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“Don’t,” I cut him off. “Let’s just pretend it never happened, okay?”
He seemed like he wanted to say something more, but I held firm. “Please? It’s just easier.”
He nodded. “Okay. Thanks for the coffee.”
“No problem.” I turned away. It took all my willpower not to glance back at him as I stepped through the front door. Lucy was sitting at the table, patting Bess, when I came back inside.
“You don’t mind me checking out your samples with you, do you? Because I won’t be the least bit offended if you’d rather do it on your own.”
“No, not at all. I’m not very good at this sort of thing, so I appreciate the help.”
“Perfect. Because I’m great at it.”
“Awesome!” I said with a laugh as I went to finish making our coffee.
“So, what do you do for work, Zara?” Lucy asked as she moved the sample boxes to the table and started ripping them open like a kid on Christmas morning.
I flinched inwardly. It was a normal, obvious question. Chef was an easy, simple answer. Except itwasn’tas simple as that anymore, was it? Bringing the coffee to the table, I noticed Lucy shooting me a questioning look. “I’m a, uh…I’m a chef.”
“Wow, cool.”
“Yeah, I guess so,” I replied unenthusiastically, going back to the kitchen to get the cake while Lucy laid tile samples out on the table.
“Really? It’s not cool?”
I sighed. I’d made it so much weirder than it had to be. “It used to be, I guess. But I’m not so sure anymore.”
“Fair enough. I hear it’s really stressful.”
“What about you?”
“IT consultant.”
“Also cool.”
“Yeah, it suits my anal-retentive personality to a tee. And I work for myself, so I don’t have anyone else to answer to. Well, except for my clients, of course.”
“Wow, that’s great. So do you work from home, in Esperance, then?” I sliced the cake and, putting it on a plate, added a fork and handed it to Lucy. As I did so, I caught Lucy’s flinch, just a little. I totally understood that. But I couldn’t think of a way to back out of the question without making it weird and obvious, so I just let it hang, turning away to plate my own slice of cake.
“Not right now. I, uh, I’ve recently moved. I’m staying with my parents, and it would be pretty hard to work from there.”
“Gotcha.” I pulled out the chair across from Lucy and watched as she organized the samples by color on the table.
“So I’m travelling to a coworking space most days until I finish up the contract there.”
“Crap, sounds like a pain.”
“It is, a bit. But it’ll get easier once the div—”
And there it was. Lucy’s weirdness was because she didn’t want to talk about her divorce. “I’m recently divorced myself,” I said. The blunt confession almost surprised me, but I was happy to see it made Lucy’s shoulders sag slightly in relief.
“Are you?”
“Yeah.”
Lucy sighed. “It’s shitty, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” I said again.
