After they order, they grab a table by the window. He says something. She tips her head back and laughs and he leans in. She turns her coffee cup in her hands, rotating it quarter turns without drinking, and he notices. I watch him notice.
I know the beginning of something when I see it. I watched it happen with her once before, but from the inside, not understanding what was happening until I was so far gone I had no hope of finding my way out.
He’s going to understand faster than I did. He’s not going to waste a single second. The thought stabs me like an ice pick.
I watch until I can’t anymore. Then I watch some more.
14
SOPHIE
The dinner rush doesn’t start for another two hours. I’ve been counting. Not counting the minutes that tick by on the clock though. I stopped watching the clock when I realized it was making time move slower, not faster.
Instead, I’ve been counting other things: tickets lined up, prep containers filled and labeled, salt and pepper shakers filled, candles replaced, bread baskets lined with fresh cloth. Counting the math of getting a restaurant ready.
Anything to occupy my hands. Anything to occupy my brain.
The unread texts from Vin are burning a hole in my pocket, and as nice as Gavin is, I just can’t seem to… care. Wondering what Vin even meant by having me in his life when his fiancée was right there has been driving me crazy. Does he really think I’mgoing to be hisgumar? The idea fills me with rage. But a lifetime with him in any capacity also sounds freaking amazing.
The restaurant doors can’t open soon enough.
I head to the hostess stand to clean it up a bit, and glance outside at the patio full of metal tables that no one in their right mind would sit at because it’s so cold outside. In the corner in a pile is the mess of dirt, planter, and plant that I had the staff sweep up earlier today. I guess they forgot to finish the job.
I push through the door into the cutting wind and crouch down next to the pile. The discarded broom and dustpan lay beside it, and I use these to sweep everything up. Then stop.
I pick up a leaf between my fingers and examine it, then sniff it a couple of times. Unmistakable. This is Opalescent basil. What the frig?!
Opalescent basil is not an herb that’s available in any grocery store. These plants are few and hard to find, not to mention expensive.
This cannot be random. I stand slowly, looking up and down the street. The crowds are sparse, but the cars parallel-parked on both sides are tightly packed together. I don’t see the blacked out SUV that Vin has been using recently, but that doesn’t mean he’s not out there.
And it doesn’t mean this plant isn’t his doing.
I exhale hard. What does it mean if he did bring it here? Is he remembering our first night together? And why did he break it instead of bringing it inside?
Why does he keep messing with me?
Angry, I march to the back of the restaurant with the plant, ready to throw it out. Vin is not my future. I try to force Gavin’s face into my head.
It’s not difficult, exactly. Gavin is objectively handsome, and he couldn’t be nicer. How many men would feed my breastfeeding friends or sit by himself for hours making himself available in case I needed him during my restaurant opening? I can’t think of any. He’s a good man, genuinely, and he likes me.
I know he likes me because he shows up and he follows through. He doesn’t call then lie and say it was an accident. He doesn’t throw a plant at my restaurant. In fact, Gavin is everything Vin is not.
The problem is that despite all that, I feel about Gavin like I feel about a plain glass of water when I’m not thirsty. It’s nice to have, but I wouldn’t miss it if it were gone.
Vin on the other hand—
No. I force myself to focus on the plant in my hands as I search for the right bowl to repot it in.
My nonna used to say that all women have the ‘sight’ as she called it. Not magic exactly, but an instinct for signs, an intuition about the right turn to take, the right path to choose at any given moment.
I smile, remembering her. She read the grounds in her coffee cup every morning and tracked the patterns of birds outsideher kitchen window. She said the world spoke to women in a language men had forgotten how to hear.
I’m not superstitious, but I’ve been wrong enough times that I’ve learned to pay attention to how the universe shows up to guide you.
I look at the pile of broken pottery. Everything he gives me, he destroys.
This plant is a sign. This is me picking up the pieces of what Vin did to my life and turning it into something beautiful. Something that thrives without him.
