Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Four
Her apartment was darker than usual, thanks to the cloudy conditions outdoors. She didn’t turn on her bedside lamp and certainly didn’t bother plugging in the string of lights on her tree. A tree that was now making her feel bitter and mildly ashamed of herself.
She wasn’t sure what to believe. Ryan’s words and actions were so different from each other. Choosing not to think about it, she climbed into her bed and pulled the multiple blankets over her head, listening to her ragged breath. Her eyes filled with tears and ran down the sides of her face, making muffled plops as they hit the pillow. She was exhausted. Within minutes, she was asleep.
She woke to darkness, momentarily confused about where she was. She scrambled out from under her blankets and looked at the clock on her bedside. Eight p.m. Ren had let her sleep through the entire afternoon shift. She could hear them crashing around downstairs as they cleaned up, preparing to close.
The memories of her fight with Ryan came rushing back into her mind, and she sighed deeply. Then something else pushed its way into her thoughts. A melody.
Allie swung her legs over the side of the bed and sat up, humming. Ryan’s words were lingering, and her mind was turning them into lyrics.
“ I always feel like a monster… ” She sang it under her breath, moving the notes around as she repeated the phrase, bending it to the melody that was playing in her head. She started scrambling for her acoustic guitar and her notebook.
The song was finished after just an hour of her fussing with chord progressions and a particularly tricky rhythm within the bridge. It was undoubtedly a song of love and apology. A song with lyrics pleading for him to find his way to her again. For them to somehow find a way forward together. She worked furiously, scratching out sections that weren’t quite good enough, that didn’t feel real enough, replacing them with better words and more evocative images. She managed to pack everything in there. Her feelings for Ryan were clear in the lyrics; she’d turned his own words into a metaphor that ran throughout, the complexity complemented by the simple melody she picked out on her guitar strings.
She played it through again and again. Until she could sing it without crying. Until it was perfect. It was such a strange feeling, something so sad also being something so satisfying. She’d missed writing songs and watching them magically turn into what they were meant to be.
She set down her guitar and realized she was hungry. Rooting around in her bar fridge yielded an apple and some crackers and peanut butter, which was about as elaborate as she could manage. As she was arranging her feast on a not-that-dirty plate, her phone rang.
Ryan?
She lunged for it and checked the screen. She didn’t recognize the number but answered anyway, feeling daring after her creative triumph.
“Hello?”
“Hi, is this Allie Andrews?”
“Yes, that’s me. Who’s calling?”
“It’s Meera Bukhari, I’m one of the producers of Mixtape Universe . We have you on our list as a performer for our day at the Brooklyn Arts Fest, and I’m calling to talk over the details.”
“Oh.” Ryan must not have canceled the gig yet. Of course he hadn’t. This Meera woman was overly keen, calling people at 9 p.m.
“I know, you probably didn’t think you’d be hearing from us so quickly, but we’re a bit under the gun, to be honest. Having a festival of any kind in the second week of January is a terrible plan from the jump. And they threw us in there at the last minute and—Oh you don’t need to hear all my complaining.” Meera laughed. “We just need to get our details sorted as soon as possible. You’re Ryan’s friend, right? I loved the recording he played us. That cover of ‘Borderline’ was really a cool take. Is that what you’ll be performing for our show?”
Allie opened her mouth to tell Meera that there had been a mistake.
“No, I—” She could still feel the sting in her fingertips where she’d been holding down the strings of her guitar as she played the new song over and over again. Her song. “I’m going to play an original. A new song.”
“Great!” Meera chirped. “What’s it called?”
“Uh—‘Monster.’ It’s called ‘Monster.’?”
—
Allie went back to sleep after Meera’s call, already wondering whether accepting the show was the right move. When she woke early the next morning, she forced it out of her mind. It was Christmas Eve, and one of her favorite days to work in the café. It was always a mob scene, full of last-minute shoppers and people having coffee with visiting friends. The festive season would surround her whether she liked it or not. She was missing the days when her life happened without much effort on her part. She dressed in a long-sleeved forest-green T-shirt and a pair of bright-red corduroy overalls and walked down to the kitchen, yawning as she went.
Alone in the kitchen, she felt a light relief, happy to begin work that was so familiar she hardly had to think about it. She started baking the scones and sticky buns that she knew would sell out, the thick scent of cinnamon like a wool blanket around her. At 7:30 a.m., she turned the lights on at the front and unlocked the doors. There were already two customers waiting, men in suits gazing eagerly through the window. They were the beginning of the avalanche.
By the time Ren strolled in at nine, Allie hadn’t had a moment to catch her breath. Ren immediately began busing tables and sorting out the dishes that had been left abandoned in the dishwasher as Allie stood behind the counter, serving pastry after pastry and coffee after coffee. Mindy, normally in for the late shift starting at lunchtime, came in early, knowing what they’d be facing. The three of them fell into their well-worn patterns within the café, running everything with a peaceful efficiency that made the day sail by. Customers were happy; Ren was playing Christmas music, of course, and Allie was just glad to be thinking about anything but Ryan.
Mindy, holding her tongue about the endless Christmas playlists, fell into uncharacteristic nostalgia, thinking about Christmases past at the café.
“There was one year, probably before you were born, Allie, when the power went out. The whole two days, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, no power at all. That was when I had a giant coffee carafe and a minifridge for sodas. People still came in. I made coffee on the gas stove, ran through my supplies of frozen baked goods and warned anyone who came in that the sodas were warm. People still came. Do you remember that guy Albert who used to come in every day before he moved to Tennessee?” She looked at Allie.
Allie nodded. “Oh yeah, he always had a guitar, and he called me honey .”
Ren clucked their tongue. Allie laughed. “Not in a disrespectful way. I always thought maybe he just never learned my name and then was too embarrassed to ask.”
“Anyway, Albert was around back then, too. He brought his guitar and a bunch of his weird music buddies, and we all stayed up all night. They just played old songs, and they shared a bunch of beer, and we lit candles.”
“That sounds nice.” Allie stopped arranging the tray of new scones in the display case for a minute. She straightened up and put her hand on Mindy’s shoulder.
“It was nice.” Mindy sighed. “It’s always been nice to be here.”
Allie blinked away tears and saw Mindy doing the same. Then a family of six came crashing through the door looking for cookies for the exhausted children, and everything went back to normal again.
During a brief lull at 6 p.m., Ren found Allie in the kitchen unloading the dishwasher for the seventeenth time that day.
“Hey, so, I’m headed to Anisha and Ryan’s tonight. I’m going to stay over and then have Christmas with them both tomorrow.”
“That sounds nice.” Allie stacked saucers, distracted.
“Are you going to come, too?”
“Am I what?” Allie turned away from the dishes and looked at Ren, confused.
“Are you going to come over, too? It would be great. All four of us, eating whatever delicious shit Anisha is going to make? Hanging out?”
“Ren.” Allie sighed. “I’m pretty sure I’m not invited. Ryan and I aren’t exactly on good terms. I’m not really sure that we can go back to just being friends.”
“So don’t!” There was a hint of desperation in Ren’s voice. “Go back to banging!”
Allie smiled, shaking her head. “I don’t think that’s going to work, either. We never should have changed things between us. We took a risk that didn’t pay off.”
“Allie, please don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re a fucking weirdo.”
Allie stared at Ren for a moment, blinking. “Please elaborate.”
“You know that normal people talk to each other when they encounter difficulties in their relationships, right? Like, people have fights and disagreements and issues all the time. It’s a quality that exists in all human relationships. You don’t have to live in absolute harmony with someone else to have a long-term, or even fucking medium-term , relationship with them.”
“I know that.” Allie was indignant.
“ Do you , though?” Ren threw up their arms. “I didn’t know you ten years ago, but it sounds like you were spoiled by this magical band you had, and then when that changed, you just wrote everyone off and walked away. You lost your best friends because of one conflict? It’s kind of absurd.”
“That was different! They hated me!”
Ren exhaled loudly. “Again, did they ? If they hated you, then why did Mimi talk to you on Instagram as soon as you messaged her? Why was Ayla so happy to see you the other day? Why was she sad that she didn’t have more info to help you find Jessi?”
Allie hadn’t considered the situation in that particular light. “Okay, maybe I see your point.”
“Ryan doesn’t hate you, either. You had an unfortunate stumbling block. He acted like a dingus, you acted like a dingus. It happens. Sometimes that just means there are strong feelings there. Come with me for Christmas. You can make it work.”
Allie shook her head but smiled more sincerely. “I’m not going with you now. But I promise to think about what you said.”
Ren’s dark eyes sized her up. “I’ll allow it.” They looked back toward the front of the café as the bell on the door rang, signaling a new customer. “And don’t think I won’t be lecturing Ryan about all this as well.”
“Oh, I definitely assumed you would also be lecturing Ryan.”
Ren nodded and turned on their heel, loping back out to the front to help Mindy serve a new crowd of customers who had just come through the door.