The Co-op

Chapter Ten

CHAPTER TEN

L A RYNN

After a brief overview on the construction project as a whole, Deacon and I pass the next week with hardly a few words exchanged between us. And I don’t think we are actively avoiding one another, necessarily. It’s more that we’re settling into this new arrangement while simultaneously remembering how quickly the other gets under our skin. Tiptoeing around one another decreases the chance for us to burn out. Or, at least, puts it off longer. The scope of this project is large and rife with emotional land mines.

We’re treading carefully.

I adopt a morning routine on the days that I don’t open at the café. I’m up and out the door before Deacon is out of bed. I usually grab my no-cooking-required breakfast of the day, a muffin or a protein bar of some kind, then take it with me to the beach, where I sit on a bench to watch the sunrise, hoping maybe this will be the one. The one sunrise that brings a new dawn, a new perspective on my life. Like maybe the fluorescent sky shines a figurative light on what I want to do with it and inspires a plan. Instead, I usually think of my grandmother, which feels a bit like submerging a cut in saltwater. I know it’s supposed to be good and cleansing, but it also hurts like a bitch.

Typically, by the time I head back to the house, Deacon has left for the day, whether to go to Santa Sea or… I’m not sure where. This feels like proprietary information that I’m probably not entitled to under the umbrella of this arrangement.

Today’s sunrise is shaping up to be another mockingly glorious one, and just as I’m about to get up and head back to the house, my phone vibrates in my pocket.

Mom flashes across the top of the screen, the second time she’s called in the last two weeks. So strange that she keeps trying. I’d normally have caved by now, would have called her back so she could tell me about her wonderful new apartment with her gorgeous new husband, Liam—her second new husband since she split from my father—and their perfect goldendoodle, Fitz. Or I could tell her some detail about my life that she’d respond to with a story that is supposed to illustrate just how much she can relate, but in fact achieves the opposite.

I should get it over with soon. On one hand, she’s at least putting forth an effort to have a relationship, whereas Dad’s last email to me had the subject line: Welfare Check, wherein he literally asked if I was alive. The phone call prior to that, he told me I could “always start collecting husbands” like my mom as an alternative to a career path.

If only he knew.

On the bright side, I continue to enjoy working at Spill the Beans, and have now worked three shifts alongside June, whose warm, quiet presence is a balm to my nerves. She doesn’t try to make small talk with me, hasn’t asked me to update her on my life (or lack thereof) since I last saw her seven years ago. We were brief and irregular pals who had a friendship that existed solely within the confines of this town during one summer, so even though we share Elyse between us, it’s not as if we were inseparable to begin with. But I could see us being friends again. For someone who doles out caffeine by the gallon she is disturbingly serene.

I’ll have to work on a way to ask her out on a friend date of sorts, even if it’s hard to picture. Elyse planted herself in my life and didn’t give me a say otherwise, so making new friends as an adult is not something I’m familiar with, and it sounds daunting as hell.

Still, I generally enjoy being in that space, and I think it’ll help the friend stuff get easier over time. The customers have quickly started to greet me like they know me. It’s oddly… lovely. Serving people. Offering someone some small comfort. It’s a nice change, bringing someone some joy.

It’s also been nice that I’ve been able to work so consistently with the busy season. Especially since I don’t know when the check from the trust will show and I’m down to the last $137 in my account from selling my car. My bed and frame are supposed to be delivered tomorrow, while I’m on a shift, but Deacon said he’d intercept them for me.

I make my way back up the hill and unlatch the gate. It’s surprisingly sturdy and fluid, the bougainvillea vines draped over the pergola that’s mendaciously lush given the state of the place they’re welcoming.

And when I get inside, I stealthily climb upstairs, careful to avoid drawing Sally out from her unit.

I know I need to visit her soon. She was Aunt Sally to me growing up. It’s just that… I think seeing her here and in this place makes the contrast of my grandma not being here so much more stark. My plate feels precariously full as it is, and I need a little longer, I think.

The sound of running water hits me from somewhere when I walk through the doorway, and a cursory glance around leads me to believe that Deacon’s still here—and showering. Two unlaced boots tipped clumsily in the middle of the entryway, a pair of jeans lying just as sloppily outside the bathroom door.

The idea of being in the house alone with him—naked—throws me into an immediate state. The last time he showered while I was one door and a wall away, Elyse was also here, and I guess he’s had to endure it on his end while I’ve been in there and he’s been hanging around, but… but not really, I realize. He’s always been gone by the time I’ve gotten out. I need something else to do.

Laundry. I’ll go do laundry. I have clothes. Plenty of them. I’ll wash and dry them thrice if necessary.

I grab my phone, headphones, and everything from my designated hamper-corner and scurry.

I’ve already got one load going and have begun spot-treating a coffee stain on my favorite white tee when I think I hear a thump above the din of my music. I don’t hear it again when I remove one of the earbuds, though, so I carry on.

But then I think I feel another thump. I take them both out this time and I definitely hear banging coming from above me, followed by a few muffled expletives.

“Shit.”

Deacon’s note about the shower being finicky. His water forebodings.

The sloppily scratched-out letters jumble together in my brain but I remember that there was something along the lines of DO NOT USE WASHING MACHINE AT THE SAME TIME AS SHOWER written the loudest on the page.

I fling open the lid before I slam it shut again and try to find the stop button, but it’s an old machine and in my frazzled state I struggle to decipher them all.

“LARRY!” I make out Deacon’s roar from upstairs.

“Fuck,” I mumble before I call out, “I know I know, I’m sorry! I forgot and I don’t know how to get it to stop now! How do I get it to stop?!”

I hear his feet slap the stairs and start slamming buttons in a panic.

Oh sweet mother of God. His body is a blot in my peripheral vision, but he’s definitely in a towel, only. I continue my manic button-whacking as he shoves a paper in my face.

“I wrote it down, Larry. I wrote it down.”

“Just tell me how to get it to stop, okay?!” I yell, my voice high and tight.

“Read it. You need to remember this and know how to do it. We can’t fucking afford more water damage and mold on top of everything else,” he says.

I rear on him. “Don’t you dare parent me,” I spit, my finger stabbing into a very wet and impossibly firm pec. His chin dips to look at it before he deigns to look back at me. He’s flushed, panting, and there’s a mix of bubbles and something chunky and gray splattered across his… very developed chest and abs. Real-life abs stacked on top of each other. Jesus. This is a development. Also developing: a heartbeat behind my belly button. I swear I know other words aside from the various forms of develop, but it seems nothing else wants to develop itself into my brain. I blink, blood rushing to my face, my ears and neck going hot. I speak again before he says something I can’t respond productively to. “Just. Show me.”

He looks me over for a moment that stretches and rounds, like he’s lost his train of thought and is searching for it on my face. I track a droplet of water as it slides down a curl of hair and splatters against my wrist.

Suddenly, the smell hits me.

“Oh my god. What is that smell ?!” I cup my hand over my face, but it already feels like the stench has adhered to the inside of my brain. “It’s like… like mildew that’s grown inside someone’s gym bag, and then also somehow gone stale.”

“It’s what happens when you don’t heed the warnings about the water. If you can’t be courteous, next time I’ll make sure this is all over you.” He gestures to his body, and it takes my brain a humili atingly long moment to determine that he was referring to the gray gunk and not his body.

He catches me leering and narrows his eyes with a cocky grin. “Don’t get any ideas, Larry.”

“Oh, screw you. ” Not my best line.

He tsks at me. “I told you you’d have to be very good. This has set you back some.”

I nearly stamp my foot in agitation, my now-crossed fists grinding against my ribs. He stretches past me, holding his towel with one hand as he reaches behind the washing machine to crank a knob.

“If it ever happens that you forget again,” he says, brows raised and blinking at me like he still suspects I did this on purpose, “just turn the water off altogether. This knob here.”

Another thought occurs to me then. “How’d you know it wasn’t Sal?”

“Because he texted me beforehand,” Sal says from her open doorway, sipping something that looks like a cosmopolitan from a martini glass, an oxygen tank at her feet. “I text now, you know. He sends me a courtesy text beforehand. And I know not to run any of the water when the shower goes. Multi-sink usage seems to be fine so far, only the occasional hiccup.” She takes another sip from a straw. “And hello, my girl. It’s good to finally see you.”

I swallow and let my eyes drift over her. She’s even tinier and frailer than I recall, but somehow undiminished. Emotions collide and wind up my throat.

“Hi, Sally,” I say, my eyes settling on my socked feet next to Deacon’s bare ones. I scoot them away, not liking how intimate mine look beside his.

“It’s still ‘Aunt’ to you, for goodness’ sake,” she says with a sigh. “Come here. And Deacon, go away and take that stench with you.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

I wait until he disappears around the corner before I stiffly make my way to Sal. She guides me inside her apartment and shuts the door behind us.

Her eyes look me over, head to toe. “It’s been a long time” is all she says. Simply, and kindly. I haven’t seen her since before Grandma died. I hadn’t even seen my grandmother for over a year before she was gone.

And when my arms wrap around her knobby body, I break. “I’m sorry,” I say, wailing like I’m eight again and just broke her glass dolphin sculpture. Over a year and a half of regret bursts up from my chest. I should have been here sooner. For her, at least. I picked Grandma’s ashes up directly from the county coroner’s office when Helena told me they were mine, and I couldn’t even bring myself to come here then. I missed my chance to see Helena in the months that followed, and shame kept me from seeking out Sally after.

She sighs. “Nothing to apologize for. You’re here now.”

She shushes and holds me, lets me cry it out, soothes me until I eventually settle. When I lean back from her embrace, she reaches up to dab my face with a tissue. Something she must keep in a pocket handy somewhere.

“You have time for a visit?” she asks.

“Yes,” I choke out before I awkwardly sink into the old sofa and look around the place.

So much is the same—the same round table we’d all play Yahtzee and cards and dominoes at. The same photographs. I spot one of my grandma from when she was young and force myself to look away. I avoid looking too closely at more for fear of losing the leash on my emotions again.

The Price Is Right plays softly in the background while we make conversation. Inconsequential things at first, like Spill the Beans and the tourist season. Until she straightens, visibly gearing up for the harder stuff.

“So.” She lets out a ragged breath like it pains her to ask. “How are your parents?”

My sigh is similarly worn. “Dad’s still angry with me for dropping out. And then he found out Grandma left the property to me not long after, so… he was pretty unhappy.” I blow out a breath. “We’ve barely spoken since.”

She shakes her head with a chuckle. “Not sure what else he expected.”

And I’m still not, either. My dad and grandma hardly had a relationship. It was actually my mom who encouraged him to allow Cece in my life, and most days I think that was only so they’d have childcare while they traveled, since both of her parents were gone long ago. My grandma was always extremely careful in what we discussed when it came to my parents, and I always got the sense that this was because she was worried he’d be quick to cut her out. Her focus was always to give me freedom and space while I was here.

I should have told her how much that meant to me. How the worst parts of life always felt bearable because I knew I’d get to come back. I should have asked her so much more. I should have asked why she and Dad couldn’t get along. Now, I’d only ever have his version, and I’m not certain I want it from him.

“Anyway,” Sally continues, brushing her hand through the air like she can swipe away the mood, and I’m grateful. I’m barely holding on to my composure. “Tell me how it’s going upstairs.” She smiles conspiratorially and I tilt a brow her way.

“ Nothing is going quite yet, but we’ll get there.”

I don’t bring up the details. Don’t tell her about the trust or the marriage, either, because I’m not sure what she already knows or what Deacon’s already apprised her of, and for some reason it feels like he should get to be the one to do that.

I do end up oversharing pieces of my dismal dating history and getting my ass handed to me in a variety of card games before noon, though.

And when I trip out of her doorway later that afternoon, some optimistic kernel in me prompts me to check the mailbox.

When I skip upstairs, excited to show Deacon the check in spite of myself, he and his things are gone, a note on the counter in his place that says: “Staying at Santa Sea for the weekend.” With another line on the bottom: “Don’t burn the place down.”