High Tea & Flip-Flops

by Linda Cassidy Lewis

  Oh, who am I kidding?

  Staying positive is going to be hard work. But even harder will be telling my mom I quit my job. Maybe I’ll wait until tomorrow for that.

  Since my apartment faces east and the sun is low in the west, my patio is shaded, so I’m sitting out here reading while I wait for Gabi to arrive. I texted her about quitting DEE·LISH, and, like the good friend she is, she offered to pig out on fast food with me—her treat. My phone rings. Assuming it’s her with a question about our menu for tonight, I answer without looking at the screen.

  “Chelsea, why on earth did you quit your job before you had another one lined up?”

  Damn it. Gabi betrayed me.

  “Hello, Mom.”

  “Do you have another job?”

  “No, Mom.”

  “Then why—”

  “I didn’t get the assistant manager promotion. And I deserved it.”

  My mother sighs—one of those long-suffering sighs that asks how she could have given birth to such a disappointing child.

  “Well, what’s done is done,” she says. “You certainly deserve a better position … but not in that deli. I’ve already put out the word among my friends. Hopefully something will turn up soon. And I’ve built up a pretty good savings, so I’ll help you out in the meantime.”

  “Thanks. I’m okay for now.”

  “You can always move back home. The rent is too high on that place anyway.”

  “Yes, it is, but—”

  “It’s yours. I understand.”

  “Thanks, Mom. Could you please not tell Ryan and Scott? And I don’t mean just that I quit. I don’t want them to know I don’t have a job period.”

  “Sure, sweetie, but you know your brothers are on your side.”

  “Mom, Gabi just got here. I’ll call you later.”

  Gabi’s not really here. I just couldn’t talk to my mom any longer, knowing what she thinks of me—and what my brothers would think if they knew what a screwup I am. There’s something wrong with me, I can’t deny that. But it’s not like I want to be this person I’ve become. I don’t even know how that change happened. Before I graduated, I had my future all planned out, but then …

  Before I can stop it, I break down for the second time today. And this is a real boohooing. A chair scrapes on the terrace above—Jeremy’s terrace. I hush mid-sob—mortification can do that.

  “Chelsea? Do you need assistance?”

  I look up and see by his shadow that Jeremy’s leaning over his railing, but I don’t think he can see me. If I pretend I didn’t hear him, maybe he’ll think he was imagining things. Or maybe he’ll think it was my TV he heard. I sit still. I hold my breath.

  “Hello?” He’s leaning farther over the rail and doing that little hand wave thing you do when you’re trying to get someone’s attention.

  Crap. I’m afraid he’ll vault over the railing and come to my rescue if I don’t respond. I sniff and wipe my face. Then I stand and step to the edge of my patio, look up, and wave back. Like he’d only been waving hello. Like I’m an absolute, complete, total goof.

  “Are you all right?” he asks.

  “Sure.” I flash a smile that means Seriously, dude. Don’t pay any attention to me. I just like to cry like a baby for absolutely no reason.

  “Well then,” he says. “Excuse me for interrupting.”

  God, can this horrid day get any worse?

  His face disappears from my view as he straightens. I’m relieved when a moment later his patio door opens and closes. Well, if he didn’t already know that a nut case lives below him, he does now. I sit back down and pull my feet up on the seat to rest my forehead on my knees. How much humiliation can a person stand in one day?

  The sound of a car door shutting pulls me back to the suck that is my life. Gabi’s here. Yay. A temporary reprieve.

  I’d decided to wait until after we eat to talk about her blabbing to my mom, but of course that’s the first thing out of my mouth when I open the door for her.

  “You told my mom?”

  “It slipped out. I swear. And I’ll explain, but I’m starving, so can we eat first?” Gabi steps past me and then looks back. “You’ve been crying. Oh, Chels.” Jack in the Box bag in one hand and drink carrier in the other, she grabs me in an awkward hug.

  “It’s okay. I stopped when Mr. High Tea heard me.”

  “What? How did that happen?”

  I grab the bag from her and carry it to the sofa. “I was sitting out there,” I tick my head toward the patio, “and so was he, I guess—on his terrace, I mean—and my mom called, I got emotional, and the next thing I know he’s hanging upside down and asking if I’m okay.”

  She swallows a mouthful of egg roll. “Hanging upside down?”

  “You know, leaning over the railing. It was embarrassing.”

  “Well, it was nice of him to be concerned.”

  Which is true, and which I would have realized if I hadn’t been so humiliated. “Still, obviously he was eavesdropping.”

  “You don’t know that. Was this a silent cry or one of your big, noisy boohoos?”

  I bite into a jalapeño popper. My silence is her answer.

  “Right. So it’s likely he only heard the crying and thought you might be hurt or something.”

  “I guess.” Maybe not so humiliating, then. Of course, she would think the best of him now that they’re besties.

  Gabi takes a sip of her drink and says, “Not to change the subject, but Matt and Erik have their first softball game Wednesday night. Will you come with me to watch?”

  I narrow my eyes at her. “And then what?”

  She shrugs. “We’ll go out for beer and pizza?”

  “In other words, a double date.”

  “Hey, it’s free entertainment, food, and drinks. What more can a girl without a job ask for?”

  “Speaking of … why did you tell my mom?”

  “First of all, you would have told your mom by tomorrow anyway.”

  I sigh. She knows me too well.

  “And I didn’t mean to tell her. She called me for a ‘progress report’ and—”

  “Progress report!”

  “That’s what she calls them. And when she started complaining about you wasting your life in that deli, it just sort of slipped out that you wouldn’t be doing that anymore.”

  We both reach for the last popper at the same time, and she pushes it over to me. What a friend.

  “Why don’t you tell her to stop calling?” I ask. “Or just don’t answer when you see it’s her.”

  “I love your mom, Chelsea. And she’s just worried about you. She loves you. And you love her too, so don’t try to act like you aren’t happy to know how much she cares about you.”

  I blink back tears. “I need something sweet.”

  “Right. What we need are humongous banana splits. Let’s go to Vons and get the stuff. My treat.” On the way out the door, she says, “When we get back, let’s invite Jeremy to join us.”

  My look of horror gives her a good laugh.

  CHAPTER 5

  I spent all day yesterday on the phone, Twitter, and Facebook asking everyone I know if they’ve heard of any good job openings, so I never got out to do my grocery shopping. Now, I’m standing in front of the nearly empty fridge looking at what’s left. What can I make for dinner from leftover pan-fried noodles, a dried up chicken leg, almond milk, a limp carrot, mayonnaise, and maraschino cherries? Nothing I’m going to put in my mouth.

  I’ve just closed the fridge and reached for the Fruity Pebbles when someone knocks on my door. Here’s a shocker—Jeremy’s standing there with a pizza box in his hands. And he’s smiling. Did the apocalypse begin and no one told me?

  “Hello,” he says. “I seem to have ordered too much pizza, and I wonder if you’d care to share it with me.”

  I’m hallucinating from low blood sugar, right? I close my eyes, but when I open them, he’s still there. Except, now he looks confused.

&n
bsp; “Pizza?” he says.

  “You and me?”

  “Sharing pizza, yes.”

  This is a trick. I don’t know just what he’s up to yet, but I’m on alert. Still, this is pizza we’re talking about. I open the door wider and let him in. He stops in the middle of the living room and looks at me.

  “What?” I say and then feel like an idiot. He’s waiting for me to show him where to set the pizza box. The thing is, I usually sit on the sofa and eat while I’m watching TV. I have a dining table—it’s just buried under clutter. In fact, I’m a little worried about what I might find at the bottom of that pile. After all, there was that lost Big Mac incident. What else can I do but point to the sofa? “Pizza’s casual food, right?”

  It’s subtle, but he lifts his right brow. Way to go, Chelsea. He probably eats his pizza at a table. On a china plate. With a knife and fork. I mean, being British and all. I wave my hand in the general direction of the scary mounded thing across the room. “Or give me a minute and I’ll clear the table?”

  He glances that way but then heads toward the sofa. “This will be fine.”

  I go to the kitchen for paper plates and napkins—I’m not a total slob. When I return, he’s sitting perfectly rigid on the edge of the sofa seat with the pizza box balanced on his knees. Oh, come on. Does the dude never relax?

  I’m just about to ask him that when I realize he can’t scoot back because the sofa is cluttered too. He’s trying to avoid sitting on stacks of my clothes—which are neatly folded, by the way. I just never got around to putting them in the bedroom after I did the laundry this afternoon. Okay, it was at dawn. Because I couldn’t sleep.

  “Sorry.” I balance the plates and napkins on top of the DVDs and books stacked on the coffee table, and then I grab the clothes and run out of the room to dump them on my bed. On my way back to the living room, I remember I haven’t offered him anything to drink.

  “What would you like to drink … Jeremy?” I have to stop thinking of him as Mr. High Tea. “Coke, beer, almond milk, or water?”

  “And the beer would be?”

  It would be beer, dude. I know they have that in England. “Oh!” Duh. “You mean what brand. It’s Sam Adams. Boston Ale, actually.”

  “That would be … fine.”

  I get two beers and hand him one bottle. He’s sitting normally on the sofa now but still holding the pizza, so I take that from him and set it on the cushion between us.

  “Oh,” he says, “I didn’t think you’d want—”

  “So. What’s up?” I hand him a plate and a few napkins. One is never enough when it comes to pizza. I open the box. “Hey. Pepperoni and mushroom. My favorite.”

  “Lucky guess.” He places a slice on his plate but doesn’t take a bite.

  “Would you like a fork?” That’s as far as I’ll go. Eating pizza with a knife and fork is just too much.

  “No. Thank you.” He takes a drink and then another.

  “It’s better when it’s hot.”

  He frowns at the bottle in his hand.

  I point to his plate. “I mean the pizza.”

  “Oh. Yes.” He laughs weakly and sets down the bottle. He bites into his pizza.

  “Or cold the next morning.”

  He was still chewing, but he swallows quickly. “Cold pizza for breakfast?”

  I shrug. “Why not?”

  “I see.” He nods like he’s just learned something valuable.

  I give up on trying to start a conversation, and we just eat in silence for a couple of minutes. This is weird. And awkward. Why is he here? And believe me, I never turn down free pizza—well, there was that one time I had a date with this kind of rich guy, and we went to this gourmet pizza restaurant, and he ordered this nasty thing with goat cheese and Swiss chard. Yuck, ick, gag. I only had one bite and then had to drink two glasses of wine just to get the taste out of my mouth.

  Anyway.

  I don’t believe Jeremy’s here because he accidentally ordered too much pizza. Why is he suddenly being neighborly? Oh, right. Neighbors. He’s buttering me up with pizza because he’s here to complain about the noise I make.

  “Look. If it’s about the music … ”

  His brows draw together. “The music?”

  He’s either a very good actor or I’ve completely confused him, and though he does seem like the actor type—I mean, can’t you just hear him doing Shakespeare?—it probably means he’s not here to chew me out about noise levels. I just shrug, like I have no clue what he’s talking about, and stuff my mouth with pizza.

  Jeremy blinks. Then, still frowning, he slowly turns away. After another second or two, he shakes his head and starts eating again. When he leans forward to pick up the beer bottle he’d set on the table, he pauses then runs a finger down the stack of DVDs like he’s reading the titles.

  “You probably aren’t a fan of romantic movies,” I say.

  “I’ve seen all of these, actually.”

  Wow. I would have lost that bet. Oh crap! Gabi called it. He’s gay. But what if he’s not? He probably is. But maybe not. I need to find out without being too obvious. Okay. I’ve got this.

  “Did you watch them with your girlfriend?”

  “No. By myself.”

  Well, that tells me nothing. I keep eating while I try to think of a subtle way to find out what I want to know. Hmm. Oh what the hell. “Are you gay?”

  It’s amazing how far beer can shoot from someone’s mouth. Guess I shouldn’t have asked that just as he took a drink.

  “Oh shit!” Jeremy’s dabbing at the table and everything on it with his napkins.

  He seems unaware that his plate has slipped off the sofa and landed pizza side down. I can just imagine how he’ll flip out at that, so I reach over with my foot and slide the plate and pizza under the sofa. Now I have pizza sauce and cheese stuck to my toes, but I think I can wipe it off without him noticing because he’s still freaking out about the beer splatter. I lean down with my napkin just as he flings his hand sideways—God knows why—and smacks me in the nose.

  I forget about my foot and clamp the napkin to my nose because I have these extremely fragile capillaries in my left nostril and get legendary nosebleeds. Like the time I inhaled the pepper my date was shaking all over his food—and I mean all over—and it made me sneeze, and just like that blood sprayed all over the table. Not appetizing in the least, let me tell you.

  Jeremy’s staring at me, his mouth and eyes astonished circles.

  “Nosebleed,” I mumble.

  “This is a nightmare.” He jumps to his feet. “I apologize. I’ve made a mess of … everything.”

  “It’s no big deal.” I don’t think he understood me through the wadded up napkin. I lift it slightly, just long enough to say, “Excuse me a minute.”

  It doesn’t take me long in the bathroom to stop the nosebleed. I’m a pro. I wash off the blood that’s smeared on my hands and face. No wonder he looked shocked. And then I remember the pizza gunk on my foot. I wipe off the sauce, but the glob of cheese must be lying somewhere between here and the sofa.

  Jeremy’s not sitting there when I go back to the living room. What the hell, he ran off? No. He’s standing by the door, still looking totally freaked.

  “Jeremy?”

  “I should leave before I cause any further damage. I cleaned up as best I could, but I’m afraid I found pizza sauce on the carpet. And, quite oddly, I seem to have misplaced my plate.”

  “Really, it’s no big deal.” I figured I should repeat that since I don’t think he heard me the first time. “You don’t have to leave.”

  He glances at the clock on the wall to his left. “No, really, I must go. I have to Skype with someone in ten minutes.” He opens the door then turns back to me. “Thank you for the hospitality.”

  “No problem. Thank you for the pizza.”

  “Yes. Well, enjoy the rest for your breakfast.” He gives me the shakiest smile I’ve ever seen, and then he’s gone.

 
Nice try, dude, but the batteries in that clock went dead months ago.

  *

  The next morning I’m lying by the pool reading and getting a little sun—just enough to maintain my moderate glow. I don’t want to be all wrinkles and spots when I hit forty. I should be thinking about job hunting, but Jeremy is on my mind. He’s like a jigsaw puzzle with some of the pieces missing. Or a book with a knock-out cover but blank pages. Or pizza with just crust and sauce. Or … something incomplete. On top of that, he keeps changing. Or maybe it’s my impression of him that changes.

  See? With all this confusion, how can I quit thinking about him?

  For six weeks, he’s been nothing but snarky and dismissive to me … well, except for when he heard me crying. Then last night he shows up at my door with pizza. What was that about? How do I fill in these missing pieces?

  My phone pings. I grab it hoping someone’s texted me a hot job prospect. It’s my mom telling me to call her when I’m not busy.

  Okay. Here’s the problem with that—what I consider busy is not necessarily what my mother considers busy, and if I don’t call her right now, I’ll have to explain why, and chances are she’ll be hurt that I considered anything less than being rushed to the hospital in an ambulance more important than calling her.

  I tap the call icon.

  “Oh, sweetie, I’m so glad you called back. Is your phone right there?”

  “I’m talking on it, Mom.”

  She laughs. “Duh. Well, keep it with you. You should be getting a call any minute for a job interview. You know my friend Carol? Well, she was telling her sister about your job hunt, and she said you should come in and apply for an opening in her office, and Carol said she’d tell me to tell you, and then it couldn’t have been more than fifteen minutes later that her sister called back to say you’d already applied online, so—”

  “Mom! Which company?”

  “Oh. I don’t think I asked. But if you applied—”

  “I applied at dozens of places. Look, I’m going to hang up since you said the call could come any minute.”

  “But your phone alerts you when you have an incoming call.”

  Sigh. “Right, but I need to pee, and I don’t want to answer the phone in the bathroom. Okay?”