The Space Between Us (27 page)

“Meredith, I either live here or I’m a guest. And if I’m just a guest, then yeah, I guess I’m being kind of rude. But I didn’t think I was. I
thought
I lived here as a part of this family. And in that case, you need to get over it.”

Charlie never pushed her, so I’m sure it wasn’t pleasant for her to be pushed by me. She lifted her chin. “Of course you’re not a guest.”

“Then get over it,” I repeated. “I mean, talk to me about stuff, don’t just get pissy about it. If you don’t want me to use your china, I won’t.”

“
I’ve
never even used it! I think I should’ve been the first to use it, that’s all.”

Since she and Charlie had been married for eight years, this argument held little weight with me. Still, I could compromise. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. It’s great china. You should break it out more often.”

“It’s our wedding china. Mine and Charlie’s.” She puffed out a breath. “So, yeah. I guess I’d prefer if you didn’t use our things without asking first.”

“Fair enough.” I felt bad about the china, but not as bad as it seemed she wanted me to. “Maybe you need to be more specific about your expectations, Meredith.”

“How was I supposed to know you’d just use it?”

I sighed. “Remember when I told you that if we were going to do this it would need a lot of talking? If you wanted me to join you and Charlie, live here, be a part of you, we’d have to make sure to talk about stuff. In advance and when it came up. That’s part of the package when you have more than two partners in a relationship. If you don’t talk about stuff, then…people get angry. Or hurt.”

“Oh, that’s right,” she said a little coldly. “I forgot. You’re the expert.”

“So not an expert,” I told her. “Also? Not interested in fighting with you about it.”

I pushed past her to head for the kitchen. I wasn’t mad yet, but I didn’t want to get there. In the kitchen, Cap and Charlie had demolished a good portion of the pie. One of them had brought out the chocolate syrup, probably at Cap’s suggestion, since that was a Martin family tradition. Also whipped cream, chocolate chips and even some multicolored sprinkles.

“It’s like a sundae on pie,” Charlie said. “Killer pie, by the way.”

I kissed him. “Thanks. Did you leave any for me? I can’t tell under the wasteland of all the toppings.”

“Plenty left.” Cap held up his plate, mouth full, and mumbled, “Pie. Is. Awesome.”

“Here, I’ll grab you a piece.” Charlie put his plate on the counter, but I shook my head.

“I’ll get it. You enjoy yours. Anyone want coffee?” Normally I didn’t drink coffee at home, since I lived and breathed it at work, but something about pie and ice cream screamed for caffeine.

Cap swallowed and licked his mouth. “Me.”

“Me, too.” Charlie forked up more pie. “God. So good. I can make the—”

“Hush,” I told him with a nudge against his hip as I moved past him to pull the coffee from the cupboard. “I can do it. Eat your pie.”

That’s how Meredith found us. The men, plates in hand, leaning against the counter, wearing matching mustaches of whipped cream and chocolate. Me laughing at them as I tried in vain to get the coffeepot working, unable not because it was too complicated but because Charlie kept stepping in front of me every time I moved, trying to kiss me with his whipped-cream-covered mouth. I’d just given in and let him.

“You’re making coffee?” Meredith said. She had her hands full of plates from the table. “I’ll have some.”

“Sure.” I licked whipped cream from my top lip. “If your husband ever gets his ass out of the way so I can.”

“He likes to get his ass in the way.” Meredith motioned for both of us to move so she could put the plates in the dishwasher.

I stepped in front of her when she turned with empty hands, the way Charlie had done to me, but Meredith didn’t laugh. I put my palms on her hips, shifting them a little, trying to get her to dance with me. She shot a glance over my shoulder toward Cap and frowned. I let her go.

“I really want to get the dining room cleared away,” she said.

“I’ll help you. Just let me finish with the coffee. And you can have some pie,” I wheedled. “It’s really good.”

I caught the twitch of a smile from her. It was something, anyway. In the dining room, I found her studying the china plate in her hand as if she’d discovered it in an ancient Egyptian tomb. She looked up when I came in.

“I couldn’t decide what I wanted,” she said. “For the registry. I mean, my mother told me we should pick a china pattern, right? So everyone could buy us pieces. Because everyone does that. I didn’t know what I wanted to live with for the rest of my life. So I picked this.”

She held up a bread plate, which we hadn’t used, so it was still clean. It was white with a design of roses around the rim. Not what I’d have picked, if I were ever so fortunate as to get hitched and have a wedding registry. But it was pretty.

“I think you did a nice job,” I said.

She tilted the plate in her hands so it caught the light, and looked at me. “You know why I’ve never used these plates?”

I shrugged as I moved around the table to stack dishes and gather the used plasticware. “Because most people don’t ever eat dinner in the dining room except for a few times a year?”

“Because I don’t like them,” Meredith said.

I looked up. She stared at the plate in her hands, tipping it, turning it. She traced the gold-plated rim with her thumb and glanced at me again.

“I feel like I got shoved into picking something because it was what people expected, and now I’m stuck with it. And we got a shit ton of this stuff, Tesla. Dinner plates, salad plates, bread plates. A gravy boat.” She laughed bitterly. “Really? A fucking gravy boat. A soup tureen. Who ever uses that shit?”

“People who like gravy. And soup.” I moved around the table to take the plate from her and put it on the table. “Hey. What’s going on?”

“You’re mad at me.” She crossed her arms.

“
You
were mad at
me,
” I pointed out. I rubbed her upper arms, gently squeezing. “Ooh, your sweater’s soft.”

Sorry wasn’t Meredith’s style. With nobody else in the room, though, I guess she deemed it okay to snuggle a little closer to me. “I wish we’d stayed here all day. Charlie’s sister’s dinner was s-o-o-o bad.”

“Pie will make everything better. I promise. And we could play Uno. I’m not kidding you, it’ll be fun.”

She nodded, leaning into me for a second or two before pulling away. We made short work of the dishes on the table, though the platters and serving dishes of food would take a second trip. Meredith paused in the archway and looked at the plates in her hands.

“It’s good you used them,” she said. “Someone should.”

Chapter 30

J
oy had wasted no time in hiring someone to replace Darek. Brandy was a little older than me, but proudly told me she’d been working in coffee shops since she was in high school. She named a few of them.

“They’re all closed now,” she said around a mouthful of gum. “Hopefully this place stays in business longer, you know what I mean?”

She laughed; I didn’t.

I wasn’t happy that Darek had quit or been fired, whichever it was. I didn’t like that Joy had hired this gum-cracking, hair-whipping chick to take his place without even asking me to be part of the hiring process. And though Joy herself had backed way, way off of me since the day Darek walked out, that wasn’t really what I wanted, either. Not if it meant that coming to work felt like going to prison. In some ways, dealing with her grouchiness was what I’d grown used to. A habit. With her frosty, frigid attitude to me in direct contrast to her almost ludicrous warmth toward Brandy, Joy was making it pretty painful to be on the job.

Johnny D. noticed. “What’s up with the new girl?”

I looked across the room to where Brandy was talking to Carlos. She was supposed to be cleaning up the tables, but seemed to have gotten sidetracked. Carlos was casting longing, shifty glances toward his laptop that Brandy didn’t seem to notice or was ignoring.

“Brandy. I don’t know. Joy hired her.”

“What happened to Darek?”

I frothed some milk for Johnny and added a couple pumps of syrup. “He quit. He and Joy got into it last week, and he just bailed.”

“Huh.” Johnny shrugged the shoulders of his long black coat. “That’s too bad.”

“Tell me about it.” I handed him the cup and the plate of cheese-stuffed pretzel he’d ordered. “No sweets today?”

“My kid’s dropping off my grandson in a few minutes. I’ll let him pick. But these looked good.” He eyed the pretzel, then looked up at me. “Is it good?”

“Oh…I guess so. I haven’t had one yet.” I grinned. “Wanna gimme a bite, big guy?”

He laughed, shaking his head. “I’ll give you a bite, smart-ass.”

“Pffft.” I waved a hand. “Bring it. I can handle you.”

He turned on the charm, just for an instant, but it was enough to prove to me I probably couldn’t handle whatever Johnny D. dished out. “I thought you had a special friend,” he said.

“Who told you that?”

He shrugged. “Nobody had to tell me anything. I could see it all over you.”

“Like a stain?” I suggested wryly.

“Something like that.” Johnny narrowed his eyes at me. “Suits you.”

I preened. “Thanks.”

The bell jingled; it was Johnny’s daughter and his grandson. While the kid ran to him with a squeal, his mom was a little less excited, at least as far as I could tell by her expression. She gave me a half smile, her dad a half hug.

“I’ll pick him up about seven tonight, if that’s okay. Call me if you need me to get him sooner. Strike that. Have Emm call me when she’s ready for me to come get him,” she said.

Johnny shook his head, ruffling the boy’s hair. “Nah. We got it covered. Right, pal?”

“Right.” The kid grinned up at him.

“Don’t let him eat too much junk,” his mother warned, then looked at me. “One cookie.”

“Don’t put her in the middle, Kimmy,” Johnny said.

She sighed. “Dad. You can’t sugar him up and then send him home to be awake half the night.”

I left them to their argument and headed out to the main floor to wrangle Brandy back behind the counter. Carlos shot me a grateful look as I told her she needed to get back to work. Brandy only looked surprised.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means,” I said, “that I need you in the back prepping sandwiches or even at the counter making drinks.”

Brandy gave an insulted sniff. “Fine. I was just cleaning up out here.”

I looked around the unusually empty shop. “And you did a great job. I just need some help up front.”

The compliment, half-assed and insincere as it was, mollified her. She gave Carlos a smile and went into the back. I rolled my eyes.

“She’s gonna drive Joy insane, you know that,” he said.

“Might be the only plus to her working here.” I pretended to peek at his computer screen. “How bad did she kill your page count?”

“It’s been worse.” He shrugged. “Some days the words come like a porn star, some days they don’t. Hey, so where’s Meredith been lately?”

It was a question I’d thought about asking her myself. “I guess she’s been busy.”

“You guys have a fight or something?”

Surprised, I stepped back. “No. Why?”

“Seems like you were pretty cozy, that’s all. And now she hasn’t been in for a couple weeks.” Carlos gave me a significant look. “Just wondered, that’s all.”

I frowned, counting back how long it had been since Meredith had been at the Mocha. “She’s just had other stuff to do, I guess. Not everyone can sit here all day long, you know.”

He laughed at that. “Too bad, right?”

“Yeah.” I tapped his shoulder as I passed. “Too bad.”

But what he’d said stuck with me. Meredith had come into the Mocha three or four days a week without fail for months. Now that we were…well, doing whatever it was we were doing, she barely came in at all. I saw her at home, of course. And I knew she was still doing all the home parties and other work that had occupied her during her hours in the Mocha’s front window. But where was she doing it now?

I didn’t have time to dwell on it, because another rush started and I had to get to the front. Brandy, for all her experience working in coffee shops, took forever to make the simplest drinks. She blamed it on the different equipment. I blamed it on her inability to walk and chew gum at the same time.

“My customer,” she said during the midst of the rush. She said it under her breath as she passed behind me to get a muffin from the case, so I couldn’t be sure I heard her right.

I looked up. “Huh?”

She jerked her chin toward a spot halfway down the line. “Him. My customer.”

I scanned the row, some strangers, some regulars, one or two favorites I wasn’t about to give up to Brandy. “Who? You mean…Sadie’s husband?”

“That guy,” she said with a finger point. “Fourth one back, in the suit.”

“Yeah. Sadie’s husband.” I had to think hard for a few seconds to recall his name. “Joe.”

“Yeah, Joe!” Brandy whirled to look at me, the muffin nearly skidding off the plate. “He’s married? You’re kidding me!”

“Um, no, and please serve that muffin before the dude waiting for it decides to reach across the counter and throttle you for it,” I advised. “He’s hungry and he’s been waiting too long.”

“Sure, sure.” She pushed past me to serve her customer and ring him up, while I helped the woman behind him.

It was not as seamless as when Darek and I worked together, not by a long shot, but at least Brandy was picking up the pace. Except for the fact that as the back-and-forth method of serving went, Sadie’s husband was actually my customer, and Brandy was willing to mess up the flow in order to get him.

“Hi, Joe.” She leaned across the counter, probably to show off her tits in her low-cut shirt. “Long time no see, am I right?”

Joe didn’t come in here as often as his wife did, but he shot me a smile, anyway. “Hey, Tesla. Hi…?”

“Brandy,” she told him, as if he should’ve already known. “It’s me. Brandy.”

A slow, dawning look of unease slipped over his face.
“…Hi, Brandy.”