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“Too sweet,” Tina said, her brow lowering into a glare. “She keeps talking to me like we’ve been friends for years. I barely know her.”
“She’s friendly.”
“Too—”
“Friendly, I know,” Harris completed with a laugh. “And maybe she is, but people are generally friendly. They’re not all awful.”
She stared at him mutely, clearly not agreeing with that sentiment, and he heaved a heavy sigh.
“Let’s go and see who won the cheese-carving competition,” he suggested, and she nodded, still not saying a word.
They turned around, and Harris contemplated reaching for her hand the way Brand had reached for Lia’s. He was on the verge of doing so when she spoke again.
“Don’t do that again, Harris. I can speak for myself. Don’t do good, or whatever that was, on my behalf. My life is fine the way it is.”
Only it wasn’t. He knew it wasn’t. He didn’t say anything in response to that and shoved his hands into his jacket pockets to resist the temptation of reaching for her again.
Tina was laughing as she parked the car outside the house an hour later. Harris was complaining about the results of the cheese-carving competition. To her amusement, he’d been grumbling about it on and off during the entire drive. He had been even more invested in the contest than Tina had realized.
“Bart Simpson,” Harris muttered as he unclipped his seat belt. They had both been disgruntled when neither SpongeBob nor David had even placed in the top three. Instead Bart Simpson had taken the prize, followed by a daffodil and a smiling emoji. A round yellow face with a smile and eyes carved into it. It had required the bare minimum of work.
“And don’t get me started on that emoji,” he continued to complain, practically reading her mind.
“It was carved by a ten-year-old, Harris,” she reminded him, trying not to laugh again.
“It ruined the integrity of the competition.”
“I mean, it was more of an honorary mention than an actual placing,” she said, and he muttered something unrepeatable.
They got out of the car, and Tina immediately noticed that Greyson’s rented sedan was back.
“Looks like your brother is home,” she said, and Harris’s gaze fell on the car as well.
“Looks that way.”
Once they reached the top of the stairs, they went silent and stood staring at each other for a moment.
“Should I . . . ?” he began, jerking his thumb toward her front door.
“No.”
“Of course,” he replied hastily.
“Good night, Harris.”
“Yeah. Good night.”
She was aware of him watching her broodily as she reached for her keys and unlocked her door.
“Tina?”
“Yes?” She turned to face him, and the corners of his lips lifted in a solemn smile.
“I really enjoyed today.”
“I did too. Thank you.”
“I hope—” He stopped abruptly and glared at the wood between his feet as he seemed to search for the right words. “I don’t want to go back to the way it was before.”
She didn’t know what to say in response to that and remained silent. He lifted his eyes to glare at her from beneath that messy shock of black hair.
“Good night, Harris.” It was all she could give him right now.
Monday’s brunch-into-lunch service was busier than Tina had anticipated, and while she was dying to speak with Libby, her friend—beyond a brief “good morning” earlier—had been too rushed off her feet to spare much time for her. Tina felt lost in her own restaurant. The staff and Libby were so efficient that she felt superfluous. They didn’t really need her for anything.
The duties she had expected to perform, like staff coordination, keeping track of inventories, and overseeing food preparation and service, were all very efficiently handled by Libby and Ricardo. Which left Tina to wander around, making uncomfortable small talk with some of the patrons. She soon gathered that—aside from handling their finances, paying the staff, and managing the marketing and PR—this was to be one of her main functions. She was the eponymous MJ, the “friendly” face of the business. And it was yet another aspect of the job she found herself completely unsuited for. She had briefly entertained the crazy notion of hiring someone to be Martine Jenson, but it was too late for that now. Everybody knew she was the MJ.
The thought of making cheerful small talk with strangers every day was enough to make her nearly break out in hives. She could feel her skin prickling at the very idea, her breath hitching in that awful stop-start manner that warned of an impending anxiety attack.
But it was a fleeting moment that she managed with barely a hitch. She wasn’t sure if she should be proud of the efficient way she’d fended off the incipient attack or saddened that she’d experienced so many of them in the past that she could handle the milder ones like a pro now.
She settled on satisfaction. She was happy that she’d managed to keep it together, especially after Saturday’s meltdown. Her victories were so few and far between that she’d take them where she could.
