Les hadn’t slept a wink. He couldn’t get the feel of Tori off his lips. The smell of her out of his nose. The feel of her off his skin. And he didn’t want to. But he didn’t want to just lay there with the memory of her. He needed her.
He couldn’t kick himself enough for being a complete chicken shit and ditching her with those girls. But the intensity of it all had shaken him to his foundation. She was his friend. Friends were for drinks and laughs, not for kissing. And damn, the girl could kiss. Just remembering the feel of her lips against his, and his dick wanted to play along. It was as if the fleshy appendage had a brain all its own. All he had to do was think about Tori and he was awarded with pants full of steel rod.
When he’d kissed that other chick? Instant limp dick. He had to artfully dodge her grabby hands until he bowed out on the evening. It was time to leave before little blue pill jokes started circulating. His cock wasn’t having it if it wasn’t Tori.
His heart seemed to freak out the closer it got to her normal delivery time. Not that she was ever there at a set hour, but he could usually count on her showing up about thirty minutes or so after he arrived at work. And not that he should expect her. After all, she hadn’t been in for a week and hadn’t even delivered the lavender. The crash and burn expanded from his chest to his gut when she didn’t show. He knew he had fucked up, her absence confirmed it.
He peered around the wall separating his workspace from the back door. Karen was making her typical noiseless foray back and forth from the truck.
“Haven’t seen you for a while.” He took a bushel of onions from Penny as she stepped inside.
“Nope, not since Tori took over this shift. I miss seeing all the people, but I can’t say I miss the delivery work.” Penny grunted to emphasize the difficulty of the task.
“I saw her last night and wanted to ask about a special order, but it was off hours. I didn’t want to talk shop, and I figure she didn’t, either.”
“She called in sick this morning, sounded rough. But let me know what you need and I’ll pass it on. I know she has some secret resources for your flowers.” Penny smiled.
“Would you let her know I really appreciate all the fresh lavender?”
“Good, she had a bit of a time getting hooked up with the right grower for that. I’ll let her know.”
“Also, I’m going to need more flowers. I’ll take whatever she can get her hands on.” It was so hard to talk shop when his body roared at everything that could be a double entendre. He wanted to get his hands on Tori, not her flowers.
Penny waved and left, her delivery complete. There was no visit, no smiles, no laughing, no Tori.
And Tori wasn’t feeling well.
It was still pretty early. As soon and the soup was ready, he would run some over to her apartment. Chef should be able to do without him for the fifteen minutes it would take him to make a delivery to her apartment.
***
Sleep was Tori’s friend. She didn’t have to worry about the stresses of work or the two-faced, back-stabbing actions of her so-called friends. And she didn’t have to think about Les. Not that she was sick, but Tori had found cold medicine always put her to sleep with no dreams, and right now she didn’t even want Les worming his way into her subconscious.
She spend her days off numb and asleep as much as possible. Her sick day kicked off her weekend. Three miserable days in bed. Alone. A thick haze surrounded her when she returned to work. She barely cared anymore if the farmer’s markets were a success. There would always be something threatening the security and viability of her job. A job that was not necessary to running the farm or selling exclusively to commercial clients. A job she loved, except for that Sword of Damocles bit where Penny couldn’t be certain if she would get the grant to cover Tori’s salary.
Of course the rain wasn’t helping, either. It started seriously raining during Tori’s second day in bed. The pitter patter against the roof lulled her into a deep, numbed-out sleep. So it had been great during her sick days, but trying to manage a rain or shine farmer’s market wasn’t doing her attitude or mood any good.
She dragged her body through the day and finally up the stairs to her little apartment.
She needed to text Sam, but today texting wasn’t enough. She sat with a thud on her couch and opened her laptop. It trilled as it started up. A few clicks later, and Tori stared at a photo of two smiling young women about to make their way in the world. That had been the plan, hadn’t it? She hadn’t even known Sam was sick. The bald head didn’t give it away. She had just thought Sam was a badass, because she was. Tori hadn’t known until Sam was too sick to hide it.
Day one at U.C. Davis and Sam had strode into their dorm room with her head half shaved and the other half dyed blue. Tori stood there, self conscious in her cobbled together, plus-sized, fashionista-on-a-budget outfit, and stared doe-eyed at her new roommate. She was punk and ballsy, everything Tori was not.
Sam’s gazed traveled down then back up Tori’s outfit. “We are either going to be best friends for the rest of my life, or we’re going to hate each other by the end of the week.”
“I vote friends?” Tori replied hesitantly.
With a laugh, Sam dropped the laundry basket of belongings on the empty mattress and flopped down on Tori’s newly made bed.
“Samantha, I keep telling your father to have the mini fridge delivered, but he—” An older woman stopped talking as soon as she was all the way in the room. She looked at Tori and then at Sam kicked back on the bed. “Samantha, get off that girl’s bed.”
“Mom, meet my new best friend. What’s your name?”
And they had been best friends for the rest of Sam’s short life. She had known, of course. But she’d wanted to be a normal kid and do normal things, like go to college. Sam had graduated, barely. That last year had been tough. Tori had seen the inside of the cancer treatment center more that semester than she had the inside of a classroom.
Sam had been a badass up until the very end.
“I miss you so much.” Tears streamed down Tori’s face. Cancer sucked. Tori had wondered why she couldn’t Skype with heaven. If Sam had been released back into the universe as a being of light and energy, why couldn’t she text? Texting was just energy. It didn’t matter that it had been three years. It had been three long years without the best friend she had ever had.
“I need to talk to you, to someone. I did it. I don’t know if you’ve been getting my texts or not. Remember how we said that adorable little town in Napa Valley was the ideal place? I’m here, I promised that I would do it, and I did. But nothing is working out. Remember that guy I told you about? Les, the hot chef?” Tori ground the heel of her palm into her face. “I need to get over him. But I don’t know how. At least he doesn’t hate me like Josh does. Sam, he just sees me as another fat girl. You know, I’m safe to call cute, I’m good for a laugh, and I won’t have any expectations or something. Other women have no compunction hitting on him if I’m around. I’ve let myself get shelved in the friend zone. The friend zone sucks. I need out, and I know that the out I want isn’t what’s going to happen. How do I un-crush on someone who isn’t bad? I cannot think of any reason to dislike him or find him unattractive. Sam, he wears a kilt. As much as I want to just step back and put that distance there, every time I see him it all comes rushing back. What am I gonna do?”
Tori got off the couch, wiped at her face some more, and headed over to her refrigerator. She opened the freezer and pulled out a pint of ice cream. She had eaten a lot of it in the past few days and drunk a bit too much vodka. She was already almost out of the bottle she had just purchased, and this was her last pint of fancy gourmet gelato, Madagascar vanilla with roasted coconut and salted caramel. She had finished the toasted marshmallow s’mores pint last night.
“Okay, I’m back with reinforcements.” She tipped the carton and the bottle toward the photo of her and Sam. “I think I might have to move. The job is being all weird, and those girls I was hanging out with are really mean drunks. They are ‘we wear pink on Wednesdays’ mean. I think I already knew that, but I was desperate for a friend. It’s been really lonely without you.”
Tori continued to talk to her friend, drinking straight from the bottle and eating her ice cream. When the pint was empty, she swirled the last of the vodka into the carton and drank the creamy spiked remnants.
“I’m drunk. So I’m going to go to bed now. You need to figure out how to text me back at some point. I’m kinda of tired of this friendship being all one sided. I know, I know, you can’t help it. I’ll talk to you later. Love you.”
Tori closed the laptop and staggered to bed. She was going to have one hell of a hangover tomorrow, but right now, she didn’t care.