Chapter 20
20
brYCE
I’m a godawful fucking cook.
I used to blame my inability to create anything even half-edible on my parents, my mom specifically. She didn’t cook for shit. Still doesn’t. Instead, she orders in from every place willing to deliver to their Cherry Peak–adjacent neighbourhood and dumps hefty tips to those who initially refuse. My dad is either purposefully naive to her antics or just doesn’t care enough to question why the garbage is always taken out right before dinner is served and the same meals are on a constant rotation. As long as he’s fed, anything is fair game.
Personally, I’d have preferred growing up eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or hot dogs instead of the dishes Mom ordered. I’ve never liked fish. Not salmon or cod or any other variation of it. But every second night, it appeared on a plate in front of me.
“Don’t complain and just eat, Bryce,” she’d say, her frown lines deepening as she shook her head at me.
So, I did, and the moment I left home, I wrote that shit off. I’ll go as far as to do an entire lap around the supermarket just so I don’t have to pass the fish department and get a whiff of its smell.
Amongst other things that I focused on once I escaped my childhood home, I made an effort to teach myself kitchen basics.
Eggs, boiled or scrambled. Grilled cheese, soup from a can, and a handful of different easy recipes that I found online or begged Darren and Poppy to teach me. It’s pathetic, really, how little I’ve managed to teach myself and master, but it’s something. A tiny, stupid fucking skill that I was never all that grateful for until today, when I saw the pale yellow lunch box on the counter while I was grabbing my to-go coffee cup for work.
It was empty inside. Not even a single non-refrigerated snack packed and ready to go.
Daisy was in a rush all of yesterday, holed up in her room finishing plans and colour coding her planner, so I shouldn’t have been surprised to find that she’d forgotten a lunch. Regardless, it still frustrated me to think of her putting herself and her body’s needs on the back burner.
That’s when I texted her. It was an impulse decision driven by pure concern. I didn’t need her to text me back before I decided that I would be the one to fix the problem for her.
Leaving work early was an instinctual reaction that snapped into fruition once my mother started to call and text, demanding a meeting.
What am I hearing about you and a woman?
Is this an attempt to scold me? A punishment?
Daisy Mitchell? That’s who you were with last night?
Why have I heard this from anyone other than you? Tu m’as blessée.
Answer my calls. Come to the house right now.
I didn’t.
Instead, I turned my notifications off for her number and ignored her completely.
Both my mother and the state of the kitchen are disasters that I’ve been conveniently blocking from my mind as I sit in my car in the school parking lot, hesitating to go inside. All of my prior confidence that led me here has scuttered away, turning me into a coward once again.
Two plastic containers filled with a couple of sandwiches and fruit salad sit on the seat beside me and in Daisy’s yellow lunch box in the fridge back home, ready for tomorrow.
Home .
Mine, and hers for right now. For a while still. Longer if it were up to me. It’s only been just under two weeks, but I’ve grown to like the sight of her in my place. Even with the mess of colours she’s brought with her but has tried to hide.
Like the massive, fluffy starfish slippers I’ve found under the kitchen table or tucked beneath one of the couch cushions, as if she kicked one off and lost it while watching one of the musicals she seems to love.
I’ve noticed several new things about her since she moved in. Her habit of pretending not to be cold all the damn time and instead mentioning that she’s freezing, wrapping herself up in one of her thousand heavy blankets for one.
She’s been bundling up less since I started keeping the heat turned up a couple of degrees, but that doesn’t mean the multicoloured blankets have stopped appearing everywhere throughout the house. On the back of the kitchen chairs, flung over the couch, or even on the back porch, layered with frost.
Getting a basket to keep them all in one place is on my list of things to do.
The time on the dash is a reminder that I have to get my shit together and go inside. As if sitting outside of a school with my car idling isn’t creepy as fuck on its own, being here without a kid of my own only serves to make it worse.
It takes me too long to gather everything from the passenger seat and head into the school, but once I’m there, I feel even less comfortable than I did outside.
A bell rings as voices shout and scream amongst booming laughs and giggles. Lockers slam shut, and kids run past without a care as to the way they knock into me and have me rocking back and forth on my feet to keep my balance.
Slowly, I slip through the small openings that appear between students and retrace my steps from yesterday. It was far quieter then. No kids sniffling their runny noses or shrieking when they realize they’ve forgotten something in another room or their locker. I prefer this place at night.
“Auntie Bryce!” I hear through the noise once I’ve turned down the hallway leading to Daisy’s classroom.
Abbie is the only child I’ve spent more than a few minutes of time with in my life. My best friend’s daughter is a smiley thing with bright emerald doe eyes and hair so curly and thick that it’s broken too many elastics to keep track of.
A spitting fucking image of Darren, she stands beside an open classroom door and waves wildly at me. A stuffed skeleton is clutched in her hands, and my heart pangs in recognition. She’s had that since she came home from the hospital. The only gift I’ve ever given her that she refuses to let go of, despite the rude comments I’ve heard Darren complaining about from the older kids at school.
“Hi, Skelly,” I say, jumping back a step to avoid smacking into a child who rushes past us. “Are you going for recess?”
She juts her chin. “Yep! Daddy made me a sandwich with blackberry jam for lunch. Nana’s jam! He cut it into a pumpkin.”
“That’s nice.”
“Do you like blackberry jam?”
“Not really.”
Her entire face scrunches. “Why?”
“It’s too bitter.”
“Mom says Dad’s bitter. Is that the same?”
“Your dad isn’t bitter, Abbie. Don’t listen to your mother.”
It’s terrible advice to give a six-year-old. Incredibly terrible advice. Too bad her mom is a bitch who won’t ever stop trying to ruin Darren’s life .
The little girl pushes her finger into the top of the skeleton’s eye socket and hums. “I still will.”
My hands sweat around the containers in my hands, so I adjust my grip on them and look to Daisy’s classroom just up ahead. The door is open, and as much as I care for Abbie, I don’t want to lose my time with Daisy discussing Darren’s ex-wife.
“You better go, Skelly. And make sure your dad knows how much you loved the sandwich he made you,” I tell his daughter.
Her eyes brighten, a grin forming. “Okay! Bye, Auntie Bryce!”
I freeze for a beat when she plows into my legs and squeezes them tight. With a pat on her head, I send her on her way and slip into Daisy’s classroom before another kid has the chance to get too close.
Abbie might be my exception when it comes to children, but I’m still not all that comfortable around them. If I hadn’t been there from the day after she was born, I doubt I’d have gotten close enough to let her hug or tease me.
“Bryce?”
There’s a clang, and then I’m coming face to face with my girlfriend for the first time in two days. My fake girlfriend.
It takes me a minute to blink, and by the time I do, my eyes are so dry they burn. Overalls have never done it for me before. Not even close. But with the way my nipples tighten beneath the work blouse I still haven’t changed out of and I lose my breath in a sharp puff, it’s safe to say she’s altered my view of them.
She has no defined shape in them with how baggy the thighs and waist are, but somehow, she’s never looked more beautiful. The messy, clipped-back hair and rosy cheeks add something to her appearance that makes it nearly impossible to breathe properly.
“Sunshine,” I mutter, my voice sounding as strained as my chest feels.
There’s a shine to her eyes today that makes the blue stand out, almost like it’s taken on a completely different shade. One more vibrant. Alive.
“What are you doing here?” she asks, standing from behind her desk.
“You said you were going to find something for lunch.”
Her lips part before she tugs the bottom one into her mouth and then lets it go. “I was.”
“Do you have food in your desk?”
“No. I was going to . . .” She trails off, focusing on the containers in my slick palms. “Is that food?”
I flush with heat. The kind that smothers. “It’s just something small.”
“That doesn’t matter. Here, pull up a chair and eat with me. I have about fifteen minutes before the bell rings.”
She wheels herself to the far end of her desk, leaving me a small space beside her. I avoid eye contact while I grab an extra chair from one of the sets of desks and pull it beside her.
I’m stiff as I drop into the chair and place the containers in front of us. Thankfully, Daisy doesn’t hesitate to lean close and snap the lids off the containers, giving me a hit of her sweet, floral perfume. She stares at the food with a soothingly warm expression and takes a sandwich for herself.
I should look away when she raises it to her mouth and sinks her teeth into the white bread, but watching her eat food that I made for her is one of the sexiest situations I’ve ever found myself in.
Perfectly manicured nails dig into the bread, keeping it in place as a moan slips out of her, and I jerk in my chair, a pulse thumping between my legs. My gaze tightens, refusing to have it drift so much as a millimetre.
Her tongue slips out and drags across her lips when she pulls the bread away, and then her jaw is working. The strain of her throat as it pulls and releases with a swallow threatens to have me collapsing onto the floor at her feet .
Begging for a chance to taste and savour her the way she’s doing to her food.
For just one fucking opportunity to learn if I was right all along in knowing that she’ll taste like my biggest temptation and desire. My undoing or revival.
“Eat, Frosty. You’ve got to be hungry. Did you come straight from work?”
My throat hurts from how dry it is when I speak. “No. I went home first and made lunch.”
“Oh. Right. That makes sense.”
“But I am hungry,” I add quickly.
My fingers tremble when I grab the second sandwich. Clenching them to hide it, I take a large bite of the sandwich and struggle to chew it with the lack of moisture inside my mouth.
“You know, I was hoping you’d come today,” she reveals casually.
My first swallow is a struggle with the dry bread. “Why? Are you okay?”
“I am. It’s just been a bit overwhelming. I didn’t student teach with kids this young, even though I knew I wanted to teach them. It’s kind of luck of the draw with placements, so coming here and being around so much energy and excitement was a lot to take in. It still is. But it’s been a very good day so far. Despite forgetting my lunch, of course.”
The giggle at the end of her sentence fills the classroom as fully as it does my mind, having become one of my favourite sounds in existence.
“Plus, it’s nice to see you. Especially considering all you did for me to get this place finished for today.”
I lift my eyes and find hers waiting. Like an expert in all things Bryce, the aspects of myself that I don’t reveal to fucking anybody, she bypasses all of my safety protocols and makes a home for herself in the pits of my insecurities and worthlessness that I’ve tried to bury for over a decade. They don’t feel so heavy once she’s reached them, like she’s transferred some of her colour into their black holes.
It should be enough to have me taking off. To give me the push I need to reinforce my security.
I bring my walls down a little lower instead.
“You deserved a finished classroom. It should have been like this from the very start,” I declare.
“It should have. But it wasn’t. And I have you to thank. So, thank you, Bryce.”
Staring helplessly into the endless depths of her eyes, I can’t be bothered to look away. Even when I discard my sandwich on the table and take her cheek in my hand.
It scorches against my palm, threatening to brand me with her initials. My heat sparks in answer as she leans into my touch instead of away, accepting it and nuzzling closer, eyelids drooping.
“This is just one of the many things I’d do for you, Daisy.”
“Because it gives us something to use as proof?”
I stroke the corner of her mouth with my thumb, aching to tug it up just so I could see her smile again.
Poison slithers up my throat as my lie builds, leaving a sour taste behind.
“Yeah, Sunshine. Just proof.”