20. WTF
20
WTF
Gage
The next night at Sticks and Stones I mess up a drink order—switching an olive for a lemon twist in a martini—because I’m elsewhere. I’m in my head, wondering if I’m supposed to apologize to Elodie.
What would I even say? I mull that over as I remake the drink, then set it down for the customer, who then orders a sandwich and an app of warm olives and hummus.
“Coming right up,” I say, like my helpful attitude can erase the blunder, then I turn to the kitchen to place it when I bump into Zoe. The salad she’s carrying wobbles precariously on the edge of her tray then tumbles onto the floor.
I curse myself privately as I try to catch the bowl but I’m too late—the salad is the collateral damage…of me.
“Oh shoot,” Zoe mutters.
“Sorry. My bad,” I say.
“No, it’s fine. I got it.”
“I’ll clean it,” I say, insisting.
“It’s okay. Let me just have the kitchen redo it and I’ll clean it.”
“I really will get it. I’m just…” I swallow the words I’m distracted . Don’t need my employees knowing I’m unreliable right now.
As I hustle to the back of the house to grab a rag and straighten up, this is my reminder. This is why I don’t want to get close again. Because it leads to messes, to mistakes, to a lack of focus.
I face the same problem the next day, too, when I go to a fall softball practice with Eliza’s team and I’m hardly present. I’m the damn coach yet I’m lost in my head. Am I missing something with drills? With this scrimmage? With the batting practice? I feel like my brain is breaking. It’s split evenly between how to field a hard grounder and whether I messed up when I went cold the other day.
But I’m still pissed at myself for giving in to desire in the supply room. It’s so easy to give in with Elodie. She’s temptation in a clever, bright, loyal, feisty, vulnerable, sexy package of blonde hair, red lipstick, and polka dots.
When I’m home that night with Eliza, I try to reset. She’s telling me about what she learned in history class as we unmold the soap we made two days ago—the day I confessed so much of my past to Elodie. This loaf is finally cool and dry enough to slice. Eliza sets it on a sheet of wax paper, then wields a butter knife that’s sharp enough. “This is my favorite part.”
“It’s very satisfying,” I say.
“Why is it so fun?” she asks, grinning.
“Because it’s the reward. For all the hard work.”
“Like chocolate is a reward too,” she says, then digs the knife in, the tip of her tongue sticking out as she concentrates.
And I try to concentrate too. I try not to think about chocolate, or Elodie, or the way she listens when I talk, and how she seems to want to know me.
Eliza finishes the first bar, then lifts it high. “Reward!”
“It sure is,” I say, staying focused, staying present.
She cocks her head, considering it, then her green eyes sparkle. “What if we gave one to Elodie? Wait. No. They won’t be ready. Can we give her one of the grapefruit ones I made a couple weeks ago? You can give it to her as a gift on opening night?”
So much for my efforts to stop thinking about her. “How about you hold on to it for the next time you see her? It’s really a gift from you.”
“That’s a good idea.”
“She’ll like it,” I say, and I feel confident about that.
But I sure as shit don’t feel confident about whether Elodie still likes me or not. Or if she even should.
* * *
Alone in bed a little later, I’m still replaying our last encounter on the street. Still trying to figure out if I handled it badly when I got Celeste’s email, an opportunity and a Post-it saying get your focus on .
I chew on all these questions in the dark when my phone pings with a message from my brother.
Zane: WTF?
I furrow my brow. What is he talking about?
Gage: WTF what?
Zane: I go to London and you got your ass engaged? Am I even invited to the wedding?
Shit. I didn’t even tell my brother. I suck. Immediately, I reply and give him the details, and the second I’m done, my phone rings. I answer it right away. “What time is it in London?”
“Fuck all late. It’s three-thirty in the morning. But we were at a club and now we’re heading back to our flat, and I’ve seen the pictures online so I’m calling you. So you’re fake married?”
I shake my head, scoffing. “No way, man. Just fake engaged.”
He snorts. “Doesn’t sound that different.”
“Look, we’re only doing it to impress the guy.”
“I don’t get how that impresses someone?”
I explain the situation with Felix and the last couple he leased to who broke the agreement, then how Celeste had been playing hardball with her marketing requests. “And the guy who’s leasing us this shop is obsessed with marketing. He’s a wizard, Zane,” I say, excited just thinking about the lineup for tomorrow night’s opening. Felix knows how to bring it. “I think this could make the difference in me getting the second location.”
Zane knows why I’ve been chasing expansion for a long time. Hell, he knows better than anyone. When Eliza was younger, I had nothing saved up. No security. I lived paycheck to paycheck. When I was a bar manager in Sacramento five years ago, my boss was a ballbuster, reaming me out every night for every little thing. Nothing made me want to work for myself more than working for someone else.
Zane helped me out big time when he set aside money for Eliza’s college fund, and I’ll forever be grateful for his generosity. But I won’t rely on my little brother for handouts. I’m Eliza’s dad, and it’s my responsibility to take care of her. There are no guarantees with just one bar. A second though? Maybe even a third one down the road? That’s when I won’t always be sleeping with one eye open. Always looking behind me. Always wondering when the shoe is going to drop.
I tell Zane about the opening night and some of the opportunities that Felix has lined up. And as I talk, I feel a little more settled. It was right to cool things off with Elodie. It would be a mistake to keep bending the rules and looking for loopholes. “So we cooled it, but we’re pretending to be together,” I finish.
He’s quiet for several long seconds.
“Huh.”
“What’s that huh for?”
“But you do like her?” It’s a legit question.
I answer him from the heart. “I do. But it doesn’t really matter. I don’t have a good track record with romance. When I go all in, everything falls apart. And you know it.”
I put my heart on the line with Kylie and got two hearts broken in return. And well, then there’s Hailey. Without her I would never have the love of my life in Eliza.
But the dirty little secret of my young marriage to Hailey—we were both twenty-one when I got her pregnant, and then married a week after we found out in a shotgun wedding—was that less than two years after the city hall I do , we were in the process of splitting up. When she died of a brain aneurysm, no one knew we were falling apart. Her sister didn’t know. Her parents didn’t know. My family didn’t know. Hell, I didn’t even tell Zane. Only my shrink.
Never her family.
They don’t know she was struggling as a new mom. They don’t know her postpartum blues hit her hard and for months. They don’t know she was ready to give me primary custody and that she needed a break. They don’t know any of that because none of that matters now that she’s dead.
I just don’t see how romance—big romance that you throw your heart into—can lead to anything that lasts.