Read What Happens to Goodbye Online
Authors: Sarah Dessen
What Happens to Goodbye (26 page)
“But I liked them,” she said softly.
“I did, too.”
Opal looked up at him, surprised. “You did?”
“Yeah.”
“I thought you loved the pickles!”
My dad shook his head. I said, “He hates pickles. All kinds.”
“But especially fried,” he added. When Opal just stared at him, mouth open, he added, “It’s not about my personal feelings, though. It’s about what’s best for the restaurant. You’ve got to take emotion out of it.”
She considered this as I got up, putting my now-empty glass in the sink. Then she said, “Well, I’ll tell you one thing. I could never do what you do.”
“Meaning what?” my dad asked.
“This,” she said, pointing at the pad on the table between them. “Coming into a place and making tons of .s that piss everyone off, firing people. Not to mention putting in all this time and work into something, only to move right on to the next place when it’s done.”
“It’s a job,” he pointed out.
“I get that.” She picked up a napkin, shredding the edge. “But how do you not get invested? In the place, and everyone in it?”
I turned off the water. I wanted to hear the answer.
“Well,” he said after a moment, “it’s not always so easy. But I had a restaurant of my own for many years. I was beyond invested, and that was hard, too. Harder, actually.”
“Tell me about it,” Opal said. “I’ve loved Luna Blu since I was a teenager. It’s, like, where my heart is.”
“Which is why,” he told her, “you want it to be the best it can possibly be. Even if that means making some tough decisions.”
We were all quiet for a moment. Then Opal folded the napkin, placing it neatly in front of her. Then she looked up at my dad and said, “I really hate it when you’re right.”
“I know,” he told her. “I get that a lot.”
She sighed, pushing off her chair and getting to her feet. “So tomorrow, when we meet with corporate, we’ll give them these numbers . . .”
“. . . and go from there,” my dad said.
Opal gathered up her purse and keys. “I feel like I’m going to death row,” she said, wrapping a scarf around her neck. “How am I supposed to look these people in the face, knowing they will most likely be unemployed next week?”
“It’s not easy being the boss,” my dad said.
“No kidding,” she replied. “I wish I had some rolls to drown my sorrows in. Carbohydrates are great for guilt.”
“Really,” my dad said. “Are you
ever
going to let that go?”
ever
going to let that go?”
She smiled, pulling her purse over one shoulder. “Nope,” she said. “Bye, Mclean. Feel better.”
“Thanks,” I replied. And then my dad and I both watched as she walked across the living room to the front door, pushing it open. Halfway down the walk, she stopped, adjusting her scarf. She looked up at the gray sky for a moment, then squared her shoulders and started walking again.
I looked at my dad. He said, “She’s really something.”
“Everybody is.” I wiped down the counter, then turned back, only to find him still sitting there, continuing to watch Opal as she crossed the street and started down the alley. “So what do you think? Is everyone really going to get fired?”
“No telling,” my dad replied, gathering up some of the papers on the table. “Depends on myriad factors, everything from Chuckles’s stock portfolio to how benevolent he’s feeling. What she doesn’t realize, though, is that people getting fired isn’t the worst-case scenario.”
“No? ”
He shook his head. “The building itself is worth a lot more than the restaurant right now. Chuckles could decide to just sell, wash his hand the whole thing, and move on.”
I looked back at Opal, barely visible now. “You think he’d do that?”
“He might. We’ll find out tomorrow, I guess.”
I turned back to the sink, pulling off a paper towel and drying my hands. My dad came over, kissing the top of my head as he picked up his phone, and started down the hallway.
Once the bedroom door was shut behind him, I went over to the table, glancing down at the pad with the names and numbers on it. Tracey was a four, Leo a three. Jason was a nine, whatever that meant. If only you could really use a failproof system to know who was worth keeping and who needed to be thrown away. It would make it so much easier to move through the world, picking and choosing what connections to make, or whether to make any at all.
Later that night, I was in my room, trying to do some Western Civ homework, when I heard a knock on our kitchen door. I walked down the dark hallway to see Dave standing under the porch light. He had on jeans and a long-sleeved plaid shirt and was carrying a steaming saucepan in his hands, a pot holder around the handle.
“Chicken soup,” he said when I opened the door. “Great for bar-fight injuries. Got a bowl?”
I stepped back and he came inside, walking straight to the stove and putting the pot down. “You cook?”
“I used to,” he replied. “It was either that or stick to my mom’s menu, and sometimes I wanted, you know, meat and dairy. But it’s been a while. Hopefully, this won’t kill us.”
I got out two bowls and two spoons. “That’s not exactly a ringing endorsement.”
“Maybe, but look at it this way,” he said. “You already got punched in the face today. What do you have to lose?”
“You know,” I said, sitting down at the table, “I didn’t really get punched.”
“Yeah, I know.” He started pouring soup into one of the bowls. “But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t kind of flattered that the whole school thinks you
might
have because of me.”
might
have because of me.”
“Well, I’m glad I can help with your self-esteem.”
He stuck a spoon in one bowl, then handed it to me. “I know it’s got to be humiliating for you. I figured the least I could do is make you some soup. Plus, I felt bad about earlier.”
I took the soup, then looked up at him. “About what?”
He shrugged. “That stuff I said about you coming to help with the model. When you didn’t show, I realized I sounded like a jerk.”
“Why?” I told him.
“I said I was a lover, not a fighter.” He sighed, sitting down across from me. “It doesn’t get more jerky than that.”
“Oh, sure it does.”
He smiled. “Look, seriously, though. Because of skipping grades and hanging out with prodigies . . . my social skills aren’t exactly great. Sometimes I say stupid stuff.”
“You don’t have to skip grades for that,” I told him. “I’ve got a B-plus average and I do it all the time.”
“B-plus?” He looked horrified. “Really?”
I made a face, then I leaned over the bowl, which was steaming. The last thing I’d really eaten was half of that soggy burrito, hours ago, and I realized suddenly I was starving. I ate a spoonful. The soup was thick, with egg noodles, chicken, and carrots, and was, in fact, just what I needed.
“Wow,” I said as he sat down across from me with his own bowl. “This is great.”
He ate a spoonful, then thought for a second. “It’s not bad. Needs more thyme, though. Where are your spices?”
He was already getting up, heading to the cabinets, when I said, “Actually—”
“In here?” he asked, already reaching for the one closest to the stove.
“—we don’t really—”
Before I could finish, though, it had already happened: he’d opened the door, exposing the empty space behind it. He paused, then reached for the next one. Also empty. As was the one adjacent. Finally, he discovered the cabinet that held our full array of housewares, which I organized the same way in every house when we moved in. A handful of spices—salt, pepper, chili powder, garlic salt—sat on the bottom shelf, with silverware in a plastic organizer beside it. On the shelf above, there were four plates, four bowls, three coffee mugs, and six glasses. And finally, up top, one frying pan, two saucepans, and a mixing bowl.
“Wait,” he said, moving over to the next cabinet and opening it. Empty. “Is this . . . What’s going on here? Are you, like, survivalists or something?”
“No,” I said, embarrassed, although I wasn’t sure why. I actually prided myself on keeping it minimal: it made moving easy. “We just don’t spread out much.”
He opened another cabinet, revealing the bare wall behind it. “Mclean,” he said, “you have a basically empty kitchen.”
“We have everything we need,” I countered. He just looked at me. “Except thyme. Look, my dad works at a restaurant. We don’t cook much.”
“You don’t even have baking pans,” he said, still opening things and exposing empty spaces. “What if you need to roast or broil something?”
“I buy a foil pan,” I told him. He just looked at me. “What? Do you know what a pain it is to pack glass pans? They always chip, if not break altogether.”
He came back to the table, taking his seat. Behind him, a few of the cabinets were still open, like gaping mouths. “No offense,” he said, “but that’s just plain sad.”
“Why?” I asked. “It’s organized.”
“It’s paltry,” he replied. “And totally temporary. Like you’re only here for a week or something.”
I ate another spoonful of soup. “Come on.”
“Seriously.” He looked at the cabinets again. “Is it like this all over the house? Like, if I open the drawers in your bedroom, I’ll see you have only two pairs of pants?”
“You’re not opening my drawers,” I told him. “And no. But if you really care, we used to have more stuff. Each time we moved, though, I realized how little we were using of it. So I scaled back. And then I scaled back a little more.”
He just looked at me as I stirred my bowl, moving the carrots around. “How many times have you moved?”
“Not that many,” I said. He did not look convinced, so I added, “I’ve been living with Dad for almost two years . . . and I guess this is the fourth place. Or something.”
“Four towns in two years?” he said.
“Well, of course it sounds bad when you say it like
that
,” I said.
that
,” I said.
For a moment, neither of us said anything. The only sound was our spoons clinking. I really wanted to get up and shut the open cabinets, but for some reason I felt like it would be admitting something. I stayed where I was.
“What I mean is, it must be hard,” he said finally, glancing up at me. “Always being the new kid.”
“Not necessarily.” I tucked one leg up underneath me. “There’s something kind of freeing about it, actually.”
“Really.”
“Sure,” I said. “When you move a lot, you don’t have a lot of entanglements. There’s not really time to get all caught up in things. It’s simpler.”
He thought about this for a second. “True. But if you never really make friends, you probably don’t have anyone to be your two a.m. Which would kind of suck.”
I just looked at him as he stirred his soup, carrots spinning in the liquid. “Your what?”
“Two a.m.” He swallowed, then said, “You know. The person you can call at two a.m. and, no matter what, you can count on them. Even if they’re asleep or it’s cold or you need to be bailed out jail . . . they’ll come for you. It’s, like, the highest level of friendship.”
“Oh. Right.” I looked down at the table. “Well, I guess I can see the value in that.”
We were quiet for a moment. Then Dave said, “At the same time, though, I can understand the whole blank-page thing. You don’t have to constantly be explaining yourself.”
“Exactly,” I said. “Nobody knows you were ever friends with Gerv the Perv. Or part of a vicious, girl-fight-inducing love triangle.”
“Or that your parents had an awful divorce.” I looked at him. “Sorry. But that’s kind of where you were going, right?”
It hadn’t been. At least not on purpose. “My point is that all the moving has been just what me and my dad needed. It’s been a good thing for both of us.”
“Being temporary,” he said.
“Getting a fresh start,” I countered. “Or four.”
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