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Under the fluorescent light of the supermarket, all the cheese looked like white and orange chunks of sameness. But if Mona thought this was the most important part, I didn’t want to fuck it up before I’d even started. I googled all the cheeses on my phone but words like waxy and grassy didn’t really give me much to go on.
Finally, I picked the three most expensive chunks of cheese in the display, wincing at the cost and playing Rhys’s voice in my head, telling me what he always told me if we were at the store together. Get anything you like. Get anything you want to try. Then, ever since I’d told him it wasn’t just the money, If you don’t like it, I’ll eat it. I promise it won’t go to waste.
I put the cheese in my basket and wandered up and down the aisles, gathering the rest of the items on Mona’s list. Near the checkout line were a few bunches of flowers.
You deserve everything.
I smiled at the memory of the first time he’d brought me flowers, and added a bunch to my order. That had been the night Rhys had told me what his album would be like if he ever released one. His face had glowed as he described it. I’d told him what I could remember about my mother. About my cousins whispering that she might have been deported. I’d choked on the word, and before I could say anything else, Rhys had slid his fingers through mine on the white tablecloth, and held my hand for the rest of dinner, smoothly changing the subject as I gulped my whole glass of ice water.
On the walk home from the grocery store, hands numb from the handles of the bags, I thought I saw someone walking a little ways in front of me down the highway, but the beams of passing cars showed no one was there.
* * *
—
“Hey.” Noé hung in my doorway tentatively on Friday morning. Relief spread through me. I’d thought he was gone for good.
“Hey, come in,” I said.
He flopped into the chair. He looked wrecked.
“You okay?”
He nodded and muttered, “Sorry.”
“It’s cool. I’m glad you came back. I’m really sorry I upset you.”
“Wasn’t you,” he said, shrugging.
“Yeah, I know.”
“I don’t have an appointment. But I just wanted to say . . . I like to take pictures.” He addressed the words to his sneakers, but his voice was soft. “It’s why I took that photo job. I kinda thought maybe if I got good at all the boring crap then Chester might let me use a camera. Fucked that up good.”
“Do you have a camera now?”
“Just on my phone.” He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter anyway. Everything I take pictures of . . .” He bit at his lip and shook his head. “It turns to shit.” When he looked up his eyes were haunted, and my heart stuttered in my chest. “I try to take a picture of a bird and the angle makes it look broken. Or kids playing basketball and the shadows look like hands trying to grab them. Took a pic of my friend and he looked . . . wrong.”
My heart pounded, and I saw branches turned to eerie fingers and heard the chirps of birds twisted into screams.
When I spoke, my voice was deceptively calm.
“The way you see the world, even if it feels grim . . . there’s value to it, Noé. And maybe if you take enough pictures, someday it won’t look that way to you anymore.”
“Yeah, maybe,” he said, but his voice was flat and his eyes were gone.
* * *
—
“Mother fucking shit fuck!” I yelled, jerking the pan off the burner. It was the third time the butter and flour in the pan had gone from an uncooked blob to a foul-smelling black lump in the space of what seemed like one second, and at this point I was as concerned that I’d run out of butter as that I’d burn the house down.
I fumbled with my phone, shocked at myself as I dialed. But I wanted it—needed it—to be perfect. Mona answered on the second ring, voice bright. She sounded legitimately thrilled to hear from me.
“Matt, hello! How are you, dear?”
“Hi, Mona, um, hi. I have this—well the—I mean, how are you?”
“Béchamel blues?”
“What? Oh yeah. Yes. The flour and butter thing. That’s important? Cuz mine keeps burning.”
“It can be a little tricky if you have your burner too hot. How about if I talk you through this bit?”
“Yes, please,” I said, so relieved it almost blotted out my irritation at myself for not being able to do something so simple on my own.
I added more butter and more flour and stirred consistently, Mona on speakerphone. I stirred in the milk and as it began to thicken, I sighed. “Fuck, thank you. Uh. I mean, not fuck. Just thank you.”
