Chapter six
Sully
The citrus station was giving me problems.
It wasn't the limes. They were fine. It was the lemons, specifically how I'd cut and arranged them. I had eight wedges carefully placed on a tray at precise angles.
I stared for a moment and then redistributed two wedges before I could stop myself.
"Sullivan."
Nora was watching me from the service end. She had a pencil behind one ear.
"What?"
"Nothing." She watched me move the second wedge a quarter inch to the right. "Nothing at all."
I put the knife down.
I was running on four hours of sleep, which wasn't unusual, but it was four hours that lingered at the edge of being awake.
"The prep looks intense tonight," Nora said, pulling a bottle from the rack.
"I'm planning ahead. Gets crazy on Friday."
"It's Tuesday."
"I'm getting a jump on Friday."
She uncapped the bottle and studied the label. "You're prepping citrus as if you'll have a test on it later."
"Or like someone who ran out of things to think about and needed to do something with his hands."
She looked up. That was not the snappy deflection she'd expected. Nora had two years of Thursday-to-Sunday shifts with me. She knew the difference between busy-Sully and unsettled-Sully.
I picked up the knife again and tried to look like I was doing something purposeful with it.
"Did something happen?" she asked.
"No."
"Did something almost happen?"
I put the knife back down.
I gave her the condensed version, including the lockout, soup, grilled cheese, and sharing an unplanned meal at 1:30 am.
Nora listened. She didn't interrupt.
When I finished, she tilted her head. "You invited him in after one-thirty and made him soup."
"The soup was already made. I just reheated—"
"Sullivan."
"It was a carton."
"You reheated a carton of soup for your neighbor at one-thirty in the morning and then made him a grilled cheese." She set the bottle down. "You're not circling this anymore. The eagle has landed."
