Chapter Eleven
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I met Gareth for lunch the next day at Tommy Chickens, a Nashville hot chicken restaurant that was popular both because of its cuisine and how much fun it was to say the name out loud.
“Hot-air balloon, British telephone booth—Tommy Chickens felt suitably absurd,” Gareth said.
Tommy Chickens was the perfect amount of absurd.
It was tricky to maintain a sauce-free face, but I did my best and so did he, and we laughed whenever it escaped the bounds of our mouth and required a napkin.
Afterward, we strolled along the river to keep the conversation flowing.
I wanted to hold his hand but felt too shy to reach for it, yet I didn’t feel shy at all when we came upon an unpopulated area and made out again.
Strange how holding hands now seemed like the more intimate act.
We spent the whole afternoon together, and I lost track of the time. “Shit. I need to go feed my coworker’s cat. He’s out of town.”
“The guy who sits beside you?”
I laughed. “Oh, right. Yeah. Macon. Of course you already know who he is.”
“He’s kind of a serious guy, isn’t he? He never really smiles.”
I squirmed, realizing I didn’t want to talk about Macon with Gareth. “He is serious, but he’s fun when you get to know him.”
“I work with some guys like that.” Gareth snatched the end of my coat sleeve and swung it a bit. Almost my hand. “I could go with you, if you’d like. To feed the cat.”
My shoulders tensed. Macon wouldn’t appreciate me bringing Gareth into his house, but it wasn’t something I desired either. I didn’t want to discourage Gareth, though, so I switched to flirtation. “Ah, but then that would bring us to dinner. And this was lunch.”
His eyes twinkled. “I’ll have to think of something good for dinner, then.”
A playful escalation was happening, and it seemed like we both understood that dinner would equal sex. The subject was still on my mind when I entered Macon’s house alone and his scent bombarded me. I forced myself to push away the illicit thoughts.
Edmond must have heard my car arrive because he was waiting for me.
I extended my hand to pet him, but he still wasn’t ready, which was frustrating because I’d thought we’d made decent progress that morning.
He had sniffed my hand but had backed away when I’d tried to touch him. I was hoping he might be up for it now.
“Fine, be withholding,” I muttered. “Like father, like son.”
Eager to get to my own dinner, I fed him briskly.
I hadn’t forgotten about the leftovers waiting for me.
As I opened the fridge, my eyes snagged on a huge mason jar sitting on top of it.
I let out a startled cry. Edmond bolted, leaving his plate rattling in a circle on the floor.
The offending jar was filled with slimy brine and… a dead sea creature?
I sent Macon a photo. What is this thing??
Edmond skulked back into the kitchen, so I plucked up my courage, too. I heated the manicotti and tried not to look at the submerged stack of mucus-y pancakes. I swore it was watching me. It didn’t seem to have eyes, but whatever it was, it was alive. Or had been alive.
Macon’s response was so quick that I wondered if he’d been expecting me. Kombucha.
WHAT?
The big one on the bottom is the mother, and it eats tea and sugar and grows babies. The fermented liquid they’re expelling is kombucha.
But what IS it??
A bacteria culture.
For several seconds, I was speechless. This is so upsetting.
You’ve drunk my kombucha before.
I know, but I didn’t KNOW.
There was a pause, and then he said, You can have one, if you’d like. One of the babies.
I sent him eight million crying emojis. He would never respond with an LOL, but I knew it was happening all the same.
The microwave dinged, and I snapped a photo of the manicotti. Thank you for this but nothing else , I said.
Are you reading the bacon book?
Whiplash. I wondered if there was a hidden camera in the house but then remembered my selfie with Edmond. Had Macon scrolled back through our texts to look at it again?
It IS the bacon book, but it’s not THE bacon book. It’s East’s copy. It’s good!
Dinner was better than anything I’d eaten in weeks, and we chatted throughout it, breaking another record.
I washed the dishes and then carried my phone to the couch.
If Edmond had been a human, he would have been annoyed at how often I stopped reading the novel out loud to respond to my texts.
Instead, it was as if he sensed Macon’s presence on the other end because he hopped off the back of the couch and sat beside me.
At last, he accepted my hand. His little tuxedo was so soft.
I spent longer than intended at Macon’s house that evening and longer than intended the following morning.
Edmond allowed me to pet him straight away.
We did our usual routine of feeding and reading—our cozy book club of two—and I exchanged more texts with Macon.
I had just reached the penultimate chapter when he told me he was getting on the road.
My time there had come to an end. The last thing I needed was to get so comfortable that I fell asleep on his couch, only to wake up when he opened his front door.
I used his bathroom one last time, sniffed his soap, told his cat goodbye, and left his spare key underneath the planter.
Let’s do dinner , Gareth texted a short time later. Fri?
I was empty and antsy and didn’t feel like finishing the book anymore. What about tonight?
As always, he was game. It was Monday, so he was working and would need to grab a shower first, but we met downtown that night at a restaurant with bland American cuisine and mediocre ambiance that neither of us had been to before.
“You ruined my plans,” he said with a laugh.
“Oh no. What’d I do?”
“This isn’t our date.”
“It’s not?”
“Nope. This is our pre-date. Our real date is next door.” He grinned at my confusion. “The pinball machine museum! They don’t serve food, but I was going to make a picnic for us on Friday and sneak it in. I didn’t have time tonight.”
I brightened with relieved laughter. “I wasn’t going to say anything because I didn’t want to hurt your feelings, but this place does feel like a misstep.”
He clutched his heart. “I would have never knowingly done this to you.”
I’d been to the museum a few times with Cory.
Every machine was in working condition, and for one flat fee, you could play any of them for as long as you liked.
It was all ages during the day, but after hours it became adults only, and they served boozy slushies.
The building was packed for a weekday and rang with chimes, knocks, clacks, thunks, and bells.
The volume was loud and overstimulating, and I wasn’t any good at pinball, but I did enjoy trying.
It was an appropriately silly location for us.
He paid the fees, and I bought the slushies.
I thought I was being smart by ordering watermelon—at least my mouth wouldn’t be stained blue—but then he ordered pina colada, and I realized I could have had a completely neutral color.
We wandered around, triggering the flippers and watching the balls fly around and objects spin and light up.
He liked the same row of antique machines that I did.
They were also less crowded. The atmosphere amplified the nervousness and excitement bouncing around inside me.
We flirted harder than ever, finding excuses to touch, standing so close that I could see a few stubborn splatters of gray primer on his left cheek and ringed in his nail beds.
It was as if we were both waiting for the other to be brave and say, “That’s enough. Let’s get out of here.”
A woman with influencer makeup and influencer wavy hair tripped behind us, spilling her pinky-red drink onto the carpet and the back of Gareth’s jeans.
“Whoa,” he said. “You okay?”
She kept stumbling toward her bachelorette party and didn’t apologize.
When he looked back at me, we both cracked up. I was glad that he wasn’t angry. “Your poor pants,” I said. “Are you okay?”
“I think she had the same flavor as you. They’re watermelon pants now.”
“It’s madness to allow drinks near all these machines.”
“I assume the cost of repairs is built into the price? I noticed they weren’t cheap. Thanks again,” he added.
Examining the backs of his legs, I realized this was an opportunity. “If you want to save those, they need to go straight into the wash. We should go back to your place.”
His eyebrows rose, and it was on.
I followed his car to a newish apartment complex near the library.
Of course he lived near my branch, and I felt dense that I was surprised by this.
I’d only driven past the building before, but its generic exterior reminded me of the one where Cory’s friend Robin lived.
I’d been dragged to several parties there.
As challenging as the last few months had been, no part of me missed having to socialize in large groups of mostly strangers.
Cory and I were both good with new people, but he enjoyed it more than I did and genuinely loved meeting them.
Their stories gave him energy. They drained mine, and after a long day at work, I preferred returning to the familiar to recharge.
Our shared days off required negotiating and compromising and taking turns with how the free time was spent.
“It’s not much,” Gareth said as he opened a door on the second floor.
The interior looked so much like my own apartment that it knocked me sideways. It was beige and unadorned and filled with the same build-it-yourself furniture from a decade ago.
“Okay, so it’s worse than I thought,” he said, taking in my expression.
I explained that I was only startled by the similarities. He relaxed, seeming comforted by this. I couldn’t explain why I did not feel the same comfort.
“Something else to drink?” he asked. “Cider, soda, water?”