15. Bree
Bree
When the most celebrated quarterback in your state decides he wants to wait tables at your dad’s deli, there are consequences.
I was standing at the counter watching Gavin take a selfie with some tall, gangly teenager who was staring up at him like he’d personally hung the moon in the sky. And all those consequences had been, and I am not thrilled to admit this, actually really good for business.
Half the town had started showing up at the deli almost every single day. People were lining up just to take a picture with the waiter. It had been four days since Gavin started working there, and business, as Dad put it, was “as slick as a fresh-sharpened knife through soft butter.”
On his very first day, Gavin had made some genuinely colossal mistakes.
He’d tried carrying six plates up one arm like he’d seen in a movie somewhere and dropped an entire tray of matzo ball soup directly into a man’s lap.
He’d called an elderly woman “coach” out of pure muscle memory, twice.
He’d walked straight into the swinging kitchen door hard enough that the whole deli heard the bang.
But Erica had been so patient with him through all of it.
She’d basically taken on the role of his teacher, and Gavin, surprisingly, had fallen right into the role of the eager apprentice.
Within just a few days, he’d learned how to brew the coffee properly, in case nobody else was around to do it.
He’d also been learning from Dad how to receive the produce deliveries and how to batch-check everything for quality.
On that very first day, I’d half expected him to walk in, realize this whole plan was a mistake, and just quietly bail on the whole thing.
Instead, when I got there, he was already standing at the counter, waiting for me, at six in the morning.
“You look beautiful, Bree,” he’d said, and then he’d handed me a single flower.
“So you actually think you can pull off being a waiter here?” I’d asked.
“The plan was never just to be a waiter here,” he said.
“I want to ask for your forgiveness, Bree. I want to treat you the way you should have been treated from the very beginning. Something I forgot. Something I took for granted. And for that, I need to be near you. If that means waiting tables, I’d happily do it for as long as it takes. ”
I could see the honesty sitting right there in his eyes. I knew Gavin. Once he decided to actually do something, he did it, all the way, no half measures.
But then some of his other words came drifting back into my head.
I don’t even know when talking to my own wife started feeling like homework.
“But I don’t want this to feel like a bigger piece of homework for you, Gavin,” I said. “I think you should go back.”
“I know what I said that night,” he said.
“And I still can’t fully understand how much those words must have hurt you.
The worst part is, I could go ahead and keep blaming Wren for causing you so much pain.
But those words, Bree, those were mine. Purely mine.
I was frustrated with the fights we’d been having.
I felt like I needed to talk to somebody about it.
But I should have talked to you about it.
Not her. I was tired, and it was the first time in a long time that you and I felt so far apart, like we barely even knew each other anymore.
And that night, when Wren pretended to be exactly the kind of friend I needed, in a moment of weakness, I told her how I was feeling instead of telling you. I’m so sorry, Bree. I am so sorry.”
Right after the humiliating incident involving my first illustration project, I hadn’t wanted to talk to anybody.
Not even Gavin. I’d been in this strange, low place, crying over the smallest things, completely thrown off balance by the whole thing.
I was stressed and sad pretty much all the time, for weeks after it happened.
Gavin had been the one, back then, to push me toward talking to a therapist. He’d seen that I needed to get all of it out of my system, I needed someone to actually talk to.
He’d encouraged me to reach out to somebody who wasn’t him.
He never forced me to open up to him directly.
He understood, even back then, that I needed someone else in the room with me.
And now there he was, telling me he’d been in a similar spot, genuinely needing a friend to talk to. And the only friend he had who actually knew him, and knew our relationship, was Wren.
Maybe what he was saying was true. Maybe he really hadn’t known what she was up to underneath it all. Maybe he genuinely thought he was reaching out to an actual friend that night.
Was that even possible?
I hadn’t brought the topic up again after that conversation, not once, in the four days since he’d started working at the deli.
And every single one of those four days, he showed up.
Six in the morning until five in the evening, no complaints, no slacking off.
He’d told Dad, on day one, that he didn’t even want a salary.
When Dad insisted on paying him anyway, Gavin said whatever he earned, he’d just donate to charity.
Right now, Gavin came back around behind the counter, a big tray balanced against his hip, taking a long sip from this giant sippy-cup water bottle he’d bought specifically to stay hydrated all day. A football habit, he’d said, when I had raised an eyebrow at the size of the thing.
He gave me one of his painfully gorgeous smiles. “You need help with that?” he asked, nodding at the pile of napkin-wrapped cutlery I was working through.
“Okay,” I said.
We stood there for a minute, working side by side, not saying anything.
“I have something for you,” he finally said. “If you don’t mind.”
“What is it?”
He pulled a small envelope out of his apron pocket. “I’ve actually had this in my pocket since the day I started here,” he said. “Every time I almost gave it to you, I second-guessed myself. I thought maybe you wouldn’t want it. Or you’d take it the wrong way.”
“What is it?” I asked again.
“Open it.”
Inside was a full-day spa voucher for a place called Tsuki Spa and Tea House, this eclectic little Japanese wellness spa on the other side of New Haven.
I’d mentioned wanting to go there, maybe a dozen times over the years, but life just kept happening, and I never actually made the time to book it.
The voucher listed out the whole day. It started with a private soak in a heated cedar tub, tucked into its own quiet little room, the water infused with yuzu and hinoki.
After that came a full shiatsu massage, followed by time in a meditation room where they piped in the sound of rain moving through a bamboo forest, low and steady, the kind of sound that makes your shoulders drop a full inch without you even noticing.
The whole day ended with a real, traditional Japanese tea ceremony, matcha whisked by hand, served in this cozy little tatami room lit by paper lanterns, everything slow and quiet and completely unrushed.
There were two vouchers tucked inside the envelope. One for me, and one for a guest.
“I figured maybe you’d want to take Lauren with you,” he said.
“Or save the second one for another trip, whenever you want to go back.” He paused.
“You deserve to be pampered, Bree. To relax. After everything you’ve done for me, for your dad, for this whole deli, you deserve to actually sit still for one day and let somebody spoil you the way you like being spoiled.
I should have done this a long time ago.
I already asked Melvin if I could cover your shift tomorrow, and he said it’s fine, as long as you actually want to go. Please, Bree. Please just accept this.”
Right then, Erica called out from across the deli. “Gavin, table four wants a picture with you! Is it okay if they get a shot of you serving them too?”
“It would be my pleasure,” Gavin said, and he headed off toward their table.
I watched him with that family. A mom, a dad, two little kids.
He pretended to personally serve the kids their french fries, pretended to top off their water glasses, even though Erica had already done both, while Erica snapped picture after picture on the dad’s phone.
When the family left, they left her a massive tip, and she thanked him for it, glowing.
Gavin did that every single day. Whatever tips he got, and they’d all been enormous, families kept tipping him like crazy, he’d hand every dollar straight to Erica. She’d tried refusing at first, but he told her he wasn’t paying her. He was paying her college fund.
He came back over to me, and started folding the napkins again.
“You were really good with that family.” I said.
He rubbed a hand back through his hair. “Those kids, did you see them? They were so adorable.”
I felt my whole face go warm at the mention of kids. We hadn’t talked about that in a long time.
“I’m ready, Bree,” he said. “I don’t want to wait until I’m retired anymore. I want to have kids with you. I know you’ve always wanted three. I want four. So when we get back together, we need to start working on that.”
“How are you so sure we’re getting back together?” I asked.
“I know, Bree. I know.” He looked right at me when he said it. “Because I am all in. You and I are getting back together, or I will die trying.”
He leaned in, pressed a quick kiss to my cheek, and headed off to another table, where a group of teenagers sat there completely stunned, having just watched the New England Redcoats’ quarterback steal a kiss from his wife right there in the middle of a deli.