Читать книгу Coming Home To You - Liesel Schmidt - Страница 11

Chapter 3

It was late afternoon, a time seemingly shared by all citizens of the universe in their primal need for caffeine, and a typical Sunday in the city was no exception. The coffee house down the street from my apartment was packed to bursting, its clientele running the gamut from coffee house junkies to those whose relationship with coffee was a mere dalliance.

I would have fallen into the category of junkie, though my need was not so much to feed a caffeine addiction as it was for a haven.

Buzzing Beans had opened six months ago, three months after I’d lost Paul. It had become a place I could go without fear of remembering some conversation we’d had there or regular appearances together that made these people realize that I was only half of a pair.

Here, there was no Paul and Zoë.

There was simply Zoë, the sad looking woman with curly brown hair who came in practically every day and always ordered the same thing.

Zoë, who always seemed as though she only vaguely remembered what happy used to feel like.

Here, within the walls of Buzzing Beans, I had found a second home. Ray, proud owner and head bean-pusher, had even become a brotherly presence in my life. He watched over me without ever prying for details I wasn’t ready to give, offering me his own brand of comfort with each cup of coffee he served. My drink was always ready for me by the time I walked up to the register, and Ray always refused payment. Suffice it to say, his tip jar reaped the benefits.

I took Kate there that afternoon in an attempt to escape my apartment and the tension I felt so thickly gathered there. Since her arrival on my doorstep the day before, she’d spent practically every moment glued to my side, with the exception of a quick trip back to her parents’ house to drop off all her things and visit for a few hours. I knew that this was just her initial knee-jerk reaction to having been gone so long and her fear that I really was as fragile as everyone seemed to think.

I would have thought my best friend knew me better than that, that she would have had confidence enough in my survival skills to know that I would eventually get through this a much stronger, self-reliant woman.

But not even I had that confidence.

How could I, when I felt so broken?

In moments of clarity, I could recognize the fact that I had allowed myself to slip into a deep depression, that I needed to find some way out of it. But I had no idea how, other than spilling my guts in a therapist’s office for an hour every week or shoveling pills down my throat. Neither option was something I really wanted to have to explore.

“Hey, Zoë, who’s the pretty lady?” Ray asked, bouncing up on his toes as he stood behind the counter.

“Nice greeting,” I replied with a light edge of scolding. “This is my best friend, Kate. Kate, this is Ray.”

“Nice to meet you, Ray,” she said, offering him a sweet smile. “Zoë’s been singing your praises all day. And I can’t thank you enough for watching out for her while I was away.”

Kate’s smile, I noticed, seemed to grow even wider as she spoke. I hadn’t really been giving him nearly as many accolades as she was implying. True, I’d told her how great he’d been to me over the past few months and that he had become a self-appointed watchdog of sorts, but…

I flushed with embarrassment, hoping Ray wasn’t getting the wrong impression.

“No problem,” Ray replied, waving away Kate’s thanks. “I’ve heard a lot about you, too, Kate. It’s nice to finally have a face to put with the name, and hopefully I’ll see more of you before you leave…” He trailed off, looking at me.

“So, um, Ray,” Kate began, clearing her throat. “What’s good here?”

“Good?” he repeated, shaking his head in mock disgust. “We don’t do good here. Good is for sub-par, nameless-faceless-on-every-street-corner-in-the-world coffee shops.” He paused for dramatic effect. And possibly to catch his breath. “We do excellent.”

The rest of the exchange was a blur of drowned-out words and movements, an event I was only physically part of. It was the same way I lived most moments of my life lately, like being underwater in a pool and looking up at the people standing at the edge of it. You can hear talking and see images, but nothing makes complete sense.

“Zoë, did you hear that?”

I blinked rapidly, breaking through the surface of the water.

“What? I’m sorry,” I said, thinking I must have looked a complete idiot. I shook my head. “No, I missed what you said.”

Kate looked at me for a long moment, trying to get a read on me.

“Ray says he has a buddy who’s going to be out of the country for the next nine months and needs a house-sitter while he’s away.” Her eyes widened with excitement. “Isn’t that interesting?” she prompted.

Apparently, it was much more interesting to her than it was to me. Or I was just completely missing something here. How on earth was this relevant to me?

She continued, looking intently at me for some sign of comprehension. She was going to be sorely disappointed, though, because I wasn’t getting it even enough to fake that I was getting it.

“You know—take care of the place, live there with only utilities to pay. Of course, his stuff will basically all still be there. The whole point of this is that he doesn’t want to have to deal with the hassle of renters, but he also doesn’t want to have to worry about the house sitting vacant for so long.”

I was still looking at her quite blankly.

Clearly, I must still be missing something.

Ray apparently picked up on my confusion and took pity on me. He stroked his closely clipped, chestnut-colored beard and leaned conspiratorially close.

“I think she thinks you should consider doing him a favor and taking the worry of the house off his hands,” he whispered loudly.

I raised an eyebrow and looked from Ray to Kate and back again to Ray.

“You two are both nuts,” I said, shaking my head in disbelief. “Insane. This guy’s never met me. How would me being in his house be ‘doing him a favor?’” I asked, making air quotes with my fingers.

Ray straightened and pulled his most serious face. It was almost comical.

“Neil and I have been friends since we were ten, and he takes my opinion of people very seriously. If I told him I found someone I thought would be a perfect person to have staying in his house, believe me—he wouldn’t think twice about letting you stay there. He’s got plenty of other worries right now just trying to get all of his stuff together to go. Taking this off his shoulders would be a big relief to him.” He smiled at me. “Besides, then I’d be able to keep a closer eye on you after Kate here leaves to go live up in Hot-lanta.”

I turned to Kate and gave her my best withering look.

“What’s this, you know him for five minutes and already you’ve got him brainwashed to be on your side?”

My death stare moved to Ray.

“What happened to loyalty?” I asked, feigning disgust and shaking my head.

I felt inexplicably as if I might be staring in the face of an unexpected opportunity, and there was an undercurrent of excitement running through me. But it had been so long since I’d felt anything of the sort that it was almost a foreign sensation.

Unidentifiable, confusing.

A little bit scary, even.

Ray shot me a wounded look.

“I am loyal to a fault. To. A. Fault,” he said solemnly. “In fact, Loyalty is my middle name. I just happen to think that Kate here is absolutely right, and you need to move.”

His head moved up and down in a slow nod, his dark hair flopping into his eyes.

Kate shot me a See? look, to which I responded with another cocked-eyebrow scowl.

I couldn’t take this anymore. I needed to get out of there, away from the pressure I suddenly felt piling on me. I knew they both meant well, knew that both of them only wanted the best for me. But I also knew that Kate was trying to rush me into doing something I didn’t feel ready for, that Ray didn’t have nearly all the pieces of the puzzle.

He didn’t know why I came in so often looking as though I was in mourning.

He’d never asked, and I’d never told him.

I couldn’t bear the thought of having his pity.

“I—” I started, feeling my chest tighten as though someone was sitting on it.

And then I walked out, away from the smell of coffee and the suffocating feeling that I was having my last shred of control taken away from me.

It’s amazing how quickly fear can turn a glimmer of hope into the headlights of an oncoming train.