26. Grant
Grant
Annabelle: The walls aren’t shaking, so I assume The Break is closed
Grant: You assume correctly
Annabelle: Weirdly quiet tonight
Grant: That’s the snow. It absorbs sound. And hope
Annabelle: I was going to say footsteps, but sure
Grant: You busy tonight?
Annabelle: Making soup
Grant: I have strong positive feelings about soup
Annabelle: And I’m out of crackers. You know what to do
I bring three kinds of crackers to Annabelle’s. When I show her what I have, we agree that Ritz is the only acceptable cracker for soup. She lifts the lid and gives it a stir. The tangy scent of tomatoes mingles with the heartiness of carrots, potato, and onion. It smells like home.
“My mom makes soup like that.”
“Where do you think I got the recipe?”
“You’re kidding. That’s a family treasure.”
“June gave it to me, but I have your mom’s blessing. I’m going to call it Yooper soup, because who else would put chunks of bratwurst into vegetable soup?”
“Yooper Soup. Felix is going to kick himself for not thinking of that.”
Annabelle serves us each a large bowl and we squeeze around the edge of her kitchen table.
Annabelle gives us each a craft beer from Upper Hand Brewery.
She swears she bought it on a whim, but it pairs so well with the soup that it feels planned.
The rest of the table is taken up with a label printer and oversized envelopes for her card business.
We end up knee to knee. I don’t mind. I like having her close.
This kind of simple, hearty food is my favorite kind of winter dinner. I plow through my bowl and sip beer while Annabelle shows me sketches of new cards on her tablet. I try to guess the captions and fail every time.
I get a second bowl. “Thank you for cooking. This is so…neighborly of you.”
She holds up the box of crackers. “And neighborly of you, too.”
“Neighbors should take care of each other,” I say. “Like a buddy system for surviving February.”
“Very wise. You don’t abandon a buddy in the winter. People die.”
Crackers crumble in my fingers. “And when winter ends?”
“Then we stop doing this.” Annabelle holds a cracker to her lips as if hiding a smile. Her eyes cut to her bedroom door. “Or we don’t. We don’t have to decide now.”
“Good, because I like this,” I say. “The soup I mean. The soup, the crackers, the whole system.”
She nods slowly and touches the rim of her bowl. “You’re allowed to like things. You don’t have to push them away.”
I pull my bowl closer and circle it protectively with my arms.
“I’m serious.” She looks out the window at the blowing snow and then seems to decide something. “I know about your high school girlfriend and the football coach. I know how you were betrayed. I also know that it happened more than a decade ago and somehow it still hurts.”
I could ask who told her about Triss, but there’s no point.
News travels in a small town, so of course it traveled to her.
Annabelle only knows half the story because that’s all anyone knows, but even half of it is enough.
That part doesn’t bother me. What bothers me is how wrong she is.
She thinks I’m still carrying a grudge, but I buried that long ago.
I’m actually grateful for Triss and what she did.
Some people go their whole lives still believing in fairy tales. I got that out of my system early.
Annabelle puts her hand over mine. “You were young. Younger than you should have been to deal with that. Or not deal with it, which is ultimately what you decided on.”
I pull my hand away, pretending it’s to pick up my spoon, although my bowl is empty. “I’m not like you.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re a good person and you deserve all the love the world has to give you. Me? Not so much.” I stand and gather the dishes. Annabelle doesn’t have a dishwasher so I run water in the sink and look for the dish soap.
“You don’t have to do that,” she says.
“You cooked,” I say. “I can hear my mom’s voice from here, scolding me if I don’t clean up.”
“You were raised right.”
“I was.” I check the water temperature. Not hot enough yet. I keep my back to her, consolidating dishes. “Nothing I did was my parents’ fault.”
“I don’t understand.”
Of course she doesn’t. But I want her to. I want her to know how broken I am. Then maybe she’ll understand why I can’t give her what she needs.
I have hot water now so I grab the sponge and get busy. The suds smell like spring, like fresh breezes and open air, like letting go.
“It wasn’t just that Triss was fooling around with Coach Dewitt,” I tell her. “It’s how I found out.”
She reaches past me for freezer containers and starts portioning out leftover soup. She’s giving me space to talk. She’s waiting for me to go on. I rinse a glass, then another. Start on spoons. I finish the silverware before I can continue.
“My best friend Ricky tried to tell me. He was hinting around, trying to get me to see it, and I wouldn’t listen. He finally told me straight out.”
Annabelle snaps a lid on a container. “That must have been difficult.”
“Here’s the part you don’t know.” I stare into the sink.
“Nobody knows about it because we never told anyone. When Ricky finally clued me in, I called him a filthy liar, said that he was trying to ruin things with me and Triss. I took a swing at him. He fought back, because he had to. We beat the crap out of each other.”
I handle the sharp knives carefully, shepherding them all the way through the wash and rinse, placing them gently in the drainer.
Annabelle has the big soup pot empty now and she hands it over.
She puts her arms around me from behind, pressing her cheek to my back.
She holds me as I run water and rinse the pot twice before scrubbing it clean.
“It didn’t end until I broke Ricky’s arm. We both had football scholarships to Michigan State. Ricky lost his because of me. I turned my scholarship down, because how could I go if Ricky couldn’t?”
“Oh, shit.”
“I ruined both of our futures,” I say. “And for what?”
I grip the edge of the sink. Annabelle breathes into my back but doesn’t let go. “What happened to him?” she asks.
“He went to Michigan Tech, got into computer programming, and got rich. He lives in Atlanta now.” The drainer is full so I grab a drying towel. “He says things turned out for the best. Says he’s forgotten about it. But I’ll never forget. I learned my lesson.”
“What…lesson?”
“People will be awful to you and they’ll hurt you. Other people will make you hurt them. And it’s always the wrong people who get hurt.”
“So what do you do about it?” Annabelle opens a cupboard and stacks bowls. “You apologize, and you say you screwed up, and they forgive you. That’s how humans get along. That’s how the world works.”
“Not for me.” I hold a glass up to the light to make sure it’s thoroughly dry. “That’s not how the world works for me.”
“Yes, it does. You just don’t accept it. You’ve already decided you’re unfixable.”
“I’m not sure what fixing looks like.”
But maybe I’m starting to. Maybe it looks like a shared pot of soup. Half a box of crackers. Eyes full of understanding. Maybe fixing isn’t all that far away. Maybe it’s right across the hall.
Two days later, I’m in the rage room booth with Felix.
He’s wearing his glasses, so I’m dealing with serious Felix right now.
He’s got his laptop open, finalizing the catering order for Saturday’s glow and arrow trip, but he’s mostly watching the rage room below us.
Blake is setting up empty whiskey bottles and smashing them with a baseball bat one by one. He isn’t using music. He never does.
“You don’t have to be here, you know,” I tell Felix. “I got this.”
“Oh, but I want to,” he says. “The spectacle.”
“Did he say what happened?” I ask as Blake slaughters a row of margarita glasses.
“A woman.”
“It’s always a woman.”
Everyone processes emotions in their own way.
Blake uses the rage room to cleanse his system after a breakup.
Cole comes in for a once-a-year smash in December, working out his birthday issues.
Felix comes in every Thursday, but for him, it’s recreation.
He breaks things for the same reason he does anything—because he thinks it’s fun.
I’m just glad I can be here for my brothers, in whatever way they need.
Blake still has ten minutes left. I watch for a bit, then get out my phone.
I’ve been thinking about Ricky, and how we lost touch when he moved to Atlanta.
I wonder if his email is the same. I try it, tapping out a simple message with my thumbs.
I keep it very surface-level, the kind of “How are you doing?” email you send after years of silence.
I tell him I’m doing well, snap a picture of the rage room, and hit send.
I sit back in my chair, feeling lighter.
Felix shuts his computer and regards me over the top of his glasses.
“What?” I ask.
“You tell me. Who is this cheerful brother who’s sitting in Grant’s chair?”
I flip him off.
He laughs and does it back, then points a finger at me. “A few weeks ago, I would have said you could use a rage room session, but now? I don’t think you need one.”
“Of course not.” I’ve never used my own rage room and I never will. What I have inside stays inside. Always.
Felix nods. “You’ve been remarkably chill lately.”
“Have I?”
His eyebrows bounce. “I can guess why. Or rather, who.”
Blake shouts at us that he’s done. He seems happier, and even offers to help clean up. I head downstairs, thinking about Felix’s comments.
Remarkably chill? I don’t want to know who’s remarked on my life and I don’t want to know what people are saying. About me. About Annabelle. It’s nobody’s business but ours.