Chapter 14 #2
“Oh, it’s fine,” I said. “Just a quick hike, got run over by a stag, fell in a river, she had to give me CPR, but we made it back in time.”
“It was more of a stream than a river,” Linda said.
“Okay, you two troublemakers. Alyssa, fix your floating sternum and come inside, it’s freezing out here. I’ll get dinner started right away. Did you get the chives, Linda?”
Linda held them up off the tray. “Had to fight the stag for them, but Alyssa’s scrappier than she looks.”
We went inside and gathered around in the kitchen and Charlie put Tchaikovsky on the surround-sound speakers while she went and got changed, and she was cooking up a storm just a minute later, with a fresh bread she’d picked up on the way home and a soup base that had been prepared ahead.
Charlie didn’t give one millimeter for me to help like Linda had, so Linda and I sat in the kitchen with her and talked about the Sunday market, the meditation evening they’d had at Matt’s and Skye’s place yesterday, Birdhouse events, and lowkey town gossip.
The dark look on Linda’s expression faded, slowly, but it didn’t seem to go away entirely, and it stuck in my mind even when Charlie sent Linda to go set the table in the dining room and talked quietly once it was just the two of us.
“It’s been nice of you reaching out to talk to Jade,” she said. I folded my hands at my waist.
“I like her a lot,” I said. “Daniela does, too.”
She gave me a tired smile. “Daniela especially, from what I understand. Before everything went down, most of us had been watching the will-they-or-won’t-they game Daniela and Jade had been playing.”
“Ah, well—” I stood up taller, and I tried to push down the sad, frustrated feelings that bubbled up in my stomach when we talked about it.
They weren’t going to leave me alone and stop being friends with me if they got together.
I didn’t know why this was so uncomfortable for me.
“I’m kind of rooting for them now, too,” I said.
“I got them talking again, and I think they still have feelings for each other.”
She chuckled slightly, cracking the fancy wall-mounted oven to check the stuffed peppers, and she spoke absently while she took a potholder and slid the tray out of the oven. “Well, maybe a relationship would mellow her out a little.”
“Oh.” I frowned. “You think she needs some… mellowing out?”
I shouldn’t have said it, but I said it. She strained her smile at me, setting down the tray with a clatter and turning off the oven. “Sorry,” she said after a second. “I need to remember to be more polite. I don’t want to insult your friend.”
I was in their home, and they had plenty of leverage in this community, and Linda was the one potentially connecting me to a good job.
I shouldn’t have poked the bear. But I never was able to shut up.
“You can say what you like,” I said, standing taller.
“But I’ll defend her if it feels right, just like I’d defend you if she were talking about you. ”
She busied herself checking the peppers. “I don’t doubt she’s had a few things to say.”
“She hasn’t said anything about you to me.”
She sighed, and once again, she was quiet for a second, attending to the food, ladling the soup out into a big bowl and sprinkling cheese on top. “She just doesn’t know how to mind her own business at times.”
“I… trust you do feel that way from your experiences, but she’s been closed up in her house all this time I’ve known her, so you’ll understand I’m a little surprised to hear that.”
“Her friend wanted to leverage the fund Drew has been putting away by his own blood, sweat and tears over the past five years, and to do it behind his back.”
“Behind his back? Seriously?”
“She doesn’t like being told no. And when he told her no anyway, she got her friend to yell at me on her behalf.
Drew and I go back years,” she said. “And I don’t need the Birdhouse to become some big, serious commercial venue.
She’s trying to take what Drew made and turn it into something it’s not. ”
“That’s—”
“I am doing perfectly fine,” she said, her voice barbed. “So if they want to invent issues, I’ll be okay without them.”
I frowned. “I didn’t say you weren’t.”
She sighed, and she turned around, opened a cabinet, and she took out a blowtorch, flicking it on.
I took a step back involuntarily, like I was afraid she’d lost her temper and was going to set me on fire, but shockingly, she didn’t—she browned the cheese on top of the soup, set the blowtorch back, and she moved the peppers to a big tray before she said, “I’m not going to say you can’t be friends with Jade or with Cat.
Just be careful with them. You’re a friend until you’re an enemy. ”
“I trust them both,” I said. “Like I trust you and Linda both.”
She gave me an odd look, studying, eyes narrowed, before she settled into a tired smile. “There is something about you, Alyssa. You have flowers blooming in your heart. The goodness of a warm, sunny day. Just be careful nobody stamps it out of you. It would be a terrible thing to lose.”
Well, the closest I’d gotten was with Sawyer. And that flower garden was starting to bloom again. Spring was the right time for that, anyway.
The food was delicious, once we all gathered around the dining table and settled into easy, comfortable conversation, the topic of Jade and Cat far away from us now.
I gushed over the soup and the peppers and the warm, fresh rye bread with compound butter, and the dry Riesling she paired it with.
We settled into blueberry-infused crème brulées for dessert and little espresso shots that Charlie pulled from a machine fancy enough that even Linda was prohibited from touching it, and I was feeling incredibly spoiled by the time we finished.
They both gave me hugs at the door once the conversation had wound down and I’d finished metabolizing the wine, and Linda saw me off with I’ll text you about the openings, and I drove back in exhausted satisfaction to where Daniela was still looking tired on her laptop in the kitchen, and she groaned when I came in, shutting the laptop.
“Christ, I didn’t even notice how long I’ve been here,” she said, pushing her computer aside. “How was it? How jealous should I be that I was too busy to go?”
“Oh, super jealous,” I said, dropping down into the seat across from her. “They said I was their sample run because they’re still trying to figure out how to throw dinner parties, but I think they’ve got it down.”
“Brag some more, why don’t you,” she laughed. “Well, no biggie, I’m very competitive. I’ll just make you an even better dinner tomorrow.”
“Please, let me help even just a little. Charlie wouldn’t let me lift a finger to help, and I’m getting antsy.”
She grinned, and I recognized the look of… slightly giddy, slightly shy, at the same time. The same expression she’d always wear when she was talking about Candle Girl. “You already got Jade to come hang out with me, so you’ve done literally all I could ever ask for.”
“Oh, I, uh…” There it was again—that sinking sensation in my stomach. Why was I so immature about this? This wasn’t middle school. “I guess things have been going well for you two?”
“I mean, we haven’t gotten any time to hang out yet, but we’ve been texting up a storm and it honestly feels like nothing ever happened. I don’t know how you did it, but you’re my hero.”
I forced a smile. I was supposed to be happy for them. “Assuming it all goes well tomorrow, you should ask her out,” I said. “No unambiguity or whatever, just… this was nice, do you want to go on a date?”
“Okay, first of all, that’s lesbophobia, telling me to just ask a woman on a date instead of dancing around it for seventy years until we’re both dead.
Secondly, you don’t think that’s too fast?
I mean—” She gave me an exaggerated shrug.
“We’ve only just started talking again. I don’t want to mess it up immediately. ”
Well… if she did mess it up, it wouldn’t matter anyway, since Jade was on her way out of the place.
Unless she got together with Daniela. Was I being unfair, trying to get Jade to stay with a relationship?
I just told myself I was going to make sure she did feel welcome in town again, and then the rest was up to her.
But I couldn’t tell Daniela any of that, not since I’d promised Jade I would keep it a secret.
“Jade’s an adult,” I said. “She can handle you have feelings without making it weird if it’s not reciprocated. But… I feel like it is.”
She hung her head. “What am I even supposed to say? I’m not used to just telling a girl I like her and want to go on a date.”
“It doesn’t have to be a big deal. You can pitch it as a low-stakes thing to test it out and see how it feels. But… you can still make it romantic,” I said, and it felt like pulling teeth when I said, “Where was the place you almost kissed?”
She hunched her shoulders, picking at something on the edge of the table. “It was this one spot in the park, close to the building for the old mill. It’s a little peak with some really good night sky views. We were stargazing.”
That was so romantic. I loved cute, romantic things. Why did this one make me want to shrivel up into a ball and disappear? “Ask her to go stargazing again,” I said. “That’d be cute and romantic. And if she also thought it was an almost-kiss, then she’ll know exactly what you’re thinking.”
She lit up. “Yeah? You think so?”
“She’d love it.” I smiled broadly. “You can bring a nice meal you’ve cooked and that candle she got you, and you can have a romantic firelight dinner under the stars.”
“You’re good at this,” she laughed. “Who are you looking at around here, anyway? I bet you could score someone no problem.”
“Oh, uh…” I blanked.
“Still thinking of Abby’s offer?”
“No—I mean, she’s lovely, but—” I was blushing furiously. I didn’t know why. I also didn’t know how to turn it off. “I just don’t think I’m looking to date someone right after Sawyer.”
“Yeah, that makes sense,” she said. “Well, clearly you’re getting your romance in vicariously, and I love that for you. And for me!” She stretched her arms out in front of her. “See, now you’ve helped me doubly. So you don’t need to do anything for the party tomorrow.”
“Ugh—no fair!” I laughed, crossing my arms. “Please. I want to feel like I’m contributing to the party too.”
“You already—”
“I’ll clean. How’s that?”
“Oh, sure.” She put her hands up. “I can’t argue with you about anything right now. Thanks, Alyssa. Do you want a snack?”
“Oh, god, no. I already ate way too much.” I almost said something about the whole thing with Linda offering to help me get a job…
I wasn’t sure why it died on the tip of my tongue.
It would be ridiculous for me to turn down a job here just because I felt small and irrelevant and like I didn’t want to watch Daniela and Jade both forget about me when they got together.
But sometimes I was ridiculous.
“Suit yourself,” Daniela said. “You’re going to eat well tomorrow, though.”
Tomorrow. Yeah… that’d be great.