Chapter 3
JAHNVI
S aturday : A day of complete rest and relaxation for some.
However, when your family owns a restaurant, there is never a day of complete rest and relaxation.
Combine that with the fact that I competed on the school’s speech team that had competitions every Saturday, and that day of the week always turned into complete hell.
But sometimes, understanding parents are more difficult than strict parents. They could easily guilt-trip me without saying a word. And so, I kept doing this torturous routine every Saturday morning.
But I knew I wasn’t the one who had it the worst.
As I got new tablecloths for the tables near the windows, I looked across at EJ’s.
The lights were on, and I could see Everett covering his own tables with his shabby tablecloths.
He was also giving orders to one of the elderly chefs there; I could almost sense the more serious voice he used when he bossed people around.
It’s old news that we didn’t particularly like each other when we were younger.
But there were two weeks in seventh grade when he didn’t come to class, and I was, I hated to say it, concerned.
EJ’s was also shut down during that time and my curiosity just about burst. I ran to my parents to ask what the deal was, why he hadn’t been at school and what had happened with the restaurant.
That’s when my mom bit her lip and looked at my dad, who looked back at her pleadingly.
Whatever little mental argument they were having, my dad lost.
“Everett’s parents,” he started slowly. “They died in an accident last Saturday. Yeah, umm, the restaurant is now under his grandmother’s control, and your mom and I are going to their funeral tomorrow—”
“I wanna come too.”
It was the first death I had ever processed, and it was difficult. I hated Everett, of course I did. But he didn’t deserve anything like that.
No one did.
The funeral was closed casket. I remembered it being a sunny day, and I remembered how I sweated terribly under my black dress and tights.
Everett was there too, standing with his grandmother.
I remembered how red his eyes were, and how he kept biting his fingernails.
He showed up to school a week later, and everything continued like it had before.
We were both competitive, and he pretended nothing had ever happened.
If I had to wake up at three o’clock, I couldn’t even imagine when he had to wake up to finish everything on Saturdays. He had no one to help him, after all; his grandma didn’t leave their house anymore.
I changed into my suit and pencil skirt in the bathroom. It was aggressively red and very dramatic—perfect for a speech tournament. My parents yelled a “Good luck!” from somewhere back in the store as I headed out and started walking to my high school.
Yeah, walking to school.
After failing my driver’s test three times, I gave up.
It didn’t matter that I was one of the only kids in the senior class that couldn’t drive.
There is no way I was going to get behind the wheel with a judgmental instructor next to me—not again.
Plus, our house, the restaurant, and my school were all in a ten-to-twenty-minute radius anyway. There was no need for me to be driving.
I heard a car start behind me. Rolling my eyes, I continued walking faster. Everett always tried to find a way to rub it in my face that I couldn’t drive.
“Hey, Pickles!”
I sped up and put my headphones in, hoping he assumed that I couldn’t hear him.
“Jahnvi, wait!”
Now, that’s new . He rarely ever calls me by my full name. I turned around. “What? I’m gonna be late!”
Ugh! It’s such a bummer he’s a jerk! If we’d started off on the right foot, I don’t think I’d ever be able to keep my eyes off him. Especially on Saturdays when he wears his jet-black suit and a blindingly lime green tie.
I’d tried convincing him out of that tie multiple times, but he never listened.
Thank goodness for whoever made suits a thing, and now if only men could bring back the trend of wearing them every day.
Suits make men glow up by at least 60 percent, and that’s a fact.
I was already frazzled by the sight of his long figure in a suit, but what he said next confused me even more. “Jahnvi, I can give you a ride.”
“Why?” I crossed my arms. “Are you gonna throw me off a cliff now? Trying to get rid of the competition?”
He smiled as he opened the car door. “You’re not competition, Pickles. You’re not even close. It would be a shame if a fellow captain showed up late, that’s all. It would make both of us look bad.”
You heard right; we were both captains of our team. And we both competed in one of the same categories, so we competed against each other. It’s like the universe loved torturing me with this guy.
A sudden gust of wind made me teeter. The heels definitely weren’t helping my case.
He frowned. “It’s kinda cold for a skirt today.”
“Oh—that’s none of your business!”
“Jahnvi”—his tone changed a bit, so it was more serious—“just, get in. I’m not gonna kill you. Promise.”
And I hated to say it, but the tone did it.
That and another rough gust of wind. I quickly waddled over in my heels into the passenger side of his truck.
It was an older model Ford, which just made sense.
Everything about him was always a bit vintage, a bit outdated.
I had no clue how it even ran anymore; it looked rotten. But surprisingly, it smelled like mint.
The car was also shockingly clean.
There were no pennies that littered the cupholders, no empty soda cans, or anything like that. The only thing that was in the passenger seat was his black speech bag.
“Oh, you got the good kind,” I grabbed his little bag of barbeque chips at the top of his bag, expecting him to snatch it out of my hands. “Don’t mind if I do.” When he didn’t react, I looked over confused.
He shrugged as he started the car. “If you want to be eating that much sodium at 6 a.m., that’s on you.”
It’s always fun to see how people drive.
And since I’d gotten a lot of rides, I’d therefore seen a lot of people behind the wheel.
There are those who are more aggressive with their stops and accelerations, making you discreetly hold onto your seat.
There are also those who are very calm and slow, too slow.
Slow enough to make you want to roll your eyes and jump out of the car right there because you could probably walk faster.
Some make a lot of mistakes and chastise themselves when they make them, while some make tons of mistakes but never acknowledge them.
Everett wasn’t what I expected.
He always had a habit of zooming when he worked. I’d seen him from the windows when I took orders. His hands flew when he was wiping down tables, and while he never ran, his long legs had big enough strides so that he could get places quick enough.
But when he drove, it was slow. It wasn’t hesitant. It wasn’t like he didn’t know what he was doing, like when I used to try and drive. The turns he made were deliberate, and he didn’t miss any stop signs or accidentally run a red light like I’d done.
“You know,” I said after a while. “The speed limit here is forty.”
“It doesn’t mean I gotta go forty.” He glanced down at me and back at the road. I kept silent but I had an idea of why he was going so slow. It probably had something to do with his parents’ accident.
Something was off . I mean, Everett always had a very good way of maintaining eye contact. He was so good, in fact, that many people ended up looking away when he spoke to them; I certainly did.
But today, he seemed to not meet my eyes at all. Even when we were stopped at a light.
Something was definitely up.