On the second day, he arrived at the oyster company before Hale and took it upon himself to drive Chef Bartholomew to the brink of insanity by reorganizing the walk-in fridgeandthe entire shelving system for linens, glasses, and dishes.
I knew without question that Beck believed in his soul that he was taking care of the things that needed taking care. He didn’t wake up—if he’d even slept—with the intention of upending his chef’s entire belief system or creating massive headaches for his kitchen staff.
He also tried to take over Hale’s hose-down process for freshly harvested oysters and started changing the layout of the dining room for “efficiency purposes” until Mel kicked him out. At least, that was how she told it when she came to Naked in search of coffee and some attention from Bethany.
I didn’t need the salacious details. Not when I’d already watched him shuffle out of the restaurant, climb into his car, and sit there with his head tipped back against the headrest, his eyes closed and his breathing jagged enough to spot from all the way across the parking lot.
Not when he caught me staring and when his lips curled into a tragic sort of smile, like he’d known I was there all along and he appreciated me watching over him but he was very busy experiencing big, foreign feelings the way a garbage disposal experienced chicken bones.
An entire silent conversation passed between us while I stood on the patio, watering can tipped over a pot of sprawling, gangly oregano.
Why are we doing this?he asked.
Reasons. Good ones.
Are you sure about that?
I think so.I shrugged.Just do this for me. This one thing. Okay?
He closed his eyes and started the car, and I accepted that as agreement even though I knew it wasn’t.
When the third day rolled around, I woke up in a terrible mood. My cast was itchy and annoying, and I felt like an overworked muscle, stretched too far, too hard to function properly. And I wasn’t functioning properly. I wasn’t sleeping well and my body was off in every possible way. Everything still ached from the accident and concussions were no joke but this was more than that. It was like I hurt in a place that had nothing to do with nerve endings and bones and tissue.
I hurt in a place that missed Beck.
I was lonely and sad, and I couldn’t remember how to sleep by myself, and there was nothing I could do to make it better. I had to give him the space I insisted he have, even though I wanted to gather him up and invent some nonsense for us to argue about.
Since nothing felt right and my body was a swirling vortex of dysregulation that would take any opportunity to have a seizure, I decided to stay home from work today. It was the healthy, grown-up thing to do. Even if I could push through, I’d end up paying for it later and I didn’t want that.
Also, I didn’t think I could see Beck without going to him and trashing all the well-adjusted, mature groundwork I’d laid. If we were going to be in a relationship, it was going to be a functional one, dammit. We were not going to suffer for a few days and throw it all away simply because no one was getting any sleep and following through was hard.
So, I did the well-adjusted, mature things. I threw laundry in the washer, watered my plants, fed myself day-old muffins from the café. I stripped off the bedsheets, the ones that still smelled like Beck, and I dumped all the junk mail I’d accumulated in the kitchen.
I let the dogs nudge me toward the sofa, a sign that my body was even more dysregulated than I thought. With their heads resting on my thighs, I put on noise-canceling headphones and picked up the embroidery project I used whenever I needed to get in control of the energy inside of me.
With the quiet from the headphones and the steadfast weight of the dogs on my legs, it was almost meditative. If one could meditate while rhythmically stabbing something.
The truth was, the stabbing gave me a place for all the heavy emotions gathered behind my breastbone and at the base of my skull. It gave me somewhere to put the pain of pushing Beck away and having a front-row seat to his run through the obstacle course of figuring out what he wanted. And it gave me hope that he’d find a way through all of it and come back to me.
I needed him to come back. I needed him to catch me when I fell—because that was what was happening here. I was falling for him.
And I didn’t know what would happen if he wasn’t there to catch me.
chapterthirty
Beckett
Today’s Special:
Friendship Cove Oysters Steamed in Insomnia and Raked through the Garden
Parker kickedme out of the house this morning. All because I ran the vacuum within fifty feet of his bedroom door.
Maybe five o’clock was too early for him but it wasn’t like I’d vacuumed under his bed.
It didn’t seem early to me. Not when I’d been awake on and off all night. I’d tried to sleep but I couldn’t turn off my mind long enough to get there. Couldn’t sit still for more than a few minutes at a time or even zone out watching sports. I’d tried reviewing SPOC’s operating costs for the past couple of months, but I couldn’t focus on the numbers long enough to make sense of them. And I sure as hell wasn’t welcome at the oyster bar, not after Mel, Bartholomew, and Hale all ordered me to leave and not come back until I’d unfucked myself.
Or, as Parker had screamed at me this morning, “Fix what you broke with Sunny or go back to Singapore because I won’t put up with you violating my civil rights.”
