Not in any way that I was prepared to accept.
chaptereleven
Beckett
Today’s Special:
Diver-Caught Desire with Mashed Stress
“What are the odds?”Mel asked.
I pressed my palms to my eyes. “I don’t fucking know.”
“This is the sort of thing your dad would’ve known. Graduations, school plays, soccer tournaments. He always remembered the most random events. He’d pop into the office to tell us about a pharmaceutical conference in the city or a big book signing convention coming up and how we’d probably have large groups reserving tables at the last minute—and that they’d be rowdy as fuck. He’d be spot-on about it too. I still don’t know how he did that.”
“And full moons?” I snapped. “We can give him all the credit in the world but I don’t think he would’ve clocked that one.” I nodded toward the people gathered around a cauldron—an actual fuckingcauldron—on the Naked Provisions patio. “Or that our new neighbors would need to celebrate them.”
“Please. You know as well as I do that Rabbit would have four new besties in those girls and he’d be hopped up on their cold brew. Hell, he’d be over there with them. Sandy too.”
The group had started small—maybe five or six people standing around—but then they’d started afirein that cauldron and it ballooned to more than thirty. This would’ve been fine, even the goddamn fire, but the wheels were falling off at the oyster company tonight. We were running more than half an hour late on all reservations and the kitchen was taking a short eternity to get orders out, and the delays compounded with each passing hour.
This meant we had sixty increasingly hungry and impatient people packing the area between the oyster company and the moon ritual. Not five minutes went by without someone coming in to ask what was going on over there and why didn’t we have picnic tables and drinks outside like we did last summer.
No one told me we had picnic tables and drinks last summer and no one told me there’d be a full moon festival the exact same day as graduation at both Friendship High School and the nearby university, and everyone’s wedding anniversary too. No one told me a fucking thing.
“Why didn’t Pink Lipstick mention anything about this to you?” I asked Mel.
“You damn well know that Pink Lipstick has a name.” Mel scoffed. “And that was a one-time thing, not that it’s any of your concern.”
“Then you’ve been buying coffee there twice a day since last weekend because…?”
Mel turned away from the window to face me. “I’m sorry, do we not have an overbooked house full of people requiring the perfect graduation and anniversary evenings? Plus a massive backup in the kitchen, short staff on the floor,andgirls chanting around a bowl of literal fire? Because I think all of those things are more pressing than where I’m getting my caffeine fix.”
I studied the patrons crowded near the front door, silent and sullen as they checked the time on their phones and glared at the purple beverages and moon-sized cookies coming out of Naked. This was going to get much worse before it got better.
“I’m just saying, yourfriendcould’ve mentioned that they’d be open late and—oh, I don’t know—having a moon bonfire. If we’d known both places would have overflow tonight, we could’ve—”
“What, Beck? We could’ve what? Because short of succeeding in buying the bait shop, I don’t see a solution in there.” Mel ran a hand down her face. “You have afriendtoo. She has no problem coming over here and telling you how it’s gonna be.”
Except Sunny wanted nothing to do with me. In the four days since the beer truck debacle—and five days since nearly kissing her—Sunny had been scarce. She hadn’t responded to any of my texts checking in and I couldn’t ask Lance if she was okay without looping him into this whole situation, and I didn’t care to do that.
According to Muffy, who’d delivered five loaves of fresh bread to the door but refused to breathe “shellfish air,” as she put it, Sunny had avoided all seizure activity but was still mad that I existed.
I hadn’t figured out how to solve that problem for her. Or myself, for that matter.
“We can’t watch them throwing stuff into a cauldron all night. What’s the plan? What do we do?” An uncomfortable thought crossed my mind, and not for the first time I longed for the cool, sterile quiet of my corner office in the Singapore Financial District. I wasexcellentat my job and I missed that sense of complete competence more than anything in the world. I used to have my shit together. I didn’t wake up in a twin-sized bed, wondering whether the incessantdrip-drip-dripwas from the leaky roof, the leaky pipes, the leaky shower, or an altogether new leak I had yet to locate. I didn’t argue with vegans or try and fail to set limits with an old-soul teenager, and I didn’t resort to shucking oysters to work out my frustration with the whole fucking world. With a groan, I asked, “What would my dad do?”
Mel tipped her head to the side as if those memories only existed off-kilter. “Yeah. That’s what we need. Go to the kitchen. See what you can do to move things along in there. I’m gonna start pouring the emergency champagne.”
“We have an emergency supply of champagne?”
“The last general manager had a trick or two worth keeping,” she said, shooing me away. “One of them was popping the bubbles when the shit hit the fan. Now, go.”
The kitchen was humming like a hornet’s nest which was great but also terrifying. I ended up expediting orders and jumping in to shuck oysters on the raw bar when they got overwhelmed. Every time I scanned the dining room, I caught sight of Mel floating between tables, armed with a magnum of champagne.
“Good call on the bubbly.”
I glanced up from checking an order to find Devon loading dishes onto a tray. “It was Mel’s call.”
