Chapter 14 #4
He was busy but so was I. Besides the two jobs which paid me, I had adopted a few others which didn’t.
Morgan and I continued to help our mom try to make the former family house look better.
I also continued in my position as an unpaid consultant at Walter’s Café.
I found myself there more and more frequently as Fan Day approached and so did the grand re-opening.
Avonlea and Morgan had gone on a social media blitz to promote it, enough that even I was getting inundated with their ads.
“This is what needs to be done,” Avonlea had told me when I’d mentioned it.
But what really needed to be done was addressing the elephant in the room.
More precisely, I meant that someone needed to address the elephant in the kitchen: my brother Max, who had been messing around in there but who, in my opinion, was in no way ready for a busy service.
He was still looking at the posters that he and his fiancée had printed and hung up, with step-by-step directions for how to make every item—even how to season the fries.
By carefully consulting those, he was eventually able to produce the correct results…
but it took at least four times as long as it should have. If we had a packed dining room?
But it wasn’t “we.” “I’m trying to let go and not worry,” I told Shane late one night. “It’s not my restaurant. It’s not a family restaurant anymore.” I was so upset that I hadn’t been able to focus on our latest book to read it aloud, even though The Woman in White was really good.
“Two more days?” he asked.
“Yes.” Fan Day was held mid-week and we would open—not we.
Walter’s would open the day after. I was going to Fan Day, as I always did, because the places I worked were closed for the occasion and because I would get to hang out with Shane.
I was also doing that now but my nerves were making it difficult for me to enjoy it, even though I knew that I needed to maximize this time together. We didn’t have much of it.
“Are you going to be able to sleep tonight?” he wondered and I hesitated. “There’s my answer. What if we go for a walk? There’s a full moon.”
But even with the moon, it was still dark, so I hesitated again. “We could do that if we stay close,” I said.
He stayed very close when we were strolling along the sidewalk, with his arm around my shoulders and our hips bumping gently. “Is this good?” he asked me.
It felt very good and I nodded, then said “yes” out loud so he would be sure to know my answer.
There was a strawberry moon tonight, named that since this was the time to harvest the June crop.
It was silver and beautiful and I was happy to be outside, breathing the fresh air and not hearing the cats fight next door.
They had been unusually fractious lately and I felt less sorry about how I’d disturbed that neighbor when Morgan and I had yelled on the porch.
His pets sounded a lot worse than we had, but he had asked us not to tell the landlord since they weren’t actually allowed in the duplex.
“My big sister is thinking about coming up here,” he mentioned. “I told her that now isn’t a good time, but she doesn’t always like to listen. She got worried about me in the new job.”
“Did she say that?”
“No, she said, ‘You’re probably working too hard and not taking care of yourself. I’m coming.’ I said no, you have your kids to bully now instead of me. She’s actually a great mom,” he assured me. “She would never, ever use a spoon on them.”
I was personally offended that his sister believed that she had to step in. “I think we’re handling things just fine,” I stated.
“We?”
“You,” I corrected myself. “I meant, you’re handling things. With some help, which everyone needs.” We had established that, hadn’t we? Everyone needed a hand at times.
“Right.”
I glanced up at him. “That’s ok, isn’t it?
It’s ok that I’m helping you? Because you also help me.
No one folds clothes as well as you do,” I pointed out.
“My diet has improved by leaps and bounds and that’s also due to you.
” Also, I was happier when I was near him—even smelling his natural aroma in those T-shirts that I used for crying seemed to brighten my mood.
“It’s ok that we help each other. Right? ” I prompted.
“What are we going to do on Fan Day? Are you going to come down to my office? They get pretty touchy about guests in the restricted parts of the stadium. You may have to wear a lanyard with a badge.”
“Oh, really?” I got excited. “Then I could keep a real Woodsmen lanyard! I love Fan Day. It feels like I’m part of things, since you are.”
Shane smiled. He looked so handsome in the moonlight, kind of like someone who had stepped out of a myth.
“You’re part of things,” he agreed, and we kept walking with our hips bumping under that strawberry moon.
He hadn’t answered my question about helping, but I felt like things were ok. They were.
Weren’t they?