Broken Seed

by R J Machado De Quevedo

  “No, no, no. The cops want us all out now. They said they can’t risk another riot by the crew tonight. The last two cops are waiting to escort Lucy and me out. They seem to think we all turned on Frank and tried to trash the place. Like one big mutiny. But that isn’t what happened at all,” Susan said, not sounding too sure of it herself. “I’ll go tell them you’ve got to lock up the office or something before you leave.”

  “Wait. What did happen? How did it all start?” I asked, curious to hear her theory. Last, I’d seen she and Lucy had been in a heated argument with a customer, yet they hadn’t been arrested. My curiosity was squirming it’s way into my frazzled brain power.

  “Beats the heck out of me,” she said dismissively. “All I know is this is gonna really hurt my pocket book. I’ve got mouths to feed, you know!” Susan grumbled to herself as she walked off.

  David looked back at me and smiled with an expression that clearly said “Guess I’m never gonna get to kiss you.”

  He stepped out of the bathroom and set me carefully down a few feet away. His hands lingered on my waist for a moment before I gently pulled away and turned aside to avoid looking into the intensity of his eyes.

  “Thanks,” I said, looking around.

  The place was a wreck. Shattered dishes and food were everywhere. The floor was covered; utensils and wasted food were scattered across the floor like debris. I walked over and picked up the spatula Frank had been using as a sword.

  “Poor Frank,” I said, shaking my head and took a few steps deeper into the kitchen.

  “I know,” David said softly as he came and stood next to me.

  “Do you want to meet me here tomorrow and maybe we can try to clean some of this up?” David asked.

  “I have class,” I said absent-mindedly.

  “Oh, I know. Me too. But I mean afterward. Around four? I bet Frank won’t call anyone for help. Once he realizes what happened, he might feel too ashamed to call us. The man has the pride of a grizzly.”

  I nodded in agreement. Frank was one of the most stubborn and prideful men I had ever known.

  “Four o’clock should work. I’ll see you here,” I said with a quick glance at his face.

  I wanted to help Frank. I felt bad for him. This café was named after his late wife, and it had been nearly destroyed from the inside out. I would come help David clean up. But I was definitely going to meet him here. I didn’t want to be trapped alone in a car with him. Being held in his arms had been quite close enough. I’d need some space and time before I could risk being in that sort of confined space with him again.

  I turned to walk toward the back hall so I could exit through the back door where I had come in. It was closer to where my car was parked.

  “Where are you going?” David asked from behind me.

  “To get my stuff out of Frank’s office and then to my car. I parked in the back,” I said.

  “I’ll walk you. We don’t know if Jared is hanging around out there. And I didn’t like the way Chief Wales was asking about you either. I heard him say he was leaving, but he seemed hesitant about it. Let me poke my head out and look around first, okay?” David asked.

  He was right. I hadn’t even thought of that.

  “Okay, thanks. That’s probably a good idea,” I said gratefully.

  David passed by me and went to the back door. He opened it up slowly and held a hand behind him to keep me back from the door, but I was already staying behind the shelves of supplies and boxes of dry goods while he peeked.

  David stepped outside, leaving his hand on the door to keep it from closing on him and locking him out. A moment later, he came back in and closed the door.

  “All clear. No one’s outside, even the cops are all gone. And Susan and Lucy seemed to have left already. It’s just your car and mine out there now,” David said with relief.

  “Good,” I breathed. “Oh no!” I almost shouted, just remembering. I flipped my wrist over and looked at my watch. It was past eight o’clock. “Elisabeth,” I breathed.

  “Your roommate?” David asked confused.

  “Liz was going to try and stop in for dinner tonight with her friend. I have to call her,” I said as I rushed to Frank’s office and peered in through the window. I had accidently left my cell phone in there earlier. I rattled the door, but it was locked.

  Oh shoot! My keys are in there too!

  “Crap!” I said, slightly panicked. I had to call Liz.

  “Hold on. I can get that,” David said, pulling out Frank’s glob of restaurant keys and found the one with the red rubber ring around the end. He unlocked the door for me and turned smiling. He pushed it open and held it there waiting for me to pass by him.

  “Thanks. Why do you have his keys?” I asked.

  “I stopped the cops before they could take Frank out the door and asked him for his keys to lock up the place. He said sure, so they let me unclip them from his belt,” David explained.

  David was turning out to be quite the go-to hero tonight.

  I rushed inside the office past David’s outstretched arm and grabbed my phone off of the desk. I had another missed call. I pressed the speed dial button for Elisabeth’s cell phone. It went straight to voice mail. Good, she was probably still stuck at her office if it went straight to voice mail.

  “Liz, hi, it’s me. I wanted to let you know I’m on my way home. It’s only about half past eight, but we had to close the restaurant. Don’t worry. I’m okay. It wasn’t anyone we were expecting,” I added cryptically as I glanced at David who had joined me in the office and was looking around.

  “I’ll explain later, Liz. Anyway, call me if you want to. Oh, and I don’t want you and Brad to have to change your plans for me. You guys can still go out to eat somewhere or whatever. I’ll see you later. Bye.” I hung up and let out a big breath. I didn’t want her showing up to see the place closed down, my car gone, and freak out, thinking the worst. I snatched up my keys, anxious to leave.

  “She looks just like you,” David said in a strange voice from right behind me.

  “No, she doesn’t. Liz is taller, darker, and much prettier than me,” I said with a disbelieving tone to my voice.

  “No, not Elisabeth. Her,” David said, pointing to the picture of Frank and his wife on the shelf above the desk.

  Oh that.

  This was going to be a hard one to write off unless I wanted to share with him my suspicions about Frank and who my great- aunt might be.

  “Oh, hmm… Funny that,” I said, stuffing my phone in my pocket and trying to see how I could slip past him to escape without shoving him aside in the process.

  “No, I mean, she looks just like you. Frank wasn’t kidding, was he?” David stepped up closer to the picture and examined it closer. Then looked back at my face and studied it with a slight crease in his brow.

  “Except the eyes. I like yours better. More kitty cat like. And if this was in color, I bet her hair would be just a little darker too. But wow. That is amazing,” David said in awe.

  “Can we go now?” I asked, starting to get anxious.

  “Melanie. Do you think she might be related to you? I mean, how can she not be?” David picked up the picture, his thumb caressed Katherine’s face absent-mindedly. “You are still going to be beautiful when you’re in your forties, Melanie,” David said with a smile.

  “Forties! Katherine was only in her twenties there!” I said, snatching at the picture and putting it back on the shelf.

  David laughed and glanced back at the picture where it now sat but didn’t reach up to take it again.

  “But you will be. Here, look at this one.” David grabbed another picture from the back of the shelf that had been hidden in the corner and handed it to me.

  I hadn’t noticed this one earlier tonight. It was of Katherine and Frank at a party decked out in formal wear and sparkling with jewelry. She did appear to be in her forties and still looked great. Her hair was swept up into a high, fancy design of some kind with l
ittle curls delicately framing her face. The strapless dress displayed her fit, toned upper body, but outlined the curves of her elegant body shape. She was curvy, but like me, she had a small chest. Slightly bigger than mine but still small compared to current social expectations. Her face showed only the finest of lines around the eyes and mouth, but based on how Frank had aged in this one, she must have also been in her late forties.

  “They looked so happy,” I said sadly. “Frank looked like a different person when he was with her, doesn’t he? His expression is so content and proud. He was a bit thinner too.”

  “A woman has a way of changing a man for the better. Bringing out the best in him. Giving him a richer purpose in life,” David said gently.

  “It wasn’t like that for my mother and father,” I said bitterly before I could filter my thoughts. Realizing my mistake, I jerked and glanced up at him. I had never talked to him about my parents before.

  “Well, I’m sorry to hear that.” David took the photo out of my hand and placed it back on the shelf. He reached out and took my hands in his and placed them over his heart, holding them there as he looked into my eyes. I knew he could see the pain and sorrow in them at the mention of my parents. His face shifted to tenderness as if he could feel some part of what I was feeling.

  “Not all men know how to love. Not all men know what it is they truly have until it’s gone. I wouldn’t make that mistake.” His voice was soft and sincere, and his heartbeat under my hand was steady and strong. It wasn’t a line or a lie. He was simply telling me the truth as he believed it to be.

  God, he was driving me nuts, not in a he’s-making-me-angry way, but in an I-don’t-know-how-to-handle-him-anymore-because-he-is-too-damn-perfect-for-me kind of way. My pulse was speeding up and a flutter was beating the insides of my stomach. All I trusted myself to do was stand there and let him hold my hands on his hard beautiful chest and feel his heart beating while he looked into my face as if to memorize it’s every curve.

  “Come on. I better walk you to your car,” David finally said and released my hands.

  “Yep,” I said, shuffling and swinging my hands awkwardly.

  “I still think you’ve got to be related to her though,” David said from beside me as I turned and exited the office.

  “Maybe. Don’t know,” I said, trying to dismiss the subject.

  “Can’t you ask your family?” David said, ignoring my efforts to drop the conversation again.

  “I can’t,” I quietly said, biting my lip.

  “Why not?” David asked innocently.

  “They’re dead. My mom and sister are dead. My father is out there somewhere. We don’t talk,” I said, my words rushing to get them out and be done with.

  “Melanie,” David said my name so tenderly it stopped me as I approached the back door. I turned and looked at him standing tall and handsome and clueless. “I’m sorry you had to go through that. I can’t imagine—”

  “It was a long time ago. And I don’t want to talk about it,” I said, cutting him off from whatever kind and insightful thing he was about to say.

  “Sure. Okay,” David said, his hands gesturing outward to sur- render the subject to me.

  “Hang on a second, okay? I have to check the front door and make sure it’s locked up before I set the alarm,” David said and turned to walk away but then stopped and looked back at me. “Don’t leave yet, okay? I still want to walk you out.” And with that, he bounded off in a quick jog back toward the kitchen to run his security check.

  I made a few unconscious steps in the direction he had went before I caught myself. I stopped and watched his strong back and shoulders get smaller as he jogged off and round the corner. Why did he have to look so damn good when he ran?

  Wow, he was really stepping up to take charge tonight. I’d have to tell Frank how he took care of everything for him. Maybe Frank would be nicer to him after tonight. After all, David hadn’t been in any of the fights. He’d tried to stop them or got smacked around a little by other people doing the fighting.

  Then again, I wondered if Frank would just fire everyone and start over with a new crew. God, I hoped he wouldn’t fire me out of spite because I had been hiding in the bathroom. He knew I had been here tonight. I wondered if he would wonder why I was nowhere to be found when all hell broke loose.

  The lights in the kitchen and the hall went out and only the Exit signs and safety lights kept me from being covered in complete darkness. David came back down the hall and walked up to me.

  “Good thing I checked. It was still unlocked. The cops put up yellow crime scene tape across the door in the shape of an X but didn’t bother to lock the door. Don’t know why they’d need the crime tape. It’s not like anybody died.” David scoffed.

  I stood silently and waited for him to set the alarm, so we could leave together. I was afraid I’d say something else I wasn’t ready to say. He seemed to have a way of making me drop my defenses and stuff just sort of slipped out.

  Best to say nothing.

  At my silence, David explained further, “Sorry it took a few minutes. The cooks left the stoves and ovens on. Burnt to smithereens whatever they were cooking. Got them all turned off and made sure the registers were at least shut tightly too. Had to find all the light switches around the joint to turn them off.” David looked around, checking for anything else he might have missed back here.

  David focused back on my face and my quiet demeanor. I was still trying to not say anything else that would lead me into awkward places I wasn’t ready to dive into yet.

  “You look tired. You must be ready to go home?” David said softly as he stepped up a little closer to me. His voice had been a matter-of-fact voice, but I could see that slow burning heat starting back up in his eyes again as he looked at me under the glow of the safety light.

  There was something sort of intimate about standing here with him all alone in the semidarkness with no one blundering about to come around the corner or open a door and break us apart again. I think he felt it too, and that was why he was stalling. One of us would have to make the effort to get out of here, or we might never leave.

  “Shall we?” I prodded and headed back to the door to stand by it and wait.

  “We shall,” David said, resigned.

  He walked over and set the alarm and waited for it to beep. “Me first, just in case,” he said and came up quickly to open the door and exited before me. He glanced around with his hand held out behind him once more to keep me back. He was still being protective.

  “All clear,” he said as he glanced around. I exited after him and stepped to the side, so he could shut the door and press into it until the click of the latches were loud and final.

  I made my way to my car, pulling my keys from my apron pocket as I went. I stopped at my door and looked at David who had been following me but not too close trying not to wear out his welcome.

  “Thank you again for everything, David,” I said quietly. “I really mean it.”

  “It was nothing. I’ll see you tomorrow?” David asked me, seeking confirmation again.

  Ah, yes. Tomorrow at four o’clock to clean up. Fun. Fun.

  “Yeah, sure. Has to get done right? See you then,” I said and waved with my hand still holding the keys.

  “Or…” David said, coming up to me and leaned against my little Civic.

  “Or?” I asked.

  “Or I can pick you up in the morning for school, and we can ride over here together afterward. I’ll even transport you back home,” he said with a charming smile.

  Either he was still worried about me running into Jared, or he wanted to spend more time with me. I know right now it felt like pulling apart two magnets just trying to leave, but I knew I needed a little break to try and get my clarity back. There had been too much happening today between him and I. I couldn’t go from zero to one hundred and fifty overnight. I’d never survive the transformation, and any chance we’d have of growing into more would snap like a st
iff unused rubber band.

  That was me, all right—stiff and unused.

  “I can see it in your face, you want to, but you’re going to say no. Am I right?” David asked sounding light and friendly. I think he was trying to tone it down, so he wouldn’t scare me.

  “Yes, you’re right. You can read me pretty well, you know that,” I said, relaxing since he wasn’t acting hurt or rejected.

  “Well, I’m trying. I want to understand you and know how you think and why you do the things you do. I can’t seem to get enough of you.” His voice was warm and his smile was affectionate. His eyes were hungry to know more.

  “I know what you mean,” I admitted before I could stop myself.

  Crap, did I just admit that? Why are things just popping out tonight!

  “Do you?” David asked, his eyebrows going up in surprise at the admission and then his face grew pleased.

  “Yes,” I said shyly.

  “Good night, Bishop,” David said with a satisfied smile and walked off toward his Jeep Rubicon. I watched him go, admiring his solid masculine frame and tight butt. Yes, I noticed. It was hard not to. I am only human after all.

  I climbed into my car, tossing my apron onto the seat and buckled myself in. Out of the frying pan and back into the fire. I’d have to be sure to keep my mind alert and take note of my neighborhood this time when I got closer to home. I glanced at my little notebook lying there, halfway covered up by my apron now. Right. Keep notes of anything odd. Somehow tonight’s events at work weren’t the sort to list in there. But damned if they weren’t odd enough to be written down somewhere. Heck, the last few days should be written down somewhere.

  Maybe I need to get back into journaling? How did my life turn into this?

  Oh, yes. The book. I’d have to go take a closer look at that book. Maybe some answers were in there. Or at least, maybe I’d uncover some clues.

  “Okay, God. I’m ready to know whenever you are,” I prayed.

  Melo

  Chapter Eleven