Chapter 7
SEVEN
A few weeks later
My head has been a mess since Astrid came back into town. I felt like shit. I was regretting the cowardice of my seventeen-year-old self. In what world did I think Astrid would come back to town and everything would be okay?
Fuck.
I couldn’t stop thinking about her. The worst part was that every single corner of this town held a memory.
When she left, the desperate feeling clawed at me. Day and night, I felt that dread in the pit of my stomach. I told myself I would make it better, but then it was too late. Astrid left, and in doing so, she proved she didn’t need me—not like I needed her.
My hands were making a mess of my hair. I heard footsteps behind me but ignored them. I didn’t have the mental energy to deal with it. My family knew about Astrid and the frosty way she was treating me.
Adam had a big mouth and was getting a kick out of my misery.
“Ty, you good to hold down the fort for an hour? I need to go make a pickup, and Pops said he’s running late,” Ezekiel asked me.
Working with him was like working with a ghost. Well, more like a ghost who haunted your ass. He was quiet, and you heard the occasional tool drop, causing you to jump scared because you forgot he was there in the first place.
“Yeah,” I replied without even bothering to look at him.
“Are you pining?” he asked me in his gruff voice.
I looked up at my brother, and the fucker looked amused. This was a miracle all on its own because, for years now, my brother had lost his sense of personality.
“What did you say?”
“I asked if you were pining,” he repeated himself.
“Don’t start with me,” I warned him. I had enough of Adam taunting me, but if EZ was going to start too it would be hell.
Brothers were assholes.
It would have been nice to have a sister right about now. Then, I almost winced as the thought filtered through my head. I had someone I once regarded as a sister, and look how well that turned out.
Every time I replayed our last conversation in my head, I wanted to punch myself for calling her a bitch.
“Brother, you’ve been a mess since Astrid came back into town.”
No shit.
“She’s my best friend, and she’s not talking to me,” I barked.
The frustration was starting to get to me.
“Is she really your best friend if she hasn’t spoken to your dumb ass in years?”
My blood was beginning to boil. He didn’t have to point out the obvious. “We are going through a hard patch. We’ll figure it out. We always have.”
Ever the pessimist, I don’t know why I expected him to tell me something positive. Something that would give me hope that everything would be okay.
“Friends outgrow each other.”
“Not us,” I said confidently.
“Are you thinking straight, or is it your dick talking?”
I glared at the fucker.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Adam said she’s fucking gorgeous now.”
The way he said that irritated me.
“Shut the fuck up. She’s like your little sister, and she’s always been beautiful.”
EZ grabbed the keys to the tow truck.
“I never said she was like my sister.”
My stomach churned at his words. What did he mean by that? I know I joked about Adam fucking anything with legs, but I could almost bet on the fact he would never go there with Astrid, but I wasn’t sure I could say the same about EZ.
My brow was furrowed as I looked at my big brother, trying to figure him out.
“With the kind of friendship you’re offering her, who the hell needs enemies?” he stated.
Okay, now the fucker was really pissing me off.
“If you have something to say, just spit it out,” I ground out.
My brother sighed as if he were talking to a toddler who couldn’t comprehend the lesson they were being taught.
“You’re fucking pressed that Astrid isn’t talking to you, but not once have you tried to apologize to her. You fucked up, brother. And if she never wants to speak to you again, then you’re going to have to fucking deal. We make our own beds, so if yours is full of fucking shit, then that’s on you.”
I hated him because he was fucking right. There was some work I was supposed to be doing, but I couldn’t focus enough to get it done. I was a mess because I was angry at myself. I was the one who fucked up, and Ezekiel was right—if Astrid never spoke to me again, then no one could blame her.
But I wasn’t giving up.
Some things always made sense when they were together, and since I was five, I knew Astrid and I were in that category. I knew it then, and I sure as hell had not changed my mind about that.
Now, I just needed guidance on what to do because I wasn’t giving up.
My phone pinged, and it seemed like the universe was finally in my favor.
Since the moment Astrid became my best friend, her parents had become like second parents to me. God bless Mrs. Hart for bringing Astrid that first weekend without my mother. That sleepover was what I needed.
The Harts saved me from countless nights of crying.
They helped my dad out by taking me and my brothers for a few hours so he could lose it without us watching.
They helped keep our minds busy, taking us to the park or having us do activities with them.
They helped dull the ache of losing our momma.
Losing a parent at a young age was a trip. You mourned the most important person in your whole world. As you get older and start to forget details about them and outlive the time you had together, you begin to mourn the idea of what could have been.
Astrid helped fill the void left by my mom. She had always been the second most important person to me, so when she left, I did the only thing I could think of to try to fill that void.
I came to her parents.
They were the only piece of her I had to hold on to.
Even though they were like family to me, they were still hers first. They loved me but respected their daughter too much to get in the middle of “our little fight,” as Mrs. Hart referred to it.
Not once did they give me a single piece of information about what she was doing with her life.
They had plenty of chances to let something useful slip, but man could they keep a secret.
For the last four years, every Sunday, without fail, I have been sitting at their dinner table. After the disaster at the auto shop, I decided to let Astrid adjust and skip my weekly dinner at her house.
She already felt betrayed by me. I didn’t want her to have the same feelings toward her parents. I wasn’t going to be the cause of a rift between them. As hypocritical as it sounded, I never wanted to cause her pain.
Which was ironic since that was the reason we were here now.
When Mrs. Hart texted demanding that I show up today for Sunday dinner, I was all too happy to comply.
Astrid might have changed her hair to look brighter and did her makeup in a way that made heads turn.
And added piercings that, before knowing they belonged on her body, made my cock twitch.
But I was counting on the fact that the girl still had a serious sweet tooth to try and win her over.
I pulled the door to Delicia’s , and despite coming here often, I was overwhelmed with the options. A fucking dessert was not going to fix my fuckups, but damn if I wasn’t going to try.
A smile graced my lips when I looked at the pink concha display. What came to mind was all the times Astrid had pink crumbs running down her shirt because the crust was flaky.
I grabbed a few of those and the pig cookies. I don’t know why they were shaped that way, but who was I to judge tradition? They tasted good, and since Astrid’s parents loved the Mexican sugar cookies, I grabbed some of those, too.
“Lupe, I know it’s not winter, but could you please make me some hot chocolate? I will pay you double,” I yelled, assuming she was in the back.
There was hot chocolate, and then there was Mexican hot chocolate, and the two didn’t compare. Astrid loved their hot chocolate, and I fucking hoped since leaving town she had been deprived of it. If I brought her some, she would be forced to think of me from now on.
Man, I was pathetic.
“Are you for real?” a voice that did not belong to Lupe questioned me.
My head snapped up, and I instantly recognized her.
She was Lupe’s daughter. From what I remembered, she had been in Adam’s grade.
The town was small, and the population was ninety-nine point nine percent white, and then there was Lupe and her family.
Thank God they moved here; otherwise, I would be coming to the Harts’ house empty-handed.
“I’m dead fucking serious. I need it to be the best batch you ever made.”
She cocked her head and looked me over. Chicks did that all the time. They loved coming to the auto shop themselves so they could check out my brothers or me.
“Tyler,” I said, tilting my head.
Her lip twitched.
“I know. I went to high school with you and your brothers.”
Her eyes were dark, almost black. Her hair was dark brown with some reddish highlights. She had dark brown skin and big pouty lips.
“This is the part where you offer up your name,” I told her.
She did not seem amused by this.
“We only sell hot chocolate from autumn through winter.”
I couldn’t help but think that her mother would have done it, and based on the way her eyes narrowed, I had a feeling she knew I was thinking it.
“Exactly why I said I would pay double.”
“Give me a good reason to make it?” She crossed her arms.
“Shouldn’t your goal be to keep the customer happy?”
She raised a perfectly shaped brow at me.
“Would you go to McDonald’s in December demanding a Shamrock Shake? I don’t know why people think small business means no boundaries or lack of respect for their rules.”
I gritted my jaw.
Point taken.
“It’s for my…” The sentence trailed off because I couldn’t even get the words best friend out.
Not after EZ pointed shit out, and I finally acknowledged the fact that she couldn’t even say my name.
“It’s for someone special. She fucking loves that shit, and right now, I really need to catch a break because she’s pissed at me, and I’m going out of my damn mind trying to fix it without making her hate me even more. ”
“Luna,” she said.
I just looked at her, trying to figure out what she meant by that.
“My name,” she added. “So, you and Astrid finally got together?”
“What?” I whooshed, feeling like I got sucker punched.
“That’s her name, right? She was my partner in cooking class. One day, I missed school, and she had the whole fire department there for burning a fucking tortilla trying to make a quesadilla. You two were freshmen, and every day you walked her to cooking class.”
“It’s for her,” I told her in a low tone, trying to wrap my head around what she said.
“I’ll do it just because I owe her one.”
That was news to me, and before I could question her further, she turned around and went to the back.
When I had everything, I made my way back to my truck. The twinkling lights on the tarot shop caught my attention. My eyes then went to the card of the day. The window display was like opening a fortune cookie with a much more cryptic message.
The black-and-gold foiled card was taped at the top. The Wheel of Fortune.
The brief description read: The wheel is always turning. Trust the universe to take care of you. Be open to the changes that are to come.
At this point, I was willing to take any help I could get, and if the universe was going to help me make shit right with Astrid, then I was going to hold on to that.