skin.
Chris comes back to the waiting area looking queasy. There’s a large gauze square taped over his bicep. “Let me see,” I say, but the artist warns it should stay covered for twenty-four hours.
Wordlessly, I hand the guy my drawing, hoping I’m remembering it accurately, and he shrugs in a way that says to each his own.
“Colors?” he asks.
“Blue here,” I point. “Red in the middle. And maybe both colors join and blend at the apex? Can you do that?”
“I can do anything, pretty girl. You’re the one who has to live with it.”
I follow him into the procedure room, a much cleaner and brighter space than promised by the waiting area. He asks me where I want it.
Where else? I nudge my jeans below my waistline and tap my hip.
Exactly where she had it.
11
LINNEA
The cheesecakes resting on their cooling racks look naked, so I go in search of fruit. Not berries, though. I’m tired of berries. Peaches aren’t in season yet, but I know we’ve got some frozen. Because the restaurant’s closed now, I have to leave the bakery, duck out onto the street, unlock the door, and walk through the restaurant to get to the main freezer. The kitchen is empty, the copper pots and pans clean and hanging on their hooks above the long spotless stainless steel counter that bisects the room. Leo may be a mess, but he runs a tight kitchen.
He must have left for the night. I’m not afraid of him. Not exactly. Maybe I would be if I encountered him in an alley. But he needs this job too much. Once he’s on the clock, he tends to stay out of the bakery side, like he did tonight, which suits me just fine.
The stainless steel freezer door is two tons heavier than it needs to be, what I imagine the door to a bank vault would weigh. Until the inside latch gets fixed, we have to use a wooden wedge to stop the door from shutting all the way. “Do your business and get out,” Nicola’s been saying. “We don’t need to overload the compressor while you slowpokes browse.” After the heat of the kitchen and the mugginess of the Austin night creeping into the bakery, I welcome the cold against my skin. It makes me feel more awake. Sharper.
Clearly Nicola’s hurry-up warning has rushed someone to dump a tray of chicken thighs on the pastry side, and the peaches are nowhere in sight. I escort the poultry to the right side and discover a tray of biscotti tossed onto a rack of lamb. I hear Leo in the kitchen, blabbing. Damn, so he is here. It’s a one-sided conversation, so he must be on his cell.
“Dude, will you shut up for one fucking second? I said I would take care of it.” Pause. “I won’t get my overtime paycheck for like two weeks, so you have to hold tight.” Pause. “That was the old me. I’ll make this right, I swear.” Pause. “’Course I have a key. I told you, I’m trustworthy now.”
I creep over to the freezer door and pick up the telltale doorstop, keeping the door from latching with the toe of my steel-toed restaurant shoe. I hold my breath, not that he’d be able to hear it over the freezer’s compressor. I can’t deal with his crap right now.
“Yeah, yeah,” Leo says. “I’ll be there in a few.”
I hear a pan clatter into the sink and then, a couple of seconds later, before I can really understand what’s happening, the freezer door overpowers my foot. He must have checked the door and nudged it.
It’s. Shut. Tight.
“Leo! I’m in here. Hello? Leo!”
Tomb silent. Does that mean he can’t hear me either? Or is he already gone?
I scream and pound on the door. I scream myself hoarse.
“LEO!”
I grab the aluminum tray of chicken thighs from off the shelf, dump the contents onto the floor, and bang the tray against the door. I pause and strain to hear something out there but I can only hear my own crazy breathing. My back against the door, I slump down to the floor.
I notice the reorder clipboard, yank it off its chain, and tear off a sheet. Furiously, fingers cramping with cold, I write
on the back. Harder than I’ve ever tried anything ever before, I try to shove the paper through to the other side. There’s no way to get it past the seal. My tears turn cold by the time they splash onto my neck.
The image of my phone behind the counter in the bakery is the cruelest thought bubble, one that gets stuck in my throat as a sob. Why didn’t I tell Leo I was working late? Because I didn’t want him skulking around me, that’s why.
The cold is swarming around me like pissed-off bees. I rub my arms. Jump up and down. Keep my heart pumping blood.
The colder I get, the narrower the cone of my vision gets. I can only see right in front of me. And even that is a struggle, dimmer and murkier, even though the overhead bulb still burns. My neck is creaky with cold. Hard to turn.
Oh my God, did I survive having the heart I was born with lifted out of my chest—while it was beating—only to be killed by a giant box that will preserve my dead body?
Whoever invented a walk-in freezer anyway?
12
MAXINE
Chris and I are on Rainey Street, trying to remember where we parked. Sure, maybe we’re staggering a bit (all right, all right, so I’m staggering), but whose business is that anyway? Besides, there are dozens of people on both sides of the street, exactly as inebriated (or more) than we are, shouting, laughing, living. Forgetting.
“Max?” the voice comes from behind me. Maybe if I ignore it, it’ll go away. The skin under my tattoo hurts. My head hurts. I don’t need a reproachful voice to hammer another nail into my skull.
“Maxine!” It’s Ezra. Shit. I forgot he has a new job waiting tables at Emmer & Rye to help pay for school. He grabs my arm and spins me around to face him. He smells like warm bread and briny olives.
“Ow!” I yell.
“Max?” Chris calls. He’s out ahead of me, in front of the Container Bar. He stops, whirls around and sees Ezra holding me. “Hey, whaddayou think you’re doing?” He’s in Ezra’s face in a flash.
“Did you get her drunk?” Ezra spits. The shiner Mom gave him looks raw in the streetlight’s sodium glare.
“I didn’t ‘get her’ anything,” Chris says. “She makes her own decisions.”
“I’m not so sure about that.”
“Guys! I’m right here!”
“What an asshole,” Ezra says to me, then to Chris:
“The last thing she needs is to get wasted.”
“Ezra!” I shout. But I’m slurring, so it comes out like Ehzurahhh. “Calm down, okay?” I want to add more, like “This is Austin, remember? Rainey Street. Everyone’s drunk around here.” But my words are drunk too, and they’ve sunk into their own exhausted heap.
“Are the boys alone?”
“Of course not!” Chris says. “Jesus H.”
I hold my hand up. I don’t need him defending me. “Shelby’s with them. Not that I owe you an explanation.”
Ezra looks confused. Hurt. I want to ease the hurt away, but my head throbs.
“Aren’t you out past your bedtime, little fella?” Chris says to Ezra, and somewhere in the back of my mind, a siren flicks on and starts to warm up, whirring soundlessly.
“Piss off,” Ezra says.
“You need to face the fact that the Tretheways don’t need you anymore,” Chris says.
“What do you know about the Tretheways?”
“You couldn’t protect Max’s sister,” Chris snaps, “so you sure as hell don’t need to play the hero with Max.”
The siren explodes into bright fragments of sound. I push Chris against a wall. Of course, I only push him because he lets me. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to move that wall of body. “What are you doing?” I hiss.
“What the fuck did you say to me?” Ezra asks Chris.
“You heard me, frat boy.”
I stretch out my arms, not sure if I’m protecting Chris or Ezra. Teetering on my unsteady feet, I try to keep myself between them. “Guys, please. Don’t.”
Ezra jabs a finger toward Chris. “Maybe I didn’t hear you. You’re not speaking clearly with all that shit in your mouth.”
Ezra, put that finger away. You’re not a fighter. I mean to say this, but it doesn’t make it out of my brain.
Chris kind of does, though. “Take your book learnin’ and git.” Chris exaggerates the drawl and smirks at Ezra as if he’s looking at a little boy trying to fill out his daddy’s Carhartt coat.
“Being smart isn’t an insult, you idiot!” Ezra says.
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