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She nodded, turning back to close the heavy, vacuum-sealed door.
“I agree,” she said. Behind me, the machine made a gurgling sound that told me our coffee was coming up.
We leaned against the prep tables, sipping the smooth, strong brew. Our elbows were almost touching.
“You make a good cup of coffee,” she said after she’d drained the last drops from her tiny cup. I was staring at her neck, at her throat working as she swallowed.
God, I was hopeless.
Wrenching my eyes away from her milky skin, I pushed myself into uncomfortable territory just to get my mind out of the gutter.
“Thanks. I perfected the art pretty quickly after I got sober. My sponsor, Emily, suggested that I try herbal tea. I told her she could pry my espresso out of my cold, dead fingers. I’d give up the hard stuff, but I needed my coffee. And here we are, years later, still keeping the magic alive.” I raised my cup to her and then finished it off.
I could feel her eyes on me. Again, I found myself afraid to look at her. This was how I preferred to drop the bomb that I was a recovering alcoholic. Casually, like it was something bad that happened to somebody else. A joke from another life.
“I think it’s really cool that you’re sober,” she said in a soft voice. After that, I couldn’t keep myself from looking at her. I raised my head and let her see my whole real, raw face. No mask. She took it all in, and she didn’t flinch. “I’m proud of you.”
Hot pain seared through my chest at her words. They were the ones I’d waited all my life to hear from my mother. She took them with her to her grave. But here was Hope, giving it up so easily. I realized with horror that I was about to cry.
“Um, excuse me,” I mumbled, turning on my heel and hurrying into the employee bathroom. I slammed the door and locked it behind me, and then I looked at myself in the mirror.
I’d become an old man at some point. Silver at the temples, laugh lines around my eyes. I wished I could remember more of the laughs. Pretty much all of them had happened when I was deep in the pool of oblivion, completely obliterated. Those memories had been contained in brain cells that I killed like it was my job. The hardest part of being sober was being fully present for everything, and remembering all the details. Sometimes I played fights I’d had with Hope over and over again in my mind like a home movie. There was something strangely comforting about the way she wasn’t afraid to shout me down and put me in my place.
I couldn’t be in love with her. I still hadn’t managed to keep a plant alive. I was pretty sure that I would never be ready for a relationship, even with a woman who was actually available.
A knock sounded at the door and I froze, staring with wide eyes at my reflection.
“Thacker, are you okay?”
I squeezed my eyes closed and rubbed my hand over my face before shoving it up through my hair. I’d lost a lot of memories, but my mother’s words never left me.
That’s just like you, Thacker Morris. Always chasing after what isn’t yours.
28.
Hope
Standing outside the bathroom door, I considered knocking again. I wasn’t sure what stopped me—the fear of his trademark sneer, or that he would come out of there in tears. I hadn’t meant to upset him. The words just jumped out of me, because they were true. Knowing that Thacker was an addict explained so much of his personality. I raised my fist but hesitated, still unsure whether I should knock again or just let him be. Before I could decide, I heard the click of the lock disengaging as he opened the door.
“I’m fine,” he said. He wasn’t sneering, but he was back to cold and distant.
“I just meant—”
“I know what you meant,” he said, cutting me short. He looked down at me. We were standing nearly chest to chest. When I realized it, I took a step back so he could pass. But he didn’t move. When I looked back up, I found him watching me. “Thank you, Hope,” he said. I stood there like a deer in the headlights, with no idea how to respond. Thacker was always moody and mercurial but today, he seemed to change by the minute. “Come on,” he said, relieving me of the need to respond. “Let’s get started on that walk-in.”
We worked the rest of the morning, me standing just outside the walk-in, jotting down numbers as he called them out from inside. I’d offered to swap off with him so he could warm up, but he shot me down. He said he needed to make sure it was done right, which got my hackles up, but I let it pass without calling him out. Slowly but surely, I was figuring out how to not take his mood swings personally. I was also learning that he didn’t always realize when something he’d said was rude.
When he’d been in there for two hours and I could hear the tremble in his voice that told me he was getting too cold, I dropped the clipboard on the prep table with a loud clatter. He shot me an annoyed look, and I answered it with a bright smile.
“Take a break,” I said. “Let me cook you something good for lunch.”
He lingered in the doorway of the walk-in like he didn’t want to stop.
“Come on, Thacker,” I urged. “You’re freezing. Plus, the door has been open as long as it can be. Any longer and the food will start to spoil, and then we’ll just have to do inventory all over again once we throw everything out.” That convinced him. He stepped back into the kitchen and closed the industrial refrigerator door behind him.
“I’m going to go look over these numbers,” he said, bee-lining for the clipboard. I snatched it up just as he reached for it and he rounded on me, nostrils flaring. I held it up in front of my chest like a shield.
“I thought maybe we could talk,” I said cheerfully. He furrowed his brow in irritated confusion.
