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“You hired me to be here, Boss,” Barry insisted, jumping off my couch, and spilling milk on the floor in the process.
“I hired you to water my plants,” I clarified.
“Yeah, that’s what I’m doing!” Barry said.
“You’re eating cereal in a robe.”
“I’m keeping an eye on ‘em for you. You gotta turn them, you know. For optimal leaf growth,” he said.
“It takes twenty seconds to turn a plant, Barry,” I said, placing my backpack down on the chair at one of my work stations.
“I’m watering them too,” he added.
“Wait. Where the fuckaremy plants?” I asked, looking around, not seeing any greenery anywhere.
“They’re taking a bath. You know, the best way to water a plant is from the bottom. But they need to sit in the water for twenty minutes or more,” he told me.
Apparently, he was now a plant expert. Despite the fact that he didn’t have any plants in his apartment. Just enough streaming equipment that I knew he had to be making a pretty penny doing that.
He clearly didn’t need the money I was tossing him to water my plants. He just jumped on any opportunity to be around me.
The guy figured out I was sick once and showed up at my door with four types of soup, a bag of cold medicine, and one of those fucking watering cans you shoot through your sinuses. He’d offered to wipe vapor rub onto my fucking chest.
Then he proceeded to almost immediately catch what I had, and spend a week on my couch, leaving his snottytissues everywhere, and moaning about it being too cold in my apartment.
I would think he was into me or something, but the man was straight.
He just had a bro-crush thing going on or something.
Or he had no real friends of his own.
More likely, though, the guy just needed to find a woman.
“All of my plants are in my shower right now?” I asked, my hopes of jumping in there real quick to wash away the stress of the past few weeks slipping away from me.
“Yeah, they’re having a pool party, Boss,” he said.
I took a deep breath, trying to remind myself that it wasn’t his fault he was so… frustrating. He also had no idea I was coming home. Though, to be honest, knowing that wouldn’t have changed anything. If he hadn’t already been at my place, he likely would have hightailed it right over. Thinking that, I dunno, I would want to sit around and gossip like teen girls at a sleepover or some shit.
I was an only child.
But I could only imagine that the dynamic I had with Barry was exactly what it would be like to have a little brother.
I felt like I owed my parents a thank you for only having me.
“Alright. Finish with the plants then before you go. I’m gonna run to get coffee,” I said, grabbing my backpack again.
“Oh, I could go for a donut!” he called, making me close my eyes in the doorway, knowing there was no getting rid of him now. The guy would likely be sleeping over on the couch before I finally had enough and kicked his ass out in the morning.
“Of course you could,” I mumbled, then closed the door behind me.
After a few weeks around people I didn’t want to be around, I just wanted some peace. It looked like I wasn’t going to get that.
I figured I would just hang out at Deja Brew until I resigned myself to having Barry around when I got back home.
When it came to coffee in Navesink Bank, everyone hung at She’s Bean Around. For the ambiance and the coffee. I used to take my coffee to go. But as soon as I realized there was another shop in town, one that didn’t constantly have a line out the door, and no tables available, I’d been excited to have a place to hang out.
Add in the fact that it had a sort of cozy industrial feel with its exposed brick walls, cement floors, and ductwork in the ceiling and the fact that the coffee was probably better than any I’d ever had and, yeah, I was happy Deja Brew existed.
