The Other Side of the Street

by Nicole Thorn

  “Do you not?”

  “No.”

  “You brought me flowers in some attempt to woo me into your bed.”

  Hammy smirked at me, giving my heart a strong kick. “First off, you’re the one who keeps mentioning sleeping with me. Second, these aren’t for you.”

  “What? Then who are they for?”

  When my mom walked by behind us, she didn’t even get a full wave in before Hamilton shoved past me and presented her with the flowers. She looked confused, naturally, and didn’t take them.

  “These are for you, Mrs. Barker,” Hamilton said with a smile he must have thought looked charming. And fun. And sexy.

  “Um, thank you, honey,” Mom said, finally taking them. “Did I forget my birthday again? I don’t know if we know each other well enough for you to feel obligated to get me anything.”

  “No, it’s not your birthday,” Hamilton said. “It’s a bribe.”

  I felt colder suddenly, and it had little to do with standing under the AC vent.

  Mom laughed, lifting an eyebrow. “I’m listening.”

  Hammy aimed a crooked smile at me as he spoke to her. “I have a thing for your son, and you have to make him date me.”

  I could have died right there. For the fact that the boy I liked tried to bribe my mom. For the fact that he liked me back at all. For the fact that he liked me so much that he made any kind of effort in getting me.

  Mom looked at me funny. “Is there a reason you aren’t dating him? Is he a secret serial killer?”

  “I appreciate that you would go to serial killer before the very real option of, maybe he just doesn’t like me,” Hamilton said.

  “Oh, well that’s not it. He talks about you too much for me to think that.”

  “Mom!” I hissed. “Why?”

  She shrugged. “It is what it is,” she said, sniffing the flowers in her hands.

  Because the gods hated me, my father walked into the room. He and Mom both had the day off, so that meant the whole family would show up. Unless Bea had to get to the job she’d abandoned me for.

  Dad poked the flowers Mom held. “Someone trying to steal my wife from me? They can try, but no one’s ever gonna be able to make toast in the exact way she likes. That bastard would die before they cracked the code.”

  Hamilton held a hand up. “I’m the bastard. And I’m trying to get your son, not your wife.”

  Dad nodded. “A tale as old as time. Where are my flowers? Do I not get a ‘I like your son’ present?”

  “Oh, this is a bribe,” Mom told him. “Hammy wants help trying to get Jay to come around. I guess he’s being difficult.”

  “Why’s that?” Dad asked.

  I took a deep breath before, “Sworn! Enemies!” came out of my mouth. “Why does everyone keep forgetting that?”

  Dad’s eyes narrowed at me in scrutiny. “Boy, do you have any idea how many literal love stories start with that shit? A ton of them. It’s the hook.”

  “I care not for hooks!”

  Dad turned to Hamilton. “I like those puffy Cheetos, ya know, if you wanted to bribe me into helping too. I also like lemonade.”

  So is that it then? I am on my own in this battle? It didn’t surprise me. I had been on my own for a hell of a lot more than this in life.

  “Well,” I said. “I guess I’m gonna go get pants on.”

  I started walking away, only to have Hamilton insist he follow me. Neither of my parents protested that. Hamilton could have done any means of vile, hot thing to me in my room with the door closed. Did they not even care?

  I opened my dresser, hearing my bedroom door close behind me. I didn’t even look up to glower at Hamilton, instead glaring at the pants in my dresser that didn’t deserve it. They did nothing wrong.

  “Are you mad at me?” Hamilton asked.

  “No.”

  “Are you lying?”

  “No.”

  I heard him sigh. I could picture him rubbing his eyes, looking tired. Everyone always liked to say how tired I looked, but they seemed to miss that he looked every bit as worn out.

  “If you don’t like me,” Hamilton started, “You can say that. I’ll stop. It’s fine if you flat out don’t like me. We’re sworn enemies and all that.” The words sounded weak. Quiet. Sad.

  I pulled a pair of pants out, staring at them. I felt a lump in my throat and couldn’t make myself look at Hamilton. “Sworn enemies or not, it feels like we’re friends.”

  “We are.”

  Finally, I turned to him. “I haven’t had friends. I like it. If we started dating and something bad happened, then I wouldn’t have that anymore. I wouldn’t have anything. Just the same tired life I’ve been dealing with.”

  Hamilton took a couple of steps to me. “If you think I would abandon you if we broke up, then you must be forgetting Sam.”

  “Oh, so you want to start a collection of ex boyfriends?”

  “I haven’t thought about it, because I haven’t thought of what would happen if we broke up. Why would I bother spending my time worrying about something that could possibly not happen? I would rather enjoy the present than create some self-fulfilling prophecy out of my own worry.”

  My jaw tightened. “I can’t help my anxiety.”

  “I know that. I don’t know how to make it better for you, but I can promise I’m not going anywhere. And as long as it doesn’t make you hate me, I fully plan on going to great and possibly embarrassing lengths to get you to be my boyfriend.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re worth it.”

  I didn’t believe him. I didn’t even understand it. But I felt it. I felt that he believed it, and he understood it. Hamilton could see something I couldn’t, clearly. I didn’t know if that made him crazy or optimistic, but I knew what it made me.

  He hadn’t expected it when I pushed him against the wall, or when I kissed him. It only took a couple of seconds for him to catch on, parting his lips under mine. He tasted like syrup and soda he shouldn’t have drank so early in the morning.

  When I pulled away, I didn’t say anything. Hamilton looked me up and down, smirking before he silently opened my door and left. I caught my breath.

  I changed my clothes, finding that Cullen had been in my room the whole time. He looked at me like I was a moron, but that could also have just been his face. He tended to get judgmental when he didn’t think he got enough treats.

  “What do you want from me?” I asked the dog. “Am I supposed to just throw him to the ground and have my way with him? That would be unsanitary.”

  Cullen yawned at me, laying his head back on his paws.

  When I got to the kitchen, it had filled up with people. Hamilton stood at the counter, his back to us as he messed with something. Beatrice sat at the table with Mom, and she had a single flower she turned in her hands. Mom had put the rest in water.

  “Excuse me, my love,” Dad said when he needed Mom to move her feet so he could sweep.

  “I told you I would do that,” she said.

  He smiled at her, continuing on. “I wouldn’t make you do that. You’re already a working girl.”

  Mom sighed, frowning. “I told you to stop calling me that. You know that’s a code for hooker, right?”

  “Is it? That makes no sense. Though I’ve told you before that you’re so damn good I should pay you.”

  Bea and I groaned, but Hamilton laughed. I should have kicked him.

  “You’re the sweetest.” Her expression turned thoughtful for a few seconds. “Could you help me with that lightbulb in our bathroom?”

  Dad’s brow furrowed. “What lightbulb?”

  Mom rose from the table. She grabbed his collar and dragged him away while I pretended I didn’t know what was happening.

  “Hammy told me the plan,” Bea said, looking too pleased. “He also told me that he would get me the best birthday presents when I’m his sister-in-law. So, I’m another member of the army to wed you.”

  “Lovely,”
I sighed as I walked over to figure out what Hamilton had started. He had bags of food, setting things out on the counter. “What’s that?”

  “We’re gonna cook today,” Hamilton informed me. “I think we could make more money if we had different options. And since you threatened for an hour yesterday to become a witch so you could curse Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dumbass, I thought this was a better option.”

  I stared flatly at him. “You think I couldn’t get it done?”

  “I think I don’t want to let the fury build in you so deep that it unlocks some kind of black magic.”

  “We have to work today.”

  “This is working.”

  I got suspicious, so I took my phone out of my pocket. Sure enough, the weather said it would be a toasty one hundred and fifteen degrees. Ten degrees hotter than the day I passed out.

  Everyone worried about me. I knew it was perfectly rational, and I deserved the guilt of what I’d let happen. It didn’t change the fact that a day inside would fill me with even more guilt, but I could picture the look on Hammy’s face the moment before I went down. That, and the look on my parents’ faces when I came home.

  “Fine,” I said. “But I have to restock on honey. I’m almost out.”

  “Should we do that now, or later?”

  “We?”

  “Sure.”

  I might have protested, but I kind of didn’t mind the thought of him seeing what I did. Not that it was impressive or anything, but it meant the world to me. I didn’t know what I would do without my bees.

  I took him into the backyard, where I kept the bees. I had a couple of hives that normally gave me plenty of honey. Hamilton seemed to notice, keeping his distance when I sprayed the go to sleep stuff.

  “You don’t need a suit?” Hamilton asked me.

  I shrugged. “I’ve only been stung a couple of times, and that’s because I was being dumb. If you’re careful, then you don’t need much.” Also, that stuff cost a lot of money I didn’t have.

  While I retrieved the honeycombs, Hamilton looked around the backyard. We had our own garden that the bees frequented. I liked that element of it, and the idea that we added a little extra homemade to the honey. It probably made no difference in the taste, but I enjoyed it all the same.

  “You just take those things out?” Hamilton asked me while I gathered the combs.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Then I have to take them to the garage and scrape the wax off. Then I put in in a machine I spin around my hand, so the honey falls off.”

  “By hand?”

  I nodded. “Dad and I built a version of it ourselves, so it takes a little extra elbow grease. Bigger places can afford the actual tools, but what I have works for me.”

  Hamilton helped me carry everything into the garage, and I did my best to show him how to get the wax off. It took a lot of work, and I knew he wouldn’t want us in a warm garage for too long. This could wait until the sun went down if it needed to.

  When we got back inside, we started doing what he came over for. Hamilton had a bunch of food and new spices set out like some grand display. He even held his hands out to present it.

  “I don’t know how to cook,” I told him.

  “I’m aware,” he said. “I know how to cook. It’s not hard. We’re just experimenting today.”

  Bea snickered from the table. “I bet that sounds like a good time to you.”

  I flipped her off.

  Mom came back into the kitchen sans Dad, declaring that he probably wouldn’t be back for a while. Again, I pretended like I didn’t know what happened. It was easier that way.

  “What are we doing?” Mom asked as she sat at the table. Dee followed only a few steps behind, and she crawled up onto her lap.

  “Cooking,” Hammy said. “And since you’re all here, you get to be the test subjects.”

  Dee gasped. “Oh, are you gonna make cookies?”

  “Cookies?” I heard from the hallway. AJ poked his head out. “I want cookies.”

  “Normal food,” Hamilton said. “We’re trying new kinds of sandwiches and seeing about what else we could sell.”

  AJ looked around, his eyes widening at the bounty. “Jeez. You use all that truck money to buy this?” he asked me.

  I cringed, not wanting to think about the truck and how in all likelihood, I would have to sell it. I didn’t have the means to keep up with all the stuff it needed, and I would have to go look for a used car soon.

  “Hamilton bought it all,” I said.

  I went to stand by Hamilton, prepared to do as he instructed. I had never done this before, so that seemed like the best choice for me. Dee wanted to help too, so she hung off my back and added a lot of extra weight so I couldn’t move around as easily. We had compromised, since she really wanted to be on Hamilton.

  “Try this one,” he said, holding a little chunk of sandwich to Dee Dee. He’d toasted the bread, and then put a little honey on it before stacking turkey up high.

  Dee chewed, thinking over if she liked it or not. “It’s good.”

  “How good?”

  “Better than Poptarts, but not as good as cake.”

  Hamilton looked at me as if I could figure out what that meant, but I could only shrug. Dee giggled at the movement, so I did it a few more times as I walked around, cleaning up after our mess.

  “The goal is to destroy this other place?” AJ asked around a mouthful of food. “Have you considered putting a curse on them?”

  I looked at Hamilton hopefully, and he only shook his head. “We can’t put a curse on them.”

  “Why not?” my brother asked. “If you did that, you have so many options. You could make them sick, ruin their truck, make it so all the money they get floats away in the wind.”

  “Make all their pineapple rot,” Mom suggested.

  “Send wild dogs to eat all the food.”

  Hamilton stopped, turning to them. “I feel like you people are forgetting that curses aren’t real.”

  “Anything is real if you believe!” Dee shouted from my back.

  Dad eventually showed up again, enticed by the smell of food. He ate two whole sandwiches before we managed to tell him why we’d made it, and he grabbed a piece of paper to jot down his thoughts. We thought it would be easier if we wrote down everything we did and had the family ranking them.

  “Is it enough to ruin a husband and wife food truck team?” Hamilton asked my dad.

  He mulled it over, plucking Dee from my back so I could have a break. “I think so. I haven’t tried their stuff, but I’m sure it’s not as good as this.”

  “You know why?” I asked. “Because what we make, we make with love.”

  AJ gagged at the joke, not appreciating it in the slightest.

  All crushed together in the kitchen, we kept trying to come up with something that could give us an edge. The whole family gathered around the table, and I felt kind of sad that Hamilton’s dad couldn’t be there. It felt like he should have been. But we carried on, and I hoped to god that we could figure something out. My spot was on the line, and I had been getting closer and closer to losing my mind.

  “I think this is it,” Hamilton said, holding out a new sandwich to me. “Eat it out of my hands. You know you want to.”

  I rolled my eyes but took a bite. He’d been working on a new sauce with my honey and some other things he managed to find around my kitchen. The meat was a little spicy, but in a good way. It had a sweetness that balanced out the heat.

  “That might be it,” I said.

  Hamilton grinned.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Hamilton

  “What if none of it sells and we’re hopeless failures?” Jay said, sitting in the passenger’s seat as I drove us down the street. He had been on this tangent for what felt like hours.

  “The same thing that would’ve happened if we were hopeless failures before. This doesn’t change anything,” I said, signaling the turn. I tapped my hands on the steering wheel and ignored
it when Jay turned to glare at me.

  “Why aren’t you more worried?”

  I shrugged.

  He groaned and slumped into his seat to glare out the window. “I’m just saying that this might not work.”

  “And?”

  Jay threw his hands up in the air. “How much money did you even spend on all of this?” He gestured to the bags and bags of food behind me. “You just showed up at my house with ingredients. Shouldn’t I pay for half of it.”

  “That’s okay.”

  Jay glared some more. We had made a few new sandwiches, but I’d also baked a lot of desserts. Using some of the honey that I’d bought from Jay over the last few weeks, I made this honey glazed cake that I’d had to hide from his family, they loved it so much. I’d also made cookies, because everyone loved a good cookie. We’d been watching A Little Taste of Heavaii for a while now, and not once had I seen them sell something sweet. I hoped that that would give us the advantage that we needed.

  “Look,” I said, when Jay continued to glare at me. “You can be worried all you want, but I’m telling you that this stuff will sell.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “Because everything else that we’ve brought has sold, and I see no reason not to trust that data. Furthermore, if it doesn’t sell, it doesn’t matter. We still have all the original products, including the sandwiches that have been selling. You don’t need to worry so much.”

  Jay flailed. “All I know how to do is worry.”

  “And I think it’s adorable, really. But I’m worried for your health.”

  “Don’t pull that bullshit on me,” Jay said. “Sworn. Enemies.”

  “Who will see each other naked before the year is out,” I said.

  His face turned red and he looked out the window, crossing his arms over his chest. “I don’t see why you think that. First of all, we won’t even be dating, but second of all, I don’t give it up so easily.”

  “Who said anything about it being easy?” I asked. “Clearly, I like a tough nut.”

  He opened his mouth to say something caustic back, but I hit the brakes, flinging him into his seat belt, and turned into our spot with a little more speed than necessary. He glared at me as I unbuckled my belt, smiling the whole time. “We should probably get things set up before Sam shows up. He texted me already.”