My head chef’s hand shot up, silencing me. Then I was met with her cold stare. “You will not be explaining anything. The only thing you will be doing today, Ms. Howell, is going back home to rest.”
Alarm bells sounded in my head. “What? You—you want me to—”
“Go. Back. Home.”
I looked at Felix for comfort, for support, for a lifeline, but all I found in his eyes was shame. Marg left me with that, quietly ordering Felix to follow her to this office, and that was it. My purse was clutched to my heaving chest as if it could somehow force the panic back down to where it had sprouted from. It was a garden weed that never truly went away, no matter how much I plucked, poisoned, or uprooted. It was intertwined with the very roots of my being, forever getting in the way of my blooms, disrupting the seasons of my life, and right now, the stems were cutting off my airway.
It took a while for me to become unstuck, and when I finally had the strength to walk out the door, I was faced with another problem entirely.
I had no way of getting home.
Rachel was working a double shift. She and Joey had gotten into a huge argument during last night’s shift, which resulted in her leaving the bar hours before closing. On the ride over, I was hesitant to pry, but she reluctantly told me that she was not leaving the Buoy anytime soon.
It was the only positive news I’d heard this morning. And change—especially in my life—brought chaos.
With a lump in my throat and my purse in a tight hold against my chest, I made my way back outside. The sun was sitting high this morning, nearly to its peak. The sky was a rich blue, more intense than normal, and there wasn’t a single cloud over Astoria. Instead, they were lingering close to the horizon, white and powerful. From my vantage point, they were breathtaking, but I also knew what kind of damage clouds like that could do when provoked. Rumor had it that the fishermen loved to provoke them, to challenge Mother Nature when they had a bad fishing day, coming back with empty coolers and lighter pockets. I did a slow spin to face Margie’s Place, tipping my head back to study the wooden swirls carved on either side of the name. An old photo mounted in the dining room showed the sign used to be a deep teal color, but over time, the paint had washed away, leaving the natural tones of the wood on display. With age, Margie and her husband had come to like how the sign blended in with the rest of the fishing docks. Almost as if this place was a secret treasure only to be found by those who were willing to search for her wonderful food. It provided an exclusive feeling to the folks who happened to stumble upon it.
The feeling bursting forth inside me was indescribable. Perhaps it was the same feeling that bloomed when I thought too long about the vast openness of space or black holes larger than our sun. Or better yet, when I dared myself to think about the abyss of the ocean, how dark and cold it actually was when sunlight was no longer visible.
Yes, that was it.
That’s how I felt.
I was standing in the middle of the unknown, tired, injured, and so far off my routine I wanted to scream. I ached for the solitude of my journal, for the comfort of my pen as it softlyscratched across the soft cream pages, my thoughts of madness bleeding onto them without a tourniquet in sight. But my mind wouldn’t let me have that comfort. Not for another twelve hours and thirty-three minutes.
“Why must I be so difficult with myself in order to feel normal?”
What is your plan? To stand here until your shift is over?
Though the voice in my head was trying to be a pain in my ass, there was a part of me that didn’t mind the idea. I could take a seat on the bench outside and pretend I was inside, filling pastries, cutting pies, and plating desserts. Fulfilling my duties as I pleased. As my mind loved so much.
I checked my watch, my hate-filled gaze lingering on the small hand, trying to will it to move faster. There were still over ten hours until my shift ended. Ten hours. Of free time.
Free time scared the daylights out of me. It was something my brain didn’t comprehend. How could someone just roam about all day with nothing on their schedules, no plans for meals, no scheduled wind-down time in the evenings to decompress from the day?
Yes, every now and then I planned for things to go wrong. It was statistics. Things could never go right for one person every single day. There was a balancing game being played, and everyone on the planet had their own dice to roll. But I’d already had several bad rolls, a few of them nearly costing me my life and thus derailing everything I had planned. It had taken considerable effort to get myself back on some sort of track, and now…now I was free for ten hours.
The lump in my throat jumped down into my stomach, calling forth a wave of panic set to knock me on my ass for at least a week. “What am I going to do?”
I walked to the edge of the property, where the concrete met the wood of the docks, and dropped my head for a few moments,my mind racing with thousands of possibilities. Images of my progress fading away consumed me. The sun was hot on the top of my head, and a bead of sweat trickled down the back of my neck as I tried to get a grip.
It was no use.
The burning in my throat refused to cease as I folded my arms around myself, my entire body feeling as if it were two seconds away from exploding, and scanned the parking lot. I could feel the walls wanting to close in around me, my routine interrupted.
I had done everything right.
I followed the plan.
I was good.
That’s all the world wanted me to be, right?
“And yet?” I muttered as I took the first step off my path. I headed down to the Buoy, keeping my eyes on the sidewalk as locals and tourists brushed by, relaxed and calm. I couldn’t look at them. If I did, they would see the difference. They would see how messed up I truly was on the inside, how my brain couldn’t function like theirs. And then, due to my newfound stress, I would become overwhelmed with emotion. The tears would come. I would be labeled as overly dramatic. I could practically hear their judgment.
So your boss sent you home for the day. What’s the big deal?
I wish I could get a day off. You have no idea how lucky you are.
