Chapter 2
Chapter Two
The sun had barely risen by the time I got to Love ’n Sugar. The trees lit up with color, rays of light breaking through the leaves. I didn’t love waking up before the ass crack of dawn, but I did love my job.
A persistent ache rested at the base of my spine. It’d been two days since I found Elio on the bridge. I had no idea he’d even moved here, much less that I’d see him on a night like that. I’ve lived here for just over a year, and we hadn’t crossed paths yet.
My thoughts were louder than the raging sweat I was working up, rolling dough and measuring ingredients for batter.
It was always hotter than hell in the kitchen, but nothing mattered if I was baking.
Using my hands to manipulate things into the perfect shapes, watching them go from liquid or measly lumps of ingredients to something beautiful and delicious was as close to therapeutic as therapy.
Marsha, the owner, had taken a chance on me, hiring me, teaching and training me to be the best baker I could be.
I’d never be able to show her how grateful I was.
Our days were hectic at best, complete chaos at worst. Love ’n Sugar was popular in town.
In a small place like Lindenburgh, it wasn’t hard to achieve popularity, but we had people from forty to fifty minutes away coming to buy muffins and cupcakes.
They were all handcrafted with love and a dash of sugar to sweeten them up.
“Crescent, bud. It’s ten.”
I stilled for a moment, risking a glance up.
Seeing James in front of me, his face splattered with flour and various colors of icing, I let my shoulders slump with relief.
It was really him. Glancing at the clock above him on the wall, I nodded.
I’d been so caught up in the moment, finishing a batch of our famous banana bread, I hadn’t noticed the grumbling in my stomach.
Wiping my hands off with a nearby dishcloth, I pushed the pan toward him. “Mind setting these out for me?”
Like me, James’s hair was tied back and crushed down by a hairnet. A few unruly pieces, coated in white, stuck out at the base of his neck. Most likely icing from the new lemon poppyseed muffins we’d rolled out. “I got you. Go on.”
Man of few words. I grabbed my lunchbox from the employee fridge and made my way out, walking around the line of customers at the front.
The moment I set foot outside, I pulled the ridiculously annoying hairnet off.
It always made the back of my head itch, making it nearly impossible to ignore after a few hours.
Scratching at my scalp, I made the short walk across the road and plopped myself on the bench at the right side of the park.
I breathed in the outside air, inhaling the crisp, country scent.
The bench put me right in the way of the sun, but I didn’t mind.
It kept me warm, the glow cradling me, acting like a guide so I wouldn’t get too lost in the world.
Just as I opened my lunchbox to take out my sandwich, my phone buzzed in my pocket. There were three text messages, all one after the other.
Moon
Mom misses you so much it’s driving US crazy!
I’m starting to think you never should’ve gone.
She called me at 9 this morning, saying, “My chakras are all misaligned. When are you free next? We need to go see your brother, or else I may never get sorted”
I smiled, hearing her voice in my head saying those exact words. Whenever we felt out of sorts, our chakras were all out of balance. We’d meditate for longer and do yoga more often until everything sorted itself out.
Me
Aw I miss her too. Should I be expecting a phone call from her?
Instead of a text reply, I got an incoming phone call. “Wassup?”
“Yo, you on lunch?”
“Sure am.” I balanced my phone between my ear and shoulder, biting into my sandwich.
Moon sighed dramatically on the other end of the line. “Definitely going to get a phone call at some point. Dad fixed up the truck, so they have something to drive other than the RV now.”
Swallowing, I tore off the cap of a water bottle. “That thing hasn’t seen the world in months. Glad he got it done.” After taking a swig, I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. “I’m not agreeing to them visiting if you and Star aren’t coming, though.”
He groaned loudly and obnoxiously. “I know, but I have so much shit to do. No one told me adulting was this hard.”
“You don’t want to make time for your little brother?”
“Oh wow, you’ve turned into an asshole since you left.”
I huffed through my nose. “I learned from the best, fucker. How’s Star? I haven’t heard from her in a minute.”
There was loud rustling over the speaker, probably from Moon rolling around in his bed, creating a cocoon of blankets like he always does when he’s on the phone.
“She has discovered the woes of a hangover. I told her not to go crazy, but does she ever listen to me? No. I’m just the oldest and wisest around here. The hell do I know?”
“Yeah, yeah. She has to figure it out on her own, though. You were twenty-one once; you know how it is.” I finished off my food, speaking through chews. “At least she didn’t turn out like me, drinking at seventeen and causing mayhem.”
“Stop talking with your mouth full—it’s disgusting.
Thank fuck Star didn’t take after you, or I’d really feel like a failure as a brother.
” Though his words sounded sharp, he laughed through them all.
He loved picking on me just as much as I loved picking on him.
“Anyway, she should have a break in school coming up, so I’m sure she’d go with us to see you. ”
Star was in college, working hard to get her law degree.
We were both so proud of her, watching our baby sister grow and excel in everything she did.
She took her work seriously, but our parents made sure she knew the importance of making time to have fun, too.
We were all taught to balance life, much like our chakras, or else we’d do too much too quickly and burn ourselves out.
It’d been a while since Moon and I had last talked like this. We tried to stay up to date on each other’s lives, making sure we didn’t get too disconnected from one another. “Check-in time. What’s life look like?”
As he droned on about what he considered a very boring, very adult life, I looked up from the bench.
The park here was always beautiful, full of people from all different walks of life.
Couples held hands as they walked the short trail, and others held leashes with rambunctious dogs.
Some had strollers, walking with bundles of joy hidden from the harsh rays of the sun.
I loved people-watching. I wasn’t always sure what I was looking at, but I tried to create stories about them regardless. Happy, carefree ones to match what they were doing.
When I looked at the tree not too far from the bench, I stopped. A once familiar figure with light-brown hair sat in the shade, his hands roaming amongst the grass and daisies growing there. I could only see his side profile, and just that alone worried me.
Elio claimed he wasn’t trying to jump that night and that the wound on the back of his head was nothing to worry about. Well, what about the dark, angry shading I could see around his eye?
“Moon, I gotta go.” I hung up on him mid-sentence, not caring about the text I’d be receiving about it later.
Grabbing all my trash, I slowly started to walk to where Elio was sitting.
I didn’t know what time it was, or how much longer I’d be on my lunch, but I couldn’t find it in me to care.
Reaching into the shade, I ignored the flash of a shadow in my peripheral vision.
He noticed me, raising his head and staring at me with wide, sparkling emerald eyes. “The fuck?”
“Well that’s one way to greet someone.” I sank to the ground with him, noticing the daisy in his hand. Half of the petals were torn off, littering the ground. White specks mixed with the green, the stems and leaves torn into tiny pieces amongst them.
Elio seemed stuck, staring at me like I was a ghost. “Are you stalking me?”
I laughed so hard I choked on my spit. Coughing and laughing through the absurdity, I shook my head. “No, dude. I work across the street. I always come here on my break.”
“I’ve never seen you here.”
“That makes two of us, then.”
He narrowed his eyes at me, looking me up and down. I’m sure I looked like a mess, covered in various ingredients from the bakery. “Where do you work?”
I pointed behind us. “Love ’n Sugar. When did you move here?”
The longer parts of his bangs hung over his forehead as he looked down at his hands. He was still holding a daisy stem, twirling it between his fingers. “A while ago.” He shrugged. “Like two years, I think. You?”
Being up close to him, I could see the bruising around his eye better. There was a cut on the bridge of his nose, too. “A year, give or take. I just started at the bakery not too long ago, though. Do you paint, or do you do something different now?”
His shoulders tightened, rising to his ears.
I wanted to understand what’d frightened him so much.
This wasn’t the Elio I used to know. This wasn’t the Elio I let go of in high school.
“Nah, I don’t do that shit anymore. I, uh…
” His brows furrowed as he paused. “I don’t really do anything right now. I’m in between jobs.”
I nodded along, just thankful he was talking to me, but concerned he’d called painting “shit.” “Cool, cool. So, what are you doing out here?”
“I can’t enjoy a nice day outside?”
“Of course you can. Is that why you’re out here?”
“Sure.”
It felt surreal to hear him so quiet and unwilling to give information.
We used to get into trouble in school for talking too much and too loudly.
This new silence between us was awkward and strained.
It felt like I didn’t know anything about him anymore.
Once my best friend, no secrets between us, now practically a stranger.
Searching for something—anything—to talk about, anything to try to reconnect with someone I’ve missed more than anything in the world, I settled on the same tactic as my brother and me. “So, what’s life look like for you?”
Apparently, that was the wrong question to ask. Elio turned to look at me, his features sharp and intimidating. “Are you gonna go back to work?” Anger and defensiveness outweighed anything else in his tone.
“Are you gonna tell me about that black eye? Or why I haven’t seen or heard from you in almost a decade, yet suddenly here you are?
Or why you were trying to jump off a motherfucking bridge?
” I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t stop the words from spitting out of my mouth, laced with anger and hurt from hundreds of sleepless nights wondering why.
Why my best friend in the entire world suddenly loved someone more than me, to the point he’d cut me out of his life entirely.
Elio balled a handful of grass in his fist. “Fuck you, Crescent.”
The moment he stood to leave, I panicked. “Wait, I’m sorry.” He didn’t stop, so I walked after him. “El, please just stop, man. I’m sorry.”
He turned, the sunlight pouring over the anger on his face. It hurt to see. It hurt more to know I’d caused it. I’d known him long enough to see when he was done with me. “Can we meet up again? Something more formal, like coffee or lunch. I want to catch up.”
Watching him shake his head shattered any hope I might’ve had. “There’s nothing to talk about, Cres.”
I’d only seen him twice, yet both times ended with his back turned to me. It reminded me of the last time, all those years ago. When he told me we couldn’t be friends anymore. I’d cried the entire way home, trying to understand something I couldn’t possibly comprehend.
I walked back to the bakery, full of regret and guilt. James asked why I’d been gone so long and if I was okay. I lied, using my brother’s phone call as an excuse, even though it only lasted five minutes.
Moon texted, calling me rude for hanging up so abruptly.
I had a missed call from Mom wondering when she could come to see me.
The world kept moving, and my heart kept hurting.
My soul kept crying. Someone I’d considered my other half at one point had torn my heart into two pieces—one for him, one for me, and both of them were rotting. Falling apart.
So I pounded the dough a bit harder and whisked bowls of batter for a bit longer than necessary, but I never stopped thinking of him. The mystery behind it all. The mystery behind him.
If I saw him again, I promised myself I wouldn’t scare him off, or come across as harsh. I needed to try, if only for the teenage version of myself who was lost and confused for so long.
Fuck, I hoped I saw him again. And I hoped I didn’t see any more bruises.