Wiping my hands off with a nearby dishcloth, I pushed the pan toward him. “Mind setting these out for me?”
Like me, James’s hair was tied back and crushed down by a hairnet. A few unruly pieces, coated in white, stuck out at the base of his neck. Most likely icing from the new lemon poppyseed muffins we’d rolled out. “I got you. Go on.”
Man of few words. I grabbed my lunchbox from the employee fridge and made my way out, walking around the line of customers at the front.
The moment I set foot outside, I pulled the ridiculously annoying hairnet off. It always made the back of my head itch, making it nearly impossible to ignore after a few hours. Scratching at my scalp, I made the short walk across the road and plopped myself on the bench at the right side of the park. I breathed in the outside air, inhaling the crisp, country scent. The bench put me right in the way of thesun, but I didn’t mind. It kept me warm, the glow cradling me, acting like a guide so I wouldn’t get too lost in the world.
Just as I opened my lunchbox to take out my sandwich, my phone buzzed in my pocket. There were three text messages, all one after the other.
Moon
Mom misses you so much it’s driving US crazy!
I’m starting to think you never should’ve gone.
She called me at 9 this morning, saying, “My chakras are all misaligned. When are you free next? We need to go see your brother, or else I may never get sorted”
I smiled, hearing her voice in my head saying those exact words. Whenever we felt out of sorts, our chakras were all out of balance. We’d meditate for longer and do yoga more often until everything sorted itself out.
Me
Aw I miss her too. Should I be expecting a phone call from her?
Instead of a text reply, I got an incoming phone call. “Wassup?”
“Yo, you on lunch?”
“Sure am.” I balanced my phone between my ear and shoulder, biting into my sandwich.
Moon sighed dramatically on the other end of the line. “Definitely going to get a phone call at some point. Dad fixed up the truck, so they have something to drive other than the RV now.”
Swallowing, I tore off the cap of a water bottle. “That thing hasn’t seen the world in months. Glad he got it done.” After taking a swig, I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. “I’m not agreeing to them visiting if you and Star aren’t coming, though.”
He groaned loudly and obnoxiously. “I know, but I have so much shit to do. No one told me adulting was this hard.”
“You don’t want to make time for your little brother?”
“Oh wow, you’ve turned into an asshole since you left.”
I huffed through my nose. “I learned from the best, fucker. How’s Star? I haven’t heard from her in a minute.”
There was loud rustling over the speaker, probably from Moon rolling around in his bed, creating a cocoon of blankets like he always does when he’s on the phone. “She has discovered the woes of a hangover. I told her not to go crazy, but does she ever listen to me? No. I’m just the oldest and wisest around here. The hell do I know?”
“Yeah, yeah. She has to figure it out on her own, though. You were twenty-one once; you know how it is.” I finished off my food, speaking through chews. “At least she didn’t turn out like me, drinking at seventeen and causing mayhem.”
“Stop talking with your mouth full—it’s disgusting. Thank fuck Star didn’t take after you, or I’d really feel like a failure as a brother.” Though his words sounded sharp, he laughed through them all. He loved picking on me just as much as I loved picking on him. “Anyway, she should have a break in school coming up, so I’m sure she’d go with us to see you.”
Star was in college, working hard to get her law degree. We were both so proud of her, watching our baby sister grow and excel in everything she did. She took her work seriously, but our parents made sure she knew the importance of making time to have fun, too. We were all taught tobalance life, much like our chakras, or else we’d do too much too quickly and burn ourselves out.
It’d been a while since Moon and I had last talked like this. We tried to stay up to date on each other’s lives, making sure we didn’t get too disconnected from one another. “Check-in time. What’s life look like?”
As he droned on about what he considered a very boring, very adult life, I looked up from the bench. The park here was always beautiful, full of people from all different walks of life. Couples held hands as they walked the short trail, and others held leashes with rambunctious dogs. Some had strollers, walking with bundles of joy hidden from the harsh rays of the sun.
I loved people-watching. I wasn’t always sure what I was looking at, but I tried to create stories about them regardless. Happy, carefree ones to match what they were doing.
When I looked at the tree not too far from the bench, I stopped. A once familiar figure with light-brown hair sat in the shade, his hands roaming amongst the grass and daisies growing there. I could only see his side profile, and just that alone worried me.
Elio claimed he wasn’t trying to jump that night and that the wound on the back of his head was nothing to worry about. Well, what about the dark, angry shading I could see around his eye?
