by Hendin, KK
He shot me a look. “You’re a guest,” he protested. “Sit, sit.”
I glared at him. “No, I’m your friend,” I reminded him. “Friends help friends make dinner.”
“Okay.” He looked at me. “You know how to make salad?”
“Did you really just ask me that?” I asked, laughing.
“Sorry, usually dinner guests don’t know how to make salad,” he said, smiling sheepishly.
Which meant that he either didn’t have that many girls over, or the girls here didn’t know how to cook. Option A definitely made me feel better. Taking out a cutting board and a knife, he set them on the counter for me. “Let me just check the pastelitos,” he said, walking toward the oven.
“Wait, you made pastelitos?” I asked, washing off the vegetables and setting them on the cutting board.
“They don’t just appear cooked,” he said, opening the oven to peer in.
“Well, I just figured your mom made them or something.” Clapping my hand over my mouth, I stared at him. “Was that really mean to say?”
His laughter bounced off the walls. “Nah,” he said. “It’s understandable.”
“Daddy, supper!” Noie called, running into the kitchen.
“Soon, Noie,” he said, reaching down and kissing the top of her head. He was so good with her. It was so natural.
I looked around the table, which had mysteriously been cleared while I was cutting up the salad vegetables.
There were three plates—Gabe’s, mine, and a little plate for Noie.
It looked… domestic.
Platonic, I scolded myself as I took a bite of a pastelito.
“Gabe, you made this?” I asked, astonished. “God, I haven’t had meat pastelitos this good in years. Maybe ever. To be honest, I wasn’t expecting this when you mentioned dinner.”
He laughed. “It drives my dad crazy, because pastelitos aren’t supposed to be dinner foods. They’re dessert. But Noie likes them, and loves eating dessert for dinner, so I don’t care.”
“Hey, if she eats it, it’s dinner,” I said, remembering the ridiculous stories I’d make up to get Devi to eat sometimes. “But seriously. This is delicious.”
“Thanks,” he said, cutting up Noie’s pie into pieces before turning to his own. “I kind of learned on the job.”
“Your mom didn’t help?” I asked, puzzled.
“They only moved here six months ago,” he said.
Six months ago?
“From where?”
“Further inland,” he said.
“And you lived here already?” I asked, just trying to get a better picture of what happened. He nodded.
“Yup. I moved here around a year before Noie was born.”
“Since I was born!” Noie repeated, banging her fork against the side of the plate. I smiled at her as she started babbling, telling us both about what happened with her that day when she was at Grandma’s.
“Mama, Mama, Mama!” she yelled, racing into the kitchen where I was stirring the pot of macaroni.
“Yes, Devi?” I asked, reaching down to kiss her head.
“Mama making supper?” she asked.
“Mama’s making supper,” I agreed.
“Daddy?”
“Daddy’s on his way home,” I said. “From work.”
“From work!” she repeated happily. “From work!”
“Daddy’s home!” called a voice.
“Daddy!” shrieked Devi as she ran as fast as she could toward the front door of our little apartment. “Mama, Daddy’s home!”
Ravi walked into the kitchen, holding a giggling Devi. “Hey, Mama,” he said, leaning over and kissing me.
“Hey, Daddy,” I answered, giving the macaroni one last stir.
“You okay there, Maddie?” Gabe asked.
I shook my head, trying to shake off the memories. “Yeah, just spaced out for a second there.”
“Spaced?” Noie asked.
“Spaced,” I agreed, smiling at her. It’s okay, I told myself. It’s okay.
The rest of dinner went without incident. If Gabe noticed the drop in my appetite, he didn’t say anything.
“Bedtime, Miss Noie,” he said, after the table was cleared. “Say goodnight to Maddie.”
She ran over to me and threw her arms around me. “Goodnight, Maddie,” she said, pressing a sloppy little kiss on my cheek.
“Goodnight, baby girl,” I whispered, inhaling the smell of little girl.
“I’ll be back in a few,” Gabe said, Noie propped on his hip. “Don’t do the dishes.”
I smiled. “Friends let friends…” I began.
“No,” he said. “Friends do not let friends wash their dishes the first time friends come over.”
I wandered over to the couch, taking another look around the room. There was a photo album lying on the coffee table. Overcome with curiosity, I reached over and picked it up, hearing the murmurs of Gabe’s deep voice and Noie’s little one.
The first picture was of Gabe in the hospital, holding Noie. God, they both looked so little. Well, Noie looking little made sense. But Gabe? Gabe barely looked like he was old enough to have graduated high school, let alone become a dad.
Not that age ever stopped anyone from becoming a dad, I reminded myself.
The pictures progressed—more of Noie than of Gabe. There would be an occasional picture of the two of them, but mostly it was pictures of Noie as a baby. She was beautiful. I swallowed the traitorous lump that appeared again.
“Noie calls that her picture book,” Gabe said, settling down on the couch next to me. He yawned widely.
“Do you want me to leave?” I asked, watching him yawn. I remembered those days after the baby went to sleep, when all I wanted to do was curl up on the couch and sleep.
“No, stay,” he said. He yawned again. “Sorry, just comes with the territory.”
“You sure?”
“Positive.” He smiled. “I never turn down a chance for adult conversation. Especially not with pretty café waitresses.”
“So, you used to hang out with what’s-her-name, the artist?” I asked, grinning. “Is this a pattern I should know about?”
Gabe burst out laughing. “You know Martina?”
“The old waitress? No, Grandma Evelyn told me about her.”
“Did she tell you about the paintings?” His eyes sparkled with mischief.
“Not really?”
“If you’re asking it like that, she didn’t.”
“Okay, I give up. What paintings?”
Gabe snickered, sounding closer to fifteen than twenty-something. “Martina paints political figures naked.”
“Like, senators and presidents?”
“Well, yeah, and mayors of small towns. And sheriffs. And sometimes government employees.”
“Oh.” I tried not to laugh. “You know, I’ve been to MOMA and the Guggenheim, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a series of naked government employee paintings.”
“Not yet, you haven’t.” He stretched his legs out and propped his feet on the battered coffee table. “Thank God I wasn’t a government employee.”
“Why?” I asked. “Don’t want anyone to paint you naked?”
No, Maddie! Don’t say things like that out loud!
The look on Gabe’s face went from amused to hungry. “Well, depends on who’s doing the asking,” he responded.
Why was I suddenly so disappointed in the fact that I couldn’t paint?
“Well, next time someone offers to paint me naked, I’ll make sure to refer them to you,” I said.
His eyebrow shot up. “Again?”
And… apparently I was going to tell Gabe about the time someone wanted to paint me naked.
This was not where I was expecting this platonic night with friends to go. But it’s just platonic, I argued with myself. So it’s not a big deal.
Ha.
“Once, but it didn’t count.”
“How could it not count?”
> “Um, when you’re fifteen and he’s a twelve-year-old with a crush on you?”
“Well, that’s a pickup line I never tried.” He wiggled his eyebrows at me. “Hey gorgeous. I wanna paint you naked. Don’t really see how that’s going to get you girls, unless you’re Leonardo DaVinci or something.”
I giggled. “Takes ‘Let me show you my pictures’ to a whole new level of gross.”
“And I was just about to ask you if you wanted to see my pictures,” he said.
“Um… what?”
Laughing, he pulled out a laptop from the briefcase propped up on the side of the couch. “Movies. Moving pictures. I’ve got a bunch. That is, if Sam hasn’t swiped them all.”
Platonic movie night with friend. Okay. I could do this.
“What do you have?” I asked, leaning back, trying to look like I was comfortable. Trying to actually get comfortable.
“Hmm…” He opened a file on the desktop and started scrolling down. “Well, every episode of Sesame Street known to mankind for Noie, a whole bunch of documentaries, all the Godfather films, Ocean’s Eleven, Twelve and Thirteen, all the James Bond movies, Inception, Catch Me If You Can… Mean Girls? What the hell?”
I burst into laughter. “You have Mean Girls?”
He scowled. “Sam probably downloaded it from iTunes one night when I was at work late,” he said. “God help her if she watched it with Noie.”
I kept laughing, now imagining Noie telling Gabe to stop trying to make fetch happen. “It’s actually a great movie,” I said, giggling.
“I’m sure it is,” he said, doubt written all over his face. “Sam’s given me the same lecture about The Notebook and Legally Blonde and some other pink girly movie.”
“You never watched Legally Blonde?” I fake gasped. “It was a groundbreaking movie, Gabe. And you claim to be cultured.”
If his eyebrows could go up higher, they probably would have. “I’m going to get cultured about some blonde girl who goes to Harvard and wins a court case by knowing about perms?”
“You know, that sounds suspiciously like you watched it.”
“No, but Sam has. Probably fifty times. And feels the need to explain to me, after every single time she watches it, why it is imperative for my future romantic life that I watch it.”
“Legally Blonde?” I asked doubtfully. “That’s more of a The Notebook thing.”
He shrugged. “Legally Blonde is the pink Harvard one, The Notebook is the romantic one with the house. I told her she should watch something with Leonardo DiCaprio in it. Something that’s not Titanic.”
“You guys are nuts,” I said, smiling, so jealous my teeth hurt. Had I ever had a relationship like that with Jen? Never.
“Well, I don’t have Titanic, so if you wanted to watch that, I’m sorry.”
“It’s crushing me inside,” I snarked. “I was all set to sing along with ‘My Heart Will Go On’ with you.”
“Next time then. Anything else sound good?”
“I never saw Inception.”
“Awesome,” he said, opening the movie up and setting up the laptop so we could both see it comfortably. I looked at the space in between us on the couch, and inched a little in the other direction.
“Do I smell?” he asked as the previews played quietly.
“No, just like the arm of the couch,” I said. What was I supposed to say? I’m terrified of sitting too close to you because I’m trying to keep this platonic but really I want to sit on your lap but that’s got to be one of the stupidest ideas I’ve had recently?
Not if I wanted to stay I couldn’t.
The movie started, and I was sucked into the story.
If I breathed at all the next two hours, I couldn’t tell. The movie was edge-of-your-seat, one scene to the next. And somewhere in the middle of the movie, Gabe and I were sitting closer to each other than we had been in the beginning. Not right next to each other, but not at the opposite ends of the couch.
And then closer. And closer.
Somewhere nearing the end, I felt the brush of Gabe’s thigh against mine. And I nearly jumped out of my skin. Focusing on the movie, I tried to pretend not to notice the warmth of his leg next to mine. The smell of him, which seemed to be all I could smell.
The credits were rolling when we heard a cry from the bedroom. Noie. Turning to each other, we both rushed to her room. “No! No!” she screamed, terrified. Gabe reached over, scooping her out of her bed and rocking her against him.
“It’s okay,” he crooned as she cried. “It’s okay, baby.”
Noie kept crying. “No, no, no,” she sobbed, still in the throes of her dream. Her eyes opened and she stared straight ahead, sightless, still screaming. She thrashed and kicked, panicking as Gabe tightened his hold on her.
“It’s okay, baby, it’s okay.” It was hard to hear him over the sound of her screams.
It wasn’t okay. Something was wrong. Something was scaring her, and there didn’t seem to be any way for him to stop it.
Gabe’s expression collapsed as Noie continued to sob, terrified. Nothing hurt like hearing someone you love cry and knowing that you couldn’t make it stop. That you couldn’t make it go away. I knew that feeling of scared hopelessness well. Too well. It was killing me, to hear her cry like that.
“Does this happen often?” I whispered.
He nodded, stroking her back and whispering to her. I stood there, helpless and hopeless while Noie cried. Walking out of her room, Gabe started toward his bedroom.
“I should go,” I whispered, knowing there was nothing I could do to fix things.
He looked at me over her head, looking exhausted. “I’ll see you tomorrow?” he whispered.
I nodded, not sure.
“Thanks for tonight,” I whispered. He smiled wanly, and bent back down to Noie.
Turning, I walked out of the apartment, Noie’s sobs following me out.
My own tears waited until I hit the beach.
Chapter · Ten
The café was at its usual busy pace when Gabe walked in the next morning. “I’m going to the back to refill this tray, okay, Grandma?” I asked, grabbing a tray at random. I couldn’t face him after what happened last night.
It wasn’t so much him as it was me. Last night was an emotional earthquake, and seeing him again would just bring everything back. It was like he was some sort of trigger for remembering everything that had happened—the good and the bad. It was too much for me to deal with. Especially in front of other people.
Her eyebrows lifted but she didn’t say anything. Taking as long as I could in the back, I walked back toward the front counter, hoping that Gabe was gone by the time I got back. Peering around the edge of the doorway, I saw the back of his suit jacket as he walked out the door and heaved a sigh of relief.
“You running away from people?” Grandma said to me, refilling the coffee pots.
I shrugged.
“It’s for their own good,” I whispered.
“Honey, you’ve barely said three words to the boy. Give it time before you start freaking out.”
I leaned against the counter, exhausted. I was always so tired. “I’m just a mess, Grandma,” I mumbled, staring at my paint-splattered Converse.
She looked at me, hands on her hips. “Honey chil’, you think I’m blind or something? You say that like I didn’t know.”
I laughed.
Walking over and placing her hands on my arms she looked me in the eye. “We’re all a mess, darling,” she said. “But you got to learn to work around your mess before you bury yourself in it.”
“What if it’s too late?”
”You dead yet? No? Then you’ve still got time.”
“Maddie!” Grandma stuck her head out of the kitchen. “Did I forget to order enough milk again?”
I shrugged. “There’s none left?”
“I don’t think so. I’m going to have to put in a call to Martin, this is ridiculous.” She shook her head, exasperated. “Which w
ill help for tomorrow, but we’re going to need another gallon or two for the rest of today, just to make sure we don’t run out.”
I glanced around the quiet café. “Want me to run and pick up some?”
Her face brightened. “Perfect. Go to Joanie at the grocery store and have her put it on my tab. Get two gallons of two percent milk.”
I shrugged out of my apron and retied my ponytail. “No problem.”
Walking down Oceanfront Lane, I looked into the windows of every store I passed, feeling like a Peeping Tom. I had been living in Eno for almost two months at this point, and I still hadn’t gotten used to the charm of North Carolina. The grocery store was at the other end of Oceanfront Lane and was the only grocery store inside town limits. It felt like a movie set labeled “Small Beach Town,” with the fishing store, lingerie boutique, record store and ice cream parlor all snuggled next to each other like bugs in a rug.
Apparently, living in Eno for two months had made my subconscious decide to use Southern similes, too.
I took my time walking back to the café, a gallon of milk in each hand. Everything was quiet, the surge of summer people still had a while until they started to trickle in. A small sign caught my eye. Tarnation Bookstore. I snickered and kept walking.
A bookstore. I hadn’t been to one since I moved. And truth be told, my nights needed distracting. I hadn’t brought my laptop with me, my phone was in pieces on the New Jersey Turnpike, and apparently Martina, the government painting waitress, hadn’t been one for any sort of entertainment. And if she was, she had taken it all with her. Spending nights wandering by the beach was therapeutic and all, but there were only so many hours I could spend sitting by the sand dunes and trying to put the pieces of my life back together.
Instead of going up to my apartment after we finished closing the café that night, I headed over to the bookstore. Pulling the door open, I walked inside.
I didn’t even know where to look. It had been so long that I read for pleasure. I wandered up and down the aisles, trying to find something that I wanted to read. Fifteen minutes later, I walked to the front of the store with a pile of books. “This all for today?” the lady behind the counter asked.