Chapter 19.
Breached.
“She was really friendly, smart too. I thought she was going to be a jerk judging by the way Brooke was shaking.”
I wheel around and snap “I was not shaking. I told you I had too much caffeine. I didn’t faint either. I tripped.”
“Fine fine, you tripped and pyed possum for five minutes in the grass where all the bugs are. Happy?”
“Call it whatever you want.”
The light sound of sugar against gss tickles the dead air as I refill dispensers. My head is a cacophony of mistakes and invasions.
Two friends tear at me while I try to work, I wonder if they know how it feels to be pricked like this. To be inspected and worried after. To-
“Brooke you’re spilling.” Casey chirps from the far end of the counter.
I look down. A field of white scatters between the dozen gss shakers I have lined up. With a crunch my hand closes off the bag of sugar and my shoulders slump with a sigh.
The bag of sugar hits the counter with a thump. I put my arms in the air in a ‘V’ shape and turn to Tara and Casey. Tara joins me and in unison we say “non-judgement cone, activate!”
Tara nods her head for Casey to join us. She stands up on the footrest of her stool and joins our hands in the cone with a confused fervor.
I take a deep breath “I don’t know how to deal with the knowledge that my mom isn’t a bigot. Or that I’m… that I enjoy hanging out with Casey as much as I do.-“ I bite my cheek hard “cone over” I drop my hands from the joined cone and push gss shakers out of the way and sweep sugar onto the floor with my arm.
Grains of sugar crunch under my boots, adding an unsteady slipperiness to the floor behind the counter as I rearrange gss shakers. That hiss of the sugar pouring doesn’t do anything to mask the sound of whispered conversation about me.
“We do the cone of non-judgement when we have to say something heavy or weird.” Tara whispers loudly behind her hand.
“Oh okay, that’s neat. I like that idea.” I can hear the way Casey’s smile grows as the idea settles in.
“Cones over guys, I can judge the ever-living fuck outta you two now.”
“Yeah? I dare you to.” Confidence drips off the sugarplum a gallon at a time.
I open my mouth, readying my mouth for a biting remark about her… stupid face. My mouth closes and I go back to filling the sugar shakers.
“Good girl.”
My knees threaten to eject me from a standing position and my cheeks burn a flustered red.
Tara chokes on her coffee behind me, spttering it across the shelves.
Forcing my body into composure like a malfunctioning mech suit, I lean over the counter and stare into that stupid smug face of Casey’s.
“Listen up, you pink little shit. Never call me that again.”
Casey’s smile doesn’t even falter. I think it gets even wider.
I’m staring into her eyes, waiting for her to flinch. She doesn’t. She just sits there on her little stool, with that fat smile on her face like she just won a pie. Like she already knows all my buttons and how to push them. She might be right.
I pick up her coffee and set it on the shelf Tara just finished wiping down.
“Oh that’s cold. She gets feisty one time and you take her sugar away?” Tara chides from behind.
“Get bent, Tara.”
“I’m not the one blushing.”
I gather the clinking sugar shakers in my arms and stomp to the tables and disperse a shaker to each. A few customers smile up at me as I pass them, I don’t return the smile.
When I get to the far corner of the shop I sit at a booth to cool down. Casey slides into the booth across from me and I put a hand over my mouth and stare at her. I’m not sure if it’s to protect her or myself.
“Did my calling you a good girl actually bother you?” She asks softly
I shake my head and move my hand to join the other on the table.
“Then what’s going on? You’ve been acting weirder than usual since dinner yesterday. Is it me or your mom that threw you off?”
A hiss escapes me when I notice I’m picking at my fingernails. I shake my hands out and separate them on the table, like making distance between two fighting dogs. My right hand pauses to trace a chip in the table, a dish nded too hard or maybe just a defect in the table.
“All of it. Everything. These past few months have been so…different.”
“Different how?”
“Terrifying.”
My boots scuff against each other in the too-small space between the legs of the table and the base of the booth. Cigarettes weigh heavy in my pocket like a chore left unfinished.
“Can we go outside?”
“Ill follow you anywhere.” She says earnestly.
I slip out of the booth like a cage door was left open at the zoo. My feet skate across the coffee scented workpce and I wave at Tara, signaling I’m taking my smoke break.
Warm air bsts against my face as I push the cold gss of the front door. I beeline straight for my picnic table, concrete turns to grass which turns to mulch. Between the extra dry air today and the bright-ass sunlight, my eyes take a little while to adjust.
Casey’s footsteps shadow mine until I sit on the bench. Casey climbs on top of the picnic table and sits like a cat looking down at me.
“You scare the piss out of me. You know that right?”
I’m staring at her knees that are now level with my chest. The scent of vanil overwhelms the floral note on the breeze. I tilt my head and look up at her, bright fshes of sunlight twinkle through the trees behind her head.
She leans closer to me with a slight uptick to the corners of her lips “I scare you?” She uncrosses her legs and pces one foot on the bench on either side of my hips. She’s boxing me in. “Is it my confidence or my intelligence?”
“Neither.” I mumble while pcing a cigarette between my lips.
“Then what is it?”
Her breath brushes against my face as she peers down at me. I don’t light my cigarette yet, I don’t want to when she’s this close. My tongue teases the filter while I think. Her knees bump into my shoulders, scattering any sembnce of a thought that started to form.
“That. That is why you scare me.”
“Because I bumped you?”
“Because I let you.”
A light scratch steals my attention away from Casey. A small finch stares at us, a horribly cute witness. A witness to my admission. Fuck off little birdie.
