Chapter 23
The ringing of my alarm wakes me up at seven o’clock sharp. Once again, my eyes burn from the lack of sleep. I waited all night for Zay to come to bed, and once again, he never did.
Why am I being punished for his outburst?
It isn’t fair, and it makes me anxious. All night, I traced back to the previous days to see if it was anything I did.
I couldn’t come up with anything, and that only made my anxiety worse.
A fear of him leaving me surfaced. I‘ve never had this fear before, and I couldn’t figure out why I did now.
Is it because he’s all I’ve ever known? Even though he’s physically here, heavy loneliness started creeping in.
Something I’ve never felt before. It was hard to fall asleep with all those racing thoughts.
The bright light shining through the windows burns my eyes even more as I stumble my way into the kitchen, half asleep.
I expect to see Zayn’s work shoes sitting by the mudroom door, like they normally are in the morning until he returns home from the gym.
To my surprise, they’ve gone. I pause in my steps to do a double take.
I make my way into the laundry room to see if he took a pair of work clothes with him.
But that doesn’t answer my question because he has several pairs of the same work clothes.
I rummage among the dirty clothes for something.
Anything. I’m not even sure what I am looking for here.
His shift doesn’t start until nine o’clock.
He always goes to the gym, comes home, showers, eats, and leaves for work.
I stop rummaging through his clothes and think to myself, why the hell am I doing this?
If Zay went to the gym, he should be home soon, anyway. I guess time will tell.
I don’t have many orders to cook today, but I have a lot of orders I need to drop off at the local cafés.
After spending the entire morning busy, and loading my car with orders to deliver, a thought creeps into my mind.
Zay never came home after the gym. As I head to my first stop, I can’t quit wondering if he went to work earlier than normal.
He has been staying late at work. But now he is also going early.
All of this is making me question so much I don’t normally question.
I park my car at the first stop, Cup of Comfort. As I walk in, I’m greeted right away by one worker grabbing the box out of my hands. “Hey, let me help you?” Chase says.
I’ve gotten to know a lot of the workers at the cafés that buy from me. It’s nice to know that the small business cafés can keep their employees for a while. That’s one of my biggest fears if I ever open up my own bakery—making sure I’m creating the kind of place where people actually want to stay.
“Thank you, Chase,” I say as I follow him to the counter and wait for him to make sure he got everything that was ordered.
He raises his eyes back up toward me. “Everything looks like it’s here.”
“Great. Thank you.” I wave. “It was nice seeing you.”
“You too,” he says, waving back.
As I turn around, Sydney is smiling right at me with her laptop sitting in front of her. I walk over to her. “Hey, Sydney. How are you?”
She’s a local that ordered from me a lot when I first opened my business. She’s the one who put me in touch with this café. She was truly a godsend because after I started baking for them, word of mouth got around, and I got more business coming in.
“I’m good. How are you?” she asks, shutting her laptop.
I take a seat in front of her and let out a small sigh. “Good.” I let out a yawn. “I’m just tired.”
She tilts her head. “Have you been working a lot?”
I shrug. “Yeah. But I haven’t been getting good sleep these past few days.” I yawn again. “It’s catching up.” I giggle.
“I hear you. Having your own business is hard.”
“How is yours going?” I ask. She’s a gut health dietitian, and that’s how she found me when she was trying to eat better.
“It’s going good. Busy as usual.”
Someone sets a coffee in a to-go cup down next to me. I look up at Chase, eyes wide in surprise.
“I made your favorite,” he says, smiling.
“Oh, thank you. I really needed this,” I say, taking a small sip of the warm coffee. The rich, nutty taste coats my tongue.
“You’re welcome. It’s on the house,” he says as he walks away to greet the customers that walked in.
“Thank you,” I yell over my shoulder. “I better get going. I have more orders to drop off.”
“It was nice seeing you. Get some rest,” Sydney says with a sympathetic smile.
I stand and grab the coffee. “I will. See ya.”
After I drop off all my orders, I somehow have an extra sourdough loaf. My grandma comes to mind. I haven’t seen her in a while and I’m sure she’s been waiting for a loaf of bread. Since I started baking bread, I bake a lot for my family.
As I drive down my grandmas street, my stomach rumbles. I forgot to eat lunch, something that I always do but try not to.
“Hello,” I say as I walk into her house. The familiar scent of her older home invades my senses. The warmth of her home shocks my already hot body from running around all day. She keeps her house so warm, even in the summer. I don’t know how she can stand it, but she says she’s always freezing.
“In here,” she yells.
I follow the sound of her voice into the kitchen as she is serving herself food. “Hi, grandma.”
For being seventy-five, she’s still pretty active, which I’m very thankful for. She’s always out with her friends, doing who knows what. She has a busier social life than me.
“Hi, sweetie.” She sets her plate down. “You hungry?” she asks, and before I can answer, she is already getting a plate out of the cupboard. Even if I said no, she would still serve me food.
After she serves me spaghetti, we head for the table. I set down my plate and then head back for the loaf of bread. “I brought you some bread. Do you want a slice?”
“Oh yes. That will go great with this.”
I cut us both a slice, butter them, and then sit back down. I twirl the spaghetti around my fork, the aroma of garlic and tomato sauce rising as I take a bite. The rich flavors melt in my mouth. Something about your grandma’s food tastes so much better than your own.
“Is everything okay, honey? You look tired.” Her concerned eyes scan me.
I stop mid-bite, wondering if my eye bags are really that visible. I tried to cover them up with concealer this morning, but by now it’s probably worn off. “Just tired,” I say casually, as if everything is right in my world.
“Why is that?”
I shrug, chewing my food.
“Is everything okay?” she asks in a gentle tone.
I squint my eyes at her. “Yeah, why wouldn’t it be?”
She doesn’t answer right away. She gives me that knowing look, the one that always lets me know she knows I’m hiding something. I’ve never been able to hide much from her. Given all the years she’s lived and the wisdom she’s gained, I can’t hide anything from her.
Her eyes are still scanning over me like daggers, waiting for a better answer. I sit back further in my chair. “I don’t know. Zayn and I have been having issues.”
Her face softens as she sets down her fork. “Oh, honey,” she says, reaching across the table to place her hand on mine. “Marriage isn’t always easy, you know that. What kind of issues?”
I hesitate because, to be honest, I don’t even know myself. “It’s just… our communication. He’s been distant lately, and when I try to talk to him about it, he gets defensive.”
She nods, her thumb gently stroking the back of my hand. “Have you told him how it’s making you feel?”
“I’ve tried,” I say, my voice breaking slightly.
Grandma tilts her head, her eyes full of sympathy.
“Sometimes men don’t know how to handle their own feelings, let alone someone else’s.
But that doesn’t mean you stop trying. You need to keep at him,” she insists.
“That’s what I always had to do with your grandpa.
” She scoffs. “I miss him dearly, but my hell, communicating with a man is the one thing I don’t miss,” she says, shaking her head.
I chuckle hard because they used to bicker so much. It was like everything got on their nerves. I always wondered if it was because they had been together for so long.
“You need to march right up to him and tell him to stop his nonsense and tell you what’s wrong,” she snaps with a scoff.
Maybe Zayn outbursts are him bickering at me since we’ve been together for so long, too. But we haven’t been married nearly as long as my grandparents were married. Does it start this soon?
She squeezes my hand and shakes her head as if she knows what I’m thinking. Because both she and my grandpa would glare at me when I would laugh at them bickering back and forth. Their bickering was funny to me when I was younger. It’s not so funny now when I’m the one being bickered at.