Chapter Fourteen
How am I this bad at people?
Ceres
Mars seems…different. Somehow.
For starters, he knocked. On my door. And now he’s standing on my porch, smiling at me. As though he’s a normal visitor and a regular person. As though he’s never before walked right into my house, unprompted.
It’s been two weeks since we started working on this Flag Day thing together. Two weeks since last I saw him. Even though he told me that he had planned frequent check-ins to keep him abreast on progress and my schedule reiterates that intent.
“Morning,” he provides, amicably.
Tucked behind my door as though he’s a wild animal ready to pounce, I murmur, “Morning…”
He reaches for my doorknob and casually pushes.
I skid across my floor in my socks as he steps up into my house, closing the distance between us, and looks down at me. A chill works its way into the air as his smile goes frigid and his eyes tilt up like slivers of crescent moons. “You took my key away.”
That I did.
I cut my attention to the table by the door, where my spare key now lives. I figured I don’t really leave my house enough to justify having a spare outside all the time. So I confiscated it.
Probably should have confiscated it then not opened the door for him. Opening up implies that I’m glad to see him or something. Maybe even that I’ve missed him over the course of these past few weeks. Silly me.
Oh well. Here we go again, I guess.
Releasing the doorknob, I take a committed step back, clear my throat, and turn toward my kitchen. “Can I get you some lemonade?”
“Are you already out of the orange juice we stocked up on together?” The latch clicks as he closes my front door, trapping us both in here together.
“I’ve not had breakfast yet, and orange juice goes better with breakfast than lemonade.
” His confident strides take him past me, to my kitchen, and to my cabinets.
He retrieves a frying pan while I linger beneath the arching entrance.
Smiling as he twirls the handle, he says, “Sit. How do you like your eggs?”
Crossing the linoleum, I ease into a seat at my kitchen table and eye my neighbor. “Where were you last week when we were supposed to have our check in?”
“Busy.”
Busy committing crimes, I bet.
“Ceres, eggs?” He puts my frying pan on the stove and retrieves a rubber spoontula from my utensil drawer.
“Why do you know your way around my kitchen?”
“Why won’t you tell me how you like your eggs?”
I cross my arms, petulant. He thinks he can just stomp into my life four days in a row, then abandon me because he’s “busy,” then jump right back in and start making demands?
Absolutely he may not. “My eggs are rationed . I do not eat them for breakfast. If I were to, I’d run out before my next shopping day. ”
Mars sends a look over his shoulder, locks eyes with me, and opens my fridge. He proceeds to crack every last one of my eggs into a buttered frying pan while I watch, horrified. “I like scrambled,” he says, tossing the carton perfectly across my kitchen and into the trash.
Meal plan meals evaporate before my very eyes.
“How’s progress going with the festival?” He pushes the eggs around. “Months ahead yet?”
Mouth dry, I say, “What? No. I’m on schedule.” On schedule because this week’s task involves talking to someone. Outside my house. In person. I’ve been squarely living in the delusion that the bike shop in town might develop a website before, well, today.
It has not.
As you can imagine, my devastation is incomprehensible.
“Why, if I may ask, have you decided there’s going to be a charity bikeathon all over town during your festival?” And, follow up, why have you decided it’s perfectly normal to help yourself to my kitchen, use all my eggs, and just generally ruin my life?
“You’re going to order bike flags for everyone.”
“I saw that, yes. But. Still.”
“It’s for a good cause.” He salts the eggs.
I will admit, it is for a good cause. He’s picked an excellent charity that focuses on ocean safety, protection, and awareness. Good cause or not, I fear we’ve lost the plot entirely. “Bike flags have nothing to do with Flag Day. The ones you want me to get aren’t even American flags. They’re red.”
“Red flags are still the best ones, Ceres.”
I agree, but. Still. There’s a difference between “focusing” on this “romantic” side of Flag Day, which doesn’t actually exist, and removing the origin story altogether. Why, at this point, you might as well just call us the papacy.
After tossing the eggs a final time, Mars pulls the pan off the heat and retrieves bread from my freezer. “How many slices of toast would you like?”
“The bread is for sandwiches,” I say.
“Mm.” His smile broadens. “No. This bread is for toast.”
“I have a very specific meal plan.”
“Of course. Yes. I understand. And, yet, this bread told me it wanted to be toast.” He pries two slices free and pops them in the toaster. “Dying wish and all that. Who are we to deny it?”
Actual sentient beings, I think.
Despite my frown, Mars plates buttered toast beside scrambled eggs and sets it in front of me before sitting across from me with his own breakfast. He takes a bite, commends himself on having done it again , then gasps.
I tense as I reach for my fork. “What?”
He stands, invading my fridge once more. “I forgot drink.”
“I’m out of drink.”
Staring into my refrigerator, he echos, “You’re out of drink.” Wounded eyes locate me. “We bought so much juice. Is this why you offered me lemonade a moment ago?”
Yes, it is why I offered you lemonade an entire making-of-breakfast ago… “I’m a drink—” I cuss. “I can’t get enough. I go through a bottle a day, because hydration is important, and sugar contents can—” I swear. “—off.”
“Flag off,” Mars corrects me.
I angle a brow, because surely he did not just say that.
He closes my fridge. “Mind your language.”
“I picked my words intentionally.”
Mars slips into his chair again, retrieves his fork, and stacks eggs on his toast. “Little goddess, perchance are you upset?”
It takes a good few seconds for me to assess, but then I come to a remarkable conclusion. “Yes, it seems I am.”
“Don’t be.”
Wow. Sage advice. Let me just turn off the ol’ anger. Rats. Seems my expression didn’t get the memo, and now I’m scowling.
Gentle as a freight train, Mars looks me dead in the eye and says, “We’ll pick up groceries when we go out later.”
I shudder. “Go out later? What do you mean go out later ? We’re not going out today. It’s check-in day.”
“Yes, check-in day. And the task for this week is setting the bikeathon ducks in row, which involves heading to Dream Cycles. I popped a tire yesterday, so I’m coming with you.”
“You…what?”
“I popped a bike tire. Someone left a nail in the road. I had to call Jovey to come get me.” Cutting his fingers through his dark hair, he mumbles, “I’m lucky he was lucid enough to answer the phone.”
“Your…bike?”
Silence. Deafening silence. Mars’s smile wobbles, and he clears his throat. “Um. I don’t understand the disconnect.”
“You have a bike? Since when do you have a bike?”
His pupils flick between my eyes, disconcertion heavy in his gaze. “You don’t know that I have a bike?”
“Am I supposed to know you have a bike?” I know he has a bike. I’ve seen him on his bike. He’s seen me see him on his bike. But if gaslighting doesn’t make me feel better in the face of impending social situations, I don’t know what will.
His lips part. Something shatters in his gaze. “Even Amelia knows I have a bike.”
Morale. So much morale. This must be what it feels like to participate in Brian’s Countdown to Valentine’s Day event. “How does that have anything to do with me?”
“She’s mentioned my bike, on the phone, in front of you, in front of us.”
“To be so frank, Mars, sometimes her voice turns into the adults in Charlie Brown, broken ever so occasionally by ‘Brian.’ It’s just wah-wah-wah-wah Brian wah-wah-wah .”
Mars pulls in a breath that flares his nostrils, then he lets it go and says, “I have a bike.”
“Crazy. Never noticed.” Maybe if you had broader shoulders, like your brother.
“I’m coming with you to the bike shop.”
“Unprecedented.” Thank you, thank you, thank you.
“I’m facilitating the refill of your rations in conjunction with your already having to leave your house due to prior agreements.”
“Fab.” Bless you, Mars. You’re an angel on earth.
“ Therefore , you’re not upset with me anymore, right?”
Getting more juice before next shopping day is the kind of luxury I literally have dreams about, and it’s not like I can’t afford to go shopping more than my allotted amount, especially not with my current project bringing in a full year’s worth of income.
I’d feel worse about it if I didn’t know that Rouge was making hundred-thousand dollar months and forcing me to wait days between chapters in her current WIP.
I am dying for every next scrap of her story, yet she lords it over me, saying, Starve .
Anyway… Where were we? Right. Am I still upset with Mars? It’s hard to be upset after a refreshing bout of gaslighting, I think, so I say, “I rescind my fury.”
“Your benevolence is noted.” He pokes at his eggs. “We’ll go after breakfast, then?”
Considering I have nothing better to do apart from stare at a message thread and wait for Rouge to love me, I say, “Sure.” Then also: “I wonder if they have copper tubes…to match your bike.”
Which I have never seen before, in my life.
Smiling when Mars’s eye twitches, I take a bite of toast.
The guy manning this cramped, barely organized bike shop drops a whole tube—black, not copper—on the counter, and I blink at it. No box. No plastic. Just…a flat black tube, sitting there against the raw plywood.
“Need anything else?” he asks as he plops into a chair behind the register, all but disappearing as he rings up Mars’s order.
Shaking his head, Mars lifts his card. “Not today.”
The man nods. “Six-thirty. Receipt?”
“Yes, please.”
A receipt prints for Mars to take, and I twitch as I catch sight of the cost. Six…point…three. There is no hundredths place. There is a dollar sign.
I have never seen anything more offensive in my life, and I just watched a transaction take place that has concluded with Mars stuffing a raw, open bike tube in his pocket. It’s hanging out of his leather jacket like a helpless snake.
This could have been a drug deal. You could tell me this was a drug deal, and I’d believe you.
What is going on?
“And for the lady?” the guy asks, turning his attention on me and offering a crooked smile.
I am one misplaced judgement away from asking if I can reprogram his machine so it prints currency correctly. Thank goodness Mars is here, to provide me with a sense of confidence and keep me from rambling idiotically.
Unfortunately, Mars steps away to look at a forest green mountain bike before I collect the correct thoughts.
So instead of explaining how I’m planning a bikeathon for a Flag Day festival come June 14th and would love it if Dream Cycles would sponsor it, I smile brilliantly, and…
ramble idiotically. “I’ve never been in here before, and this is kind of embarrassing, but I never learned how to ride a bike… ”
From beside an array of neon pedals literally bolted to the wall, Mars throws a totally subtle look my way.
Heart rate fumbling around stupidly, I push my hair back over my ear. “What bike would you recommend for someone learning late?”
Beaming, the guy stands, and—quite honestly—friendly people will lead to my demise…
It takes a solid hour for me to not mention the bikeathon a single time. A solid hour for the guy to tell me all about how he got into biking and started his own business. A solid hour before I’m standing out in front of the store, beside Mars’s Honda Civic, with a bike.
“Pink, huh?” Mars comments.
“Shut up.”
“I would have thought you’d pick green.”
“ Shut up. ” Heat rises to my cheeks, blistering my flesh.
“Pink’s super cute, though. Who knew you were a pink girlie?”
I have always been a pink girlie. With a penchant for nature tones. On account of their calming aura and the fact I am, naturally, super duper calm .
“I will actually strangle you to death with your own bike’s inner tube if you don’t shut up .” Breath scours my lungs as I force them to fill. I just bought a bike. A three hundred dollar bike. What is wrong with me?
Mars opens his mouth, deathly serious. “Ceres, that is exactly how I want to die.” Offering me his bike tube, he warms, expression tender in the scorching, unforgiving sunlight. “If you’d be so kind.”
My eyes narrow. “I can’t ride a bike, Mars. How am I supposed to get this back home? Also, we’re supposed to be going to the grocery store right now. And another thing , I don’t want a stupid bike! I was supposed to get things situated for your bikeathon! Not buy a bike!”
His lips quirk. “Now you can learn and be in it with me.” He puts his tube back in his pocket. “For charity.”
“No.”
“Think of the sharks.”
“ No. ”
Taking a step forward, he puts nothing but this stupid pink bike with a frilly white basket between us. His bright green eyes ignite. “Do stop tempting me, little goddess. I’ve always heard that word like a challenge.”
“What a deeply concerning thing to say.”
His smile stretches, and his fingers graze mine as they slip the handlebars from my grasp.
“What do you think you’re—”
“I’ll meet you back at home, then we’ll go shopping.” He tucks his car keys into my hand. “Race ya.”
“What? No. Ma—”
Swinging himself onto the padded white bubble seat, Mars takes off like a pink bullet toward home…without me.