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Maybe this isn’t the kind of love that deserves to exist.

Maybe it’s the kind that wars start over.

The kind that topples empires and never leaves the world better than it found it.

Cross Stitch, by J. C. Vale. I’d loved that part too.

I took a screenshot.

“Hey, are we going in or what?” Lexi was standing impatiently by the back door.

“Yeah, sorry.” I put my phone away.

We came into the café and put our stuff in the locker. Mike’s sister Janessa was there opening the register. She didn’t even look up.

Lexi leaned in while I started the coffee. “Now, that is someone who needs to get laid,” she whispered.

“Oh my God, stop,” I whispered back.

“The last guy she dated had balls hanging off the back of his truck.”

I choked quietly.

“Uh, there’s a lot to do?” Janessa said, shooting us an annoyed look.

We gave each other an amused glance and separated.

I made the cute picture of Woofarine my screensaver, and I saved the quote in a folder in my phone.

“Thank God for this job,” Lexi said, turning on the syrup warmer. “I don’t think I’d eat more than once a day if I wasn’t getting a meal for free.”

Honestly, it was one of the only perks of restaurant work. I usually saved half my lunch to eat for dinner. If we really got lucky, the chefs would mess up an order and I’d get to take that home, too, though Donna and Janessa usually made them throw it away so they wouldn’t “mess up on purpose” to get extra meals. At this point I wasn’t above digging a perfectly good sandwich out of the trash.

“One day I want to have brand-name cereal money,” I said, tying on my apron.

“With real milk,” Lexi said, filling up the creamer bowls. “Not the evaporated stuff Mom always got when the electricity was shut off and we didn’t have a fridge.”

“God, why was it so bad?” I grimaced.

“We used to buy the cherry Kool-Aid packets because they were so cheap. One time I put that on cereal just so I didn’t have to use the shitty milk.”

“I used to get excited when the food shelf had the brand-name SpaghettiOs. The ones with the meatballs in them,” I said, still remembering the elation when they had a can.

“Bonus if it wasn’t expired.”

“I don’t know how we would have survived if it wasn’t for WIC and the free pantries,” I said, filling up a sanitizer bucket. “One day I want to make enough to donate all the stuff I wish they’d had.”

She wiped coffee grounds off the counter. “No Great Value brand. No cereal in a bag.”

“And no Vienna sausages,” I said.

“If I never eat another fucking Vienna sausage… I think we’re closer to needing the food shelf than donating to it though,” she muttered.

She was right. But I could still dream.

7

CHRIS