Page 12 of The Blue Moon Café & 24-Hour Occult Emporium

Dahlia covered her face with her hands and mumbled something through her fingers.

“Say that again?” Talula asked gently.

Dahlia’s hands fell away from her face. “I’m intimidated by your mom.”

“Oh!” Talula felt the anxiety and excitement rush out of her. “Is that why you came and left earlier?”

“Yes and no.” Dahlia twisted a spiraling curl around her finger. “I realized she didn’t know how to make cocoa, so…”

“She’s not great at the barista side of the business.” Talula pulled out the cocoa ingredients. “But yeah, Mom can be intimidating.”

“I want to be her,” Dahlia sighed dreamily. “I’m also terrified she’ll notice me and decide I’m unworthy.”

Try being her daughter, Talula thought.

Dahlia continued. “She has that thing that queens have.”

“Money and power?” Talula eased the steamer’s spout into a jug of milk.

“Presence. Plus, that striking natural beauty.” Dahlia gave Talula a once-over with her eyes. “I see where you get it from.”

Shocked, Talula dropped the milk jug, caught it again, and in her fumbling, turned the steamed milk into a jug full of foam. “What?”

“Come on, Talula.” Dahlia gestured emphatically at her. “I mean, come on!”

“My mom is…well, she’s beautiful,” Talula argued.

“And you’re not?” Dahlia rolled her eyes, but her dimples remained in place. “You’ve got the most gorgeous eyes, an hourglass figure, great hair, killer cheekbones, and your skin looks like an ad for a celebrity skincare collection. Do you even wear makeup?”

“I wear…” Talula answered hoarsely, “lip balm.”

“You don’t even wear mascara? With those lashes? This is cosmic injustice!”

Talula smiled at Dahlia’s playful outrage; meanwhile, her neurons were frantically searing the last few seconds into her brain. But she really needed those neurons to tell her what to say next. This was the difficulty in being bisexual. Women could be emphatically complimentary of other women (especially in bar bathrooms). But deciding whether a compliment was actually a flirt was like deciding which wire to cut on a bomb.

Frazzled, Talula replied, “Thank you. That was a lot of nice words about me in a row, and I ruined your milk.”

“That’s okay, and you’re welcome!” Dahlia laughed.

“I have a lot to live up to, when it comes to my mom.” Talula dumped out the foamed milk and started over.

“I get that. My dad was an archaeology professor plus the university’s first Black department chair,” Dahlia explained, sounding proud but far away. “Actually, he never thought of that as an accomplishment. He always said he’d rather be the fiftieth Black department chair than the first.”

“Does that mean he wants you to go into academia, too?”

“No, not at all!” Dahlia shook her head. “He wanted me to do something I loved, the same way he loved his work.”

Talula finally caught on to Dahlia’s use of the past tense. She turned to Dahlia, heart splintering with understanding. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay…but it’s not.” Dahlia shrugged, a tired smile on her lips. “I just wish I’d heard what he was trying to tell me sooner. When I was growing up, Dad hadn’t gotten tenure yet, so things were a little tight while he played the adjunct game and Mom had to work double shifts. I didn’t want to find a lifelong passion. I wanted to find stability, you know?”

Talula nodded, watching Dahlia’s face.

“So I got my degree in marketing, found a job with great pay and tons of benefits. I thought, ‘This is it, I’m set.’ But Dad always wanted to know what I was doing for myself, what I was doing to make me happy. I thought stable was happy. Then, he…” Dahlia tilted her face up and blinked furiously. “An aneurysm. Six months ago.”

Talula fought the urge to leap over the counter and wrap her arms around Dahlia’s shoulders. She settled for reaching out her hand, laying it on top of Dahlia’s.

Dahlia took a breath, then continued. “When he was gone, I tried to go back to normal. But I just couldn’t do it anymore. So I said, ‘Fuck it.’ I quit my job, packed everything up in my car, and moved to Pine Hollow. To their house. It’s just me there. Mom’s at Nana’s because she’s…” Dahlia swallowed again. “She’s worse off than me. But I wanted to do something for myself. Something that Dad would have wanted me to do. So I’m writing. Or, trying to write, I should say.”