2. Zara
ZARA
I shift on the couch in the empty staff room, trying to get comfortable. On the wall is a poster of New Orleans at night that showcases one of my favorite places. I was there five months ago for my grandmother’s funeral. Five months and the grief from losing Mimi hasn’t dimmed.
I rub the achy spot in the back of my neck and then the one in my shoulder. The pain started in my neck five years ago and hasn’t gotten better. “Lord, I’m only thirty-five,” I mutter. Just how long will it take to heal from whatever I’d done to it?
I pick up the bottle of ibuprofen from the coffee table and swallow a capsule with a glass of water.
Initially, I hadn’t needed the medication on a regular basis.
But after the pain in my body increased five months ago, my physician told me to start taking the medication again until things got better.
She figured it might be an overuse injury, the result of my job. I’m careful while working in the kitchen and when lifting heavy things, but even then, I must have pulled a muscle or something.
My knees twinge in agreement, the ache in them also flaring up lately, but not enough to keep me from doing the job I love.
I hide the ibuprofen in my desk drawer and return to the couch to do the payroll paperwork.
As I hit submit, the staff-room door opens, and Keshia walks in.
The Keshia I saw twenty minutes ago, after the lunch rush was over, is not the same one taking her break.
The Keshia from twenty minutes ago was smiling and joking with a customer.
Now she looks like someone’s kidnapped her puppy. If she had a puppy.
“What happened?” I ask as her friend and not as her boss.
She sinks into an armchair and removes her scarf, her box braids tied up in a top-knot bun.
Gold flower earrings dangle against her bronze skin.
“Tyler and I were supposed to get together tonight. Just the two of us. But he canceled a few minutes ago, claiming something came up and he’s not gonna make it. ”
“Claiming? You don’t sound like you believe him.”
She lets out a sigh, like a bicycle tire with a rapid leak. “I would if his buddies hadn’t been laughing and joking in the background. He probably bailed on me to hang out with them.” I didn’t think the curve of her mouth could deflate any lower. I was wrong.
What she’s saying doesn’t surprise me. If Tyler were listed on Yelp as boyfriend material, he would barely scrape by with a 2.5-star rating. This isn’t the first time he’s pulled this crap with Keshia. Nothing I say will change anything, so I zip my mouth and let her rant.
“I love him, but I wish he was more attentive, you know?”
I nod. “I do.”
“It drives me nuts that he would rather be with his friends than with me. It’s not like I’m some controlling girlfriend who never lets them hang out together.”
I nod once more. She has a point. Keshia is sweet and kind and considerate. She’s also an incredible singer and cake decorator. Tyler is lucky to have a wonderful, talented girlfriend like her. Too bad he’s not smart enough to appreciate it.
“What you need is a boyfriend like Joseph.” My boyfriend. The words slip out easily, but there’s something frail about them, like dry crumbs falling on the floor .
Keshia stares at me for a beat, then bursts out laughing. “You mean boring?”
“Joseph isn’t boring.” Much.
“Oh, please. Last week I heard him going on and on and on about one of his client’s accounting errors that took him forever to fix.
” She flashes me a pitying glance that has me grimacing on the inside.
“Don’t tell me you don’t remember that. He came here during his lunch break to spend time with you.
And complained when you told him you were extremely busy with customers. ”
I can’t deny it. He did complain, and when I took him into the staff room to eat, because there were no available seats in the café, he couldn’t stop talking about the accounting errors. “So he gets a little overexcited about his job. That’s not a bad thing.”
Keshia huffs a muffled laugh. “What you need is a boyfriend like Garrett.”
True.
Wait. What?
I thought we were talking about her boyfriend and not my hopeless crush on my best friend. The crush she doesn’t know about.
“You and Garrett are so good together; you’d make a great couple.” Pride at the suggestion beams on her face. “I’m surprised you haven’t already gotten together in that way.” She tilts her head, knowing eyes assessing me. “Or have you?”
I choke out a strangled laugh and cough to cover it.
She doesn’t need to know the truth. That I’ve been in love with Garrett since college.
I’d spent a year flip-flopping between deciding to tell him how I felt about him…
and deciding that would be a terrible, What-were-you-thinking? catastrophic idea.
Then one day during my junior year, I got up the courage to tell him. I’d just received my midterm grade in the class I’d been struggling with. I’d gotten an A…and had thought it was a sign from the universe to let the chicken out of the bag, so to speak.
I mentally scoff at that na?ve thinking.
I found Garrett where I’d predicted he would be—under a tree in the grassy common area. He was wearing a gray T-shirt that deliciously fit his tanned hockey-honed body. His trademark messy brown hair was even messier—as if someone had run her fingers through it during a heated make-out session.
The way I’d imagined it looking after I kissed him.
He wasn’t alone. He was staring into the eyes of a girl—and it was clear from his expression he was lost for her.
But it wasn’t just any girl. I recognized the bright floral head wrap tied around her coily hair. The floral head wrap I had given her for Christmas. It was Kenda.
My best friend.
The girl who’d strode into my freshman psychology class on the first day, surveyed the other students, and taken the empty seat next to mine. We’d instantly become friends.
She was my best friend, but I didn’t tell her when my feelings for Garrett had gone from him being my childhood best friend to something more. And she didn’t tell me…she didn’t tell me she had fallen for him.
“Have you?” Keshia asks, yanking me back to the present. She’s looking at me expectantly, her eyes flaring with meaning.
“Have I, what?”
“Ever been with him that way?”
“Definitely not.” The words rush out a little too quickly. “It’s not like that between us.” And never will be.
Garrett had been so in love with Kenda. And I was the best friend he’d come to for advice about their relationship.
I was the friend who’d smiled at every seemingly innocuous question. Questions that left my heart feeling like it had been tossed into a meat grinder. But I couldn’t complain. They were perfect together.
The happily-ever-after kind of perfect.
Heck, I’m waiting for her to realize she still loves Garrett. I know he would get back together with her in a heartbeat. I don’t think, deep down, the man has ever really gotten over her, and he probably never will.
Keshia purses her lips, unconvinced at my answer.
“I want to be with a man who looks at me like I am his world.” The way Garrett was looking at Kenda the day I stumbled across them together. “Garrett definitely doesn’t look at me that way. ”
“Does Joseph look at you like you’re his world?” Keshia flashes a warning glance that says: Don’t even try BS-ing your way out of answering the question, Z .
She already knows the answer.
“Hey, we’re not talking about my boyfriend. We’re talking about yours.” Praying the ibuprofen kicks in soon, I shift on the couch, my hips and lower back now grouchy. My mouth curves into a wide smile, hopefully hiding my physical discomfort.
I put my laptop on the coffee table and push to my feet. I need to get moving, and then I’ll be fine. “I’m going to check on things out front. Enjoy your break.”
I hurry from the room before she can say anything more about Joseph or Garrett.
It’s midafternoon, and the café is still busy. And once tourist season is in full force, Picnic he’s old-fashioned that way.
Keshia’s words from the staff room flash in my head like a flickering neon sign. Boring . That’s what she’d called him.
Oh, Lord, please tell me he’s not that way in bed.
I pick up Rose’s empty coffee mug. “Are you telling me I should practice yoga?”
Rose flashes me a sassy grin. “Do you want to have a great sex life?”
A hearty laugh erupts over my lips. “I’ll take that into consideration. You make a compelling argument for slotting it into my schedule. Yoga, I mean.” My busy schedule doesn’t exactly have time for things like yoga.
Or sex, apparently.
I return to the kitchen with their empty mugs and place them in the dishwasher. Two years ago. That was the last time I had sex, if I don’t count the vibrator stored in my bedside drawer, which died a year ago. I can’t even remember the last time I had an orgasm.
Joesph and I have been dating for two months now. How much longer will we have to wait for the perfect time? Surely he can find the romance in consummating our relationship if he can find excitement in fixing accounting errors .
Maybe it’s time we move things up a notch—starting tonight. Maybe it’s time the drought finally comes to an end.