Ryder's Boys

by Cody Ryder

  He walked up to the front door and used the spare key he had to open it, and the nostalgic smell of spaghetti and meatballs wafting out from the kitchen greeted him. His favorite.

  “Mom!” he called. “I’m here.”

  “In the kitchen, sweetheart!” his mother’s voice called back.

  He took off his shoes and walked across the living room’s plush white carpet, past the huge windows that gave a spectacular view out at the La Jolla shore, through the dining room, and into the expansive kitchen where his mother was working at the stove.

  “Hi, mom,” Joe said, coming up to her and wrapping his arms around her.

  “Hi, Joey,” she said, hugging him back. She took a quick taste of the spaghetti sauce. “Mm. Perfect.” She turned to face him, and gasped. “Honey, what happened to your face?”

  “Boxing class,” he said. “It’s nothing. The spaghetti smells great.”

  “Well, I knew you were coming, so I had to make it for you. We can eat soon, if you’re hungry.”

  “Definitely. But I can’t stay long, I’ve got some work I need to finish, okay?”

  She smiled. “Alright, I understand. Why don’t you go watch some TV while I finish with the food?”

  “It’s okay, I want to talk to you. Is there anything I can help you with?”

  “Why don’t you make the salad for us? Stuff’s all in the fridge there.”

  He went to the fridge and pulled out a plastic box full of spinach, a couple plump tomatoes and an avocado, and brought them over to the counter.

  “Oh, guess what?” she said. “I met someone.”

  “You did? Really? It’s been a while since you’ve dated anyone, isn’t it?”

  “Well…no,” she said with a sheepish smile. I just never mentioned it before.”

  Joe laughed. “Tell me he’s not a loser, mom.”

  “I’ve learned my lesson too many times,” she said. “But I realized I do have a type. I can’t deal with the hoity-toity businessmen type you hang around with. No offense.”

  “So who’s this guy?” he asked as he washed the spinach.

  “I met him at a farmer’s market. He has a farm. Those tomatoes are his, actually. He’s a real salt of the earth kind of guy, just the kind I like. But he doesn’t drink. Doesn’t do much of anything, really, except work on his farm. But he’s charming, and a little rough around the edges.”

  “Sounds like your type,” Joe said. “But he definitely doesn’t sound like a loser. That’s great, mom.” He washed the tomatoes and then started to slice them on the cutting board. “Actually, I…met someone too.”

  She gasped. “You did? Someone serious?”

  He nodded. “But I don’t know if things are going to work out.”

  “Why not?”

  “I kind of screwed things up, mom. He doesn’t want to talk to me.”

  “What do you do?”

  He sighed and transferred the salad ingredients into a bowl. “It’s hard to explain. It has to do with my company. He also has a coffee shop, and mine is pushing his out of business. But we didn’t know that until recently.”

  “Wow,” she said. “That’s dramatic.”

  “I’ll say. But I want to help him. I want to be there for him. And I think I can help him, but I don’t think he’d let me.”

  “If he loves you, and if he’s right for you, then he’ll understand what you’re trying to do for him.”

  “I don’t know. This is pretty bad, mom.”

  “You’re a good person, Joe. You need to stick to your guns. Help him. It doesn’t matter if he still hates after, but you have to follow through. And if it was meant to be, then it was meant to be. If not, then at least you did the right thing.”

  “That makes sense.”

  She turned off the stove and then poured the steaming pasta into a strainer. “Of course it does. You’ll make the right decisions. You don’t need me to tell you what those are. You were always better at making good decisions than I was, anyway.”

  He laughed, and came over to give her a kiss on the head. “Thanks, mom.”

  “You’re welcome. Okay, help me bring this into the kitchen. Let’s eat.”

  Nineteen

  “Two spicys,” Julia called back to Marcos as she finished ringing up her customer. She then quickly set to work at the espresso machine, and after she’d made her magic, brought the drink out to the woman who had ordered it.

  It was a relief having Marcos back. With Bruce out of commission, it had been extra stressful having to multi-task everything—even for someone like her, who thrived on multi-tasking.

  A short while later, Marcos brought the sandwiches out to the floor, and things were completely quiet again. Julia poured them cups of freshly brewed iced tea, and they enjoyed them at the counter.

  When the door chimed, Marcos looked up and smiled. “Hello, sir. Welcome.”

  Julia turned around from the counter and tensed up when she saw who was in the door.

  “What are you doing here?” she jabbed. “Didn’t I say never to come back here?”

  “Oh, shit,” Marcos murmured in realization.

  “Listen,” Joe said, holding up his hands in front of him. “I’m here because I want to talk about Bruce.”

  “You need to get out,” Julia said.

  “I need your help, please, I’m begging you. I’ve been calling him, but can’t get through, I need to talk to him. You don’t know how much I love him—”

  “I don’t care! Get out!”

  “Julia,” Marcos said, gently grabbing her arm. “Hold on.”

  “Marcos! You know who that man is, right? You know what he’s responsible for?”

  “Yeah, it’s Joe. I got that. But listen.” He pulled her close, his voice lowering. “I know you’re mad, I’m mad too. But I think we need to give the guy a chance.”

  “Why should we give him a chance? Did he give us a chance?”

  “Look, all I’m saying is that we should hear what he has to say. Callie would’ve done that for him, you know?”

  He felt Julia slowly relax.

  “So let’s give him a chance?”

  She crossed her arms and sighed. “Fine.”

  “Thank you,” Joe said, walking forward. “I’m sorry, I didn’t get your name.”

  “Marcos. Don’t get comfortable, I never said I liked you. I’m just giving you a chance.”

  “Right. I understand. Maybe we can sit and talk?”

  Julia gestured to a table. Joe sat down, and the two of them followed.

  “I don’t know how I can convey how much Bruce means to me,” Joe said. “But please believe me when I say that my desire to help LeFlorette’s has nothing to do with my love for him, although it means even more now. I’d fallen for this place before I’d fallen for Bruce.”

  “You’d fallen for this place,” Julia repeated, unconvinced.

  “It’s why I kept coming back. But it was being with him that helped guide me down the path towards the decisions I’m now making.”

  “What are you talking about?” Marcos asked.

  “I’m going to making some changes in my company. I’ll spare you the boring details but essentially I want to go back to our roots. As soon as we became really successful we started moving further and further away from the ideals we founded on. I want to stop that before it’s too late. Part of that plan would involve LeFlorette’s.”

  “How?”

  “The sandwiches. My current CFO pushed low quality, but well marketed foods into our stores. We used to only serve coffee. It’s what we started on. Just quality coffees. I can’t save your business, but I can save what really matters, and those are the recipes that Bruce’s parents made, and that he’s helped improve on. I’ve tasted his cooking. It’s fantastic.”

  “How do we know you’re not just trying to steal our name and recipes to make your brand seem more authentic?” Julia asked.

  “Contract,” Joe said, and he put his briefcase on the table. “I
can show you a sample of it right now. You’d have everything in writing, and nothing Bruce feels uncomfortable with would stay.”

  “And how does he know he can trust you?”

  “I don’t know how I can answer that. But maybe you can help me convince him.”

  Julia and Marcos looked at each other. “How would we do that?”

  “Well, first you could look at this contract. If you’ve both have read it and approve of it, he might more willing to look at it himself. I want to do this for him, regardless of whether he forgives me or not.”

  “I don’t know shit about that kind of thing,” Marcos said. “Julia, you look at it.”

  She sighed. “Okay. Fine. Let me see it.”

  “Okay,” Joe said, and he opened his briefcase and pulled out a small packet of papers. “Take as long as you need.”

  She did. After ten minutes of reading, Marcos got up and went to clean the tables and wait at the register. After thirty minutes, he made the three of them lattes and brought them to the table. After an hour, Julia had read the contract through twice.

  “So,” she said, closing the packet and pushing it back towards him. “What do you have planned for getting Bruce back?”

  Joe blinked, and then broke into a bright grin. “Do you happen to know a good florist?”

  Twenty

  The whiskey was long gone, but it was better that way. His headache seemed to be unending now, and his bed the best place to deal with it.

  When he dozed off his dreams were filled with him, and when he woke, his heart was always pounding. Why did it have to be him? The question circled around his head in a never-ending loop.

  He missed him. He wanted to see him. Joe hadn’t called or come by, and Bruce had tried his best to convince himself that he didn’t care and didn’t want him to, but the reality was that he did. He dreamed the phone would ring and it would be him, and everything would be fine. When the postman dropped the mail into the slot on the door, he bounded out of bed, thinking—praying—that Joe had come to see him.

  The strange thing was, he still couldn’t come up with an answer for what he’d do if it were actually him. He might just slam the door in his face, or hang up the phone. He didn’t know.

  He got up from his bed and went to the bathroom, catching a glimpse of himself in the mirror. It’d only been three days, but he looked more like a week deep. His hair was greasy and disheveled, he hadn’t shaved, his eyes were red from crying. It seemed that whenever he had a tear to spare, he’d shed it.

  I’m pathetic, he thought. What the hell is wrong with me?

  You love him, a voice came. It’s fine to grieve. But it’s time to pick yourself up. To move on. And maybe it’s time for forgiveness?

  I don’t know if I can forgive him, he thought. Can I?

  “That can come later,” the voice said. “There’s someone else you need to forgive, first.”

  Bruce turned around. That voice…it wasn’t in his thoughts. It was…

  He walked out of the bathroom towards the kitchen and towards the sound of the voice. Bright bands of sunlight streamed onto the kitchen floor from the windows, and Bruce squinted his eyes. His head didn’t hurt, but his eyes felt like they hadn’t seen sunlight in years.

  “Mom?”

  His mother was standing there in the kitchen, a halo of light surrounding her body. She wore a white dress. “Hi, Bruce,” she said.

  “Hi, mom,” he said.

  “You’ve done all you can, honey. You know you have. You’ve done a damn fine job of it too. Better than I ever could’ve.”

  “Mom…”

  “Don’t argue with me, Bruce. You know it’s true.”

  “Then why couldn’t I do it? Why couldn’t I save the shop?”

  She smiled. “Some things can’t be saved, honey, no matter how badly we want to. But you did your best, and that’s all you can do. So, it’s time to let all that go now, okay? You know it, but now it’s time to embrace it.”

  He looked at her, the tears overflowing from his eyes.

  “Do you know who you need to forgive?” she asked him.

  He wiped the tears from his cheeks, and then nodded slowly. “Yeah.”

  “Good. I’m proud of you. Here…” She lifted up her hand, and in it, she held a single white rose.

  He reached his hand out to take the flower from her. His fingers touched its stem…

  His eyes opened.

  A dim light blanketed his room, drifting in through half-closed blinds. His heart was pounding.

  A dream…

  Bruce looked at the clock—it was midafternoon. He’d nearly slept all day.

  He groaned as he sat up and slid out of bed. His headache was gone, but his body felt like he’d been in the ring and had taken the beating of his life. He went to the bathroom and checked himself in the mirror—he was even more disheveled than he was in his dream. After rummaging through a drawer for a while finally located a small bottle of ibuprofen, and tossed back one of the blue and red capsules. Then he filled the tub with water so hot that the bathroom immediately clouded with a thick layer of steam. He stripped off his clothes, and lowered himself into the bath.

  He felt like a new man after emerging from the water, and after wiping the steam from the bathroom mirror, Bruce lathered his face with shaving cream and set to work removing his three days of growth.

  He wandered into the kitchen and stared at the spot where he’d seen his mother in the dream. Sun from the window formed a diamond of light speckled with the dancing shadow of a tree branch on kitchen floor.

  There was a knock at the front door. Bruce looked up, unsure if he was just imagining things, but it came again. His mind immediately filled with thoughts of him.

  He pulled open the door. “Julia,” he said.

  “Hey. Surprised to see me? I brought coffee.” She grinned and held up a thermos.

  “No, I guess I’m not,” he said with a small smile. “Come in.”

  “How are you doing, Bruce?” she asked, pouring them both a cup of coffee. “Are you alright? I’m sorry I didn’t come by earlier.”

  “It’s okay,” he said, sitting down at the kitchen table. “I’m sorry I left you fend for yourself. That wasn’t okay of me.”

  “No, it’s fine. You would’ve done the same for me. Besides, Marcos is back.”

  Bruce smiled. “He is. I’m glad he came around.”

  Julia sipped her coffee. “So, are you alright, Bruce?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I’m still in shock, I think. It’s difficult for me to process…”

  “Do you hate him?”

  He shook his head. “No. No, of course not. You probably wish I did though, huh?”

  “No,” she said. “No, Bruce I don’t. I might’ve overreacted. I was so caught up in what he represented that I couldn’t help but hate him.”

  “I felt the same. It is hard for me to accept that he’s the same man who owns The Standard. But…I still love him…”

  Julia reached across the table and took Bruce’s hand. “Marcos and I have talked, and…we think that we should work to close the start closing the shop.”

  Bruce blinked. “Huh?”

  “You were right. We should start looking for someone to take over the lease, and shut the shop the down. There’s a plan that we have for rebirth, but it’ll need your approval first.”

  “Rebirth? How?”

  “I can’t tell you here. You need to come back to the shop. We’ll be able to explain and show you everything.”

  “I don’t understand. If we close, we close. There’s no coming back from that, Julia. We’ve discussed all of our options.”

  “Not all. Come on, Bruce. Let me show you.”

  They took Julia’s car, and Bruce could only sit in a daze. He gazed out the window and contemplated the end of his business, and where life would go next. He’d reach out to Joe…if he were even willing to talk to him again after what he did to him. He felt empty. He just coul
dn’t imagine life without the shop, without that environment, without his friends.

  When then pulled past the front of the shop, Bruce did a double take. At first he didn’t recognize that they had even arrived, the scene outside was so drastically different than what he’d grown used to.