“Absolutely not. You work hard enough as it is, with your job and soccer and school. And besides, it’s our job to take care of you, not the other way around.”
“But I want to help.”
“You are helping. By being happy. By helping with your sister.”
“Yeah, but...”
“No buts.” Dad smiled. “We’re going to be okay.”
“Okay,” I said.
Dad let out a long breath.
“Come on, enough heavy stuff. Tell me something interesting that happened while I was gone.”
“Well,” I said. “I got kneed in the balls last week.”
Dad winced, and his hand twitched, like he wanted to cover himself.
“I’m okay, though. Don’t worry.”
Dad shook his head.
But then he chuckled a little.
And then he started laughing.
It felt good to make Dad laugh.
TERRIBLY PEDESTRIAN
“Can you grab two more boxes of Tencha?” Alexis hollered. “And one of Masala Chai?”
I set the Tencha by the door, then went to the black tea shelf. It was in total disarray: Ceylons and Darjeelings and Earl Greys all stuffed haphazardly onto shelves without their labels pointing outward.
I shoved a couple boxes of Ceylon to the side and found the Masala Chai hidden toward the back.
“Got it,” I called back.
I straightened out the shelves as best I could and took the boxes to the front.
“Restock? Good.” Kerry nodded toward the empty shelf space and then turned back to her customer, a twenty-something white guy with long blond hair, a full blond beard, cargo shorts, and one of those colorful sweater-hoodies that looked like it was made out of alpaca wool or something.
Truth be told, the guy looked like he should have been out on a mountaintop, herding alpacas too.
I slipped past Alpaca Man, getting an unfortunate whiff of his musk as I did (at least I hoped it was him and not me), dodged around Alexis, who was carrying a gaiwan service to a table in the corner, and made it to the shelves.
Rose City Teas had never been so packed. But it was an unusually warm Saturday, and we were launching our new Nitro EarlGrey, served float-style over vanilla ice cream from this artisanal ice creamery down the block.
I wiped the sweat off my forehead with the crook of my arm and started unboxing, using a little retractable box knife to slice the tape and flatten the empty boxes.
Each box of sixteen tins had four smaller cardboard boxes inside, with four tins each.
I didn’t understand the point and purpose of double-boxing.
“Do you have any English Breakfast?” a voice asked behind me.
“Oh.” I stuck the knife back in my pocket and turned around to face a woman about Mom’s age, with her purse slung over her shoulder and her arms crossed. “We don’t have any traditional English Breakfast. But we have an Assam that’s similar, and—”
