Chapter 8 #2
I glower at her, but I can’t keep the smile from spreading on my lips. “I’m not shit at cooking. I can cook. In a small kitchen, for myself.”
“Sure, big guy.” She finishes the plate, rings the bell, and shoves it toward me. “Table 11. Go be useful.”
I take the plate, and muscle memory kicks in even though my brain is still rebooting. Back straight, easy smile, move with purpose. I’ve been doing this since I was fifteen. I could serve tables in my sleep.
The dining room has visibly relaxed now that real food is coming out. People are actually smiling instead of looking as if they’re contemplating arson, and the woman at Table 11 literally gasps when I set the plate down.
“Worth the wait?” I ask with an apologetic grin.
“Oh my God, yes,” she breathes out, already reaching for her fork.
I top off her water, clear a few empty plates from the next table over, and the moment I reach the server station, Sydney materializes at my elbow. “You hired a new cook?” she asks, eyebrows arched.
Her talking to me unprompted does something stupid to my pulse, but I manage to sound almost normal. “Nope. She just kind of… appeared. I’m not ruling out that Jasper manifested her.”
Sydney’s mouth twitches. Almost a smile. “Well, she’s better than the last guy.”
“A rock would be better than the last guy,” I say. “Actually, Jasper has a bunch of rocks in his room. Should I grab one? Put it in a chef’s hat?”
She actually laughs, and I mentally high-five myself for not completely fumbling this interaction.
“No, but you should hire her.” Sydney glances toward the kitchen, then back at me. “The food looks fantastic. And she seems nice enough.”
That stops me cold. Sydney said someone is nice. I don’t think that ever happened before. If she likes Lemon, then fuck my reservations, fuck the weird lemon theme.
I can explain it to Mabel. I can handle this.
With that fragile spark of optimism, I shove back into the kitchen, where Lemon is already cleaning, humming to the music.
The stove is wiped down, the pans are washed and angled neatly on the drying rack, and her hair is now free, falling over her shoulder in loose waves. The apron she borrowed is folded neatly on the counter beside her.
I yank off my own apron and watch her finish wiping down the station. The kitchen looks better than it has in weeks, and she did it without even being asked.
“Not bad,” I say, and she looks up. “You want a job? Because I can admit that you just saved my ass, and I’d like to make that a regular arrangement.”
“Oh.” She blinks, surprised, then her smile turns a little sheepish. “I don’t really know yet if I’m staying in town, but I guess I could…”
The pendant around her neck shifts as she reaches up to tuck her hair behind her ear.
That fucking crystal.
I freeze so hard it feels as if the entire room goes silent around me. My breath stops halfway in my chest, and for a moment, even the hum of the refrigerator seems to disappear.
There is absolutely no way.
That pendant has been in my life longer than most people I know, even though I thought I got rid of it.
My mind yanks me backward.
Six-year-old self, my belly hurting from hunger while my mom lies on the couch in the late afternoon, incense thick in the air, telling me she was “traveling between planes,” and that I should make dinner myself because the universe was guiding her somewhere more important.
Ten-year-old me shaking her shoulder during a power blackout, the trailer swallowed in darkness, and her smiling dreamily as she whispered, “Trust the universe, it always provides,” even though it never provided anything but disappointment.
She pressed a crystal into my hand when I asked for help with homework I didn’t understand, insisting I should study my intuition instead.
She slept for days while fifteen-year-old me worked double shifts at this very inn, so my seven-year-old brother didn’t go hungry as I did.
The necklace was there for all of it.
Hunger, darkness, and her choosing literally anything else.
The stone that was there my whole shitty childhood is now dangling between the breasts of a woman I met twenty minutes ago, quietly mocking me with the reminder that my mother’s spiritual obsession mattered more to her than I ever did.
The anger hits so fast it catches me off guard.
I know it’s not rational, she didn’t do anything wrong, it’s just a fucking crystal.
A rock. She has no idea what it means, but my chest tightens anyway, and I can’t separate the pendant from every shitty memory attached to it.
“… think about it?” Lemon finishes. “I mean, the kitchen is great, and you clearly need help, so maybe we could—”
“Where did you get that?” The words come out harder than I mean them to as I point at the crystal.
She stops mid-sentence, hand going to her throat. “This? Jasper gave it to me. He said—”
“Get out.”
Of course, Jasper gave it away. He was only seven when our mom developed Alzheimer’s and stopped wearing it. He wouldn’t know the weight it carries for me.
Her brows pull together. “What? Why?”
“Because I said so.” It’s all I can manage without setting fire to every nerve in my body. I can’t explain why her wearing my mother’s crystal makes panic claw up my throat, or why the crystal means neglect. I can’t explain how it feels to see it on someone else, as if it’s nothing but aesthetic.
“I just wanted to help,” she says quietly. “I can give it back.”
“No thanks,” I bite out. “Leave. Please.”
The please comes out wrong. Not polite. Barely human.
Something flickers across her face like hurt or confusion, but she doesn’t argue. She grabs her bag and walks out without looking back.
I stand alone in the spotless kitchen, breathing in fast pants and hands trembling, wondering how the day imploded even more.
Breathe, Nevan.
I try a breath, but fuck. The kitchen smells like lemonade.
Is that her scent?
She came in here, fixed my kitchen, fed my guests, cleaned up after herself, and I kicked her out over a necklace.
She deserved better. I know that. I’ll know it worse in twenty minutes when the adrenaline drops, and the guilt moves in.
Right now, though, my chest is doing the thing it does when a panic attack is coming up. The too-tight feeling. The thoughts that won’t stop looping about the trailer, the hunger, the crystal.
Breathe, Nevan.
There’s a bottle of lemonade in the walk-in.
I know because I put it there this morning, the same brand I’ve kept in every refrigerator I’ve had access to since I was old enough to buy my own groceries.
I don’t know when that started, probably around the time I figured out that the sourness helped, a physical way of something cutting through the static.
I go and grab it, crack it open, and take a long pull. The sourness hits the back of my throat like a slap, and for a few seconds, there is nothing in my head but the taste of it.
My shoulders drop, my breath slows, and the loop quiets.
I take another pull.
Still shaky, but better.
The kitchen smells like lemonade now. Her lemonade, whatever the hell she smells like mixed with the smell of the bottle in my hand. I can’t quite separate them.
I stand there with my back against the walk-in refrigerator door and breathe until the panic finishes receding wherever it goes.
She’s gone. The kitchen is clean. The guests got fed. Everything is under control.
None of it feels under control.
“What did you do?”
Jasper barrels through the kitchen doors, and something in me snaps sideways again.
“What did I do?” I straighten and set the almost empty lemonade bottle on the counter. “Why did you bring her here? And why did you give her that fucking crystal?”
His confusion hardens into defensiveness. “You literally told me last week I can give away as many crystals as I want so we can get rid of all that shit.”
“Because it is shit,” I mutter, shaking my apron out harder than necessary.
“It is not shit,” he shoots back, clutching his tarot pouch like I might snatch it out of his hands and set them on fire.
I might.
The door swings open again, and Sydney steps inside with a tray of dishes, catching my bad mood. She eyes the two of us, then glances around the room. “So.” She sets the plates down by the sink. “From the look on your face, I’m guessing you fucked up asking her to stay?”
I flinch. “She won’t be working here.”
“Pity,” Sydney says with a shrug. “The food seemed great.”
Yeah. Tell me something I don’t know.
“Don’t worry,” Jasper nods to himself. “I’ll meet her tomorrow and smooth things over.” I open my mouth to argue, but he steamrolls over it. “Nev, can we go? I need to ask Mabel for help with school stuff.”
“I need a few more minutes. I’ll have to wash the dishes before I head to the logging—”
“I’ll finish up here,” Sydney cuts across me, already rolling up her sleeves. “You can head over.”
I stare at her for a second, waiting for the catch, but there isn’t one. She’s voluntarily helping.
Today is getting weirder and weirder.
“Uh… thank you,” I say, and when she actually smiles at me, my heart misfires in my chest.
Jasper tugs me toward the door by my elbow. “Yes, she smiled at you,” he mutters. “Don’t get all cringe about it.”
I yank my arm free. “I’m not cringe.”
“You so are when it comes to her. And I told you, she’s not the right pick. Your cards say—”
“Jasp.” I scrub a hand over my face. The day already feels about three days long, and it’s not even mid-afternoon. “I am begging you, spare me with your woo-woo shit, okay? Just… walk.”
He huffs but obeys, and we leave the kitchen, cutting through the quiet hallway and out the back door into the garden.
Jasper steps ahead of me, no doubt fed up with my shitty attitude, crossing the patchy lawn and herb beds on our way toward the cottage at the far end of the property.