Chapter Seven
Chapter Seven
“I’ll do it. I’ll take over the café.”
Allie looked at herself in the mirror as she spoke. She was not convinced by her own declaration. She had approximately five minutes left on this brief respite from work before the produce order arrived. She huffed out a frustrated breath and tried again.
“Okay. I will take over the café. But I’m changing the name to Allie’s Café.”
That felt even more absurd. She didn’t want to change the name of the café. She wasn’t even sure she wanted to take it over. But maybe if she said it a few more times while watching her face in the mirror, she would start to feel as if it was true.
“Mindy, I’ve decided I will…Aw, fuck this.” Allie shook her head and picked up her hairbrush from the ledge under her mirror. She brushed her hair back into a ponytail and smoothed her hands down her canary-yellow jumpsuit. She assessed the rest of her look—blue socks, red high-top sneakers and a new red bandanna that Ren had grabbed for her at a consignment shop—with pleasure. At least her outfit schedule remained reliable. As she left her apartment, she appreciated the beat of her sneakers hitting each of the back stairs in a comfortable and familiar rhythm. The delivery truck driver was knocking on the kitchen door as she arrived.
Once she and Ren had hauled in all the boxes of lettuce and tomatoes and whatever else had caught Mindy’s eye on the weekly order form, they both leaned up against the prep counter to gulp down large glasses of ice water. The autumn weather was cooling, but it made no difference when they had to carry a whole load of heavy boxes into the kitchen while the ovens were on.
“Where is Mindy, anyway?” Allie asked, setting her empty glass in the dishwasher.
“Dentist.” Ren refilled their own glass. “Why? Do you need her?”
“Naw.” Allie was relieved but kept her face neutral. “I’m good.”
“That guy is here.”
“What guy?”
“The tall one with the beard.”
Allie went still. “Ryan?”
Ren nodded. “He got here right before the order arrived. Says he wants to see you, but not to rush. He’s trying the new cookies.”
Besides cookies, what did Ryan want? She’d told him the story of the band breaking up; she’d humored him by accepting his dinner invitation, and now she had no idea why he was back at the café. Was he just being…friendly?
I’m so out of practice when it comes to having friends.
Allie shook her head and tightened her ponytail, then made her way out to the front on slightly shaky legs.
Ryan was seated at a table by the window, leaning back with his long legs stretched out to one side. His face broke into an inviting smile when he saw her, brown eyes crinkling at the corners.
Allie felt her stomach flip and then dug her nails into one palm to bring herself back to reality. This was not the time for a crush. Not when she could hardly sleep at night for worrying about her future at the café. Not when everything she’d depended on for years was suddenly shaken up.
“Allie!” Ryan wiped his mouth with a napkin and gestured at the empty chair across from him. “Do you have time to sit down?”
Ren was at the counter, and the café was quiet, so she nodded and sat down.
“Hi.” He smiled at her.
“Hi.”
“I think we need to find Jessi.”
Allie physically recoiled. She squinted at him in confusion. The silence was filled with Carole King declaring that it was too late, baby—Mindy had been in charge of the playlist that morning.
“What?”
“Sorry, that was abrupt.” He sat up a bit straighter. “How are you?”
“Ryan, I don’t think you can backpedal from that statement into pleasantries.”
He grinned. “As you wish. So…we need to find Jessi.”
“Why?” Allie’s heart was hammering at the thought.
“You never had any closure with her. I bet if you find her and talk to her, you’ll feel better about the whole thing.” He pushed his plate of two cookies toward her. “These raspberry oat ones are my favorite so far. Want one?”
Allie could not think of a thing to say. She leaned forward, broke a piece off and put it into her mouth. He watched her chew, staying quiet, while she thought through this harebrained idea.
“And then what?”
“What do you mean, and then what?” Now Ryan looked confused.
“And then what? So I feel better, so what?”
“Allie.” Ryan looked at her with gentle eyes.
“Ryan.” She mimicked his tone perfectly.
He laughed. “Okay, I might be wrong, but do you think that maybe you might…want to play music again? As in, write songs and play shows? I know you’re recording covers for your project—which, by the way, I really want to hear sometime—but I’m talking about playing music the way you used to. Maybe you want to be in a band? It might help if you stopped feeling terrible every time you thought about what happened when you used to be in a band.”
Allie sat back again. “Huh.” The way he put it made it actually seem possible. She took another piece of his cookie, chewed and swallowed. “You might have a point. But I think you’re underestimating Jessi’s desire to not be found. It was her idea that we all use Jetski for our last names so we couldn’t easily be identified. She wanted us to have that level of control over our own story. Totally dedicated to the DIY punk ethos. She’s probably booking acts for a basement club somewhere, having to turn away bands in droves because everyone wants to play at her exclusive and rad place.”
“And I think you’re underestimating the punk scene, and frankly, I think you’re underestimating lesbians.”
Allie almost choked on the cookie. “You think I’m underestimating lesbians ?”
Ryan ignored her question. “When you played in the band, didn’t everyone know someone who knew someone you’d already met? Didn’t each venue tell you who to find and who to watch out for at the next venue in the next town? Didn’t everyone who had been in a band eventually join another band with someone from someone else’s previous band?”
“Okay, sure, yeah. That makes sense. But…lesbians?”
“Look, I’m not personally a lesbian.”
This time, Allie did choke on a crumb as she emitted a surprised laugh. Ryan waited while she retrieved a glass of water from the kitchen and sat back down. “As I was saying,” he continued, “I’m no lesbian, but Anisha is queer, and what I know from her is that queer people work just like music people. Everybody knows everybody. The lady on the L Word show had a whole chart about it. And since Jessi is queer and a punk, and if you are pretty sure she’s still in the scene, I don’t see how we could not find her. It will just take some askin’.”
Allie was compelled to agree with him on most of his points. She didn’t think it was going to be quite as simple as he predicted, but she would never have thought of just talking to people to find Jessi.
Allie didn’t keep in touch with anyone from her music days anymore. Even people she’d thought of as friends, the occasional club booker or music writer she’d gotten along with especially well, seemed to just fade away after she wasn’t “the girl in the band” anymore. Fans and scenesters had short memories.
Except Ryan, but he is obviously a weirdo.
She was also paranoid, at least right after the split, that people had heard what a jerk she’d been and didn’t want anything more to do with her. She really didn’t try. Music had been her whole life, and she’d just let it go like a balloon on a string.
“I don’t have any contacts or anything, if that’s what you’re thinking,” she told Ryan. “With punks or with lesbians.”
Ryan grinned his slow, confident grin that she was beginning to enjoy in spite of herself. He always looked right into her eyes. “Leave that to me.”
“Yeah?”
He leaned forward and held her gaze. “Yeah. Anisha and I both want to help.”
“Why?”
Ryan sat back again, his face contorted with confusion. “Why?”
“Yeah.” Allie folded her hands on the tabletop. “Why do you want to do this?”
“Huh.” Ryan looked off over Allie’s shoulder. It didn’t seem to have occurred to him that anyone might wonder why he was willing to insert himself into their business. “Well, I guess because we both like you, and we’re both pretty intrigued by the story of your band. And, as far as my own reasons…” His gaze moved back to her. “I just want you to feel better and play music again. Selfish, really. I want to hear the music you make in the future.”
Allie’s mouth was dry. A buzzy, nervous excitement made its way through her body. The fact that someone other than George was enthusiastic about her potential future musical projects was overwhelming. And yet Ryan didn’t even seem to think it was a big deal. He’d been texting her daily since they’d exchanged numbers, acting as if they were already friends. As if it was just meant to be. It was almost too much. She stared at him, trying to decide whether she wanted to go farther down this rabbit hole of unexpected companionship. Finally, she nodded.
“Okay, let’s do it.”
Ryan pumped his fist in the air before the sentence was fully out of her mouth. She held out her hand, as if she were asking an overexcited puppy to lie down. “I have one condition.”
“Okay, ma’am.” The glow in Ryan’s warm eyes did not dim. “What’s your condition?”
“You start learning to play the drums.”
Ryan’s boisterous fidgeting stopped, and his mouth fell open. It was fun to shock him. His unflappable demeanor was an entertaining challenge for Allie.
“I start to what now?”
“The drums. You start learning to play the drums. Or something. Play a fucking xylophone, for all I care. If you are making me do something scary and potentially disastrous, you can do something slightly less scary and less potentially disastrous.”
Ryan watched her curiously, and she locked eyes with him, making sure he knew she was deadly serious. Sunshine from the window, filtered through the orange and yellow leaves of the tree just outside the café, lit up his face and shoulders in a constantly moving pattern of light and shade.
“Okay.” He brought the palm of his hand down on the table, with just enough force to make the dishes clink. “I’m in. If you’re going to get some closure on the passions of your past, I can get a start on the passions of my future.”
Allie looked at him, struggling to keep a straight face as her lips curled into a smile. “That was really cheesy.”
Ryan laughed. “Tough crowd! You can take the girl out of the punk scene, but apparently, the attitude remains.”
She felt a fizz of pleasure in her belly as he teased her, and the air between them suddenly seemed charged. She quickly looked away, out the window, adrenaline shooting through her system. She may not have dated anyone for a few years, but she knew that look .
He reached across the table and took her hand in his. She looked up at him as her heart pounded in her chest. She closed her eyes for what felt like an awkward amount of time, allowing the warm feeling to flood her body.
For a brief moment, she felt herself standing on an emotional ledge. She could take the leap, squeeze Ryan’s hand and tell him I like you , and see what happened next. She was surprised by how tempting that option was. Tempting, but terrifying. Most of the people Allie had loved had left her. And now her aunt, the one person she thought would stick around forever out of familial obligation, was also leaving her. She could not handle another abandonment, especially from someone she was starting to like. A lot.
She jerked her hand back toward herself as though she’d just burned it on the stove.
Ryan’s face fell. His smile seemed to deflate before her eyes. “Allie, I—”
“It’s okay!” Her voice was louder than she meant it to be. “It’s fine. I’m fine. It’s good.” She scrambled to get up out of her seat, which made him hastily stand as well. Their table was bumped by her hip or his knee or some other body part that was now flailing through the space between them. Ryan’s coffee sloshed as the table wobbled, and when they both stopped moving, they found themselves staring at the liquid as it pooled on the wooden tabletop, overtaking the random cookie crumbs like the tide coming in to demolish sandcastles.
“I’ll get a rag from the kitchen.” Allie was eager to get out of the café space and retreat somewhere she could be alone. Unless some weird, hand-holding giant decided to follow her.
“Allie, can I just talk to you for a second?” Ryan stood in the entryway to the kitchen, watching Allie rummage through a drawer of various well-used dish towels. She could feel her cheeks warming.
It felt nice.
She couldn’t deny the spike of excitement that had shot through her when his hand gently slid over hers. It had felt normal , too, like any one of the tiny everyday actions that happen between people who care about each other. That was even more unsettling than any burgeoning feelings she might be fighting.
And yet. Here he was, standing in the kitchen doorway with a concerned expression that looked very sincere. He knew her history. She’d seen his home and met his best friend. He’d shown up at the café repeatedly, even when she was rude to him. He’d bought her a soda mere minutes after she’d shouted at him.
Maybe she could…count on him? If he liked her, really liked her, maybe this wasn’t the worst time to fall for someone. Especially for someone who made her feel so much like her old self. She opened her mouth, intending to apologize. Her heart hammered as she tried to think of what to say. But Ryan spoke first.
“Look, I’m sorry about that back there. Grabbing your hand.”
“Ryan, it’s—”
“Please.” He held out one hand. “Let me finish up before you talk. I don’t want you to get the wrong idea.”
Allie’s heart slowed.
“I know you and I are just friends. I just grabbed your hand without thinking. It absolutely was not meant to be a come-on or anything. I shouldn’t have done it. I don’t want you to think I’m out here being all sweet on you, making it all weird between us. I’m really happy being your friend. That’s all. I promise. Nothing more.”
Nothing more.
Allie was dizzy. She blinked, trying to calm the rush of emotion that had come over her and then receded and then returned in a slightly different form, all in the space of a few minutes.
What had she been thinking? She didn’t have the time or emotional stamina for any kind of romance. And Ryan clearly didn’t even feel that way about her. Him speaking first had saved her from an unimaginable humiliation.
Friends. They would be friends . That was better. Her mind filled with images of future dinners at his apartment, adventures and inside jokes and music filling their time. Someone she could actually depend on to stay in her life without drama or upset.
“Allie?” Ryan’s voice cut through the fog of her thoughts.
She smiled at him. “Thanks, Ryan. Thanks for clearing that up. I’m glad we’re friends.”
He grinned, looking relieved. “I thought you didn’t have any friends.”
“Well,” she grabbed a dish towel and closed the drawer and smiled in spite of herself. “I guess I do now.”