“Oh, hey, Reese. You okay? You sound kind of sniffly.”
“Uh, hay fever,” I mumble as I start to stir.
“Hay fever, my left ass cheek,” Natalie snaps. “I was waiting for my backup to ask you, but you can’t fool us, Reese Camden. You’ve been feeling feelings and they’ve been leaking out your eyeballs and you’re gonna tell us all about it.”
“That was…crude, but you’re not wrong. I don’t feel liketalking about it, though, not yet anyway. The best thing y’all could do is distract me with something else.”
“Are you still mad at Ball Cap Benny? Do my Louisville Slugger and I need to have a li’l talk with him?” Nat asks.
I give a short laugh. “No, if anyone could use that, it’s probably me.”
She sighs. “Reese, whatever it is, I think you should just talk to him. Boy is clearly obsessed with you, and I know it’s been hard seeing how he’s treated differently from you, and the internet and your coworkers have giant bromantic crushes on him while you’re consistently getting shat on while doing the same job just as well”—I’m about to cut her off because, good gracious, does she have to toss so much salt in these fresh wounds? But I wait it out—“but it seems to me like he’s trying, and if you tell him to jump up and defend you, he’d sure as hell ask how high and if you’d like a cup of tea while he’s at it.”
As Nat talks, I am trying my best to cut butter into the dry ingredients with a fork. It’s slow going and I’m not even sure it looks right, the tiny shavings curling and piling up on top of the white snow drifts in the bowl. I’m also sidetracked by what Nat has said, which has the tears stinging at the backs of my eyes again.
Clara chimes in, “I obviously don’t know what’s going on either, but I agree, Nat. Reese, I love you to death, but you have a habit of taking on too much on your own. You’ve come sofar, and you just need to keep communicating and letting others help you when you need it. You’ve put yourself back out there in the biggest way this summer, and your other mother and I are just so proud, right, Ma?”
“I tell you what, Mama, if I was any fuller of pride, I’d be fixin’ to burst.” Natalie lays the accent on extra thick, diffusing the seriousness of the message, but the love and sincerity are there.
“I don’t deserve y’all,” I murmur, fighting this latest wave of emotion. My mamaw’s biscuit recipe does not call for salt water. I win this time, though, and clear my throat before I speak again. “Okay, no more Reese drama. Update me on y’all’s lives before Clara has to save an innocent from facing the prison industrial complex.”
Natalie launches into a story about how she’s trying to negotiate a lemonade stand merger for a few kids she babysits who live in the same neighborhood, because “patrons can’t decide which stand to support, so they’re not buying from anyone. All those profits down the drain with the unsold lemonade!”
Meanwhile, Clara—notoriously tight-lipped about anything love and dating—has a suspicious amount of good to say about a pretty redheaded court justice at camp. Then Nat asks how badly Clara wants to bang her gavel, and Clar uncharacteristically starts yelling at her for being inappropriate.
I’m distracted with laughing at my friends’ bickering as I pour milk into the mixture. I remember Mamaw stirringeverything together with a fork. I’m feeling impatient and find a hand mixer in one of the drawers. If I keep it on a low speed, that could be more efficient than a fork, right? Mixing ingredients is literally what it’s for.
I plug it in and push the lever to the lowest setting, but it’s immediately clear I’ve made a big mistake. Flour explodes into the air in a butter-flecked cloud, with milk splattering on its heels. It goes all over the counter and, more upsettingly, all over me. It’s the macaron video all over again, but wetter and dustier this time, especially because I’m too shocked to turn off the mixer right away. When I finally do, I can barely move. It feels like moving would mean spreading the mess even farther, and I don’t know how the heck to start cleaning it up.
A bit too much like my life as a whole.
“Reese, did a bomb just explode or a plane take off in your room or something? Both? Houston to Reese, come in, Reese?” Nat’s voice is touched with humor but a bit of panic, too.
“I’m using a mixer,” I say shakily, even though the mixer is more using me. I feel the tears threatening their return, and I make a quick excuse to get off the phone and save my biscuits. We all know it’s not the biscuits I’m upset about, but my friends let me go anyway with promises to keep them updated if I need anything.
I wipe my face and hands with some wet paper towels, thinking how bonkers it would seem to Early Summer Reese that I’m wishing Benny was here to laugh at me and brush flour out ofmy hair. I finish the recipe as best I can, though the dough’s consistency is not quite right. I flew too close to the culinary sun, trying to skip the fork mixing. I’m definitely adding an excess of salt with my stray tears. But I keep trying, using a glass in lieu of a biscuit cutter to make some misshapen, liquid-y lumps on a pan.
When I ultimately pull a dozen half-charred, half-dough mounds out of the oven, it’s just as well. This proves it. I am not a chef nor a baker. Benny is the real talent. He deserved the fall internship all along, and I was kidding myself to think otherwise. I’m still wiping tears from my eyes as I pitch all of my efforts into the garbage and head back downstairs to shower and change into clean pajamas.
I send Benny a text before bed saying we should talk soon, but I need a little more time. In my current state of frustration and confusion and disappointment I don’t want to say anything I don’t mean and make an even bigger mess of things. And okay, maybe to some extent I’m putting off what feels like the inevitable, once-and-for-all end of this thing between us. Because even if today’s showdown was based on miscommunication, I’m still stung by what he said and the ways he’s shown that he doesn’t quite understand my feelings. I’m in over my head on the relationship front as much as on the career one. Maybe it’d be better for both of us to cut ties before we get even more attached than we already are.
The pesky L-word pokes at me from the back of my mind.
When I settle in under the covers, I think of how my mamaw once told me that one of the reasons she and my papaw have stayed together so long is that they never go to bed angry. I know she probably meant angry at each other, not angry at their circumstances or angry in general. But goodness, if I tried to live like that, I’d be in for even less sleep.
I’m tired. Tired of getting the short end of the stick. Tired of the judgments that surround me. Tired of trying to make myself lesser so that others are more comfortable. Tired of being angry when my efforts never pay off anyway.
There was a day in March some years back when I clearly remember waking up, going down to the kitchen for breakfast, and stopping in my tracks, thinking,My dad must have been in a terrible car wreck.He looked an absolute mess, eyes blearier than I’d ever seen on a human, face weary and basset-hound-level saggy, hobbling around with his shoulders slumped and one hand on his back like everything hurt. He had not, however, been in a wreck. It was only that the University of Kentucky men’s basketball team had lost the national championship the night before. And that was how I learned the word “hangover.”
When I go to the bathroom and glance in the mirror first thing the next morning, I look worse than my dad post–March Sadness. And never did a drop of bourbon pass my lips. Would I feel any better if it had?
Oh goodgravy,Reese, pull it together.
I brush my teeth and wash my face, doing my best to makeamends to my skin, which, between the crying and carelessly falling asleep with makeup still on, is none too happy. Plodding back to my room, I consider what I should do about the Benny situation. Something about the ten hours of sleeping like the dead has left me feeling calmer and less angry than I did yesterday, despite how much worse for the wear I appear.
Back in my room, I stick my oatmeal in the microwave and start practicing aloud what to say when I go into work, like a woman who is totally fine and stable.
“Hey, Margie, can I talk to you about something?” Hmm. Too ominous? Or just enough to fit the situation?
