Chapter 30
If an empty pizzeria could give hugs, Sal and Enzo’s place was doing its best. Unfortunately, it was the A for effort best and the kind of reluctant yet obligatory side-hug siblings had to do when mothers screamed at them to hug it out after a major fight.
Always taken for granted but also always there. In the morning hours before the pizzeria was open to the public, Marisa had no problems breathing in the reliable yeast or shuffling her boot around until she found a patch of floor that wasn’t sticky.
Sal had just taken out the latest batch of pizza dough to finish proofing on the counter and had done the much-needed good work of wordlessly restocking her Dr. Brown’s supply in the fridge.On the top shelf this time. An angel, that man.
After several days of staring at the walls of her apartment, she’d finally had to admit defeat to her sad-sack emotions and venture outside. Besides, she’d used up her last pack of ramen and had vowed to stay as far away from sugar as possible.
Or any of the other sweet memories that seemed to strike out at her with every room she went into.
It was funny. Marisa had never been one for the dramatic and had always prided herself on hobbling through whatever horrors life threw her way, but this time, things felt different.
It felt almost permanent and unshakable in its reminders of just how much of a sucker she really was.
The chair in her living room where Alec had let her care for him after a misunderstanding with the boys, her sad menorah that still sat untouched, all drippy and frozen from the last time Alec had put candles in it, the doorframe of her bedroom where Alec had stood in nothing but his boxer briefs and that delicious smirk that made her insides go all a-flutter . . .
Dammit.
Marisa’s eyes began to mist over again as the shame of her foolishness rose hot and heavy, even after she’d done her best to put it all from her mind, put him from her mind.
She couldn’t speak to him. Didn’t want to hear any excuses regarding his regrets or guilt.
She had quite a bit of her own to deal with, not the least of which was what the hell she was going to do with her life now that Sweetest Heart’s Desire had been embroiled in the confectionery world equivalent of a holiday sex scandal.
Marisa hadn’t bothered to reopen her online shop after she’d shut things down for Christmas. Any orders that would come in were likely only out of pity anyway.
And she was doing damn fine hosting her own pity party, thank you very much, in a pizza parlor no less.
But God, it all hurt. Hurt. Like a chunk of her had been ripped out and lit on fire as part of a public spectacle level of hurt.
She’d always thought she could handle loss a bit better than most people, but that had been before Alec had rolled the stuff around in an extra-thick layer of rejection and betrayal.
No one alive could have swallowed that and come out topside.
A thousand questions still plagued her, not the least of which was why oh why, but she told herself she’d just need to be content with not knowing. Answers wouldn’t change what had happened.
They wouldn’t change the way her heart had been torn into a million fragile pieces with each one crushed beneath some absurd designer planter.
None of it seemed to make any sense on the surface, and perhaps that was what stung worst of all.
The words, those hateful, awful words, had been his, but for the life of her, she couldn’t reconcile the truth of them with the man she’d come to know, the man she’d come to care so deeply about that this whole nightmare felt like a part of her had turned the knife on herself.
It was another reminder that she hadn’t known Alec at all. How could she after only a few short days of mutually agreed-upon falsehoods?
The whole thing made the betrayal that much thicker, until it turned into a vile sludge behind her breastbone.
The sharp tsss of the cream soda was the first jolt she needed to send her morose thoughts packing for a bit. What did she care that it was still solidly in the a.m.? Poor life choices and poor dietary choices often went hand in hand, making both a bit more palatable.
And she desperately required palatable.
The second jolt she needed came in the form of a sharp knock on the glass window next to the flipped-over Closed sign. Eden stood there, eagerly shaking her leg in greeting because her arms were full with three distinct colors of takeout bags.
Sal grunted his approval at the off-hours intruder, and Marisa went to let her in. Yup. Total freaking angel.
Before Marisa even had the thing fully open, Eden burst through the door and immediately plopped one of the bags, a brown one, on Sal’s counter. “Payment for early entry.”
The suspicious pizzaiolo arced a large bushy brow before wiping his floury hands on his apron, reaching into the bag, and pulling out a glistening, crusty elephant ear pastry easily the size of a calzone.
“Is that from De Luca’s?” Marisa asked, her mouth already watering.
“Yup. The first of many stops on this morning’s Eat Our Feelings But Not Our Pride parade route.”
Before Marisa could question her friend further, her hands flew out to keep her soda from toppling as she was greeted by a flurry of bags being dropped on her table.
From the corner of her eye, a flash of white curled itself around the brown paper bag.
When she looked back, Sal was gone, along with the elephant ear, a thin cloud of flour dancing in his wake.
“Damn, that man moves fast. What else was in that bag?”
Eden winked as she finished setting up her spread. “I got the last of the Christmas struffoli before they started switching out cases with the New Year’s desserts.”
“Oh, you are a queen.”
“I know.” She grinned. “Now, here. I got the good coffee from Alice’s Coffee and Kitchen, hazelnut with almond cream, of course.
Then I got the good bagels from Beta Bagels and Bites over on Claremont.
The French toast ones were right out of the oven, but they also had those whole wheat sesame ones you like.
Grabbed some scallion cream cheese, too, along with the walnut raisin.
They didn’t mix it with as much cinnamon this time, I’m guessing.
The color’s a bit light, but I already taste tested it and can confirm it’s equally delicious, as always.
They might have some new employees making the cream cheese. Not sure, but still so good. Yum.”
Marisa marveled at the spread before her and breathed in each distinct scent that had already gotten to work on loosening the pressure behind her ribs. “I love you.”
“I love you, too, and never forget,” Eden said, lifting a heavily schmeared French toast bagel to her lips, “carbs and caffeine will always love you back.”
“Amen.”
After they saluted their cream-cheese-smothered bagels and proverbially clinked paper coffee cups, the euphoria of Marisa’s creature comforts had begun to settle in enough that she was finally able to have an adult conversation with her childhood best friend.
Except this time, boys were sure as hell off the table.
“So, what are your plans for the New Year?” Eden asked.
“My parents need help putting their Hanukkah stuff away. They said they’d pay me in hot dogs and sparkling rosé, so I don’t think I’m in a position to turn that down at the moment, given the state of my fridge.”
“Of course. What fool in her right mind would say no to a couple of Hebrew Nationals and a three-dollar bottle of not-Champagne? And on New Year’s Eve, no less.”
“You joke,” Marisa said, feeling the need to defend her gloomsday meal, “but it’s not like I have anything better to do. You chose to betray me as well.”
“It’s not betrayal. It’s a job. A holiday-pay-rate job. I’m a bartender. It’s literally my tax season.”
“Still feels like betrayal,” Marisa muttered, “even if it is understandable.”
“I’m just saying, there are better places to be than chateau de Silver right now.”
“I know, but this is likely the one time where my parents’ total lack of enthusiasm for my career might be beneficial.
They probably won’t know what happened. I can’t imagine they follow me on social media, so I won’t have to rehash anything.
I can just clean off all the candle wax like a good little robot and check the box for visiting them when they asked me to. ”
“What if they ask about Alec?”
“They won’t.” And oh boy, did she spit those words out almost as fast as she thought them.
“They already knew he was going to be rejoining his team after Christmas. If they keep prodding me with anything else, well, that’s what the three and a half bathrooms are for.
After such a long GI-straining holiday, no one would question why I would need to excuse myself so often.
Besides, they invited me to their block’s small fireworks show, so, you know, there’ll be an eventual time when conversation about me would have to stop so my mother and Aunt Gail could resume their favorite topic of community noise complaints. ”
“Your family members are the literal last people on the planet who I would think would want to be anywhere near fireworks.”
Marisa took a sip of her coffee. Mmm. So good. “My mother calls anything spicier than a campfire fireworks, but it’s literally just a cul-de-sac of sparklers. At any rate, even though it breaks my bed by eleven rule, avoiding my family altogether would only put more attention on myself eventually.”
And that was something she definitely did not want. After her time as Alec’s fake girlfriend, she’d had all the attention she could take for a couple of lifetimes.
When Eden didn’t immediately fill the silence like Marisa expected, she lowered her coffee cup and sized up her friend. Sure enough, the woman was staring way too intently at a bottle of ketchup on the table and had started using her finger to scrape nonexistent cream cheese off her plate.
Marisa thinned her lips and kicked Eden’s leg.
“Ow!”
She would not be the person people walked on eggshells around, no matter how fragile she felt. “Just say it. I know you want to.”
Eden rubbed her calf, but the sadness in her friend’s eyes was laced with the kind of regret veterinarians must feel whenever the phrase euthanasia came up on their patient schedule. “Any word from Monica?”
Monica. Now there was another Christmas wreath-wrapped boulder Marisa had been crushed beneath.
“Not since I spoke to her at the Ball.”
After the news broke about the video, Monica had expressed concerns about what had happened and how it may have impacted the event and the recreation board’s (re: her) reputation.
With no suitable words of explanation or even understanding, all Marisa could do at the time was hide behind the standard millennial response given to all boomers when it came to clarifying such Internet scandals.
Handling West Meadow’s premier boomer benefactress was no different.
“Technology is weird, and no one ever really understands it.”
“Social media is finicky. Don’t believe everything you read on the Internet.”
“Short-form video is so fleeting. No one will even remember this in a week.”
Yeah, well, it had been a week, and Marisa still hadn’t heard whether Monica had made a decision about including Sweetest Heart’s Desire on her vendor list.
The silence was speaking volumes, though.
“I’m so sorry.” Eden reached across the table and grabbed her hand, squeezing it to impart the comfort Marisa needed.
And, God, she hated that she needed it, but she did. Because, as delicious and warming as the bagels and her best friend were, they still couldn’t touch the frigid chill that had iced over her heart.
Marisa sat back in her seat, removed the to-go lid from her cup, and took the biggest scorcher of a sip her mouth could take, hoping to get any infusion of heat that might stop her lips from shivering in sadness.
Instead, the only thing that seemed to worm its way through was more bitterness.