Love by the Slice (Valentine’s Sweethearts)

Chapter Thirteen

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

EZRA AND GREG had divided up the pizza truck duties so they could operate like a machine. The truck had its own wood-fired oven, which must have caused some licensing authority to have heart failure when they realized it might be driving around with live flames inside. When you were putting pizzas in or yanking them out, you could get warm, but the rest of the truck was wide open to the winter, and it was frigid.

A personal sized pizza stayed in about seventy seconds to get the cheese all melty and the crust crispy. Ezra or Greg could take an order, assemble a pizza, shove it in the oven, take the payment, and finish up just in time to get it out of the oven again. They’d slide it into a tiny cardboard box printed with “LOVELACE,” and up would come the next customer. They had two lines working at the same time, and only rarely did they get in one another’s way.

Both lines were six people deep, but they stayed at it. When they’d gotten the line down to two deep, Ezra said, “If you’d worked this hard for Shelly, she’d still be with you.”

Greg said, “We’re doing this now?”

Ezra could assemble a pizza in seconds. It took Greg a little longer, maybe because Ezra slung pizzas full time and Greg was part time. “Now,” Ezra said as dough became dough plus sauce plus cheese plus pepperoni. He shot it into the oven, then turned back to the customer.

When Ezra wasn’t customer-facing, Greg said, “You think she’s being reasonable?”

Ezra said, “Yes. And not just because she’s my sister.” He retrieved the cooked pizza from the oven, boxed it, and handed it to the customer before taking the next order.

When he got that done, Ezra said, “We’re stuck together for the next three hours.”

Greg said, “Three hours of browbeating.”

“Dude, you blew it. Admit it.”

Greg couldn’t keep up the chatter while working this fast, but Ezra seemed to have unhinged his jaw to let it talk all on its own. Like now, when he said, “She wanted the bare minimum, and you wouldn’t give it.”

Greg had spent the last week combing back over Shelly’s demands. He’d needed to stay out of things with Rowan’s grandfather. No question, there. As the owner, Lacey was the best equipped to handle him, and she’d done it expertly. She’d heard the man’s concerns, agreed to abide by whatever he demanded, and then somehow managed to work down his demands so they could do what they wanted anyhow. Shelly had participated in that just fine, although she was more strident. Adding a male voice to the mix would have re-activated the grandfather’s wounded pride. Silence had been the best option, even if Shelly didn’t see it at the moment. They’d gotten the concessions they’d wanted from the grandfather. What more could she have expected?

The line had gotten longer again, and Ezra stopped talking. It wouldn’t have been a productive conversation anyhow because what would they have said? That Shelly had mysterious standards no one knew about but herself—and possibly Ezra, since he’d predicted this would happen. Ezra swore he’d stayed out of it, but maybe it would have been better if he’d stepped up and said, “Hey, Greg, here’s how high Shelly actually set the bar.”

Okay, break it down. Pizza was crust, sauce, and cheese. Toppings, too, but the basics were crust, sauce, and cheese. Greg was no good at making relationships, clearly, but he was good at making pizza.

So, he could be the crust. That was the base of the pizza and the thing that held everything else together. Shelly was saucy enough on a regular basis, so she could be that. The crust had to be strong but also airy. The sauce gave flavor. It wasn’t just there to be pretty. Without the sauce, the pizza was lacking, and on a tomato-less pizza, you had to replace the sauce with something to gave it zing.

Cheese, though. Cheese held the pizza together. If you kept the temps high enough, the pizza was cooked when the cheese was melted, and the cheese retained the heat by cooling first and insulating the sauce so it stayed hot. (That was why people burned their mouths on the sauce even when the cheese was cool enough to bite.) Cheese also kept the toppings in place.

Cheese had to be effort, then. This metaphor wasn’t really going to work, but Shelly was saying in effect that Greg wasn’t putting enough cheese on the pizza. Not stepping up for her—because he hadn’t had a chance yet to plan a date for them, although he would have. He’d just kept defaulting to whatever Shelly seemed to want, and when he waited, she’d make a suggestion. He’d figured that was the way to keep her happy, but she was saying no, thinking up dates and arranging the details was work, and moreover, work he hadn’t been doing.

What else had she been angry about…? It had bothered her whenever he tried to reassure her that things would shake out okay. Not always. Sometimes she’d let him calm her down when she was freaking out about certain disaster. Ezra got like that, too. Ezra would see a shadow and predict catastrophe, and Greg oftentimes had to just tell him to relax his death grip on reality before he gave himself a heart attack. Like when Ezra was convinced Lacey was going to destroy Loveless Pizza. Instead, it was doing so well now that they wanted to open a second location. Ezra had been wrong.

Except, had he been wrong? What had averted disaster? Well, the way they’d changed things up. Greg hadn’t been a part of that.

Now he started considering other issues. How many times had he let things slide because most of the time, they worked out fine? Like the cookie-baking. He considered that a success, but she considered it a failure. But why? The result of that day was, they’d both had cookies, so it wasn’t about the results. And it wasn’t about process, because although Shelly thought they hadn’t been baking together, they had baked together.

It was about listening.

Or, rather, it was about giving validity to what he was hearing.

Shelly had been worried about the snowstorm, and Greg hadn’t considered her worries valid. She’d been worried that Rowan was starving or being neglected, something Greg hadn’t considered a realistic problem, so he’d let her handle it on her own. The grandfather had come in, upset, and Greg hadn’t considered his bruised pride to be valid. If the grandfather had forbidden them to keep giving Rowan pizza, Greg probably would have given it to the kid anyhow because the grandfather’s position was incomprehensible. To Greg, that was.

Ezra’s mockery had gone right over Greg’s head because he hadn’t considered it a valid criticism. Greg didn’t think it was a problem, and therefore, it wasn’t a problem. But to Ezra, it was a problem.

Shelly thought Greg’s attitude was a problem. That made it a problem even if Greg didn’t think it was a problem.

Over and over, as Greg assembled pizzas (crust, sauce, cheese, topping, oven, box) he reviewed the things Shelly had said, or the things Ezra had said. Just because Ezra tended to over-react didn’t mean he wasn’t reacting to something . Shelly had wanted to be heard. She’d wanted to be seen. She didn’t only want to be bucked up. She’d wanted her opinion weighed and considered and then acted on. Telling her everything would be fine didn’t mean anything, even if it did turn out to be fine.

Well…that was a problem.

That was the cheese: not just listening but actually hearing. Hearing, and validating. Even if he disagreed, he needed to acknowledge and deal with it. I understand you’re worried about Rowan. I don’t think the situation is as severe as you do, but we should check up on him.

Or, I don’t think the weather will turn as bad as you do, but let’s look at the forecast Monday morning and make the decision then?

The line was getting shorter. Ezra was assembling an assortment of pizzas for an entire family, so Greg asked the next person in line to wait a moment while he checked the sauce on the stovetop.

He couldn’t brighten Shelly’s world by telling her it wasn’t dark. He needed to show her the light.

“Be optimistic!” wasn’t going to create optimism. The only way to do that was to prove to her that things could work out.

And, “Give me another chance” wasn’t going to create second chances.

“Ezra,” he said when Ezra had slid an entire family’s little pizzas into the oven, “I’m going to need a favor.”

The only way to create a second chance was to make it for himself.