2
LARISSA
HE SECOND THEY took Mom back to the OR, I burst into tearsT again.
I’d been crying most of last night and part of this morning. Mom too.
Dad had used my Social Security number to open credit cards in my name. I found out because they’d garnished the tax return I’d been waiting on to fix my car. I got the email yesterday.
Mom wasn’t working, and we were barely making the rent. I didn’t know how we were going to pay these medical bills, and now I didn’t even know how I was going to afford to get my car out of the shop. I couldn’t take any more time off work. I was living paycheck to paycheck, doing odd jobs just to afford groceries.
I’d babysat last night until midnight for the lady upstairs to make twenty extra dollars. I put him to bed at nine and fell asleep on the sofa, and he pried my eyelid open to tell me he woke up and drew a picture of me—on the wall of his room with his mom’s makeup. I laughed because it was so not funny, it was.
I felt so bad for the mess, I didn’t even take the money.
I pulled my legs into my chest on the gray waiting room chair and put my forehead to my knees.
I didn’t want to be alone at the hospital. I wanted to go home.
I wanted to put on my ratty emotional support grandma underwear and take off my bra and climb into bed and sleep until it was over. I wanted to order delivery food I couldn’t afford so I could eat something I didn’t have to cook and most of all I wanted someone else to figure it out. The brain energy it took for me to just do the basics at this point was more than I had to spare.
And on top of all of it, according to Mom, I probably smelled like soup.
I cried harder.
I was weeping softly into my knees, grateful that I somehow had the whole surgical waiting room to myself to sob in peace, when someone cleared their throat. My head shot up. Chris stood in the entrance, holding Mom’s bag.
When he’d showed up this morning instead of Mike, I’d almost broken down right then and there.
I didn’t like to ask for help, it had taken a lot for me to do that. Then Mike sent Chris instead of coming himself.
I could barely process it. I felt horrible that a man who barely knew me had to wake up so early to come do this. I was embarrassed by Mom’s nervous word vomit in the car, I was upset that Mike made us an inconvenience for somebody else, and I was baffled at why he hadn’t given me a heads-up and sent Chris unannounced.
I liked Mike. He was funny and distracting, and I’d needed that more than I’d realized with the last few months being so draining. But after what happened this morning, I was seriously questioning whether I should keep dating him.
I probably wasn’t being fair. He had a migraine. Maybe it took everything he had just to call Chris and get him to come instead. Maybe he was in excruciating pain and looking at his phone was debilitating. But something felt off about it, and I was too emotionally and mentally exhausted to examine it. I’d barely eaten last night, I was shaky from low blood sugar, I had a caffeine headache creeping in, and I was likely not thinking rationally, but my knee-jerk reaction to Mike not showing was to just break things off because I did not have the capacity to deal with unreliable people right now.
Chris stared at me for another few seconds. Then he grabbed a handful of tissues from the box on the coffee table, walked across the room, and sat down next to me.
“Here.” He put the Kleenex into my hands.
I took them. “Thanks.” I wiped my nose.
“Are you okay?” he asked gently.
I nodded at my hands in my lap.
He didn’t say anything and after a moment I looked up at him. He was sitting there studying me. He looked genuinely concerned.
He had really pretty brown eyes. It struck me as weird I hadn’t noticed them the night we met. Maybe the lighting wasn’t as good. I also hadn’t been this close. Or maybe I hadn’t registered how kind those eyes were and that’s what made them beautiful now.
“Nancy left her bag in the trunk,” he said.
“I know.” I sniffed. “I didn’t have your number to call you. Mike isn’t
replying to my texts.”
“Migraine.”
“Yeah. I know.” I drew in a shaky breath. “Thank you. You can go home
now. I’ll be fine.”
“No.”
It took me a second to register what he’d said. “What?”
“No,” he said again. “I’m staying.” He gazed at me levelly.
I laughed a little, and it completely threw me out of my spiral. “What if I don’t want you to stay?” I asked.
“Don’t care. I took a job. I’m gonna do it. And you can’t fire me. You
didn’t hire me, you’re not my boss.”
He got an amused scoff out of me.
“Have you eaten yet today?” he asked.
I shook my head. “No.”
“Why don’t we go get breakfast. My treat.”
“I… I don’t know if I should leave…”
“She’ll be in surgery for at least an hour,” he said.
“How do you know? You don’t even know what surgery she’s having.
Unless Mike told you.”
“He didn’t tell me. With prep and recovery, no surgery takes less than an hour. The hospital has a text message notification system for updates. I’m sure they set you up,” he said. “There’s a café just across the street. If they page, we can have you back here in five minutes.”
He waited for my reply.
“I’m hungry but I don’t think I can eat,” I said.
“Then maybe we should just go, sit down in a booth, and rate the bread.”
“Rate the bread…” I said slowly.
“Yeah. They’re a bakery too. We can get a bunch of different loaves and eat them. Rate them from one to ten. When your stomach’s upset, you can always eat bread.”
He looked at me, stone-cold serious.
I let out a breath. “Okay. I have to check the menu, though. I have a nut
allergy.”
“Oh. Okay. I’ll do it.”
Then without another word, he pulled out his phone and dialed.
I don’t know why this made me want to cry again. Maybe because I was exhausted and even the small task of making sure the restaurant was safe
felt overwhelming to me right now?
I watched him call.
“Peanut allergy or tree nuts?” he said, putting the phone to his ear.
“Both.”
He nodded. “Hi,” he said. “I was wondering if you have any nuts on the menu? I was going to come by with someone who has a nut allergy. Are you sure? Can you triple-check? Ask the chefs. Okay.”
He moved the phone away from his mouth. “I’m on hold. They’re checking with the kitchen. Is the allergy severe?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Do you have Benadryl?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Where’s your EpiPen?”
“In my purse?”
“Let me see it.”
“You want to see my EpiPen,” I deadpanned.
“Yes.”
“Okay…” I took it out and handed it to him.
He cradled the phone with his shoulder and looked at the expiration date and then the color of the liquid. He seemed to be satisfied with its condition and handed it back to me.
“It passes inspection?” I asked, mildly entertained.
“I’m a pharmacist. Minnesota has big temperature fluctuations, which can affect the quality. This one looks good.”
When I kept giving him a look, he gave a goofy one back to me.
“I’ve been entrusted with your care and I’m taking you out to eat,” he said. “I like to know your rescue medication isn’t expired.”
Before I could reply, the person came back on the line. “None at all?” he said into the phone. “No Nutella or peanut butter or almond flour? Great.
Okay, we’ll be right over.”
He hung up. “Nut free.” He nodded over his shoulder. “Come on. Let’s go get you some coffee.”
We made the short walk across the street and he held the door for me on the way in.
The place was cute—small with a bar full of red stools and booths against the window with tiny vases that had a single pink carnation in them.
There was a cold case with muffins and pies and cookies in it by the register and baskets full of fresh baked breads on the wall behind it.
The hostess put us in a seat by the window. A minute later, our waitress came over with coffee. She was a middle-aged woman who reminded me a lot of Mom. “You kids need a minute with the menu?” she asked, filling our cups.
“We’re going to do five loaves of bread,” Chris said.
She looked at us over her glasses. “Five? They’re big, you know.”
“Yeah. We want to try them all,” he said.
“Okay…” she said. “How about for your girlfriend?” She looked at me.
“You just want bread?”
“Oh, I’m not his girlfriend,” I said.
“She’s my best friend’s girlfriend,” Chris said.
“Huh,” she said, uninterested. “You want the pumpernickel too?”
“Is it good?” he asked.
She gave a shrug. “Not my cup of tea. Cindy, what do you think about the pumpernickel?” she called over her shoulder to another server wiping a
table down.
“It’s kind of ass.”
Chris glanced at me, and we shared an amused look.
“What do you think?” he asked.
“Pumpernickel’s rye, right? I like rye,” I said.
“Me too,” Chris said. “Ass can be subjective. We’ll take it.”
The waitress mouthed “Ass can be subjective” while she wrote the order down. Then she grabbed our menus and left.
“I’m not really his girlfriend,” I said once she was out of earshot.
He lowered his coffee cup. “Oh. Sorry. I just didn’t know how else to—”
“It’s fine. We’re just seeing each other right now. It’s not anything official.”
“Noted. Do you have a pen?”
“I think so.” I dug in my purse and handed him a generic ballpoint. He
started writing on a napkin.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Making a bread-ranking scoreboard.”
I watched him with amusement while he drew a grid. “You’re really serious about this,” I said.
“Aren’t you? This is important work we’re doing.”
He finished the tally sheet while I emptied three vanilla creamers into my mug. I took a long swallow and the calories and caffeine flooded my system like liquid energy. I felt instantly better.
When he was done with the scoreboard, I took the napkin and started drawing a floral border around it.
“So I need to know,” he said, sipping his coffee. “How did you end up barefoot with Lexi at a Jaxon Waters concert?”
“Someone threw up on her boots in the bathroom,” I said, shading a
daisy. “They could not be saved.”
“So you gave her your shoes?”
“I did. One of us had to piggyback the other one out, and she’s stronger.”
“Did you get your shoes back?”
“Yes. She returned them the next day—but it was touch and go for a while there. She is known to take things. Mostly hoodies.” I held up the napkin to show him my sketch. He gave me an approving nod.
“Did you know Lexi before you started working together at the diner?”
“Yeah. We used to live in the same building,” I said. “She got me the job.”
“Do you like working at Donna’s?” he asked.
I shrugged. “I like the hours. I’m a morning person.”
He scoffed. “I’m not.”
My face fell. “I’m sorry…”
He seemed to realize what he’d implied. “No, it’s fine. I didn’t mind waking up—”
“I thought you said you were already up.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. “Okay. I was not up. But I’m happy to
help. Seriously.”
I gave him a look that called bullshit.
“I mean it,” he said. “I’ve been having trouble sleeping. I would have woken up anyway and just laid there, so at least I’m doing something.”
I didn’t get to press him for more because the bread showed up.
The server dropped it off, then brought us two plates and a ramekin of butter and left again. She was right, they were huge, lined up next to each other across the table like we were at a farmers market.
“So how’d you meet Mike?” I asked while he pulled the French loaf in front of him and started slicing.
“We grew up on the same street. Jesse and Xavier too. Went to school
together.”
“Same college too?”
He slid me a piece. “No, Mike didn’t go. He went into a trade.”
I cocked my head. “A trade? What trade?”
He looked surprised. “He’s a licensed master plumber. He didn’t tell
you?”
“No…”
“Yeah. He can do all of it,” he said, buttering his slice. “It’s his side hustle right now. He prefers the personal training, but he is a plumber.”
Huh. I had to admit, that impressed me. And Mike had never mentioned it, which sort of impressed me more.
He nodded at me. “Have you met his stepdad yet?”
“Not yet,” I said, taking a bite of the bread.
“You’ve probably seen his billboards. The Toilet King?”
I had to cover my mouth when my jaw dropped. “That’s Mike’s stepdad? The Henry Tudor guy with the plunger?”
“Yeah. That’s why Mike went into the business. I think Tony wants to leave it to him when he retires.”
“I had no idea that was Donna’s husband. Wow.”
He took a bite and chewed, then he gestured to mine. “Thoughts?”
“I like it,” I said. “It has a really nice crust on it.”
“Yeah, but almost too much. It was a little hard to bite into,” he said,
examining it.
“So what’s your rating, then?” I asked.
He bobbed his head. “I give it a seven and a half out of ten. You?”
“Nine out of ten.”
“Really. That high.” He wrote down my answer. Then he set the napkin
aside and started cutting slices of the sourdough. “So how long is your mom going to be in the hospital?” he asked.
“Just today if everything goes fine. She slipped on some ice and broke her wrist. It didn’t set right.”
“I thought it was cancer or something. You both seemed a little upset.”
“I was upset because I just found out my alcoholic degenerate father with a gambling addiction managed to get my Social Security number and open a twenty-two-thousand-dollar credit card account in my name. It’s in collections.”
I probably shouldn’t have dumped this on him, but I wanted to blurt it out. Hurl it at this stranger and watch him flinch when it hit him.
But he didn’t flinch.
“My mom died three months ago,” he said. “It was unexpected. I’ve just been a little… out of sorts myself. So I get it.”
We looked at each other, some unspoken understanding passing between us, like we were agreeing to be whatever kind of mess we needed to be at this table. That it was mutually acceptable to just eat this bread and be in our feelings and say whatever it was we wanted to say without judgment from either side—which was good. Because sometimes I was too tired and too done to pretend I was fine.
“Has he ever done this before?” he asked.
“To my mom,” I said, watching him butter another slice. “She said he never had access to my Social, so she told me not to bother worrying about
it. Obviously she was wrong.”
“You can’t dispute the debt?”
“I can. I will. But it’s a process and it doesn’t always get reversed. They took my tax return money yesterday. I was going to use that to get my car out of the shop. My mom’s been out of work for two months. She’s going to need another month to recover enough to go back. I’m paying all the bills. I just didn’t need this right now.” I stared at the piece of bread on my plate.
“You’re a pharmacist?” I said, changing the subject.
“Yeah. I work at Bergmans.”
A big retail pharmacy chain. He had a good job, and he was smart. I couldn’t imagine being able to understand all that chemistry. It felt harder than being a doctor for some reason.
“That’s a lot of school,” I said. “I never liked school,” I admitted.
“Oh yeah? What do you like?”
I shrugged. “I like cooking—sorry if I smell like soup, by the way.”
“You don’t smell like soup. You smell good, actually.”
I paused and looked up.
“Not that I’m sniffing you,” he said quickly. “It was just when I held the door for you and you walked past me, I—”
“I’m glad I don’t smell like soup,” I said, holding back a small smile.
He cleared his throat. “Are you going to be a chef, then?”
“No,” I said, going back to the napkin. “I’ve worked in enough restaurants to know I don’t ever want to cook in a kitchen.”
“Did you go to college?” he asked.
“No. I took a pottery class once.”
“You’re artistic, then,” he said, somehow making my sad education sound interesting.
“I guess so. I sew a little bit. I make my own clothes sometimes, my own jewelry. I got really into paper quilling at one point and I was pretty good at it, but you can’t make that a job.”
His cell phone vibrated. “Sorry, hold on.”
He read the message. “It’s Mike, asking where we are.”
I watched him while he texted a reply. He looked stern when he was focused. Sort of how he looked that first night.
I knew Chris was single from Mom’s prying in the car. Lexi mentioned it, too, when she was auctioning off which guy friend I should get a ride home from the night of the concert. I’d picked Mike, mostly because he actually smiled and seemed less irritated at being asked.
I laughed a little to myself remembering it. Mike had been actively flirting with me and in the middle of it, Chris mumbled something about being closer to my city than Mike was. He’d said it like he was honor- bound to inform me of the logistics so I would be fully aware of how much
I was inconveniencing Mike.
I chose to inconvenience Mike.
Two months ago meant Chris’s mom had just died. I guess I could understand why he’d been a little dark.
He was still a little dark. But that was okay. I didn’t care so much this time around.
We tasted the sourdough and both gave it a nine.
“Should we try the pumpernickel?” he asked.
“Yes.”
We bit into it at the same exact time and chewed, watching each other for the reaction.
I swallowed. “Well?” I asked. “Is it ass?”
“No. Definitely not.”
“Right? It’s so good. What’s your rating?”
“Honestly? I give this a ten,” he said.
“Me too. We wouldn’t even have tried this,” I said, sliding the napkin in front of me to jot down the score. “Good thing we didn’t succumb to the peer pressure.”
“I think it’d be good with some eggs,” he said.
“Yeah.”
“Let’s order some. Try it.”
I nodded. “Okay.”
“Do you want some bacon? Ham?” he asked.
“Sure. Ham sounds good.”
He ordered our food and I realized that he was right about the bread—it did settle my stomach. I think I’d been so hungry I’d gotten nauseous, and now that I’d eaten something, I was feeling better. In fact, I was suddenly starving.
When the server cleared our empty plates thirty minutes later, I realized Chris had gotten me to eat a full breakfast on a morning when I probably wouldn’t have eaten at all if I’d been left to my own devices. I actually felt okay now, like I could somehow handle the rest of my day.
I needed to be in a cute café drinking a coffee and eating breakfast with someone, not sitting alone in a waiting room, letting it all fester. Chris knew that. And I was really grateful that he did.
Mike must have known Chris would do this for me. Sending him was Mike’s way of taking care of me when he couldn’t be there himself. It was thoughtful and considerate.
Maybe I didn’t need to break up with Mike for bailing on me after all.