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“So, who wants a piece of bread?” They both eye my offering dubiously, like it might come off the plate and attack them.
“What kind of bread is it?” Hollie asks cautiously.
“It’s like zucchini bread,” I answer.
“Well, that can’t be too bad.”
They both reach for a slice and take a bite, chewing a few moments before stilling and looking at me with wide eyes. It’s Bianca that rushes to the trash can first, spitting the chunk of bread out with aptuinoise. Hollie expels the offending bread slightly more discreetly into her hand.
“What the hell, Vi?” Bianca asks. “You said this was zucchini bread. Did you use thousand-year-old zucchinis or something?”
“No. I said it waslikezucchini bread. It’s pickle bread.”
“Holy shit, Vi. That’s notlikezucchini bread,” Hollie says while chugging her glass of wine. “That was the most sour piece of bread I’ve ever eaten.”
“It can’t be that bad, you guys. Just look at it, it’s perfect.” I grab a slice and take a healthy bite.
Okay, so it’s just the tiniest bit sour. As my saliva glands start to work overtime, I have to admit it might be more than just a little sour. Maybe I shouldn’t have added the juice to it as well as the pickles. I try to swallow but decide I can’t do it and spit it right into the trash next to Hollie’s and Bianca’s.
“I think with a little tweaking this could be delicious. Maybe I just added a little too much of the juice. I mean, there’s hardly a difference between pickles and zucchini, it should taste great.”
“Violet, honey,” Hollie says in a soothing voice like she’s worried I might explode if she says the wrong thing. “You realize that just because zucchinis and pickles are both long and green it doesn’t mean that there’s hardly a difference between the two.”
“She’s right, Vi. Not all phallic vegetables are created equal,” Bianca adds.
I let out a laugh and slide the rest of my pickle bread into the trash, right where it belongs.
TWO
Dante
Amanda Calling . . .
I throw my head back against the leather headrest of my office chair and let out a groan. What could my ex-wife possibly want now? With Bianca finally graduating college I figured that most of our communication would die out. Sadly, that hasn’t seemed to be the case. If anything, the frequency of her calls has been ratcheting up the past few months.
I look back down at the phone that’s happily buzzing away on my desk and quickly hit the decline button. I’m too busy to deal with whatever drama Amanda Moreno is trying to drag into my life.
I would feel worse about dodging her calls if we were ever really in love but we weren’t. We were two stupid kids in high school that fooled around and ended up pregnant. Amanda isn’t a horrible person, we were just never right for each other. When we found out about Bianca, we did what we thought was best for her and got married. The signs that we weren’t going to make it were apparent before our daughter was even born but being young and optimistic, we carried on anyway.
The years we spent together weren’t unhappy ones. Though, the two of us never really connected, we had our daughter, and she brought enough joy into my life to keep me there. It wasn’t until I found out that Amanda had been cheating on me and spending his money all over town that I finally threw in the towel on our relationship.
I’m a man that values honesty and loyalty. We may not have been in love but we made a commitment to each other and to our family. The moment she stepped out of our relationship, it was over between us.
It devastated me. Not so much the losing of my wife but that I had to split the time with my daughter who I was accustomed to seeing every day. She was so young back then, growing and changing every day. It felt like my heart was being ripped in two when I was away from her. Moving three hours away to Seattle had been the toughest choice I ever had to make, but it afforded me a job that I could eventually catapult into my own business and gave me the means to support Bianca in anything and everything that she’s wanted to do in her life.
Bianca has dreams, big ones, and I work hard every day so that she can reach for her dreams and not have to worry so much about finances.
Thoughts of my daughter are put on hold when I hear my front door slam downstairs. It’s either Bianca or Jake, one of my foremen. No one else has a key to my house.
“I’m in the office!” I shout to whoever is currently climbing my stairs. The heavy footsteps let me know that it’s Jake before his frame fills my doorway. His utilitarian tee shirt, jeans, and work boots are covered from head to toe in dust, letting me know he came here straight from the job site. Even his short brown hair has streaks of cement particles running through it, making it look almost silver.
“Hey, boss, how’s it going?”
I take a moment to look pointedly around my home office, taking in the desk filled with Post-its and the stacks of paperwork on every open surface that isn’t the filing cabinet where they belong. “Just great, can’t you tell?”
He lets out a laugh and grabs a stack of what I’m pretty sure are lumber receipts from the chair in front of my desk and unceremoniously shoves them onto the bookcase before taking the seat the paperwork previously occupied.
“Do you think maybe it’s time to move to an actual office?” Jake asks.
