Waterfront Café

by Mia Malone

  Brody

  Her mouth formed a circle around the straw, and then again without the straw as she stared at him in surprised joy. Images of what he wanted those lips to do with various parts of him flashed in his mind, but he pushed them back.

  “I could get really, really drunk on this, Brody,” she said, and her voice was slightly breathy, which kicked off another set of images in his goddamned brain.

  He grinned and moved to sit down next to her, thinking that the godawful day he’d had might not be so fucking horrible after all.

  The morning had started with a bundle of joy in the form of dog-puke which he'd had to wipe up from his kitchen floor. Then he'd been late for work, and in a foul mood, so when his uncle Jools walked in and started complaining about the soup, Brody snarled something which had neither been nice nor nephewly. Jools bushy brows lowered as he dug in, and when Dottie entered the Café, they were standing nose to nose, arguing about the best way to make lobster bisque. The number of f-bombs needed to make the point that cognac was absolutely necessary to achieve a decent bisque had not made Dorothea Baker happy.

  Brody let his mother scold him as if he was ten years old, mostly because she gave his uncle the same treatment, and then he went back to frying boring pieces of cod for the fish and chips everyone seemed to like even though it tasted like cardboard and grease. He was on his way home to unpack the last boxes in his mudroom when his ex-wife called. Ex-wife number two, that was. Ex-wife number one never called and neither did her son, which was also his son, a fact that the two of them chose to ignore.

  Ex-wife number two asked if he’d talked to their daughter, and he heard her silent smirk over the line when he shared that it had been a few weeks.

  “Okay,” she said breezily, and added, “Well, I’m sure she’ll call you when she feels up for a chat.”

  He refused to let her bait him but hung up frowning, and then he called his daughter. Thea didn't pick up, so he left a message, got into his running gear, whistled for Boone to come and went jogging in the rain.

  Two hours later, he was exhausted, but slightly less pissed off, and after a shower, he went down to the Bar to wash the rest of his mood away with some beer. He raised a hand in greeting to the people he knew, but didn’t feel like socializing and sat down alone at the end of the bar to stare into his beer, thinking that he'd knock on Marie's door the next day. She’d been mostly invisible the past week, but he'd seen the shadow of her move around a few evenings, so he knew she wasn’t dead. Then a brief pause in the conversations had him turning around to watch the crowd, and there she was.

  “So, Marie,” Brody murmured as he sat down next to her. “Miserable?”

  “Yes,” she confirmed. “It’s been raining non-stop for a week. I haven’t talked to anyone, and I guess I bored myself to tears.”

  “No family to call?”

  Something flashed over her face, and it looked like sadness, but then she smiled again.

  “Not really,” she said evasively, and added breezily, “It got so bad I started thinking I’d relocate to Florida instead. I’ve always wanted to live there.”

  Brody wondered why a woman who wanted to live in goddamned Florida had rented a house in a tiny town in Maine. In February.

  “Why didn’t you rent a house there?” he asked.

  She had her pretty mouth around the straw and took a few long sips before she answered.

  “My husband stole Tallahassee.”

  Since he'd been focused on her lips, it took a while for her words to penetrate, and then Brody blinked.

  “Your husband stole Tallahassee,” Brody echoed slowly.

  “God,” she muttered. “What is it about you?”

  “Me?”

  “I am not an idiot, Brody.”

  “Okay.”

  She blushed and closed her eyes briefly. Then she took a deep breath and tried to smile.

  “I keep saying these stupid things, and I don't know why. I guess it's because you're such a nice man.”

  Fuck no. Being cast as the nice guy would push him straight into not rolling around naked with her.

  “Marie,” he said and waited until he had her full attention. “You can ask anyone in this bar. I’m not nice.” It looked like she wanted to protest, so he added, “Tallahassee.”

  “Right,” she sighed. “I guess I should explain.”

  “That'd be good.”

  “I always wanted to live in Tallahassee. It’s been a dream since forever.”

  “Been there?” Brody asked.

  “No.”

  “Have you been to Florida?”

  “No.”

  Brody blinked.

  “Babe, I don’t get it. Why Tallahassee?”

  “Mostly the name, I think. It rolls off your tongue like... I don’t know, like sunshine and friendly people. It just sounds happy.”

  That had to be the weirdest reason for anyone to move anywhere, but Brody wasn't going to share that. Something else she'd said had finally registered with him.

  “You’re married?”

  She made a face and looked away. Brody sighed because he might be an asshole, but he did not do someone else’s wife.

  “I don’t know what I am,” she said quietly. “It’s complicated.”

  “Babe. Either you’re married, or you’re divorced. Not complicated.”

  “My husband died six months after we split up but four days before our divorce was final. Complicated,” she countered.

  Brody stared at her and pushed out a confused, “Huh.”

  “So, what am I? A divorced widow? Or a widowed divorcee? A widorcee?”

  God. Laughing at her dead husband was so wrong. He clamped his jaws together and breathed slowly through his nose.

  “You’re right,” he managed to press out after a few beats. “That is complicated.”

  “I know,” she murmured and took another sip from her drink. “I was so angry at him for Tallahassee, and then he –”

  She cut herself off and stared at him.

  “Then he...” Brody murmured.

  “Not telling,” she said immediately.

  “Babe.”

  “No.”

  “Marie.”

  “Brody.”

  He saw in her eyes that she wouldn't budge, but he still had to try because he was curious, so he leaned in closer.

  “Will you explain if I make you another hippie juice?”

  “The drink’s called hippie juice?”

  “Yup. Mom’s favorite.”

  “I’d like one more, but I’m still not telling.”

  He grinned and said with a shrug, “Drink up, and I'll get one for you. Will you tell me how your ex stole the town of Tallahassee, at least?”

  “That I can do,” she said primly, slurped up the last of her hippie juice, and added, “It’s a lot less embarrassing.”

  Brody got up, wondering what the hell that ex of hers had done.

  “So,” he murmured. “The theft of a town?”

  “The theft of a dream,” she said with a sigh. “I always wanted to move there. Pete knew because I told him on our first date, which was a very long time ago. He promised me we’d live there one day, and we talked about it over the years, but something always came up, so we never moved. I figured we’d retire there or something.”

  “And then you split up,” Brody said when she stopped talking. “Divorced twice myself. It sucks.”

  “Yes,” she said. “It was such a surprise.”

  “He step out on you, babe?”

  “No. Or, I don't think so. It was just... you know? We had nothing in common anymore. He was forever watching something on TV, which was mostly sports. I draw and paint. Took art classes and puttered around in the garden. Our son was in college, and our daughter was in her last year of high school, so she'd leave too. And I realized that Pete and I never did one single thing together, so I thought we'd... I don't know. Fig
ure it out. I told him I didn't think our marriage was working. He told me he agreed and moved out a week later.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Yes. I’d meant for us to go to counseling or something.” She sighed and shrugged. “The thing is; he was right to move out. I didn’t love him anymore, and I don’t think counseling would have helped. My sis was livid, and the kids weren’t too happy, but Pete and I were mostly amicable about it.”

  Amicable. Brody remembered the shouting matches that had been his own divorces and sighed too.

  “Then he got transferred,” Marie murmured, and Brody got it.

  “To Tallahassee.”

  “Yeah. Pete knew that it was in the works when he moved out and never told me. I'd talked about it off and on all through our marriage, and he still didn't tell me.” She ignored the straw and took a deep swig from her drink. “Pissed me off,” she muttered.

  “I can imagine,” Brody murmured. “And then he...”

  Marie opened her mouth but stopped herself before she blurted out whatever the fuck her ex had done.

  “Nice try,” she said with a giggle.

  “A desperate try,” Brody countered. “And also a very curious one. What the hell did he do?”

  She closed her eyes briefly, and then she scrunched up her nose.

  “You can’t tell anyone,” she said.

  “Okay.”

  She leaned in and put her mouth so close to his ear he felt her lips when she started speaking.

  “My soon to become ex-husband apparently had a bad heart, and consequently a massive coronary. He had this whilst in a motel room and on top of a woman.” She took a deep breath, and whispered, “She called me the morning of the funeral and asked if she would still get paid. Since he hadn't, um... finished, she said he'd get a fifty percent discount.”

  Brody closed his eyes and pressed his lips together. Laughing about her being a widorcee would have been wrong. Laughing about how her ex had died was so much worse, and he tried valiantly to think about something, anything which might make him sufficiently somber.

  “Brody?” Marie asked, so he opened his eyes and turned toward her.

  “I’m so sorry, babe,” he managed to get out. “That is just fucked up.”

  Then he leaned his head back and burst out in loud laughter.

  Chapter Four

  Bucket list

  Marie

  I stared at the paper in front of me and tried to make sense of the thoughts floating around on a sea of hippie juice in my brain.

  I wasn't drunk. Well, I was perhaps slightly drunk but not embarrassingly so. At least, I hoped I wasn't, and since I'd walked the short distance to my small and pink house with no assistance at all, and barely swaying, I figured I was fine.

  I'd had Brody on one side and Patrick on the other like gigantic bookends so my lack of swaying could be because of them, but I didn't think so.

  The evening had been lovely. When Brody started laughing, Patrick came over to watch us with a grin, and I realized that he’d inherited his mother’s eyes. They were full of joy as he watched his brother, but there was something else in them that I couldn’t interpret. If it hadn’t seemed so weird, I would have thought it was surprise.

  Brody kept laughing for a while, and then he refused to share the joke with Pat. A brotherly argument seemed to be brewing, but it was interrupted by a woman who walked up to us.

  “Stop bickering,” she said calmly. “Hey, I’m Shelly, and if my cousins are their usual annoying selves then feel free to join us.”

  She indicated a table on the other side of the room where a small group of people was sitting. A couple of them waved happily, and they were watching us curiously. I told her my name and said that I might join them later, which I did, and so did Brody which for some reason made Shelly bark out laughter. Then we had drinks and talked until Patrick told us they were closing the place. He waved at the second bartender and left when Brody and I did, but he veered off with another wave when we reached his house.

  “Marie,” Brody said when we were standing outside my door. “I wish I could take you out to lunch tomorrow, but I have a place to run.”

  “I know,” I murmured, and added, “I could have lunch at the Café.”

  “I’d like that,” he said.

  Then we stood in silence for a while, and I wondered if I should go inside, but I didn't want to.

  “I’m sorry I laughed about your ex, babe,” he murmured. “That discount, though...”

  “I know,” I said. “I never explained that part to the kids.”

  “Bet you didn’t,” he said, and I giggled. “So, lunch tomorrow.”

  “Unless I move to Florida during the night,” I said cheekily.

  “Babe. You never wanted to move to Florida specifically. You just wanted something else.”

  “Maybe,” I said slowly, and confessed, “I’m not entirely sure what I want.”

  “Write a bucket list, and start knocking things off it,” he murmured. “It doesn’t have to be harder than that.”

  A bucket list. I knew what that was. I’d seen the movie. In my inebriated mind, it made perfect sense to create such a list, so I tilted my head back and looked at him.

  “You really are a very nice man,” I said.

  “Not really,” he murmured and leaned down until his eyes were all I could see. “If I were, I wouldn't take advantage of your consumption of hippie juice.”

  “What?”

  That had been a stupid thing to ask because I knew what he meant. He was going to kiss me, and I was about to share that I was absolutely a-okay with that when he brushed his mouth over mine, gently and so swiftly I didn't have time to react before he'd straightened again.

  “Sleep well, Marie,” he murmured and caressed my cheek with his index finger. “Do you have any Aspirin?”

  “Tylenol.”

  “Good,” he said, opened my door and nudged me toward it.

  I watched him walk across to his own house and raised my hand when he turned.

  “Goodnight,” I murmured into the night before I went inside to sit down and stare at a blank piece of paper.

  I could do this, I decided. I was the queen of lists. I just needed some structure, or perhaps a system.

  Then I put the pen on the paper and started writing.

  It took me some time to reach the point where I felt I'd added everything I wanted to do. Feeling happy with myself, I got up, swaying slightly.

  “Yikes,” I muttered. “Should have said no to the last glass of juice.”

  Shelly had gone to get herself another gin and tonic, which was her drink of choice at all times she informed me, and she returned carrying another hippie juice for me. Patrick had made it, and it tasted like my previous glasses, but I still turned to Brody and shared that the ones he made were better. My reward for this lie was to watch his face soften and the tips of his mouth twitch. I should probably have found a way to not drink it though, and in an effort to sober up, I opened the door toward the water and stepped outside.

  The air was cold, and I leaned on the rail around the small porch, watching the waves through the darkness. Life was a lot better than it had been that morning, I thought. The people I'd spent the evening with were lovely, and when my phone pinged out the message that I had sold my beach pattern, everyone cheered as if I'd won Olympic gold.

  When I turned to walk back inside, my eyes met those if the surprised mermaid on the wall next to the door. She really was appallingly done, I thought. Fueled by the memory of my success in selling one single image, and probably also the dangerous mixture of lemonade and God only knew what, I rushed inside to get a tube of black paint and a soft brush.

  “You don't deserve to look like this,” I mumbled. “I'll just...”

  With a soft hand, I traced the wobbly lines, straightening the edges ever so slightly. No one would notice, I told myself. When the outer edges looked marginally better, I
stumbled inside and fell face first into the bed.

  ***

  The first thing that hit me when I woke up was a surge of unease rolling through my stomach. This was immediately followed by dull waves of pain thumping in my head.

  “Tylenol,” I murmured.

  An hour and a shower later, I felt better, and after a short but brisk walk along the water, it felt as if breakfast would be doable. The sky was blue all the way to the horizon, and as I walked up the steps to my porch, my eyes fell on the mermaid.

  “Shit,” I whispered.

  I had drunkenly tried to improve the way she looked and stepped closer to survey what damage I had caused. To my surprise, it was barely noticeable. The lines were more precise and seemed less awkward, I thought, but the black looked like it had been painted in one go, so no one would spot what I'd done.

  I also realized that the shape of the creature wasn't bad. The proportions were excellent, and I liked the layers of scales Dottie had outlined. My fingers started to itch with the desire to bring my brushes out there to add some more details and fix a few of the other things that were off.

  “She's godawful, isn't she?” a deep voice said behind me, and I jumped guiltily. “Mom says she'll cover her with pink when the weather is warmer.”

  Patrick was standing behind me, and I smiled at him.

  “Really?” I croaked out.

  “Really,” he confirmed. “She says she'll do another one later when she feels inspired.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Have to go. Promised Brody I’d take Boone for a walk and bring him to the Café later.”

  “Drop him off here, and I'll take him with me,” I offered, and added when he raised his brows. “I'm having lunch there.”

  “Of course,” was his reply, and I wondered if his brother had said something about... well, something.

  Brody had kissed me, but it had only been a soft brush, and it was perhaps something he always did when he walked drunk women to their doors, so I wasn’t sure if there even was something to talk about.

  “I'll bring Boone by in an hour or so if that's okay?” Pat asked.