The Fortune Cafe (A Tangerine Street Romance)

by Wright, Julie

  I can’t do it, Dad, Emma thought. I can’t do this.

  While medicated, her mom was fine, great even... sometimes. But Emma knew what embarrassment to the family looked like, and it had nothing to do with Dragon’s Lair. When her mom stubbornly chose to hide her medicine, or throw it away, or dump it all into the toilet, she became this cruel, frightening thing.

  Emma never understood the creature that emerged in her mother.

  Other kids battled monsters under the bed or in their closets. But Emma’s monster didn’t live in a closet or under any bed where it would be convenient to forget it— easy to live a life separate from it. Her demon lived inside her mother’s mind. It went to parent-teacher conferences, to school plays, and on trips to Disneyland where it clawed free and rampaged in ways that Emma hollowed out emotionally. She thought about Harrison and all the daydreams she’d been having of him since he’d left her porch. He was so interesting and funny. She thought about her mother’s demon unleashing itself in front of Harrison’s beautiful face, his eyes widening in shock at things her mother might do, and her heart slammed her ribs in protest against the two of them ever meeting.

  Her dad had handled the cracks in their lives— mostly. He took care of everything, straightened up everything, smoothed out ruffled feathers, and wrote checks and made apologies when necessary. Emma thought she could pick up where he left off when he’d died.

  But she hadn’t known. She hadn’t known how the marrow from every aspect of her life could be sucked dry by her mother’s instability. Of course, things weren’t just harder because her dad was no longer there to take care of it, but they were harder because he was no longer there. And her mom didn’t know how to handle the endless hopelessness created by his absence. Not living with her mom, Emma couldn’t enforce regular medicine habits. As a solution, the psychiatrist had recommended Emma move in with her mom in her old childhood home.

  She didn’t— couldn’t— do that. She couldn’t live under the same roof with the comments made of slivers and broken glass, not again— not unless she planned on going insane too. Emma fired that psychiatrist, deciding that he might be just drumming up business. If he made her crazy too, he’d have another client.

  Her older brother and sister were no help at all. They didn’t get it. How could they? Blake and Rosalee were over a decade older than Emma. They remembered their mother as caustic and biting, but they’d already moved out by the time she became a menace to society and entirely unstable. They lived in different states— too far away to be useful— a thing which Emma felt certain they had done by design.

  Emma, unfortunately, was only a phone call and fifteen minutes away in light traffic. And because, out of her siblings, she was the one unmarried, childless, and unsuccessful career-wise, she was the place her mother focused all that negative energy. Made for super fun weekends when her mom would declare herself suicidal and camp in Emma’s apartment so Emma could watch her.

  “Why don’t you call Rosalee?” Emma suggested, staring at the clock and willing the second hand to stop sweeping over the face.

  “And how is Rosie going to help me all the way from Seattle?” her mom demanded to know.

  “I told you I’ll come by tonight— as soon as I’m off work.”

  “If you loved me or cared about me at all, you’d come now,” her mom said.

  With her mom, love was a tool for manipulation. “I’ll make it so I get off early. Put in one of your movies and wait for me. I’ll be there soon.” She hung up before her mom could protest. She hated it, but the hasty-hang-up was a necessary evil. If she allowed her mom to linger through teary or angry good-byes, the phone call would never end.

  Though Emma was already running late, she had to text Harrison to let him know she couldn’t have dinner with him after all. If she didn’t take a lunch break, she could leave work earlier. She hated breaking off the beginnings of something that felt like it had potential and hated that she had to do it over text, but what other options existed? And wasn’t it better? She again imagined one of her mom’s explosive tantrums happening in front of Harrison again.

  Yes. It was better to never let anything start than to have him bear the mortification of her mom. She hit send on her phone hard enough she could’ve put her finger through the glass, grabbed her keys since she’d need the car to get to her mom’s, and kicked the door shut before thumping down the stairs to the carport. If she hit the lights right, Cái’s restaurant wouldn’t cry out in despair or whatever it was bewitched restaurants did. She made it with thirty-eight seconds to spare. Cái’s restaurant was safe.

  “So,” Cái said as she clocked in and tied the apron around her waist. “Feeling fortunate?”

  “That’s a terrible pun, even from you.” She moved to where the kitchen connected to the dining area. The kitchen’s humid heat stifled and chafed today in a way she found she couldn’t handle.

  Cái followed her. “Okay, fine. I leave the jokes to you and your dragons, but I think you owe me an apology.” His wrinkles folded into a wide smile.

  “I am not apologizing for the crazy lady.” She wasn’t sure if she meant Harrison’s date or her mother, but either way, she wasn’t apologizing.

  “Who cares for crazy lady? You owe me an apology for spending four years making fun of my restaurant’s divine calling.”

  “An apology would indicate some remorse and some intention to stop making fun of your voodoo. And you think I’m stopping why again?”

  He snapped his fingers in her face. “Your fortune! It’s come true.”

  She glanced at Nate, who shrugged and then mopped a handkerchief over his forehead. So she wasn’t the only one who felt like the kitchen was too hot to handle. “You don’t even know my fortune, what do you—”

  “Look around. Love is trying to catch you.” He grinned, knowing he’d surprised her.

  Who told Cái what her fortune had said? Emma frowned; how could anyone have told when Harrison was the only other one who knew?

  “You knowing what it said proves nothing,” she scoffed, still a little unsettled because he had insider information on the contents of her cookie. “It’s not like it came true.”

  “Really? I think you should have another look around,” Cái said and pointed out toward the dining area to where the windows overlooked the ocean.

  Standing outside the restaurant and appearing a little nervous was Harrison. His blue long-sleeved pullover accented his build in a way that made her take in a sharp breath. His fingers gripped a small bouquet of... what was he holding?

  And more important than what was he holding, what was he doing there? “Why is he here?” She actually whispered the question out loud.

  “I would think that’s obvious,” Nate said when it became evident the only answer Cái planned on giving was a cocky grin. “He’s trying to catch you.”

  “He is not!” she whispered. “Is he?”

  Nate laughed. Cái beamed. Jen rounded the corner to try to enter the kitchen but stopped when she saw her pathway blocked. “What are we looking at?” she asked.

  “We’re watching love catch our Emma.” Cái’s voice sounded reverent, confident, and self-satisfied all at the same time.

  “We’re apparently watching magic,” Nate tried to clarify.

  Cái pursed his lips and wagged a finger at Nate. “Ah! But love is always magic!” he insisted before giving Emma a shove toward the dining area at the same time that Harrison opened the door.

  A wave pounding the sand outside felt like a punctuation mark to Emma’s increased heart rate. She stumbled forward and heard Jen make a noise of approval about Harrison’s shoulders. Emma stepped forward before Ali, the hostess, could gather menus and lead him off to a table. She took his arm and swung him out of Ali’s path.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked, hoping he didn’t repeat the words from her fortune that were now on constant repeat inside her own skull.

  “You tried to ditch out on our date.”
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  Wait a minute. He was calling it a date? Not a get-together, or hanging out? Why did that make her legs feel all wobbly and her feet feel all tingly? She gave her head a slight shake to stay focused and said, “I wasn’t ditching. Something came up. Something unavoidable. I—”

  “These are for you.” He handed off the bouquet, which she could see was a bouquet of... “Pencils?”

  “Sketching pencils. I didn’t know what brand or anything, so I bought a bunch of everything in the art store.” He shrugged and smiled, looking hopeful and sweet and perfect. She had to work hard to not stare at his lips.

  “You bought me sketch pencils? I don’t think any...” She took a few deep breaths. Was this for real? Was Cái’s magic cookie really right? She looked up at him, feeling a heat in his eyes as soon as their gazes locked. “Thank you, Harrison. I can safely say that no one has ever bought me anything like this. I’m impressed enough that you remembered I sketched on the sides of my school assignments.”

  He gave a noncommittal kind of shrug. “Actually, I cheated a little. I Googled you.”

  She felt her smile freeze in place. He’d gone online? He knew about the comic? And he still showed up to see her? “Wow. I don’t think anyone’s ever said that to me before. Googled me, huh. I’m not going to lie, it’s a little... unsettling.” Granted, she’d have done the same if she wasn’t caught between work, her mom, her book launch, and Comic Con.

  “Your web comic is really clever, funny enough I laughed out loud several times and made my mom’s poodle bark at me from the hallway. Your work is impressive.”

  The words were water in a drought. Had anyone she knew personally aside from her few friends at the restaurant ever said anything positive about Dragon’s Lair? And he called it her work, not her hobby, not idle doodling, nor a waste of time. “Thank you, Harrison,” she said. He couldn’t know how much exactly she was thanking him for— not just for the pencils, but for the validation.

  “Sorry to interrupt you,” Jen said as she shot a meaningful look toward the corner table of the dining area, “but table nine has been seated.”

  The spell was broken. She had a job to do. But she couldn’t let Harrison leave, not yet. She leaned in to whisper, not because she needed to but because she wanted an excuse to breathe him in. “Wait a few minutes at table thirteen, I’ll be over in a minute, and we can talk more then.”

  He leaned in to whisper back, “Where’s table thirteen?”

  For a thrilling moment she hoped his lean was as on purpose as hers. “Where you were seated last night.”

  “Ah. That explains it. Table thirteen, demonic date possessions. It all makes sense now.”

  She laughed and gave him a gentle nudge in the direction of his table.

  She pocketed the pencils with her sketch book and hurried to table nine, reciting nearly the entire menu before the couple let her leave to fetch their drinks. Once she had their order placed and drinks on their table, she went back to table thirteen, thinking how much better he looked at that table when there wasn’t an angry woman sitting across from him.

  “I only have a few minutes but wanted to apologize again for our plans tonight.”

  He gave her an inquisitive look. “So why no lunch break? Don’t you legally have to take a break?”

  “I have to leave work early tonight. If I don’t take a break, I can get out of here sooner. My mom, um, needs my help.”

  A worried expression crossed his features. “Is she sick?”

  Emma knew what he meant. He wanted to know if her mom had a cold, or the bird flu, or cancer. He wasn’t asking if her mom was mentally sick, and Emma didn’t want to tell him, especially after he made several remarks about how Andrea’s outburst the night before proved he was right about backing off. He didn’t want a woman with any irrational tendencies.

  Emma couldn’t confess that she was genetically tainted by irrational tendencies, or at least tainted by association. Because even though she’d been the one to cancel their date, she found herself interested, interested in his making a business out of his creativity, interested in his smile, interested in his smile being aimed her direction, interested in a man who thought to bring her pencils because he recognized it would be a meaningful gift. He knew she’d had problems with her mom, but he couldn’t know the depth and breadth because what if that made him not interested. “She is sick,” she said. “I can’t leave her alone when she’s like this. I’m so sorry.”

  He looked more relieved than he did disappointed. Had he believed that she was ditching him for less respectable reasons?

  “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  Send me to a day spa, she thought. But instead she said, “Not really. It’s just something I need to handle.”

  “I bet it stresses you out a little though, right?”

  You have no idea. “Why would you say that?” Did he think she was some heartless cavewoman who didn’t like helping her sick mom? And okay, that was sort of true, but also sort of not true. She really did love her mom. But with her brother and sister abandoning her to the task, she felt like she’d been given a dull sword to battle her demons.

  She inwardly grunted at herself. She was not a heroine in her web comic. She didn’t own swords, and her demons were not long-fanged creatures with ten heads. They just felt like they were.

  “You have your Comic Con in LA this weekend. It’s a lot to do when you’re caring for a sick parent as well.”

  She almost asked how he knew that, but then remembered that he’d stalked her online, giving him access to her entire schedule for the next week. “It is a lot to do,” she agreed.

  “Want some help?” He repeated his previous question.

  “Help?”

  He grinned. “Yeah. Help. You know, that thing when you don’t have to do everything all by yourself because other people lend a hand and make it easier. Synonymous with assistance, comfort, relief, support.”

  She had the crazy desire to reach across the table, grab him by his shirt, and kiss his face off in the overwhelming gratitude she felt that he would even offer assistance. It was an offer she could never take, but the very suggestion of kindness warmed her soul. “Why?” she asked.

  He raised his eyebrows in question of her question.

  “Why do you want to help me?” she clarified.

  “Payback,” he said, “for all the times you’ve helped me.”

  She shook her head, confused. “But I haven’t—”

  He lowered his voice. “Yes, you have. I always had a friend to sit next to as long as you were in my classes.”

  “Assigned seating does not count as help,” she hedged.

  “It counts because it wasn’t always assigned. And you never moved away— even when you had a choice. You always talked to me before class started. You always loaned me pencils because I never remembered mine.” He lifted one shoulder at the same time a corner of his mouth lifted in a rueful smile. “I figured I owed you a pencil or twenty since I’m pretty sure you never got some of those pencils back.”

  She laughed and looked back toward the dining room she’d been ignoring, hoping he didn’t see the blush that surely crawled all over her face. “I have to get back to work. Thank you so much for those pencils. And for everything. Thanks for the offer. If I need help with anything, I’ll call you, since some sneaky guy put your number in my phone.”

  He drummed his fingers on the table top. “Gotta watch out for those sneaky guys.”

  “Especially when they’re good-looking.”

  Her face heated up from merely warm to sun surface temperatures when she realized she said that part out loud. But the look on his face, the one of approval, and the leap of excitement in his eyes were reward enough to make her not regret it so much as simply feel embarrassed by it.

  “I’ll call you maybe,” she said. “If I need anything. Thanks for coming in to check on me. See you later?”

  “You absolutely will,” he said.

  Sh
e rushed to the back kitchen to fetch table nine’s food and get it delivered to them. She’d been talking long enough that the orders had to be ready. On her way back to deliver the food, she halted mid-step, startled to find Harrison still sat at table thirteen. Hadn’t they just said good-bye? Why was he still sitting there?

  As she maneuvered her tray over to table nine, she shot another look back at him and her toe caught the edge of a chair. The stumble off-balanced her with the tray in her hands, and it tilted and crashed to the ground. That was when she realized that not only had she dumped an entire order on the ground, she’d nearly dumped it on an actual customer. “Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry,” Emma said, horrified that she’d been too sidetracked by looking at Harrison to focus on her job. “I’ve never done that before. It’s lucky you moved right then, or you’d have sweet and sour sauce all over you right now.”

  The younger woman shrugged off her near calamity as if it was nothing. Emma ran back to let Nate know they needed table nine’s orders remade, then rushed to table nine to apologize for the misfortune, promising the couple free dessert to make up for the inconvenience. Only then could she focus on the mess.

  Except that Harrison was already there cleaning. “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “This is that helping thing we talked about a minute ago. I’m getting the feeling you don’t let people assist you enough, or you wouldn’t have to have me continually defining it for you.”

  Cái peeked around the corner and saw Harrison kneeling on his tiled floor cleaning up Emma’s mishap. He grinned at Harrison. “You know if you want to work here, I can get you an application.”

  Harrison laughed as he scooped up sweet and sour glazed chicken and dumped it into the bin Emma had retrieved for him. “Well, I do know where all your cleaning supplies are located. Do employees get any kind of perks?”

  Cái wagged a finger at Harrison. “You already had your fortune. What greater perk could you need?”

  Emma groaned as she dumped the last bits of broken dishes into the garbage can. “Cái thinks his restaurant is magic.”