Broken Down: A Novel, page 12
“He’s always worried about money. If he didn’t worry about money, he’d have no reason to stay at that job.”
“But there’s no reason to worry, right? Like, you guys are doing okay financially?”
She looked up at me but didn’t say anything.
“Sorry, there I go again being intrusive. I only ask because something has been on my mind lately.”
“I’m listening.”
“Well, you see, there’s no reason for me to be saying here rent free. Even if it’s just for a few weeks, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about it. Now that I have a job, I would really feel a lot more comfortable if I could give you some money for my living expenses.”
She smiled. “Oh, that’s what you’re worried about? No. That’s fine.”
I frowned. “But I have the money—”
“I’m sure you do, but I simply refuse.” Her tone was not unlike someone who was politely refusing a cookie with her tea.
“But Beth, it doesn’t make sense for you to continue housing me and feeding me without allowing me to pitch in at all. Please, just let me give you a couple hundred dollars, the same amount I would spend if I rented another place in the area.”
“A couple hundred dollars, don’t be ridiculous! The house is paid off, my bills for the entire month won’t be a couple hundred dollars.”
“They will if I keep using hot water and eating all your food.” I came over and sat next to her. “Please. It would make me feel a lot better.”
She sighed. “Fine. If this is what you want, then you can buy the groceries next time we go. Deal?”
It wasn’t as much as I’d hoped for, but I’d take it. If it came down to it, I could always give Theo some money to give to his mom without her knowing it was from me.
“Deal.”
I felt my phone buzz in my pocket. I took it out slowly, acting like I wasn’t so eager to see what Theo had written back.
It’s pretty cool, what you guys are doing,” he texted. And this party sounds like it’ll be really fun. I’m excited. And get ready because I’m bringing a lot of wine.
I sent the laughing face emoji and said, Oh, I’m ready!
“What are you smiling about?” Beth asked me.
“Nothing,” I said. “It’s nothing. A friend of mine sent me a funny picture, that’s all.” I didn’t know why I was lying, but I couldn’t take it back now.
She eyed me for a moment, then went back to her coupon book. “Whatever you say.”
Another text from Theo came through, and it said the exact thing I hoped he would say. Do you need me to bring or do anything else? he asked. I want to help in any way I can.
My smile grew even wider. Here was my opening. I was nervous, but there was no time for nerves. I needed to ask, and I needed to do it now. If we were going to get posters up soon, we’d need Theo to get back to Aria and do a photoshop ASAP.
There is actually one thing we could use your help with. I sent that on its own.
You name it.
We need someone to take photos of Urs for the posters. It doesn’t have to be anything special, or artsy. We just need a few candid shots of her in the town, and some portraits as well. We don’t know anyone else with photography experience or who owns a nice camera. I reworded it a few times, then forced myself to hit send.
At first, the three dots that told me he was typing appeared, then they disappeared.
I waited for them to come back. And waited. And waited.
Nothing.
After three minutes of staring down at my phone, I realized he wasn’t going to write me back, and my heart sank. I’d just ruined everything—all the progress we’d made since our not so friendly first interaction, it was all down the drain with one single text.
“Is something wrong, dear?” Beth asked.
I sighed. “You guys put too much faith in me,” I said. “I couldn’t convince him.”
“Who? Theo? I don’t believe it! I thought for sure it would work.”
“Nope. In fact, I might’ve made things worse. We’ll be lucky if he even comes down at all this weekend, since I’ve apparently made him so mad he can’t even stand to answer my text.”
Beth looked a little alarmed. “That’s very rude of him. Let me get my cell, I’ll call him this instant.”
“No, it’s fine. It’s not a big deal. It just means we have to find someone else to take the photos. Maybe I can try a few with Urs’s phone. She has one of the new ones, and it’s supposed to have a pretty good camera on it.”
“Are you sure? Because I bet if I get Theo on the phone he’ll come to his senses real quick.”
“No, really. I don’t want to make him do anything he doesn’t want to do.” I stood up. “I’m going to go for a walk. I’ll see you after my shift at Walkers’ tonight.”
“You seem upset,” she said. “You sure you don’t want to talk about it?”
“I’m fine. Just need to go clear my head.”
She nodded, her lips a straight, doubtful line across her face.
“See you later,” I said as I made my way down the hallway and out the door.
I walked for a long time, just letting myself get lost in the streets of Bethany’s neighborhood. A lot of the houses around looked like hers, which meant they were all on the smaller side but also very cute. Some people had well-kept yards, some were overgrown with weeds and wildflowers. The leaves were just starting to change color on some of the trees, and there was a distinctly autumn bite in the air. I had to zip up my jacket and put my hands in my pockets as I walked. My stomach growled after a while, so I took a turn toward town and went to the coffee shop.
Nicky wasn’t working, I figured he was at school. It was his mom who took my order instead. She was a pleasant woman with a warm face and soft red hair.
“You must think I’m the worst mom ever,” she said after she took my order and I gave her my name.
“Why would I think that?” I asked, shocked.
“Nicky told me about you, you came in over the weekend and yesterday. So you know I make my kid work on the weekends, and even on some school days. But you have to know, Nicky is a senior, and the way his schedule works out, he doesn't have to be at school on Mondays until the afternoon. He doesn’t even go on Fridays. All of this is to say, I would never pull him out of his classes.”
“It hadn’t even occurred to me that he wasn’t in school when I came around yesterday,” I said. “But I promise you, even if I had noticed, my first thought would’ve never been that you’re a bad mom. Nicky is a good kid, and I don’t think he turned out that way by accident.”
She smiled. “That’s sweet of you to say. He talks about you a lot. He says you’re the prettiest woman he’s ever seen.”
I laughed. “He said so to my face yesterday, but I don’t believe him.”
“That’s good,” she said. “Don’t believe a word that kid says. Not that you’re not pretty, you are, it’s just… Nick is mostly good, that much is true, but he’s also got a side to him that’s just like his daddy. It worries me. His daddy was a smooth-talker, real charmer, but then he left me high and dry when I found out I was pregnant so what does that tell you?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “He’s missing out, though—Nicky’s dad, I mean—on the chance to be a part of a great little family.”
“Yeah, well, I’m sure he doesn’t see it that way. Anyway, I’m real happy you folks gave him a job cooking on Friday. He’s good in the kitchen, and he likes it. I’m trying to get him to apply to culinary school. I think he’d make a great chef one day.”
“I’ll be sure to let Beth know. Maybe she can drop a few hints while they are cooking together.”
“That would be great!” she said. Then she leaned onto the counter and talked low. “I don’t believe a word Jason is saying about you, by the way. Most everyone in town knows he’s full of it. Don’t worry, we aren’t going to let him turn this whole story around. Telling everyone you came on to him in my coffee shop? No way.”
“He’s saying that?” I didn’t know why I was even surprised.
“You hadn’t heard?”
“I’d heard he was spreading lies about me,” I said. “Just not that one in particular.”
“Then I guess you didn’t hear that he was saying you sat on his lap, whispered in his ear, and he had to nearly shove you off just to get your hands off him. According to his story, he told you he had a girlfriend whom he loved, but you were all over him anyway.”
I made a face. “The thought of him being all over him actually makes me want to barf.”
“You and me both, honey.”
“God, I hate the man. I know it’s not right to hate people, but I really hate him.”
“I don’t blame you. But like I said, no one is buying it. I would say you should limit the time you spend in his company though. He can find a way to twist any interaction into something that makes him look good.”
“So I’m learning.”
She checked her watch. “Speaking of which, you should know he normally stops in here around 1 for an afternoon coffee. It’s 12:30 now, so you should get going as soon as you can.” She hurried with making my drink and gave it to me in a paper cup.
“Thanks for the heads up,” I said. “And I hope we’ll be seeing you at the party on Friday.”
She grinned. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world! I’m even going to wear one of my nice dresses. There’s not many excuses to get dressed up in a small town like this.”
I laughed and waved on my way out of the shop. In the streets, I thought I saw the back of Jason’s black car as it turned the corner, so I quickly headed in the opposite direction and kept walking.
I went into work two hours before my shift started. The bar was quiet, seeing as it wasn’t even three yet. The whole town was still at work, and the wedding party that had been there the night before was long gone.
“What are you doing here?” Danica said. “It’s too early. I don’t have much work for you to do.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “I thought maybe I could just stick around and watch you. Do a little homework, learn how to make some drinks.”
“Homework?” She raised a brow. “You were one of those nerdy kids who really liked school, weren’t you?”
I felt my cheeks flush. “Yeah. I was.”
“I could tell. Well, you’re welcome to stay and take as many notes as you’d like. But I can’t pay you for hours spent observing, sorry.”
“I expected as much. No worries. Just go about your regular routine and I’ll be here.”
“Taking notes?”
“Taking notes,” I confirmed, and she laughed and went back to wiping down tables. I watched where she tossed the dirty rag after she was done, and from where she retrieved a new one in the back room. She threw the fresh one over her shoulder and then went behind the bar and took stock of what they had on the shelves. She wrote down names and prices on a pad of paper that sat next to the cash register.
“Inventory,” she told me. “I need to know what to put on the list for our next order.”
“Got it. How often do you do inventory?”
“Once a week, usually on Sundays, but yesterday that wedding party really cleared us out of a lot of stuff, so I wanted to do a second one today. The orders go out typically on Wednesdays.”
I wrote that down. “Inventory Sunday, order goes out Wednesdays. Easy enough.”
Danica rattled off a few more scheduling details I needed to keep in mind, and then stopped herself mid-way through listing off their most popular beers and wines. “You’re probably not going to run into any of this stuff anyway,” she said. “I told Kenny last night that you were just a temporary hire. He thought you’d decided to move to Aria permanently, but that’s not the case, right?”
“Move here?” I laughed and then felt bad. “Sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. I laughed because it was funny to think of me making any kind of major decision lately. I’ve been sort of… avoiding.”
“Avoiding what?”
“Life.”
“I see. Well, Aria is a good place to do that.”
I nodded. “It really is. It’s sort of like a town out of a storybook. Everything feels so unreal, you know?”
“I do. I thought the same thing when I moved here for Kenny.”
“You’re not originally from here?” I made a surprised face. “I think you’re the first person I’ve met in this town who wasn’t born in the area.”
“I’m from New York,” she said. “And let me tell you, my parents were very confused when I told them where I was moving. Four generations before me lived in New York, and I always thought I’d be a city girl to the day I died. Then I met Kenny, and all that changed.”
“How’d you meet?”
“In college. He went to school in the city. We got together our senior year and fell in love almost instantly. Got married when we were young, had Benjamin shortly thereafter. We were living in a tiny one-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn, and our rent just kept going up and up. Even with both of us working, we could barely make ends meet, and he and I both harbored a dream of one day opening a bar together. He told me all about the town he grew up in, and for years I thought it sounded too good to be true. Then one Christmas, just a few months after Benny was born, we came down here to visit his parents, and I fell in love with Aria. We moved a few months later, opened this place a year after that, and here we are.”
“Wow, that’s a great story.” I tucked my notepad under my arm and leaned against the bar. “I moved to my husband’s hometown too. He got a promotion in Phoenix and since that’s where all his family was anyway, it seemed like a good move. Needless to say, things didn’t work out like we thought they would.”
“I was wondering whether or not you were attached.”
“Not anymore.”
“Was it recent?”
“Was it recent?” I repeated the question and tapped my chin like I was thinking about it. “Let’s see, I think it was a Wednesday, just last week, so that means tomorrow it’ll have been a week.”
She gawked at me. “Only a week? Holy hell girl, you are holding it together good.”
“I’m really not,” I said. “It’s just that my emotions don’t manifest in the way I think most people would expect. I don’t really break down and cry, anything like that.”
“Then what do you do?”
“Oh you know, the usual. I tend to quit my job, get stuck in random Colorado towns, and take up work as a bartender. Sometimes I recruit people and launch a last-minute campaign for mayor of a town that I’d never even heard of the day before. That kind of stuff.”
She smirked. “You’re right. That is unexpected. But hey, whatever works for you. As someone who has been in the bartending business for some time, I have seen people deal with their breakups in much more destructive ways than that. Even your friend Urs. You should ask her sometime what she did in this very bar the night she dumped Theo Jennings.”
I perked up. “What happened?”
“I said ask her. I’m not going around talking about other people’s business. I’m just saying, I’ve got stories, and hers is one of them.”
Danica got back to work after that, so I followed suit and got back to taking notes, but in the back of my mind, all I could think about was Ursula and Theo and their bad breakup. How did things go down? If it was such an intense breakup, that had to mean they’d had intense feelings for one another. What I truly wanted to know wasn’t the gritty details of who did what, who said what, rather, I wanted to know if those feelings still existed between the two of them.
Well, I thought, since Theo isn’t exactly talking to me, I guess there’s only one way to find out.
If I wanted answers, I’d have to ask Ursula for them.
14
The next two days were busy to the point of being nearly chaotic. Ursula managed to get her paperwork finished and turned in just under the wire on Wednesday. She, Bethany, and I got together that afternoon before my shift at Walkers’ to finish designing our posters and flyers which would need to be brought to the printers first thing the next morning. At the printer, however, we ran into problem after problem, starting with the price we were quoted.
“You want how much for 10 posters and 50 flyers?” Beth stared at the man behind the counter wide-eyed.
“It comes to 423 dollars,” he said, “and 98 cents.”
“But on the phone I was told it would be a couple hundred dollars max.”
“That was before we got the files,” he explained. “There are a lot of bright colors involved in the flyers, and you requested a glossy finish, which is extra. I’m sorry, but this is how much it costs. Unless you want to downgrade—”
“No,” I said. “It’s fine. Here, put it on this.” I gave the man my credit card.
“What are you doing?” Bethany asked. It was just she and I at the printers; Ursula had gone to work already.
“I’ve got a crazy high limit. I can pay it off later.”
“It’s too much.”
“It’s necessary,” I said. “You and Urs can pay me back whenever.”
She frowned. “I don’t like this. And neither will Ursula.”
“Then don’t tell her,” I said, shrugging. “At least, not until after the party and after the campaign kicks off. We need this stuff, there’s no other way to get her name and face out there. And we can’t put off getting these printed even another day, or we’ll be really behind.”
She sighed. “Fine. But we are going to pay you back. Every last penny.”
“I know you will.”
The man handed me back the credit card after running it and said everything would be ready by the end of the day. We thanked him, although Bethany’s thank you sounded a little less sincere than mine, and left. After that, I had to go home to take a nap before my shift started that night, so Beth dropped me off on her way to the school. I slept for a couple hours and was woken up shortly after 1 by the sound of my phone vibrating on the bedside table.
Groggily, I picked it up without looking at the caller ID first.
