Best Served Cold

by Emma Hart

The painting in Best Served Cold was done, and the floor was filthy despite all my best efforts with dust sheets during that process. I still had to reattach shelves to the wall and put the ice cream cone lights on the walls, but I couldn’t think about that right now.

  Anything was better than the scene I’d left at my house.

  My mother had been crying on the sofa because my dad had apparently run off with someone younger with perkier tits than her—her words, not mine. My grandma was confused about why she’d come home without calling, and my grandfather had walked in, saw in hand, taken a look at the situation, and turned around again.

  I’d made a break for it at that point. I couldn’t handle my parent’s issues as well as my own, but of course that was how it worked.

  When something wanted to shit on you, it didn’t just take a shit. It ate three currys and took ten laxatives and covered you in it.

  At least my toe didn’t hurt today. Small mercies and all that good juju thought bullshit things.

  I dipped the brush into the hot, soapy water in the bucket next to me and, after giving it a shake, got back to work on the floor. It wasn’t dirty, per se, but it definitely needed a good scrub to make it look the way I wanted it to.

  AKA, white again.

  It was therapeutic. All the frustrations and anger from the past week—and last night—that I’d held tight in my muscles was being worked out. Every scrub I made provided a release from the emotion that was knotting itself inside my body.

  I’d had enough. I was done.

  I didn’t want to hurt anymore. Where Chase was concerned, I didn’t know how to move forward, but I just knew I didn’t want to hurt. I didn’t want to fight with him.

  I knew him.

  I knew he hadn’t done anything deliberately to hurt me. His ideas were stupid and his execution of them even dumber, but he wasn’t a cruel person. He wasn’t mean or vengeful.

  Not like me.

  I was vengeful. I wasn’t perfect. If you wronged me, I wanted to see you get your comeuppance. I wanted karma to bite you in the ass and laugh in your face.

  I was human.

  I had flaws, and I owned up to them.

  One of my flaws was the inability to face my emotions.

  I mean, I’d left my own mother crying on the sofa to scrub a fucking tiled floor.

  I wasn’t exactly daughter of the year, never mind human of the year.

  I knew it. I couldn’t face my emotions. I didn’t handle them well. Handled them a lot like picking up a hedgehog with my bare hands, if I was honest.

  Hell, not even a hedgehog.

  I’d handle sitting on a wasp nest better than I would my emotions.

  The fact was, I knew Chase hadn’t deliberately tried to hurt me. I believed him on that. I wasn’t going to hate him forever because of something that had happened… Well, I don’t know why it’d happened. His idea was fucking dumb, and I think he knew that. He knew he’d fucked up, he admitted it, he owned it.

  There was nothing more to discuss there.

  Chase Aarons couldn’t lie to me.

  I knew him too well. Although only days ago, I’d thrown back in his face that he “knew” me, it didn’t matter. You didn’t change a whole lot in two years unless you moved away and had a fucking epiphany or some shit.

  He hadn’t moved. Neither had I.

  Neither of us had changed. We’d grown older and gotten more experience, but we hadn’t changed as people.

  I still binged on trashy TV and murder mystery shows. I still ate my weight in pizza. I still drank vodka with water because that way, I could get drunk and be hydrated at the same time.

  He still let his beard grow just long enough to be a little unkempt but kept it trim enough that you couldn’t tell whether it was deliberate. He still had the same laugh that could light up Main Street during a blackout.

  He was still Chase.

  I was still Raelynn.

  And, in the end, we’d broken each other’s hearts.

  It didn’t all have to be hard. It would never be easy. I didn’t know if I could forgive him, but I knew I didn’t want him out of my life. Even if we were only ever friends…

  But could we be friends while he still loved me?

  How did I feel about him? Did I have any feelings? I’d sure as hell felt something when he’d kissed me last night. I’d felt that zing of delight and familiarity as his lips had pressed against mine.

  Yes, I’d cried. But that wasn’t my fault. That was, um, hormones. You know. Those ones that come out when your ex kissed you.

  In my defense, it would have been equally as easy to punch him.

  See? Uncontrollable.

  Nothing I could do about them.

  Pesky little bitches.

  I sighed and dropped onto my ass. This cleaning wasn’t anywhere near as therapeutic as I’d thought it would be. I couldn’t get anything straight inside my mind, so the only option here was abandonment.

  I had all the time in the world to clean.

  I needed to create right now, and luckily for me, I had a freezer full of ice cream tubs waiting for me.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN – RAELYNN

  I carefully set a handful of cotton candy on top of the Princess Sundae and sprinkled glitter over the white fluff. It was perhaps the prettiest I’d created yet—pink and sparkly and glittery, from the ice cream to the cotton candy to the white-chocolate water that was coated in glitter and sprinkles and cut into a crown shape.

  Mumford and Sons’ “I Will Wait” blasted into my ears courtesy of my headphones. Spotify had been both spot on and incredibly irritating with its music choices for me since I’d been creating, but all the music had done was block out everything but the lyrics and the process my brain went through as I worked.

  I put the finishing touches of silver candy balls onto the top of the sundae and glanced at my phone for the time. A frown marred my expression as I noticed the three text messages and four missed calls from Chase.

  I opened the messages and pulled the headphones off my ears.

  CHASE: I have a delivery with your name on it. Box is huge.

  CHASE: Hey. Are you in the store? I saw your car, but you didn’t answer the door.

  CHASE: …Rae? Your box is the size of a minivan. What did you order?

  I smirked.

  ME: A minivan.

  His response was instant.

  CHASE: Oh look, she’s alive. Ok to bring it over?

  ME: Sure.

  I turned off my headphones, leaving the music playing out of my phone in the kitchen and went to unlock the front door. I held it open, leaning against the wall as I waited for him.

  I scoffed the second I saw him. “That’s hardly the size of a minivan, is it?”

  Chase put the box on the floor and pushed it over the threshold into the store. “It’s fucking nearly there. It’s been in the middle of my floor for the last two hours.”

  “Two hours?”

  “Yeah. What the hell have you been doing in here?” He stepped inside the building.

  I shrugged. “Creating my new menu. I’ve had one hell of a morning and started off cleaning.” I motioned to the floor. “Then gave up. I locked the door, put my phone on silent, and then played music through my headphones.”

  Concern flickered in his eyes. “What happened?”

  Anxiety bubbled in my chest. I needed to talk about it, but I didn’t want to unload on him. Hell, I didn’t know where we stood. It wasn’t fair for me to tell him all my issues right now.

  “It doesn’t matter. It’s not—”

  “Important? It is. You look exhausted.” Chase took the door from my eyes and met my gaze. “If you need to talk it out, Marnie and Chelsea have the store sorted. In fact, I was all but kicked out.”

  I looked down with a smile. “You don’t—I mean, you don’t think it’s unfair?”

  “What’s unfair?”

  “For me to unload on you when I still haven’t processed everything that happ
ened last night.”

  Chase took my face in his hands. “Rae, the way you feel about me, whether you know what that is or not, doesn’t change the fact that I’m here for you. Me caring about you isn’t based on the way you feel about me. It’s unconditional.”

  My heart skipped a beat. “My mom showed up this morning.”

  He actually dropped his hands and took a step back. His eyes were wide and his eyebrows were basically in his hairline they’d shot up so high. “Your mom?”

  “Yup.” I leaned back against the wall. “She showed up at, like, eight-thirty, and declared on the doorstep that my dad had left her for someone else.”

  “Well, shit.”

  “Your reaction is scarily close to what mine was.”

  “Your dad left her for someone else?”

  I shrugged. “That was all I heard before I made a break for it. I left her sobbing on the sofa with Grandma. Definitely not winning any daughter of the year awards.”

  Chase wrinkled his face. “Hate to agree with you, but probably not. Still, that’s a little left-field, and you did have to come to work…”

  I shock-gasped and pressed my hand against my chest. “Are you writing me a whole list of excuses for why I couldn’t stay for the pity party?”

  “No, I was hoping you’d mumble something about feeling bad.” He shrugged a shoulder. “Never mind. I see your emotions are fully with the ice cream today.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You have sauce on your forehead and ice cream in your hair.”

  Simultaneously, I wiped at my forehead and reached for my hair. Sure enough, my fingers connected with sticky sauce on my forehead that turned out to be chocolate—how long had that been there?—but I couldn’t find the ice cream.

  “Here.” Chase stepped forward and reached for a lock of my hair like he had every right to run his fingers through my hair. “Wait, you probably can’t see that, huh?” Without releasing my hair, he nudged me into the restrooms and into the ladies’ room.

  Standing in front of the mirror, I saw it instantly. Pink and red made up the ice cream that colored the dark-blonde part of my balayage hair. I wrinkled my nose at the stickiness that was already setting in.

  “How,” Chase started, still holding my hair, “the hell did you get ice cream at the back of your head?”

  “Um.” I met his eyes in the mirror and blushed. “I was in the zone. I don’t really know, if I’m honest.”

  “What are you making?”

  I swiped my hair down the side of my head, pulling my hair from his grip. “New menu.”

  “You’re redoing it? Huh.”

  “Why so surprised?”

  “I don’t know. Isn’t that a lot of work?”

  “Yes. Not that you’d know.”

  He drew in a deep breath.

  I covered my face with my hands. “I’m sorry.”

  “No.” He stepped back. “It’s okay. It’s fair.”

  “No!” I spun and dropped my hands. “No, Chase, it’s not fair. You regret what you did. You didn’t mean it. Me beating you over the head with it isn’t fair. I’m sorry.”

  He rubbed his hand over the back of his neck and smiled cautiously at me. “I feel like I deserve it.”

  “Just because you feel like you deserve it doesn’t mean you do,” I said softly, finding his gaze with mine. “And it doesn’t mean I think you do, either.”

  “You don’t think I deserve it?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. I’m undecided, but I think I should not do it until I’ve come to my final choice.” I smiled and grabbed a paper towel to wet and get the ice cream out of my hair. It worked, leaving a bit of blue paper behind.

  Chase leaned forward and plucked it out of my hair. “There. Now you look like a regular human again. Except, you know, the sauce.”

  Crap. The sauce. How had I forgotten about that?

  I reached for another towel, but Chase already had one in his hand. Reaching around me, he wet it, then wiped it across my forehead, only just avoiding squeezing water into my eyes.

  I brought my shoulders up and squeaked as the ice-cold water trickled down my nose. I shivered, and Chase laughed, squeezing the paper towel so more than just one droplet ran down my skin.

  I screamed and stepped away as the water trickled down onto my collarbone and onto my chest. My toe throbbed at the pressure, so I ended up hopping into the wall. Chase’s laughter echoed off the tiled walls, and he leaned against the sink, putting his weight on it, as he laughed from his belly up.

  I knew that because it was deep and low, yet it had all the amusement of a thousand laughing toddlers.

  Fuck his laugh.

  Fuck him and his laugh and his smile.

  “Oh my God!” I wiped at my cheeks. “What the hell was that for?”

  He shrugged, still laughing, still bent at the waist. “It was funny,” he breathed. “You looked so cute with your nose wrinkled up.”

  I snatched the wet paper towel from the side of the sink and threw it at his face. “Asshole!”

  He tugged it away and filled his hand with water before throwing it my way in the lamest way possible. It barely even touched me.

  I grabbed a huge handful of paper towels from the dispenser and turned on the tap. A dark blue clump of stuff flew at me, and I ducked in time to avoid the flying, wet missile.

  Half of my towels managed to get wet before I scrunched them into a ball and launched them at Chase. He avoided them with a deft step to the right, but the second hit him in the cheek.

  It was so wet it splattered across his face and onto the wall behind him. I clapped my hand over my mouth and burst out in laughter, instinctively reaching for more paper towels.

  He stared at me, then, with a smile, disappeared into a cubicle. By the time he emerged with a big handful of tissue paper, I had two handfuls of paper towels that were sopping wet and ready to use as missiles.

  I balled them into one and tore off small pieces, only to ball them in my fingers. One after one I launched them at him. After a few, they ended up as sloppy bits of paper flying through the air.

  I gave up. I threw great globs of wet paper at him, and he did the same to me. They flew through the air with the accuracy of a five-year-old with a Nerf gun shooting at a moving object.

  I ran out of paper and found myself backed into the wall. The dispensers were out of reach, but Chase wasn’t. He had a handful of soaking wet tissue paper, and he wasn’t shy about it.

  He threw clump after clump at me. I was defenseless. I swat out at the stupid little clumps as they came at me, but it did nothing except make them splat onto the floor in a mess I’d have to clean up.

  “No, no, no, stop it!” I hit away a huge wad of the yucky paper towel and flattened my hands against the wall. “Chase Aarons, if you throw that at me, I’ll never speak to you again.”

  He stopped a few steps away from me. His eyes flicked between the wet glob of paper in his hand and me. I even widened my eyes and added a little drama to my expression so he knew I was serious.

  Seriously.

  Hollywood needed someone like me.

  I was wasted in Key West.

  Jennifer Garner, eat yo heart out.

  Chase took a step toward me, fingers clenching around the tissue paper.

  “I swear—” I held up a finger. “I will never speak to you again! I mean it!”

  He shrugged, and instead of throwing it at me, planted it right in my face.

  My jaw dropped, my mouth forming an ‘o’ in shock as the ice-cold water trickled out from the paper over my face.

  It was fucking freezing.

  I peeled the paper from my face and threw it to the floor with a slap. “What the hell?”

  “You said don’t throw it.” His eyes danced with laughter. “I didn’t throw it.”

  “You little—” I launched myself at him, balling my hands into fists. I got a few lame-ass thumps into his chest before he grabbed hold of my hands, laughing throug
h everything I chucked his way.

  “Whoa, spitfire. Calm your ass down.”

  “Dick! Jerkface! Asshole! Douchemonkey!”

  He laughed no matter how many insults I tossed his way.

  “Fuckhead! Shitbag! Cockshit!”

  Still laughing, his fingers curled around my wrists, and he pulled me close to him. “Go ahead. Keep shooting shit at me. See what happens.”

  “What’ll happen?”

  “It’s no fun for me if I tell you, is it?” His blue-green eyes still shone with laughter, and I realized how close we were.

  Inches.

  There were only inches between us.

  I could feel his breath fluttering through my hair. My skin tingled where his fingers held my wrists just tight enough that I knew there was no escape, and shivers tickled up and down my arms, making the hairs stand on end.

  Goosebumps. They were all over my arms. There wasn’t an inch of skin not covered by them.

  Chase was right there. Touching me. So close that one twitch would have my lips on his.

  So close I couldn’t handle it.

  I cleared my throat and stepped back, dropping my arms. He slowly let go of my wrists, letting his fingertips trail across my skin as he released me. I fought against the shiver that threatened to wrack my body.

  I couldn’t let him see how badly he affected me, especially when I still didn’t know what to do with him right now.

  “I hope you’re going to clean this up.” I folded my arms and raised my eyebrow. “Since you started this.”

  “You threw the first bit of tissue!”

  “You squeezed water down my face. You started it. You can finish it by cleaning up.”

  Chase took a deep breath before he sighed it out. He even added a roll of his eyes, like this whole thing was just too much for him. “Fine. I’ll clean it up. But it wasn’t just me. You threw your fair share of wet tissue, Raelynn Fortune.”

  I bent down and grabbed a handful from the floor, then hit him in the face with it before he could react.

  He wiped it off with one hand, and it fell in a splatter between us. “What was that for?”

  I shrugged a shoulder and backed toward the door. “Do I need a reason?”