Chapter 14: I only came to talk (yeah, right).
Wednesday
We’re in the weeds again Tuesday night, and I come home exhausted and sore and smelling like lentils. It’s practically enough to trigger PTSD-style high school flashbacks. Dad doesn’t come to the restaurant at all after Mom’s morning doctor’s appointment, so Gerry and I are the ones who manage the restaurant and close up at the end of the night.
Wednesday morning rolls around and I’m back at Soul Mountain by ten o’clock, rolling silverware and double-checking the toilet paper supply in the bathrooms before our eleven AM open, and I’m already completely fucking over this and counting down the hours til my coffee date with Amy.
Dutch comes by right after eleven with my toddling baby niece in tow, and we chat and it’s awkward and Gerry hides in the office and everyone, including Dutch, seems glad when she leaves again.
Jodie and Ben show up at noon, even though their weekly Scrabble date was the day before, and Ben surprises the whole damn restaurant by ordering fried chicken instead of dal bhat tarkari and I think, That’ll be the most exciting thing that happens the whole goddamned shift — Jodie and Ben showed up on a Wednesday, and Ben ordered chicken.
Couldn’t have been more wrong.
Because at two-thirty, right as the lunch business starts to peter out and we begin thinking about getting ready for the dinner rush, in walks a woman with long, braided blonde hair, and yoga pants. She’s got an infant snug inside a sling against her chest and a pre-schooler with his mother’s big brown eyes holding onto her first two fingers.
She pauses for a second in the foyer, and I watch her with clenched fists and a stomach that burns like I just gulped down a bowl of Momma’s five-alarm chili too fast. I wonder if she’s looking at the black and white photos of my family, or just stalling because she’s trying to decide if she really wants to pull open the second door and waltz into the main body of the restaurant.
Just as I’m sure she’s about to turn back around and escape into the parking lot, she opens the second door and walks in. Uses her free hand to brush stray hair out of her face when the cold draft catches it and pushes it forward.
Instead of looking directly at her, because it’s like staring straight into the fucking sun, I look down at the kid hanging off her hand. He’s got his mother’s eyes, true, but it’s already obvious he’s going to end up a spitting image of his father.
My fingers uncurl long enough to find a dry eraser cap sitting on top of the seating chart. I start fiddling with it.
Jenny hesitates, walks up to the podium.
“Hi,” she says.
I grab a menu, nod down at her son. I unclench my jaw. “You need a high chair for him?”
She shakes her head. “I didn’t come to eat, Ani.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“I just wanted to talk.”
“I don’t.”
She releases a long, slow sigh. “I got my hair trimmed yesterday afternoon, and Jodie told me you were in town. I thought I’d come by. Say hello.” She glances down at her son and smiles softly. “Introduce you to my wild things.”
I glance over involuntarily to the table in the corner. Is that why they came on a Wednesday? Jodie wanted to see the show play out in person?
Fucking Jodie. Woman can’t keep her mouth shut for longer than two minutes at a time. Never pauses to consider that what she says to someone in her salon chair might lead to unwanted consequences for other people.
“I’m busy, Jenny.”
She looks pointedly around the empty restaurant, arches an eyebrow. “Really? Doesn’t look like it.” She hesitates before speaking again. “C’mon, Anika. Can’t we act like adults here? It’s been more than five years since we talked. I just wanted to see you. Hear how you’ve been.”
I cross my arms against my chest, ignore the way I can feel my pulse slamming against my ribcage. I lean back against the wall. “You’re right — it’s been years since we talked. I don’t see why we should start now.”
She takes a step closer, lowers her voice even though she just pointed out that we are alone in the dining room. “You never gave me an explanation. I thought we’d been doing really good at being just friends. Then you blocked my number. Deleted me off social media. Why?”
“I don’t want to talk about this.”
“But why? Why the sudden change? Friends for years… and then nothing? With no warning?”
I squeeze the marker cap in my hand, feel its open end bite into my palm. “Being friends turned out to be too hard. You cheated on me.”
Her perfect brow wrinkles. I used to think it was cute when she got mad. Now… Oh, hell. I don’t know how it makes me feel now.
“I cheated on you?” she says, voice ticking up an octave or two. “Don’t you think that’s the pot calling the kettle black?” Then her eyelids drop closed; she draws in a long breath, lets it out slowly. It’s Jenny’s reining-her-temper-in look. I used to think that was cute, too. “If it was so hard to be friends with me, why were we friends for so long before you stopped talking to me?”
I shrug. I know the real answer, but there’s no fucking way I’m telling her. Especially not now. Not after five years of carefully maintained radio silence.
“Maybe I got tired of being expected to comment on every fucking picture of your kindergartener you posted or texted or emailed.” I point at the baby against her chest, then at the kid hanging off her arm. “Where’s the other one? You thought it’d be easier for me if I didn’t have to look at the one who broke us up?”
Hurt spreads across her face. But she’s always been a better person than I am, so instead of responding to me using her child as a weapon against her, she reins in what’s left of her temper and changes the hurt into a smile. “Andy’s in school. He’s nine already — fourth grade this year.”
“Great. Nine,” I spit out. Nine years since I came home to find a positive pregnancy test in the bathroom trash.
“Anika. Don’t be like this. Andrew isn’t who broke us up, and you know it. Mason isn’t even who broke us up. We broke us up.”
I snort. “Oh, so it’s ‘we’ now, huh? I guess that’s an improvement over it being all my fault.”
Jenny bends down, hands her phone to the boy who comes up just past her waist, says something softly in his ear. He dances off, jumps onto the waiting area bench with that eager energy only little boys have, swings his feet below him. Watching him, I feel something pop deep inside my heart, like some sort of inner fan belt split apart and I’m about to overheat.
She steps closer to the podium, cupping the back of the infant’s head protectively.
“Please let’s not fight. I just… I honestly just came by because I was hoping you would finally be ready to talk to me again. Can’t we at least try having a civil conversation? One that’s not about the past?”
She’s looking up at me with those wide, innocent brown eyes, and for a split second, it’s like no time has passed at all. I’m back in high school, at a New Year’s party, leaning over her the moment before our first kiss. I’m back in college, trying not to wake up Ophelia with our whispered Skype session. I’m back in Phoenix, coming home from basketball games to a woman who stands on tiptoes to reach tiny hands around my neck and pull me down into a kiss.
And because I’m a complete fucking pushover who apparently hates myself, and because I still feel guilty, and because of sheer force of habit — after all, for thirteen years I always did whatever this woman asked of me — I hand her a menu and I say, “Go find a table. I’ll get you a high chair.”
“I told you I’m not here to eat.”
“It’s a restaurant, Jenny. People don’t come here to stand around in the lobby.”
She glances over her shoulder, to the adorable little boy playing with her phone behind her. “If we sit down and order some food, will you join us? Will you talk with me?”
I tip my head back, stare at the ceiling for a second before letting out a breath and looking down at her. “If it stays quiet, maybe I can sit with you for a minute.”
She beams a smile at me that’s all heart, a laser beam of concentrated sunlight that nearly blinds me, and even though there are the beginnings of crow’s feet crinkling around the corners of her eyes, even though three babies have added a bit of padding to her petite frame, she’s still the perfect vision she always has been.
Jenny. My Jenny.