Chapter 17. Fisher
“For real?” Indy says. “We can’t just drive to the next town? Or as far as it takes for us to find intelligent life and a Target?”
I turn off the ignition in the O’Doyle’s parking lot and give Indy a pointed look in the rearview mirror. Sage spares me from replying first.
“While I’m sure you’re safe in assuming those things are mutually exclusive, we’ve gotta get him a wet suit and get you school supplies. And this is the only place weird enough to have both,” she explains, unbothered.
Indy just laughs, seemingly satisfied with this response, which makes me feel like I need a notebook. Last night, I asked Indy if Sam was her boyfriend, and by the nasal, disgusted, horrified scoff I received, you’d think I asked her something much more invasive. I make a mental note: Teen responds well to sarcasm only.
But of course I’m contradicted shortly thereafter. With Sage, it’s not limited to sarcasm. Indy answers her earnest questions with equal frankness and ease. They banter without any acidity from Indy’s end. They also team up to tease and bully me over a variety of things.
Still, even if their comfort level is not the case for Indy and me yet, watching them interact gives me hope.
After shopping, we end up grabbing burgers and fries from Walter’s and take them with us over to the park by Starhopper, per Sage’s recommendation. We fall into easy conversation divided between comfortable silences and slurping on our drinks.
When Indy starts asking Sage about her various ear piercings, I let my mind wander to more food, even though I’m full enough that I’ve had to sit back in my seat to be comfortable. I think I’ll try to run by the store again for another batch of blackberries, since what I keep buying and trying just doesn’t taste the same as the ones Sage had at her house. I’ve started playing with a chipotle blackberry sauce for a burger on the Starhopper menu, but I’m also mulling over a lemon pudding cake we used to make at Marrow. Instead of the rhubarb we typically used to accent it with, I think I’ll do something with those blackberries whenever I find the right kind… maybe a white chocolate crémeux alongside.
I’m still mentally deconstructing when Sage asks me, “How long have you had your ears pierced?”
I blink a few times and pull myself out of the daydream. When was the last time I daydreamed about making anything like that? “Since I was fifteen,” I laugh. “Why?”
Sage sets aside her soda and leans her elbows on the picnic table. “I guess it seems like a semispecific choice? Normally, there are tattoos that coincide and such, too.”
“Oh yeah? Where are all your tattoos, then?” I ask, nodding to the four or five earrings she has per ear.
“Touché,” Sage replies.
“Mom said you were picked on for your ears as a kid,” Indy adds. Her eyes go wide for a second after, like she feels bad for oversharing.
“Yep,” I quickly respond, hoping she won’t be discouraged. “My ears were this big when I was nine. Seems silly looking back, but I guess it was my idea of a fuck-you to those kids at the time.”
“Can’t let it get to you if you own it first,” Sage connects. She fixes me with a look that tells me she sees right through me, too, maybe beyond me just being bullied for having big ears. I shift uncomfortably in my seat.
“And by the way, how do you know I don’t have tattoos?” I hedge, hoping to evade the implications in that look. “Maybe they’re just on parts of me you haven’t seen.”
Indy makes a noise from her sinuses. “Sick. Save the act for when I’m not around, please,” she whines.
It was Sage’s idea to bring Indy in on the jig yesterday when she’d asked us to help her harvest tulips. She’d leaned in my way over the tray we were putting her bulbs out on—a dirt smear on her cheek as she told me that “showing trust often earns some, too.”
Indy had seemed mostly indifferent to the whole thing. “Whatever you gotta do for work, I guess,” she’d said with a shrug.
“I’m gonna go say hi to Sam at Savvy’s. That okay?” she asks me now.
“Sure. Yeah, of course. Definitely,” I reply. In obvious shock that I was even asked. I catch Sage’s smirk in the corner of my eye. “We’ll meet back here, or something. Just check in with us in a bit?”
Indy rolls her lips and nods before she skips off toward the bakery.
I turn back to Sage’s knowing face. “Walk?” she asks me.
“Sure.”
We clear off our garbage from the picnic table, and I follow her over to the trail at the border of the park. Today, she’s got half of her hair pinned back, but the wind keeps stealing pieces of it from her clip and blowing them across her face and around her tanned, freckled shoulders. She doesn’t seem to mind, just keeps grinning to herself—entertained by her own subconscious. I have the distinct thought again: I wonder how she burrows into me this quickly, into my head and into other vital parts, and I can’t help but wonder how the hell I can affect her like this, too. Guilt rides the thoughts, though, because what would be the point? I need to try not to forget that I’ll be leaving at the end of this thing.
“You changed your nail color again,” I observe. A harmless comment to fill the silence. She spreads a hand out in front of her as if to check. Today, they’re a pale orange.
“You noticed?”
“You change them a lot, don’t you?” I say with a shrug. But when her smile spreads wider, I think my chest expands to the same degree.
“I do,” she says. “Wren thinks I’m nuts, but I probably change them three times a week. It relaxes me.”
“Toes, too?” I ask.
“Foot fetish?” she replies, eyes narrowing in adorable mock suspicion.
Just ayou fetish, I think. I thankfully stop the answer before it escapes me. “Just curious about you, is all.” Keep letting me in that mind. You make it look like it’s a fun place to be.
“Most of the time, yes,” she says. “Toes, too.” Her shoulder brushes against my arm, and the slightly sticky heat adds the smallest friction, sending my synapses into free fall. “I read, too,” she continues. “Or journal. What do you do to unwind?”
I know what I would like to do more of.“Exercise, mostly. Watch TV. The usual.”
“Cooking shows?” she asks.
I flinch like I’ve been gut-punched. “No,” I say ruefully, suppressing a shiver.
“That bad, huh?” she chuckles. “Probably like surgeons watching medical dramas. Can’t stand to watch other people do it wrong?”
We’ve come to the part of the loop that forks off toward the front of Starhopper, and I decide to veer off in that direction, suddenly eager to get inside and have a break from the wind and sun. I said I was curious about her, and she’s managed again to flip things on me somehow. I pull out my keys as I clear my throat and try to explain.
“Sometimes that, but it’s not that anyone does anything particularly unrealistic. And they’re usually not doing something risky like it would be with some medical show. I just…” I frown and wipe at my brow. “I don’t do anything especially important, so it sounds ridiculous to say that watching cooking shows gives me—anxiety.” Metal scraping, loud voices, heat and smoke and steam. I’m as numb as I can be when I’m at work, so why would I want to experience it in my free time, too? I flinch when her cool fingers touch my forearm.
“What do you mean you don’t do anything especially important?” she asks, her expression furrowed in concern.
I huff out a forced laugh as we step toward the door. “I’m not saving lives, Sage. I’m definitely not in any real danger, either. I’m usually making pretentious shit by overly complicated methods.”
She looks devastated by that, and I can’t decide if I’d like to say something sarcastic to brush it off or bury my face in her neck and let her comfort me.
“Literally every significant event in life is celebrated with food somehow,” she says. “You really don’t think that’s important?”
“I don’t make food. I—I don’t make the stuff you need to sustain you.”
“Maybe not, but at its core that’s what it is! Plenty of people aren’t looking to just eat. Some of us are trying to be fed something, I don’t know, more, when we go to those places,” she urges, emphatic. I open the door to Starhopper and hold it ajar for her, and she steps in close to me, ardently holding my gaze. “How can you say all that stuff to me about growing flowers and not feel the same about what you do? Especially when you’ve proven that you do it well. You’ve gotten awards for it, Fisher!”
I groan. “You googled me?” I worried she might after her brother brought it up the other day.
She blushes. “Screw it. You know what? Yes, of course I did. After that first day in the library.” She stabs her hands out at her sides and lets them fall back to her thighs with a slap, and I try to reconcile the fact that she undoubtedly has known about all the other shit for a time, then, too. And she never held it against me? “Food Wine’s most promising chef at twenty?!” she continues. “You couldn’t even legally drink!”
“Legally being the operative word,” I mutter.
“A James Beard Award at twenty-two?! And by the way, you have three fucking Michelin stars?!”
I march through the entrance even though I’m looking for an exit route away from this topic. “Exactly. And no.”
“Exactly what?!” she’s almost yelling now as she follows me and gently grabs my forearm again, turning me in a half circle her way. Her eyes are bright, and there’s a prominent vein pulsing in her forehead. I feel adrift and confused. I started a conversation hoping to glean more about her, and she’s got me raw and open instead. I have no clue how we got here, but my heart is racing with her a few inches from me, and I think that maybe I’m just going to say it. I’m going to say what I think and let myself sound as pathetic as I feel.
“I mean,” I say, “that is exactly why I have no reason to be this goddamn miserable. I got what I wanted. I accomplished a dream, and it felt completely fucking empty. And then I went and fucked it up, anyway.” I gulp back a few breaths before I add, “I’m not sure how much you found, but I take it you saw that I lost one of those stars, too.”
The tension visibly unravels through her, everything softening. And then she does something I don’t expect. She doesn’t try to say something placating or dismissive, doesn’t press for more information, and she doesn’t tell me I’m right, either. Her scowl simply untethers and fades away before she moves closer and gathers me into a hug.
It’s misery. It’s agony. It’s bliss. Why is it that someone hugging you and holding you together can make you feel like you’re about to shatter?
Her arms come around my ribs and cross at my spine. I feel both of her hands ball into fists and push tightly against me, like some sort of reverse Heimlich maneuver.
I breathe out a long breath and give into it, let my cheek rest on the crown of her head. Her scent invades my senses—citrus and sweet, like these ridiculous fancy marshmallows we made for a whole s’mores series at my first sous gig. Orange-blossom marshmallow squares dipped in chocolate, rolled in crushed pistachios.
“Thank you,” I say into her hair, voice gruff.
Her responding laugh vibrates against my core. “For what?”
“For the hug,” I say. “And for not telling me I’m an ungrateful, whiny, privileged dickhead.”
Her hair catches in my stubble as she pulls back to look up at me. “I don’t think that. Not at all, Fisher.”
My thumb smooths the crease between her brows playfully, and I’m tempted to touch her lower lip. Everything in my body is tempted to touch something. I stare at her mouth a tick too long, and I feel her hold her breath. I think about it—about kissing her for a moment, and it feels like that moment balloons… but no. She was comforting me, and I refuse to misread this or risk taking advantage of her. I gently extricate myself with a grateful smile before I can give in any more, and I rotate toward the rest of the room.
“Want to check this place out with me?” I ask, drawing a circle through the air.
A look I can’t unravel flickers across her features. “Okay.”
The main restaurant is still a blank slate. Framework and drywall are done, but Walter’s nephew is a stonemason and is set to start working this week on the sections of exposed brick that need repair. Carlie hired one of Martha O’Doyle’s brothers for the plumbing and her sister for all the interior painting.
Carlie had told me that the observatory dome was the only thing that was nearly complete, since that required a more specialized group.
“Apparently, there’s a brewery over in Bend with one of these,” I say to Sage, pointing out one of the window frames at the tower. “Carlie jokes that she might’ve been slipped psychedelic brownies when she visited it but that it was the ultimate immersive experience. ‘Good food, friends, and a journey through time and space,’” I quote her.
“I like her. She sounds wise,” Sage says.
“She’d love you, that’s for sure,” I say. Then I nod to the observatory. “You wanna go up? The elevator’s not running yet, but we can take the stairs.”
We head outside and scale our way up the spiral staircase that wraps around the outside of the tower, pausing when we make it to the second-story platform to take in the view. Sage smiles wide to herself again as she looks around. Like maybe where I see a nice ocean and a patch of green grass, she’s seeing memories and more.
“And you tried to tell me that’s not hidden charm?” I say, looking at her expression. She charms me beyond reason.
“Fine,” she says. “Maybe there’s some.” She tucks a wisp of hair behind her ear. “Why is it you hate them?” she asks.
“Hate what? Small towns?”
“Yeah.” She cants her head to the side and holds me with an owlish stare.
“Hate,” I say, “is maybe a strong word.” When I don’t say more, she nods for me to continue, but I pat my jeans to find my phone, getting the key code for the door and letting us inside.
I let my eyes adjust to the indoor light. Shiny blue-black tiled floors lead up to walls painted to match, with labyrinthine shapes painted all around. “Maybe she was on psychedelics when she decided to do this,” I mutter, hoping the attempt at a joke might buy me a distraction. I find Sage still giving me a shrewd look, and heave a sigh.
“I don’t hate small towns,” I say. “I just think they tend to have a dark side most don’t consider.”
“Care to elaborate?”
No.I almost tell her as much. But I’ve already cracked myself open, anyway. “I guess it started when I was younger and started noticing things, like… when I was still little, my parents opened up a sandwich shop in town, right? Not a chain restaurant of some kind, just a tiny family deli. My sister and I would make stroopwafel with my mom at home and bring fresh batches for sale every day.” She’s looking at me like she already knows where this is going, lips pinched sympathetically. I keep telling her anyway. “No one wanted to give their business to outsiders, though. Someone’s teenager even vandalized it once.” I let out a dark laugh. “My parents didn’t set out to put anyone else’s business under. They wanted to share something they loved doing and wanted to make a living for themselves doing it. They certainly weren’t trying to monopolize milquetoast America. But you’d have thought they were, with how few customers they had. All because there was already one other family that owned a deli a few blocks down.” I finger the protective sheet covering one of the telescopes. “It went under in less than a year.
“After that, I think I always felt apart, or something. I saw how stuck small places and small minds can get. Got bullied in school. Had a hard time making friends. I wasn’t trying to be a corn-fed jock that peaked in high school, so suffice it to say, I never fit in much,” I add bitterly. I bite my tongue before I tell Freya’s story, too. How watching her mistreatment made me hate the place even more.
“That why you went to culinary school?” Sage asks.
“Probably,” I say plainly. “There wasn’t much in the way of fine dining, since even our casual options were limited.” I’ve made my way around the circular room and back to Sage, face-to-face.
“I remember thinking,” I say. “I remember thinking that if I was better than they were—someone special. I thought I’d be happier than they were, too.”
A commotion from outside pulls our attention to the door just as Indy, Sam, and another friend step into the room. I make the assumption that Sam can track Sage’s location like she did the night I was looking for them. Indy introduces me to Blake, whom Sage already knows as her former student.
“Can I hang out with them for the rest of the day?” Indy asks.
“Sure.” I wish there were a way for me to tell her I’m proud of her for being open to making friends, but I can’t imagine doing this and it not earning me one of her mortified scowls.
“Just don’t be out late, all right?” I add. “We both start things early tomorrow morning and need the sleep.”
“That’s right,” Sage says with a signature bright grin. “You guys start summer school, and we officially begin training.”