A brittle laugh gasped out of me. “I know that.”
“You don’t have to save the day for me to like you.”
“Sunny, please.” I took the turn onto Market Street a little faster than necessary and the dogs stumbled around in the back.
“It doesn’t matter to me that you have an on-demand maintenance crew ready to clean up the random disasters that tend to occur at my café each week.”
“Shall I call back and tell them not to come?” I snapped. I didn’t know why I was doing this. I had no reason to be snappy. Aside from the facts that I required another hour or two of sleep and those shorts had evolved into something akin to bikini bottoms Sunny was while seated.
“No, because that would botheryou,” she replied. “I’m just saying, I don’t like you for your willingness to do things for me or your insistence on paying for those things. I keep you around because I—”
She stopped herself when we turned down Succotash Lane and I muttered, “What the hell?” at the sight of the seventeen-year-old shroomster Parker, of all people, lugging a ladder across the driveway toward Naked. At six forty-five in the morning.
“Do you think he’s here because he slept on the dock?” she asked.
“No, but only because I’m tracking his location on my phone now and I know he was at a friend’s house all night. And I checked with the parents too.”
I pulled into my usual parking spot and paused a moment to survey the storm damage. And to steal a second before we had to leave the quiet of this little world we’d created.
“What were you saying?” I asked. One of the dogs panted over my shoulder. It was Jem. I could feel his muggy breath on my neck. Scout had better manners than that. “You keep me around because—why, exactly?”
She abandoned her texts once again. “I like you. That’s all. I like you and I care about you, and I know you care about me, and that’s why I keep you around. Not for any other reason.” She dipped her head to catch my eyes, shot me alisten up because I’m not saying this twicelook. “I need you to understand that calling in the minions or jumping behind the counter to take orders when we’re slammed has nothing to do with it. I don’t like you because you do things for me. I’m not an acts-of-service girlie. I’d like you without any of it.”
To say I handled this poorly would be a serious understatement. I would’ve done a better job catching a line drive watermelon than I did hearing this from Sunny.
“Half your roof blew off. Someone has to deal with that.” I said this like she was a disobedient teenager trying to wish her problems away with angst and eye rolls and I was the adult who knew better,as always. I regretted it immediately. No, I regretted it as the words spilled out of my stupid mouth but that still didn’t slow me down. “I’m not going to stop fixing things for you just because you tell me you don’t need it.”
“That’s not what I said.”
“I solve problems, Sunny. It’s what I do. It’s what I’m good at.” I jerked my chin toward the oyster company. “Theyneedme to fix things for them.”
Agent Price pulled up behind me and, without so much as a hairy eyeball in my direction, he joined Parker and Hale around the back side of the café. A few members of the oyster company crew emerged from the dock wearing waders and wide-brimmed hats. They brought tarps, a sump pump, and a gas tank, presumably for the generator.
“I don’t need you to fix anything.” She sat there with her fingers locked in her lap and her shorts moonlighting as underwear and her gaze as steady as the sun. “You might not want to hear this but I think you’re good at a lot more than solving everyone’s problems. Anyone who knows you—the real you, not the broody troll—knows there’s a lot more to you than the things you fix.”
I didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t sure I knew how to speak. There was a rumble in my gut, a ribbit, like I’d swallowed a frog whole in the past minute and now we had to coexist. Eventually, I said, “I’m not sure what you’re expecting me to say.” I shook my head as the silence stretched out, proof that I wasn’t equipped for these kinds of conversations. Hand me a crisis and I was solid gold but ask me to talk about feelings and other intangibles? No, I was better off alone with the frog alive against all stomach acid odds. “What do you want, Sunny?”
“I don’t want you to say anything.” She watched me for a steady moment before adding, “I just want you to know that this”—she motioned to the maintenance vehicles rapidly filling the lot and the workers spilling out—“isn’t what I like about you.”
“Then what the fuck do you like?” I yelled. “I don’t know the first thing about showing affection—”
“Not true.” She shook her head likenot this again.
“—and I’m not great with gifts unless they’re the functional, need-addressing type. I’m not a lot of fun—”
“Also inaccurate.”
“—and I don’t stay in one place long enough to make real connections with anyone. But I can fix just about anything. I can make issues disappear and put safety nets in place so they don’t come back. That’s what I do for the people I—” I stopped, swallowed hard. This wasn’t the right time. For so many reasons. “That’s what I do for the people I care about.”
A smile lighting up her face, Sunny gave me a meaningful nod that said my life was about to be twist-turned upside down. “Do you know what I do for the people I care about?”
I rubbed my forehead. “I’m going to assume it has something to do with flowerpots.”
“When the situation calls for it, yes, there might be a flowerpot,” she said, laughing. “But more than that, I care about people by making sure they know they don’t have to do anything at all to be with me. It’s enough that you came here with me today. It’s enough for you to hold my hand while I figure out today’s iteration of the truth behind the saying ‘anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.’ It’s enough for you to listen while I vent or help put the café back together.” She pointed toward the maintenance trucks. “That isn’t required. It’s not expected. And it’s not why I want you here with me.”
I watched as the people from Rainey’s crew jogged a wheelbarrow around the building. That could not be a good sign. A second later, Mel arrived—with Beth on the back of her motorcycle.
I nodded toward them. “Is this happening for real or are they going to go back to hating each other tomorrow?”
