COOL BEANS

by Erynn Mangum

  “Shut up,” Jen says, taking the box away from me. “You are not allowed near this stuff anymore. What is with you?”

  I bite my bottom lip, hoping she hasn’t noticed the nerves shaking my hands. “Nothing.”

  She rips the top off the box and dumps the noodles in the boiling water. “I can’t believe this is all we’re eating for dinner,” she gripes. “Where’s the protein? Where’s the vegetables? Where’s the omega-3s?”

  “Here’s the ice cream,” I say, holding up the container like I’m a more-clothed version of one of those women on Deal or No Deal.

  She shakes her head at me. “Maya.”

  “I found cookie dough, too.” I will win this woman back from the dark side if it takes every last breath in me.

  She thinks about that one, stirring the noodles. “What kind?” she asks in a small voice.

  “Chocolate-chip.” I smile. “And I even have a package of pecans. We’ll add the protein.”

  She is still wavering, but I can see the fight leaving her eyes. “Well, okay.” She keeps stirring. “Cut it with the victory fists, Maya.”

  Sheesh. Ruining all of my fun.

  Forty-five minutes later my bowl is empty and stained with fake cheese. Matthew Perry is halfway through trying to win the heart of a pregnant Salma Hayek, and I glance over at Jen.

  She’s giggling at something Matthew said, and I smile. See? This was a much better plan than springing the news on her right when she walked in the door after a long day at work. Now she’s rested and happy.

  “When do the ice cream and cookie dough come out?” she asks.

  “Right now.” I gather our bowls, dump them in the sink, and grab two more, the tub of dough, and the cardboard container of ice cream. You’d think Dreyer’s could splurge on plastic containers given how much its ice cream costs.

  As I scoop the ice cream, I listen to her giggling in the living room.

  I suck my breath through my teeth. In and out. All is good. Lord, help me please.

  The movie ends nearly another hour later. The ice cream is gone; the remaining cookie dough is looking kind of squishy; and Jen is curled into a little ball on the last couch cushion.

  “That was nice,” she says, her words running together in a contented mmm sound.

  “Yes, it was,” I say, fingers trembling. Must do it.

  The muscles in my chest are constricting, and I take a deep breath. “Jenny …”

  Right then, the doorbell rings.

  Auuugh!

  Jen frowns and sits up a little bit. “Are you expecting someone? It’s almost ten.”

  I walk over to the door and peek through the little peephole.

  It’s Travis.

  Of course.

  Dang it! I clamp my mouth shut on my words and look at her. “It’s Travis.”

  She gasps and looks down at her movie clothes. “Hang tight for just a minute. I’m going to go change!” She’s up and gone, bedroom door slamming before I can protest.

  I close my eyes. I can’t just leave him out there.

  I open the door. “Hi.”

  He looks at me, hands shoved deep in the pockets of his coat. “Hi, Maya.” Then he blinks and his mouth drops open.

  Oh, Lord, please say he’s not recognizing me now.

  “Maya?” he says, small voice, ducking his head a little bit as he looks at me. He’s staring at me with a mix of amazement and shock.

  I just look at him, sucking my breath in. “Hi, Travis.”

  “Maya Davis?” Still in shock. He hasn’t moved from where he is standing on the front porch.

  “Come inside,” I say quietly. “It’s cold.”

  I shut the door after him. He’s standing there, staring at me, eyes wide, mouth wide. I’m curious how long he can hold it until he starts drooling.

  “Is it really you? You look … different,” he stutters. “A lot different.”

  “Lost some pounds and some hair,” I say, nodding slightly. I look up at him. “You haven’t changed at all.” Same smile, same eyes, same athletic confidence.

  “Your hair is brown.” He’s blinking repeatedly. “Oh, gosh. I never even … How did I miss seeing you? When did you recognize me?”

  I clear my throat. “Um. When I first saw you again.”

  “Are you serious?” he gasps. “And you never said anything?”

  Aye, there’s the rub, as Shakespeare would say. I shrug. “I should’ve.”

  I can hear Jen banging around in her closet, probably looking for clean clothes.

  Travis’s eyes get even wider, which I didn’t think was possible. “Jen …” he breathes. “Does she know?”

  I shake my head so fast my neck cramps up. “No, and I was just getting ready to tell her when you came over,” I say, massaging my throat.

  “Oh, man.” He starts fiddling with his class ring, which means he doesn’t know what to say. “I don’t even know what to say!” he bursts out all of a sudden.

  “Shhh!” I frown at him. “I still haven’t told her.”

  “Well, we need to!”

  “I’m going to! I’ve been waiting for the right time, which was just now until you showed up!” I close my eyes and let my breath out. “Sorry.”

  He smiles slightly at me. “Same little fireball.”

  I try to hide the wince. It’s too easy to be standing here looking at him and remember everything that happened between us. The silence is so deafening; I want to cover my ears.

  “So …” he says awkwardly, after a few minutes. “How have you been?”

  I can’t help the giggle. He cracks a grin.

  Jen comes out right then. “Hi, Travis, I didn’t know you were coming over.” She walks over to him and gives him a quick hug. She’s changed into form-fitting, boot-cut jeans and a cranberry red sweater. Yeah, she looks like she was just lounging around the house.

  “You didn’t answer your cell, and you’d told me you were having a rough day. I brought you these.” He digs in his pocket and comes out with a bag of M&M’s.

  He drove all the way over here to give her a bag of candy? Gag me now.

  Jen doesn’t find it so revolting. “Awww, Travis! Thank you!” She’s puckering up, and I take my cue.

  “Well, I’ll just, uh, figure out if this is growing any forms of salmonella yet,” I say, swiping the cookie-dough tub and heading for the kitchen.

  Jen doesn’t even notice my exit. Travis gives me a What do I do? look.

  Do not say anything, I mouth.

  He frowns at me and then smiles at Jen. I hightail it to the kitchen.

  Dang it, dang it!

  I slam the cookie dough on the counter and grab my forehead. God, what do I do?

  Travis is the epitome of honesty. It’s both a virtue and a curse. Virtue when he says you look beautiful because you know he means it. Curse when he won’t use a line like “it’s not you, it’s me” to break up with you because he feels the need to tell you exactly why it’s not working out.

  Sometimes, there is such a thing as being too honest.

  I hear muffled voices, and then the front door opens and closes, leaving me all alone in my apartment. They’re leaving.

  Closing my eyes, I lean against the refrigerator.

  He’s going to tell her.

  Lord, is this payback for not telling her right away? You bring him in right as I’m going to say something?

  I walk out to the living room. Calvin is lying down, head on his paws in front of the couch.

  I grab my phone and push the speed dial.

  “How’d it go?” Jack answers.

  “I just opened my mouth to tell her when Travis walked in, and, of course, that’s when he recognized me, and now he’s gone with Jen, and I never got to tell her!”

  “Whoa, breathe, Nutkin.” He pauses. “He recognized you?”

  “Yes!”

  “It’s about time,” Jack says, disapproval in his voice.

  “Jack. What am I going to do? He’s going to
tell her, and God’s obviously trying to teach me a lesson.”

  “Don’t panic. Just talk to her when she gets home.” He lets his breath out. “And God isn’t vindictive, Nutkin.”

  I sigh. “Okay.”

  “All right? Chill out, Pattertwig. Everything is going to be fine.”

  “Okay.”

  He makes a noise deep in the back of his throat. “It’s late. Wish we had tomorrow off. Okay. Wait for her to get home, and just tell her and get it over with. This isn’t healthy.”

  “Okay.”

  “Text me when it’s over. I’m going to bed. Night, Nutkin.”

  “Night, Jack.”

  I hang up and start pacing. Back and forth across the living room. Calvin watches me for the first few minutes before lifting his head and yipping at me.

  I glare at him and move to pacing the hallway outside my door. “Dumb dog.”

  “Roo!”

  “This is my house!”

  “Roo! Roo!”

  I send another glare his way and go into my bedroom. I flounce on the bed and stare at my nightstand. Now’s a good time for a Bible reading, right? Maybe a nice comforting psalm.

  I open to the New Testament instead.

  “Do not lie to one another,” Colossians 3 yells at me. “Whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father.”

  “Okay, I get it!” I say to my ceiling. “I was trying to tell her! You couldn’t have held him back for, like, another ten minutes?”

  Silence.

  I shake my head and close the Bible.

  Calvin slinks in then, all contrite and downtrodden. I look at his lowered gaze and oversized silky ears hanging almost to the floor and feel bad.

  “Come here, boy,” I say quietly, patting the bed.

  He hops up and lays his head on my lap. “Sorry,” I say, rubbing his soft fur. “I’m not mad at you.”

  He licks my hand in apology.

  I finger his ears, and he sighs and closes his eyes. All is well in Calvin’s world, it seems.

  Wish I could say the same. My best friend is about to find out I’ve kept a huge secret from her for the past month and a half; I have to spend Sunday night in complete awkwardness with Zach and Kate again; and God has apparently given up on responding to me.

  I close my eyes and wait for Jen to get home.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  She doesn’t get home until nearly midnight.

  I hear the front door open as I’m finishing off the rest of the cookie dough, lounging on the bed watching the Style Network, trying to pass the time and stay awake.

  “Jenny?” I call. I put down the spoon and walk out into the living room. Jen’s wrapped in a huge oversized jacket that is not hers but, based on the faint cologne scent, Travis’s. She’s not looking at me.

  I stand there quietly. “Jen?”

  “I’m tired, Maya.” She gives me a brief look. “We’ll talk tomorrow.” And then she goes into her room and closes the door with an almost imperceptive click.

  I think I could almost squeegee the guilt off my face.

  Jack walks into Cool Beans at six twenty Friday morning and holds his phone out to me. “No text,” he says. “Therefore, I assume it isn’t over.”

  I’m tempted to put my face in the coffee filter I’m holding.

  “No,” I moan.

  “What happened?”

  “Travis told her. Based on the look on her face, I’m assuming he told her everything. She came in, said she was tired, and went to her room. That was it!” I slam the filter into the machine.

  “Easy, Nutkin.”

  “Jack.” I sigh. “She looked hurt. I should’ve told her the first night. You were right.”

  “Well. That’s no surprise.”

  “Jack.”

  “Sorry, Pattertwig. Okay, listen. Everything is going to be just fine. Give her a little time to digest it and then talk to her about it.”

  I nod. “Okay.”

  “In the meantime, don’t take out your rage on the coffeemaker. They do break, you know.”

  I look at him, and he smiles and wraps me up in a hug. “It’ll be okay. By tonight, you guys will be back to being same old, same old.”

  I nod into his shirt. He lets me go and washes up for the day, pulling his apron on when he’s finished at the sink.

  “Hey, Jack?”

  “Yeah?”

  “What do you do when God doesn’t answer?”

  He blinks at the deep theological thought so early in the morning. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, I’ve been praying about this and asking God to take care of this whole thing, but He doesn’t answer.”

  Jack frowns. “Maya, God doesn’t just take care of things for us. You have to do something, too.”

  I start measuring the dark roast into the grinder. I’m going with our signature African roast. It’s the smokiest, blackest, deepest beans we have. It’s a good somber-mood coffee.

  I’m quiet as I think about what Jack just said. It sounds an awful lot like that saying “God helps those who help themselves,” which Andrew spent about thirty minutes disagreeing with last Sunday morning.

  “God doesn’t help those who help themselves,” he’d said. “Before we’re saved, God helps those who confess that they can’t help themselves. And after we’re saved, God blesses those who bless others.”

  I look at Jack. “What?”

  He starts on the medium roast. “It’s like a story my mom used to tell me when I was a little kid. There was this kid who decided that he would be obedient to God by sitting on a couch and not moving for the whole day so he wouldn’t get in trouble. But he was being disobedient because God calls us to have faith and actions.” He sighs, looking at the coffee beans while he thinks. “It’s James, right? I think James said that faith without works is useless.”

  I turn on the grinder, and the little shop is filled with the reverberating noise. It finishes, and I pour the grounds into the filter, turning on the machine.

  Words to think about.

  Jack gives me a hug good-bye at two. “Text me,” he says again, climbing into his car. “I’ll see you on Sunday.”

  “Okay.”

  It is quiet the rest of the day. I’m consumed thinking about Jen. What will she say? What does she think? What has Travis told her?

  My phone rings right as I close my car door.

  “Hi, Mom,” I say tiredly.

  Long pause. “Maya?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Sorry, I was just taken aback by the greeting. I wasn’t sure it was you at first. I’m so used to being called ‘Hey’ or something like that.”

  I turn the key in the ignition. “And people ask me where I get my flair for the dramatic. They’ve obviously never met my mother.” I back out and start toward home.

  “Funny. So, what did you get Zach?”

  Reverse course. I start driving toward the only shopping mall in Hudson. “I’m on my way right now,” I say.

  “Oh. So, what are you going to get him?”

  “I don’t know yet. We’ll see what looks good.”

  “Call me when you find something. And don’t get a stethoscope. We already got that for him.”

  “Yes, Mom.”

  “Okay. Bye!”

  I hang up and park in front of the mall. Zach is probably the pickiest person in the world, save for maybe the California fiddler crab, who is supposedly the pickiest thing on the planet. I guess they go through 106 males before they decide who they are going to mate with. I know some married friends who might have benefited from that same wisdom, but I digress.

  There’s a little gift shop here called Fábrica De that sells all kinds of useless things no one really needs but everyone gives for people’s birthdays.

  I walk in and am immediately confronted with a huge floor-length magnification mirror.

  Oh my. I had no idea my hair looked so awful today. I pull the elast
ic out of my hair and quickly swipe it back into a tighter ponytail. The annoying little ringlets that aren’t long enough to fit in the band immediately fall right back by my face and around my neck.

  I step forward and peer at my reflection, blown up to ten times my size, staring at the individual pores on my face.

  Well. Apparently Grandma was right. I should have been using sunscreen all these years.

  “Can I help you, ma’am?” A girl about my age is standing there with a little name tag on.

  Wow. If the knowledge that, yes, I do have sun damage isn’t bad enough, now someone my own age is calling me ma’am.

  I don’t like this store.

  “I’m looking for a present for my brother.”

  She nods. “We do specialize in unique gifts.”

  Read: Useless.

  “What does he do?” she goes on.

  “He’s a doctor.”

  “Have you considered an engraved stethoscope?”

  “I wouldn’t live through his birthday dinner. My mother already got him that.”

  She motions for me to follow her to the back of the store. “Over here are our medical birthday collections. We carry an incredible assortment of black leather and genuine silver accented supplies perfect for any up-and-coming doctor.”

  She points to a few shelves stocked with black leather. I pick up a paperweight and gape at the price tag.

  “Fifty-five dollars?” I gasp. I show her the two-inch-by-two-inch leather box with a silver stethoscope pin glued on it. “Isn’t that a little steep for something you can’t use?”

  “That’s a paperweight, ma’am.”

  I’m going to strangle her if she calls me ma’am one more time. I’m twenty-four years old, for goodness’ sake!

  “Have you ever used a paperweight?” I challenge her.

  She gapes at me. “Not personally, no,” she says after a minute. “But I know lots of people who love to receive them as gifts.”

  There are address books, day planners, iPod covers, and Bluetooth cases all in the same black leather with the little stethoscope.

  This is just a side note, but doesn’t the word stethoscope remind you of a dentist and not a doctor?