22. Vivienne
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Vivienne
The rain has been falling since morning, and none of us can stop looking at it.
It’s the lightest kind of rain that can’t quite commit to a full downpour.
It just drifts down in a gray mist that blurs the harbor and makes the fishing boats look like a watercolor painting.
It’s completely unthreatening, barely more than heavy fog, and somehow every twenty minutes, one of us finds a reason to drift to the patio windows and stare at it anyway.
We’re standing there now — me, Frannie, Iris — coffee cups in hand, watching the delivery truck attempt to back into the alley.
It is not going well.
We ordered brand new tables. Replacements for every one we’d been shimming with cocktail napkins. Plus a few extra for the event.
And the driver is doing his absolute best to get them delivered.
That much is clear. He’s a guy in his fifties with the patience of someone who has backed large vehicles into small spaces a thousand times, and under normal circumstances he would probably be fine.
The complicating factor is Beckett, who has appointed himself in charge and is standing in the drizzle behind the truck with both arms up, guiding it in with the authority of someone who has absolutely no idea what they’re doing.
“Okay, back up,” Beckett calls, his voice carrying across the alley. He’s walking backward, hands raised like he’s conducting an orchestra, completely confident despite all evidence suggesting he shouldn’t be.
The truck lurches into reverse, engine growling loudly. The brakes screech as it inches back into the narrow space between the building and the dumpster.
“Little more. Little more.” Beckett’s hands are making these sweeping motions that seem more enthusiastic than helpful. “Okay — wait — hold on —”
The truck stops hard, the whole vehicle rocking slightly on its suspension.
“He’s going to hit the dumpster,” Iris says from beside me at the window. She’s leaning forward, one hand pressed against the glass like she can physically stop the impending disaster through sheer force of will.
“I don’t think so.” But even as the words leave my mouth, I’m watching Beckett’s hands with growing concern.
They’re doing something that could generously be described as contradictory. One is waving in a circle, the other is pointing emphatically to the left. Or maybe the right. It’s honestly unclear from this angle.
“Just look at his hands!” Iris says, her voice rising slightly.
“Yeah. He’s definitely going to hit the dumpster.”
The truck swings wide to the right, the driver clearly trying to give the dumpster a wider berth based on Beckett’s increasingly frantic gesturing.
The dumpster is spared, mercifully, but now the back end starts drifting left, the driver overcorrects, and suddenly the entire vehicle is at a forty-five degree angle to the alley entrance.
Which is not where a delivery truck needs to be.
Beckett stops moving. His hands drop, and he stares at the truck for a long second, his expression cycling through confusion, realization, and mild horror. Then he walks in a small, tight circle, both hands coming up to grip his head like he’s trying to physically hold his brain in place.
“Oh God,” Iris mutters.
But Beckett rallies. He shakes himself out, rolls his shoulders back, and repositions himself with renewed purpose. His hands come up again, more decisive this time, like this attempt will surely be different.
“Okay,” he calls out, projecting confidence he absolutely doesn’t possess. “Okay, I’ve got it. Pull forward a little — just a little —”
The truck starts rolling forward. Slowly at first, then with slightly more confidence.
“No, not that much!”
The kitchen door bangs open and Callum leans out, one hand braced on the doorframe. He’s still in his chef’s whites from morning prep, a dish towel thrown over one shoulder, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows despite the cold drizzle.
He looks at the truck then he looks at Beckett, who’s now making what can only be described as jazz hands at the increasingly bewildered driver.
Callum looks at the truck again, which is now somehow at an even worse angle than before, nearly perpendicular to where it should be, and groans. He closes his eyes briefly, like he’s asking for patience from some higher power.
“Hayes,” he calls out, projecting his voice back into the kitchen. His eyes are still closed. “Wesley. Good Lord, anyone with a valid driver’s license, please.”
“I heard that!” Beckett shouts from the alley, pointing an accusatory finger at Callum, rain dripping from his extended arm. “I have a valid license!”
“Having one and knowing how to use it are two different things,” Callum shouts back.
Hayes appears in the doorway, takes in the situation in approximately two seconds — the angled truck, his twin’s enthusiastic incompetence, the driver’s growing desperation — hands his coffee to Callum without a word, and walks out into the rain.
He doesn’t even bother with a jacket. He just steps into the drizzle like it’s not even there even though his shirt immediately darkens with moisture.
He positions himself at the alley entrance, makes brief eye contact with the driver through the side mirror, and begins directing with small, calm gestures.
Left hand up. Right hand steady. A slow curl of the fingers.
The truck straightens out and slides into the alley on the first try, missing the dumpster by a good three feet.
Hayes drops his hands and steps back, satisfied. Rain streams down his face, and he wipes it away with one hand, pushing his wet hair back from his forehead.
Beckett has been watching this entire performance, his own hands now hanging uselessly at his sides. He’s still standing in his original position, getting progressively more soaked, his expression cycling through several stages of realization.
“Yeah.” He gestures vaguely at the now-perfectly-parked truck. “That’s what I was going for.”
Hayes turns to look at him, water dripping from his nose. “You were facing the wrong direction.”
“I was establishing the general concept.” Beckett crosses his arms defensively, which only makes water squeeze out of his sleeves.
“You were facing the wrong direction, Beckett.”
“Conceptually I was —”
“Please, for the love of God, just unload the truck,” Callum says from the doorway, still holding Hayes’s coffee. His voice has the tone that means the discussion is over and further argument will not be entertained.
Hayes and Beckett both look at him.
Then they look at each other, having what appears to be an entire conversation in the span of two seconds through nothing but eyebrow movements and the slight tilt of their heads. Some twin language I’ll never understand.
Then they’re moving, breaking into simultaneous motion like they’ve just remembered Callum is their big brother and it’s his restaurant and his delivery and his very important event tomorrow.
Hayes is already at the truck’s rear door, reaching for the handle. Beckett scrambles after him, nearly slipping on the wet pavement in his hurry to be useful, his shoes making a squelching sound with each step.
What follows is forty-five minutes of organized madness in the rain that involves everyone and a great deal of opinions about the most efficient way to carry a four-top table through a doorway in the rain without it getting wet.
The driver and his partner handle the heavy lifting off the truck.
They have a dolly and a system. They try to make it very clear they do not need our help with polite professionalism.
What they do need is for someone to hold the door and guide the tables through the restaurant to wherever they’re going. And stay out of the way.
What they get instead is a large group of people who all have different ideas about the best route from the alley to the dining room, none of whom agree, and all of whom are now soaking wet.
The rain has picked up. Not dramatically, but enough that by the time Iris and I have made two trips carrying chairs in from the truck, we are both definitively damp, and by the time Frannie has made one trip and stood in the alley for four minutes debating with Roman about the chair situation, she is drenched and has declared the heavy lifting someone else’s problem.
“I’m doing logistics from here on out,” Frannie announces, backing up until she’s framed perfectly in the doorway, one hand braced on each side of the frame.
“Is that an option?” Iris asks, already turning to head back out into the rain. She pulls her hood up as she goes, water immediately beading on the fabric and dropping onto her face.
“It’s an essential job, I think.” Frannie shifts her weight, settling into her position with the air of someone who has found their calling.
Roman comes through carrying a massive box of what looks like microgreens, water streaming off his shoulders. He has to turn sideways to fit through the doorway, adjusting his grip as he navigates around Frannie’s strategically positioned body.
“You’re standing in the doorway,” he huffs, not even breaking stride as he passes.
“I’m keeping the doorway clear,” Frannie counters, pressing herself flat against the frame to let him through but not actually moving from her spot. She stays exactly where she is, arms now crossed, watching the mayhem unfold from her perfectly dry vantage point.
“That’s not what ‘clear’ means,” Roman calls back over his shoulder, already disappearing into the kitchen.
Callum is everywhere at once without appearing to rush.
He carries two chairs at a time with the ease of someone who has moved furniture in this building a hundred times, then disappears into the dining room, reappears, goes back to the truck, does it again.
He’s soaked within minutes and doesn’t seem to notice or care.
His hat is pushed back on his head, water dripping off the brim.
His jaw is set with the focus of a man working through a checklist.