Chapter 5

Cecilia

L istening to Alex talk about his accident and his recovery almost broke my heart. The only thing I kept thinking was, why didn’t I know him then? I wished I could have been there to help him! He talked about his brother being there, his cousins Luke and Annie, his dad and his other cousin Tucker flying in sometimes. He never mentioned his mom at all. Where was that woman in all this? It made me mad.

We had a lazy Sunday the next day. Both of us got up late after spending so long talking the night before, and it was pouring rain out, a grey, cold rain. We ended up going to the movies.

“Are you a candy person?” Alex asked me, gesturing at the glass counter of concessions.

Usually I was, but my throat was bothering me. “Not today. I’ll drink some water.”

The movie was pretty funny, but I started feeling worse and worse as it went on. Finally I put my head down against Alex’s big bicep, and closed my eyes. He reached up and put his hand over mine where I held his arm.

I must have dozed off, because I felt him shaking me a little. “Cecilia? You ok? The movie’s over.”

I tried to clear my throat and it hurt. “I think I need some chamomile tea and honey,” I told him, rubbing the outside of my throat. He peered at me, eyebrows furrowed.

“We’ll stop on the way home. Anything else you need?”

“Um, maybe some echinacea.”

I drank the chamomile tea with echinacea once we got home, and had a spoonful of honey. It made me feel better. “Maybe I’ll just take a nap,” I told Alex.

He looked more concerned. “Maybe you should go to the doctor.”

“For a scratchy throat? Get real! I’ll be fine.” So I slept on and off for the rest of the afternoon. Once when I woke up, Alex insisted on taking my temperature. Apparently he had made a drug store run while I was asleep, because he was hacking at the plastic packaging of a new thermometer with scissors, and then swore when he tried to make it turn on.

“How the hell does this work?” I watched him struggle for a while, while the thermometer made various noises as he jabbed at it. He got it going, and found that I had a temperature of 101. “Ok, we are going to the doctor. I found an after-hours clinic not too far from here. Come on, I’ll help you.”

I honestly felt like crap! Too crappy to even protest when he pretty much carried me down to the car. We had to wait forever at the clinic, with his arm tightly around my shoulders, and me closing my eyes. Finally I went back to an exam room. The doctor didn’t have to look at me long to diagnose strep throat, but she did have to take a sample of my throat gunk with a disgustingly long swabbing thing. I had never had one before. She also prescribed antibiotics. “Do you have any allergies?” she asked.

“I don’t think so. This is only the third time I’ve taken prescription medicine, so I’m not sure.” It hurt to talk.

“Do you have religious objections?” the doctor asked.

“No, my mom was just weird.” It was easier to sum it up that way!

I leaned on Alex heavily as he settled up at the front desk before we left. “I’ll pay you back,” I told him. “I don’t have my money because I’m not wearing a bra.”

I felt a tremor go through him. “Are you ok?” I croaked anxiously.

“I’m good. Let’s get your prescription filled.”

We went to a drugstore near his house that he swore was fast, and before he went in, he shrugged off his coat and covered me up with it, and leaned the chair back so I could curl up. I woke up when we were pulling up in front of his condo.

“Hey,” he said, quietly. “I got your medicine. Let’s go inside and you can take it and some more acetaminophen, ok?” He checked his watch. “It’s time for your next dose. It’ll help.”

And despite feeling so crappy, I felt a little wave of happiness when he said that. The last time I had been sick I had been alone in Cincinnati. That had majorly, majorly sucked. Even when I felt like a semi had run me down, I was glad to be with him.

“I’m going to help you out of the car,” he told me, but I wasn’t that sick. As I was pushing open the door, I heard someone call to him.

“Alex? What’s going on? Who is this?”

A big, big guy was walking up to us. Like as tall as Alex, but about twice as wide across. “Steve,” Alex was saying. “Hang on. I have to help Cecilia inside.”

So this was his brother. He really was bigger than Alex! Before I could really object, Alex had swung me up in his arms, and was pushing the front door open with his foot and going up the stairs. “Couch or bed?” he asked me.

“Couch.” I wanted to be near him.

He put me down, and went out of the room. His brother was staring at me. “Hi, I’m Cecilia,” I rasped at him. He didn’t answer.

Alex came back, and covered me with a blanket. “Sit up a little more so you can take this.” He handed me a mess of pills, which I obediently swallowed, then grimaced at the pain. “Do you want some tea with honey? Just nod, don’t talk.” So I nodded at him.

I looked at his brother Steve. Now his mouth was open, gaping. Eventually he sat down in a chair, and I closed my eyes. I could hear the kettle whistle faintly from the kitchen, and then Alex brought the tea. “Take a sip,” he ordered gently, and put his hand behind my head to help me hold it up.

“Alex,” his brother said in his deep voice. “What’s going on here? ”

“This is my friend Cecilia,” Alex told him. “She has strep throat.”

“She’s staying here?” His brother sounded pissed.

“Temporarily,” Alex said. “Take another sip.” He let go of my head and smoothed back my hair. “Want any more?” I shook my head no, and he turned to his brother. “Why don’t we go into the kitchen?”

I was trying to sleep, but I heard every word they said in the other room. It wasn’t that big a condo. And duh, there was a pass-through.

“Who is this woman? Is this the friend you were talking about?”

“Yes,” Alex answered calmly.

“I thought you meant a man!”

“No, she’s a woman.”

“I can see that!” Steve exclaimed. “I’m not blind. How did you meet her? Who is she? Are you sleeping with her?”

“Hey!” Now Alex’s voice was sharp. “That’s none of your business. She’s my friend, she needs a little help right now. If it would make you feel better, I talked to Dr. Mavromatis about her and he agrees that this is a good thing.”

“What do we know about that guy, anyway?” Steve sounded furious.

“Oh, now he’s a bad doctor because you don’t agree with him? Steve, back off, man! Let me live a little.”

“I won’t back off if you’re making poor choices,” Steve said.

There was a pause. “How do you know this is a poor choice? Meeting Cecilia is the best thing that has happened to me since…since ever.”

My eyes popped open and I forgot about my aching throat. What??!!??

There was an even longer pause. “I’m not going to kick her out, or tell her I can’t see her anymore, because you don’t like the idea, Steve, ok? If you take the time to get to know her, you’ll like her too.”

Obviously I had to make the brother like me! Wait, I was the best thing since ever?

“What do you know about her?” Steve persisted. “Who is she? What if she’s some kind of con artist, who knows about your trust fund?”

What?

“I’m not going to talk about this anymore. You came to me. Were you just doing a surprise inspection, or is there something going on?”

Someone, probably Steve, sighed deeply. “Mom has been calling me a lot. She really wants to see you. I know what you said, but I told her I would talk to you in person. We could meet her some place so she wouldn’t cause a scene.”

“As if negative attention from strangers ever stopped her before.”

“Fine, you’re probably right. We could go to her house, and leave at any time. If you could just talk to her a little, let her see you’re doing well…”

“She’d leave you alone?”

“God, I hope so.” Steve sounded miserable.

“What is she doing back from Naples so early in the year?” Alex asked him.

“She had to sell the house. She’s up here for good.”

“Oh, man,” I heard Alex sigh.

“I’m not sure what she wants. Maybe to apologize,” Steve told him.

For what?

“I don’t expect an apology. I don’t need one. Let me think about it,” Alex said.

“Look, why don’t we have dinner tonight?” Steve asked. His voice sounded a lot more conciliatory.

“I can’t leave Cecilia. Get some take out and bring it back. I’ll make her some soup later. That might feel good on her throat.”

There was a big pause. “I’ve never seen you act like this,” Steve said.

“Like a normal human being? I’m imitating you.”

Steve laughed, and I heard him leave. I closed my eyes again, and when I listened very closely, I could hear Alex’s almost silent tread come into the living room. He put his palm against my forehead, then I heard the creak of a chair as he sat down near me, and I finally dozed off.

∞

I woke up again to soft, rumbling voices at the table. I had to pee, bad, and I wobbled up from the couch.

“You ok?” Alex called to me, and I pushed hair out of my face and yawned.

“Yep, ok.” My throat still hurt, though. I tried to fix myself up a little in the bathroom, but it was a lost cause. Finally, I braided my hair back, but then I looked like I was six. I wanted his brother to like me.

Steve was sitting alone at the table when I came out, and I could hear Alex in the kitchen. “He’s making you soup,” Steve told me, and gestured at a chair across from him. I sat cross legged in it, and we looked at each other.

“How did you and Alex meet?”

I tried to clear my throat a little. Mistake. “I work in a coffee shop near his office. Your office. He comes in and draws.”

“What?” Steve said. Alex came back in and put a mug of soup in front of me, and I smiled at him. He was a sweetie pie. “Alex, you go into a coffee shop and draw?” Steve asked him.

Alex shot me a displeased look. Oops. “I go in there for coffee, and Cecilia sees me messing around. I’m not doing anything.”

I took a sip of soup, and it felt so good going down. “He’s really, really talented. I’m sure you know,” I told Steve.

But he just looked surprised. “No, I didn’t know.” He shook his head. “I mean, I knew you liked to doodle—”

“It’s not doodling!” I snapped. That hurt. Too loud. “He’s an artist. Haven’t you seen his portfolio?” I rubbed my throat.

“Can we not?” Alex asked me. He looked pissed. “I’m not an artist, I’m not talking about this. Steve, when do you leave for Montana?”

That started off a story about trout. When it was (finally) over, Steve kept trying to ask me questions, and Alex kept telling him that I couldn’t talk, and filled in information about me. It was so funny to hear his interpretation of my life!

Steve: Where are you from?

Alex: She was born on St. Thomas. She’s an American citizen.

Steve: You grew up down there?

Alex: She grew up on a yacht. [As if the Essex was a yacht! Tub was more like it.]

Steve: Where did you go to school?

Alex: She’s been on her own, taking care of herself. She plans to go back to school.

Steve: How old are you?

Alex: She’s almost twenty-five. [Did he know it was my birthday soon? How did he know that?]

Steve: Where’s your family?

Alex: Enough with the third degree, Stephen !

Finally Steve left, and I sighed with relief. Alex heard me. “He’s a pain in the ass,” he explained.

“He loves you.” It was getting easier to talk. “I think it’s really nice that he worries about you and looks out for you. You’re lucky.”

“Yeah, but he’s still a pain in the ass.”

“Why were you mad that I told him about your portfolio?” I asked, and stifled a yawn. Oh, I was getting sleepy again.

“Because it’s not a big deal. It’s worthless.”

I was shocked. “It’s not worthless at all! If there was a fire here, that would be the second thing I would grab!” Living on the boat, I always had a plan in case of an emergency. If you had to get out, you took what was most important to you.

“What would be the first thing you’d grab? Your bra of money?” He smiled.

“No, dummy! I’d grab you, of course.”

He looked at me with a very funny expression.

“I hope you’re not still mad that I told him that you draw. And I hope Steve liked the story of my life on the yacht.”

Alex laughed. “I’m not mad. I thought he’d relate more to a yacht rather than that awful thing you told me about camping illegally on an island and eating beach apples.”

Yeah, that had been a bad one! My mom had liked to live off the land where we could, and connect with nature, but connecting with the poisonous fruit of the manchineel tree on Barbuda had been a terrible idea. Luckily, she had only eaten a few bites and she had only convinced me to try a little nibble. It had been the one time since my birth that we had both gone to the hospital, after I flagged down a truck to take us there.

I yawned, and Alex told me it was time to go back to bed and that I should sleep in the next day. “No, I have to go to work tomorrow. I can’t call in sick, or I’ll get fired,” I said.

“You wouldn’t get fired for being sick. We can get a note from the doctor if you need one.”

“My boss is looney tunes.” I decided to deal with it in the morning. “Maybe I’ll sleep on the couch,” I said.

“What’s wrong with your bedroom? Is the mattress uncomfortable?

“No, it’s great! I just want to be…” near you. “Around the action.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Stay out here, if you want.”

I slept fitfully, getting up a few times with Alex bending over me, giving me drinks of water and tea, having me take pills.

Then I woke up again, and it was morning. And somehow, I was not on the couch, or in the guest bedroom.

I looked around. Was this Alex’s room? Why was I in here? Oh, holy shit, what time was it? I ran around like a mad woman, grabbing the note and pill bottle propped up for me on the table, and gunning Nina as fast as I could down the Lodge to get to the coffee shop.

I was about half-hour late, but fortunately, Keri had decided to come in late, too. Neveah was waiting outside in the damp April air and I apologized to her .

“I was worried!” she said. “You’re always on time!”

“I was sick,” I explained, unlocking the door and flipping on the lights. Then I opened my bag to get out the antibiotics, and there was the note I had also grabbed from Alex’s table.

Hey Cecilia—Please don’t go into work. Take a day and relax. I called the clinic and they can email/fax a note to your boss if she needs one. I left tea ready to go, just heat up the water. Call me on my cell when you get up to let me know how you’re doing. I’ll come home early. Don’t forget to drink a lot of fluids. Alex

In terms of love letters, I thought it was the best one ever written, on the whole planet. I clutched it to my chest. He remembered that I needed to drink fluids. He was coming home early for me! Meeting me was the best thing, since ever. I closed my eyes, and when I opened them, Neveah was watching me, forehead twisted. “Cecilia?”

“I’m good. This was a good letter. Let’s get everything going before Keri shows up.” I took my pills and drank fluids, and called Alex to let him know that I was at work. He was not happy, and wanted me to call him if I felt any worse, at all. Actually, I was feeling a lot better, and I told him so.

“Take all the antibiotics anyway,” he said sternly, and I saluted him through the phone.

“Yes, sir!Bossy.”

Smokey came at ten for his bagel, and then Keri finally blew in about 10:30, clearly in a bad mood. She thumped around her office, then called us over. “Cecilia? Naomi? I need to talk to you both. We’re having a meeting.”

The three of us sat at one of the marble-topped tables. “ What’s up, Keri?” I asked.

“We are now only eight months away from my wedding. That’s it.”

We nodded. “And?” I prompted.

She rolled her eyes. “ And I really need to be spending all my time working on it. I mean, my bachelorette weekend is in three months, and I haven’t done a thing about it!”

“I thought the maid of honor organized that,” Neveah said. “We planned a really nice dinner for my cousin before her wedding, but then my mom made me leave before the stripper came afterwards.” She looked disappointed.

“Ew, that’s so tacky!” Keri said. Neveah’s mouth dropped open. “I’m not exactly planning the bachelorette, but I have to tell her exactly what I want, otherwise how will it be any good? By the way,” she said to me, “Milan is now the maid of honor. Lucy is out, that skanky bitch! I saw her flirting with Harrison over the weekend. I would have used Shanti, but she’s trying to get pregnant. If she does, and she can’t be in my wedding, I’ll kill her!”

The wedding details gave me headaches. I couldn’t keep up with the bridesmaid carousel. “Um, Keri, Neveah and I should probably get back to work,” I told her, gesturing at the man waiting impatiently to order at the counter.

“I just needed to tell you both that I will be stepping back a lot here, and you two and that other guy are going to have to pick up the slack.”

There was really no place for her to step back to without the coffee shop falling off the cliff of bankruptcy! “We’ll do what we can,” I responded. “And the guy who works here is named Jason.” Keri had hired him. Neveah got all dreamy looking when I said his name.

Keri spent the rest of the morning hunched over the table, dealing with her guest list. “Nadia, bring me a non-fat half-caff latte?” she called. “I’m totally stressing. Ugh, my mom has too many sisters! Why do I have to invite them all?” She hit the keyboard of her laptop with her fist, then squinted at the screen. “Great, now this piece of shit broke on me! Stupid computer!” Tentatively, Neveah sat the latte (her fourth of the day) on the table, then scooted away.

Thankfully, Keri left to get a calming mani/pedi, and Neveah and I were alone. We cleaned up all the coffee cups and fake sugar wrappers around her table, and put the broken laptop on the desk in her office.

“I want to have a destination wedding,” Neveah told me. “In Holland! Have you ever been there?”

I shook my head.

“Well, I guess it looks just like the real Holland. You know I’m talking about a town in Michigan, right?” She held up her hand, and pointed at the left side toward her wrist. “It’s right here.”

She was demonstrating for me where Holland was located in the state, which was shaped like a mitten. It had taken me a while to understand what Michiganders were doing when they pointed at their hands. At first I had thought they were all a little crazy, holding up their hands when they talked about locations in the Lower Peninsula, but now I enjoyed it. I planned on doing that for every place I lived in the future!

“It would almost be like going to Europe,” she continued. “What do you want for your wedding? ”

I had only one thing in mind, but it wasn’t a destination. It was a person.

“I haven’t really thought about it,” I responded. “Jason will be here in an hour. Let’s brainstorm!”

While Neveah and I worked on developing a plan that would cleverly put the two of them together and simultaneously demonstrate his secret love for her, Keri’s gross fiancé, Harrison, sauntered into the coffee shop.

“Christina, Noel,” he said to us. “I’ll have a large espresso with an extra shot. Half-caff.” Neveah and I looked at each other. “I’m going to grab a table, so bring it over when it’s hot and ready for me.” He winked at me and I quickly closed my eyes so he couldn’t see them rolling.

We did rock, paper, scissors over who had to bring him his drink and I lost. “You always do scissors, Christina,” Neveah told me.

“Ha ha, Noel, you’re cracking me up,” I told her. Next time I would do the paper and smother her rock, although I never really understood that relationship.

“Here you go, Harrison. I’ll put it on Keri’s tab,” I said, as I put down the drink. His hand shot out and grabbed my wrist.

“Have a seat for a minute. Don’t waitresses always want to get off their feet?” He eyed me up and down. “You’ve got a great set of legs for such a small package.”

I shook my wrist free of his grasp. “That’s so weird, that’s just what Keri was saying about you!” I told him.

“That I have great legs?” Harrison smirked.

“No, the small package part.” Thankfully after that he didn’t stick around too long.

By the time Jason got there, our plan was all set to go. I had found an obscene amount of stuff in Keri’s office—bills, invoices, timesheets, and more!—that I didn’t think she had ever looked at. “Hi, ladies,” Jason said loudly over the music coming from his headphones. We waved back, then winked at each other significantly.

He dropped his bag in the back and came to the counter, and Neveah told him that they needed to go through everything we had found. “With the way Keri has been freaking out about her wedding, I’m afraid she’s going to run the business into the ground then we’ll be out of our jobs!” she told him, sounding so completely rehearsed that I cringed. Luckily, Jason paid attention to the content of the speech we had written out, and got worried. As we all needed to be. They sat right down together at a table to go over all the paperwork that Keri had been stuffing in her desk.

Alex came in while I was brewing tea for a customer, and I motioned him to a table and pointed at the new couple with my head. He looked confused, so I came to whisper in his ear after I had served the tea. “That’s Neveah and Jason, remember, she likes him? Watch and tell me what you think.” I stood behind him, and without really thinking, rested my hands on his broad shoulders. My, he did have nice shoulders. All that rowing.

Alex took my hands and tugged them forward, until I was leaning on his back, and I rested my chin on his head. “How are you feeling?” he asked, and I sighed a little.

“I’m tired. My throat hurts.”

“Can you leave the lovebirds here alone or will they forget to serve the customers? ”

“Do you really think they’re lovebirds?” I asked excitedly.

He laughed. “Let’s get out of here.” He swiveled his head to look at me. “You look exhausted. You should have been sleeping all day.”

“And miss hearing more about my boss’s wedding plans? That’s all she does here. Wedding, wedding, wedding. And Harrison, her fiancé. He was in here earlier, and he’s a jackoff.”

“I knew a Harrison. He was also a jackoff. But I thought women liked to talk about weddings.” I made a face. “Just a stereotype?” he asked. “My female cousins all seem to. Whenever one of them gets married, they all get really into it.”

“I like weddings,” I said. “I’ll like planning my own wedding, probably. But I’d rather just have something small, with a judge or something. And I don’t want to write my own vows.”

“Why not?”

“Well, the only wedding-like thing I ever went to was my mom’s friend Frida’s re-commitment ceremony in Dominica. She and her partner each talked for about an hour about their love and how they didn’t need a piece of paper to prove anything. They were as good as married! Then like the next month he went and got really married to someone else. Piece of paper and everything!”

“And you think it was the vows that did it?”

“I mean, it couldn’t have helped!”

“You’re a goober,” he told me.

“I don’t know why people play around at being married,” I said. “If you love someone, why don’t you just do it? I don’t like all the fake-married stuff. And I don’t like all the wedding stuff, either. All they care about is the party, not what it means.” I yawned. But the cake and the fancy dress would be fun. And the friends, and flowers. And the food and music and dancing. Yeah, maybe I would like that.

I was really tired. It felt good, resting on Alex. “Let’s go,” he urged me again. “You can leave Nina in my spot in the garage and I’ll drive home.”

It did sound really nice. “Jason? Neveah?”

They broke apart, startled. Oooh, love was in the air!

“I’m not feeling very well. Alex is going to drive me home.”

“You’re going home with him again?” Jason asked.

“Jase, I have a lot to tell you!” Neveah assured him.

“Neveah, do you mind staying for me? I’ll trade you for later in the week if you want. Or I can adjust your hours. Keri never checks.”

“I’m good,” she said, smiling at Jason.

“Great.”

Alex pulled Nina into his office garage, and I curled back up in the passenger seat of his Jeep. “Want my coat?” he asked.

“Yes, please.” He covered me up again and put on the Motown station. Oh, this was nice. I could definitely get used to this. “Wait, can you leave early? Is that ok?”

He reached over and patted my leg. “It’s my brother’s company. I don’t think he’s going to fire me.” Then he left his hand there. Yep, this was nice. Very nice.

I roused myself a little. “Hey, Alex? Did you put me in your bed last night, or did I wander in there myself?”

He squeezed my leg a little. “I wanted to keep an eye on you.”

So we had slept together? Oh, my. I got a little hot thinking about it. Maybe it was my strep throat fever.

Alex took my temperature when we got home, and yep, fever was back. “Lie right down.” He looked a little frustrated. “I wish you had stayed home today.” Then he glanced around the condo. “There’s nothing for you to do. I should have a TV for you to watch.”

“How come you don’t?”

He shrugged. “After the accident I didn’t like all the noise and the flashing lights. I don’t mind them now, though. That movie we saw was pretty chaotic.”

I had no recollection of the movie, besides cuddling up with his arm. “I’m fine. I want to sleep anyway.”

And I guess I did, only waking up for Alex to stuff more medicine in me. And then around dinner time, he heated some soup, and I saw that there was a sketchpad leaned against the chair in the living room.

I got a little weirded out when it came time to go to bed. “Ok,” I said, shifting my weight from foot to foot, “I guess I’ll see you in the morning.”

He nodded at me. “Come wake me up if you need me in the night. ”

Ok, so I guessed we weren’t sleeping together. I meant, not sleeping together , sleeping together. Ugh.

Tuesday I was done early at work, and I felt much, much better. Nearly cured, although Alex kept feeling my forehead and calling me Typhoid Mary for serving customers. That was not funny! I casually pumped Jason for a little information about Nevvie, but he was strangely subdued, which worried me a little. Then I called over to Ms. Eubank and arranged a visit for that afternoon.

She was waiting on the porch when I drove up. “Go back inside,” I called as I got out of Nina. “It’s too wet and rainy out here!”

“I’m waterproof, aren’t I?” she asked me, and took my wet jacket. “Come on into the kitchen. I made cookies.”

“For me? Thank you!” I trailed after her as she slowly walked down her hallway. Jeez, her house was kind of dingy. She pointed me to the kitchen table and indicated the cookies.

I took a bite. Oh, wow. I took a bigger bite. “These are delicious!” I told her, as soon as I had swallowed.

“I had a cooking segment on TV, and this was my most popular recipe. People called into the station to ask for it all the time.”

“Wait, you were on TV?”

“I was Detroit’s Kitchen Genie. I didn’t come up with the name! I had a friend who had a radio show, oh, a million years ago now, and he knew I loved to cook. One thing led to another, and I had a little segment on a morning show for a few years, with that dumb name. I cooked and baked all kinds of things, but peanut butter cookies were my trademark.”

“That’s so cool! I thought you said you were a teacher!”

“Honey, when you live as long as I have, you end up being many things.” She settled into her chair and reached across the table to pat my hand. “I’m glad you called me. I wanted to let you know, I reached out to some of the people whose names I gave you. I wanted to see if any of them knew anything about Roger.” She looked uncomfortable. “No one had any definite news, but my cousin Anna last heard of Roger about fifteen years ago. He told her he was moving to Canada, after having some, well, financial problems here in the States. She said it sounded as if the law might be after him.”

My heart sank.Canada?

“But she wasn’t sure, so don’t look so glum! Let me keep making some calls to the old biddy network and maybe we’ll come across some of his old friends or business associates. That’s how I think we’ll find him.” She patted my hand again. “Have another cookie.”

I chewed it slowly, looking around the kitchen, and at Ms. Eubank’s swollen knuckles on the hand that lay on top of mine. “Why don’t I help you clean up?” I asked her. “It’s only fair, since I got to enjoy the fruits of your labors. Would that be ok?”

“My goodness, I don’t want to make my guests clean.”

“But I’m offering!” I told her. So I washed the dishes, which led to wiping the counters and table, then the cabinets, which really needed some elbow grease to get them clean. We talked the whole time, despite my lingering throat ache.

She told me all about Detroit and growing up in the city. How her phone number used to be a word, and then numbers, and you talked to an operator to make a call! The riots in 1967. “I had a friend in Berkley, and I rode my motorcycle past the fires out of the city to stay with her. I was afraid I’d come home and find just ashes instead of my house, but it came through all right. Those were horrible times.”

I had scrubbed down most of the kitchen when I got a glimpse of the clock on the stove. “Oh, shit! Sorry, shoot! Alex is probably having a fit. I should have been home an hour ago!” I started to gather up my bag.

“Who is Alex? Your boyfriend?”

I felt myself blushing a little. “He’s my roommate. My friend.”

She looked at me archly. “Mmhmm. Just a friend, eh?”

“Just a friend! Can I use your phone to call him?” And as I expected, he had been freaking out.

“I thought Nina had broken down somewhere. Are you ok?”

“I’m fine, I’ll be home soon.”

“I’m making dinner,” he told me. “Prepare yourself.”

I hung up, and found Ms. Eubank had been hanging on my every word. “Worried, was he?”

“He doesn’t like my old car. And I’ve been a little sick, so that’s why.”

She nodded. “Thank you for cleaning my kitchen. It’s hard with my arthritis, and I hate to see it such a mess. ”

I smiled at her. “Can I come back and see you?”

Ms. Eubank patted my cheek. “Anytime, honey! Let me know and I’ll crank up the oven.” She handed me a to-go bag filled with cookies. “Enjoy them with your roommate.”

Alex

Steve was acting weird. He would start to say things, then stop. I saw him walking outside of my office more than a few times, glancing in but not entering. After two days of it, I’d had enough.

“I’m going to see Dr. Mavromatis,” I told him on Tuesday afternoon. “Would you like to come? Seems like you have some issues you need to work through.”

“Huh?”

“By that I mean, your inability to communicate with me. If I see you creep by my office door one more time, I’m going to have to call building security.”

He made a grimace of a smile. “Annoying, am I?”

“Very.” I remembered what Cecilia had said. “But I know I’m lucky to have you. Thank you for caring about me.”

Steve looked stunned. Had I ever thanked him? He had been with me nearly every day after the accident. Whenever I had needed anything, he had been there for me. If I hadn’t thanked him, I was more of a dick than I thought.

“You’re welcome,” Steve said slowly.

“Ok, if there’s nothing that you want to say to me…” I paused, and watched him manhandle a pen. In a minute it he was going to break it. “I’ll be back later this afternoon.”

There was a young girl crying in Dr. Mavromatis’ waiting room. When he came out to get me, I asked him if she could take my spot. I could wait.

“That’s all right, but thank you, Alex,” he said. “She already had her session. She just needs to decompress a little before leaving.” I thought of the times I had driven or been driven home from some kind of therapy. OT, PT, SLT. I hadn’t been crying, I had been filled with blistering rage, at myself, at the therapists, at all the people who were just fine, blithely going about their lives. I had treated Steve terribly, and I owed him an apology as well as my thanks. It was certainly a relief now, this many years out, that the anger was gone. Mostly.

“I’m curious to know how things are going with your friend Cecilia,” he said when we sat down.

I thought about her, how she had looked curled up in my bed. It was all I could do to keep myself from mauling her, sick as she was. I was a pervert around her. “Cecilia,” I repeated. “She’s good. She ended up getting sick, strep throat. She’s better now. Steve is in a tailspin.”

“Why is that?”

“He came over and saw that she’s staying with me. He saw me taking care of her when she was sick and got worried that she’s a con artist.”

“You’re not worried about that anymore yourself?”

I laughed a little. “No. I trust her completely. Maybe I shouldn’t?” I looked at him, but he just raised his eyebrows. “ But I do. She’s—” How could I describe Cecilia? “This will sound really hokey, but she’s like sunshine. Like anywhere she is, it’s brighter there. Do you know what I mean? Anyone would love her. Steve will come around, he just has to stop thinking that because I chose her, there has to be something wrong with her.”

“Do you think he generally believes that you make bad choices?”

I rubbed my eyes. “Pretty much, I guess. I mean, I don’t blame him for feeling that way. I was always a major fuck-up. I did terrible in high school, got tickets driving, partied all the time. My dad had to pull major strings to get me into college and I was worse there. I was always getting in trouble. Then I had the accident.”

“When did you start using?” he asked me quietly.

“I had my first drink when I was twelve. I took a bottle of wine after my parents had a party and I finished it off. I hated the taste, but I loved the feeling.”

“What feeling do you mean?”

Nothing. When I drank, I felt nothing. I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

“Twelve is very young.”

“Yeah, I guess so. I just got worse and worse. College was a nightmare. Poor Steve was always cleaning up after me, trying to make me straighten up and fly right. He probably spent every weekend at the school.”

“It sounds like he devoted a lot of time to you.”

“Exactly. And now, he has nothing, no wife, no kids, not even a girlfriend.” I sighed. “I pretty much ruined his life. But I’m trying really hard not to be his problem, anymore, so he can move on.” I looked at Dr. Mavromatis. “You know, I’ve never volunteered so much information to a doctor before.”

“I feel flattered,” he said, and I laughed.

“Sometimes we get a little stuck in our roles,” he mentioned. “It’s hard to stop patterns of behavior once they are established. Do you think that has happened with you and your brother?”

“I think he’ll jump for joy to have me off his plate. You should see how worried he gets about me, how stressed out. I have to show him that I’m ok without him, and that he can be free of me.”

“How do you plan to show him that?”

By never making another mistake, ever again. “I’ll figure something out.”

∞

I was going to make pasta for dinner with a recipe from Steve’s assistant, Danny. I had ended up talking to him when I went to get some water from the employee breakroom, and he was a pretty nice guy. I had been working at Whittaker Enterprises for seven years now, and really, his was one of the only names I knew. Maybe I could make a little more effort.

As the clock ticked the minutes past, I got more and more worried about Cecilia. Where was she? Why didn’t she ever answer her ridiculous cell phone? Finally she called and told me she was coming home. I reminded myself that I was just her friend. That’s all she wanted, and I was lucky to get it .

I was trying to evenly cut a carrot for the salad when I heard her come in. “Alex? I’m home,” she called. Man, I loved to hear her say that.

“In the kitchen,” I answered.

“Mmmm, smells good in here!” Cecilia said, coming up behind me and peeking to see what I was doing. I swung my arm around her, and pulled her in for a side hug. Then I kissed her forehead. Get a grip, Alex. I quickly let her go, but she was smiling up at me. Her smile could light up a room.

“Hey,” I said. “What have you been up to?”

“Oh, I’ve been here and there,” she said vaguely. “Can I help you cook? Isn’t that the deal we have?”

“Sit down and relax and you can do the dishes for once.” I glanced around, and noticed that it looked a little like a bomb had gone off in the kitchen. “I think I’ve used every single pot and knife that I own.”

“I can see that!” Cecilia commented, then sat down on the barstool. She put down a Ziploc of cookies on the counter. She wasn’t talking much, and I kept looking up at her.

“Who made the cookies?”

“A friend,” she said briefly.

I turned to look at her, and she was pulling on a lock of her hair, and not looking at me. “Which friend?” Holy shit, I sounded like Steve! “Never mind, you don’t have to tell me,” I said quickly.

“No, I’ll tell you. I’ve been meaning to, anyway.” She sat quietly for a minute, then got up to set the table, and we sat down to eat .

She took a tentative bite of my pasta. “Hey, this is good!”

“Don’t sound so surprised,” I said.

“I remember what you were cooking before I came. Coffee and baking soda!” she told me. She pulled her hair some more. “We can have the cookies for dessert. They’re really good. I got them from my friend, Virginia Eubank. She’s Detroit’s Kitchen Genie. That’s her most famous recipe, peanut butter cookies, so she baked them for me. I helped her clean her kitchen because she has arthritis. And I visited her because she’s a relative of mine, maybe, a second cousin twice removed, if the guy in the red short shorts is really my dad, Roger Trelles, I mean.”

I shook my head. “Hang on, you lost me somewhere around the idea that you’re meeting a genie. What?”

“No, she’s not a real genie! She was on a TV show where she cooked and baked, and that was her title. Detroit’s Kitchen Genie. It was probably before you were born.”

“Ok, so you’re hanging out with Detroit’s Kitchen Genie. And where do red shorts come in?”

“Here.” Cecilia got up, and came back to the table holding a picture. She handed it to me. “Ms. Eubank, the Kitchen Genie, she may be a relative of mine.” She was twisting her hands together. “I’m looking for my dad,” she said very fast. “I’ve been looking for him for a long time.”

She looked so sad, and worried, linking and unlinking her fingers and biting her lip. I put the picture down on the table. “Come here,” I said, and took her hand and tugged her to me, until she was sitting on my lap. “Tell me more about this.”

Cecilia curled up on me, with her head on my shoulder, plucking at the front of my shirt. “Twenty-five years ago, my mom was hanging out in the Florida Keys, and she got pregnant with me.” She continued the story of getting a list of possible fathers from her mom, all the names or partial names the woman knew or could remember, anyway. Then she described the long and painstaking journey she had undertaken to find these men, beg them to take DNA tests, and then again and again and again find out that she had the wrong guy. It had literally taken her years.

Cecilia sighed against my neck. “It was hard, and some of them I made really angry, and some of them I really disrupted their lives. But I want to find him.” She picked up her head and looked at me. “Do you think I’m crazy to do this?”

“I don’t think you’re crazy. It makes sense to wonder who your parents are.”

“Yeah, but for me it’s like The Odyssey or something! That’s a Greek book I read in high school in Miami. This guy, he goes around for years, and years, and years trying to get back to his wife and kids. It’s, well, it’s an odyssey.”

“I know that one,” I said. “Doesn’t it work out for him in the end though?”

“But what if it doesn’t work out for me, and I’ve spent all this time for nothing?” She pointed to the photograph. “Ms. Eubank told me today that he may have run off to Canada to get away from the police! I can’t go search for him in Canada.” Her lip quivered and tears filled her eyes. “I was always so sure that I’d find my dad. I’ve had this idea in my mind of our reunion for so long. I would love him, and he would love me. He would be married and have more kids, and I’d have brothers and sisters! But this guy, Roger, he just sounds like a big jerk. My mom always tells me to let it go, and that if I’m meant to find him, I will. It depends on my karma. So am I supposed to just sit there and wait?” She took a deep breath that sounded a lot like a sob.

“I’ll help you find him,” I told her. “We can find this red shorts guy together, and if he’s not the one, we’ll keep looking.”

“Really?” Her mouth dropped open and she looked almost stunned. “You’d help me?”

“I’d do anything to help you,” I told her honestly.

Cecilia looked at me, her eyes so wide in her beautiful face. And then, god help me, I kissed her. I just leaned down, and then our lips were touching, and I couldn’t seem to stop. I dipped my tongue in her mouth and she tightened her arms around me, kissing me back, until we were both breathless, and she pulled back, eyes huge.

“Alex?”

“I’m sorry.” I shifted around in the chair, trying not to rub my crotch against her. Oh, man. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done that.”

“That was ok with me,” she said, and touched my lips with her fingers. “I was just surprised.”

“That was ok with you?” Now I was the one who was surprised.

“I mean, you wanted to be just friends, but I really like you,” she said. Then she took the back of my head in her hands and pulled me back down to her mouth, until finally I had to stop kissing her, or I was going to carry her to my bed.

She was breathing hard, leaning her forehead against my chin. “Maybe we should stop and do the dishes.” She picked her head up to look at me. “You made a huge mess, you know.”

Then we both started to laugh. It felt good, everything about it.