“I can always use help.” I glance, for no reason at all, behind me, into the café. “You’ve proven your decent mopping skills before,” I say resignedly, turning back to him. “Sure, I guess I’ll take you up on your offer.” I push the door further open as he steps nearer, a smirk playing his lips.
“Is there a brownie or a cupcake in it for me?” he says with a growing smile.
“Oh, jeez.” I move briskly across the room. “Lock up behind you, please.”
I pick up the lone saucer and balled-up napkins from the last dirty table. “Coffee? Before I shut down the machine?”
“Sure,” he says, following closely behind.
I’m about to prepare the beans when Chad snags up the filter basket before I can reach for it. He offers to make the coffees himself.
“Your coffee’s so terrible, Sophie,” he quips.
“Ugh.” I grab the pile of dishes on the counter and head towards the kitchen. “If you’re here to help, then no insults.”
“Kidding, kidding,” he calls out. “You know I love your coffee. As much as I love to tease you.”
I wag my head brusquely and move into the kitchen as Chad performs his magic with the espresso machine. When he worked here he did have the whole barista thing down pat.
“So, how’d you know I’d be without any employees tonight?” I ask once he’s finished preparing two perfectly brewed cappuccinos.
“Excellent, by the way,” I say. I lift up my teacup and take another sip. “But I did teach you how to use that machine.”
Chad rolls his eyes in a “Whatever, if you say so” kind of way before saying that Conner had told him I’d be short help for a few days.
“News sure travels fast, jeez!” I say, recalling how I’d told Claire just this morning that Oliver was leaving town to visit John.
“Conner says she so called this one, by the way.” Chad takes a drink of his cappuccino and smacks his lips. “Mmm, that is a mean capp.”
“Called what?” I take one more sip before I return to the pile of dirty dishes in the kitchen sink.
“Oliver and John. Their connection.”
“That’s true,” I say with a sharp nod, recalling all those times Claire begged to set the two up. “Guess she’s got a gift for that sort of stuff after all.”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
“Oh no?” I toss him a drying towel and tell him to get ready to work.
“No.” He leans against the adjacent wall near the sink. “She said she thought Evelyn and I were a good match, and that’s not turning out so hot.”
“Ahhh. So this visit is not to offer me help but to bitch about the girlfriend.” I slip on a pair of yellow dishwashing gloves and fill the sink with hot water and soap. “Well save your breath, Chad. Evelyn’s my employee, and I’m not going to rally to your side because she, what?” I flash him a quick, inquisitive glance. “Refuses to participate in a threesome? Won’t go out to Alki Beach and get stoned with you?”
“Sophie.” His tone is flatlined, no room for joking.
I splash about the water, sudsing the soap. “Sorry. But I’m not going to bad-mouth my employee, just so we’re clear.”
“I wouldn’t ask you to do that.” His tone is still flat.
“Of course, I’ll be a friend and lend an ear.” I glance back at him as I turn off the water, and a small grin tugs at the corner of his mouth.
“Thanks. I could use that,” he says, taking one more drink of his coffee before setting it aside. He crosses his arms over his broad chest and props a sandaled foot against the wall.
“Of course,” I say, “I’ll also be the friend who will bad-mouth her friend just in the name of jest.”
“Okay, okay.”
“And because he’s ruining her wall.” I gesture to his foot on the wall and clear my throat loudly. “Scuff marks.”
After a heavy roll of his eyes and a groan, Chad drops his foot to the floor. “You never quit, do you, woman?”
“No,” I reply, short, “because I’m not a quitter. And please don’t call me ‘woman.’ What is it, 1950?”
I begin to scrub at a cupcake pan. “So,” I say, cutting to the chase, “Evelyn’s not turning out to be the perfect match, huh? Things not all honeymooney anymore?”
He only grunts in response, so I say, “You think it’s because you’re twice her age?” I just can’t help myself. Making fun of Chad comes so easily.
“Oh, come on, Sophie,” he says with a fake laugh. “Twice her age is a bit of an exaggeration.”
“Fair enough.”
“But, not an entirely untrue exaggeration.”
I scrub at the crusted over nooks and crannies of the pan and coax him to go on, but only if he promises to match his drying pace with my wash and rinse pace.
“We’ve been fighting a lot lately,” he says in a reserved tone. “More than usual, even though we’ve been arguing for a while.”
I think back on the last time Evelyn came in rather incensed with Chad. That was months ago, back during that night out John and Oliver hooked up. After that, on occasion, I had detected some unusual moodiness from her at work, attributing it to something in her love life, but it was never anything too alarming.
“Lately, though.” Chad presses his head against the wall, hard. “God, it’s driving me fucking nuts.”
“Here.” I hand him the rinsed cupcake pan, and he slowly begins to dry it.
“It’s spring break, it’s college, it’s her friends…” he rambles. “It’s always something with her—something she’s complaining about—and it’s always related to how I’m holding her back or some shit like that.”
“Holding her back?”
“Yeah, you know. Like she wants to go to these frat parties and, obviously, as I’m her boyfriend, she wants to make it a date. She expects me to go.”
I can’t stifle my oncoming laughter. “Come on, Chad. You? Pass on an opportunity to hang out with your fellow frat bros?”
He blows at a loose piece of hair.
“Your fellow Pikes?” I tease. “The Pikesters?”
“Okay, Sophie.”
“I thought you lived for beer pong and stoner bonding?”
“Yeah, well…things change.” He sets the dried pan down and rubs at his chin.
I notice then that he’s no longer wearing his lip ring—that atrocious, dated thing. I point it out to him and he shrugs and tells me that he hasn’t had it for some time, nor did he wear it twenty-four-seven.
“It’s not like I wear it to the office,” he says, making a face that says I’d be crazy to think he’d work in a swanky marketing office downtown dressed in suit slacks, a collared shirt…and a lip ring.
“Sorry,” I say when I note a hint of aggression in his voice. I hand him another cleaned dish. “Only pointing it out because I’ve just now noticed it. Don’t get all huffy.”
“I see,” he says, a hint of joshing returning to his voice. “You don’t pay much attention to me, huh?”
“Whatever,” I brush off, scrubbing at a cookie sheet. “I think it looks nice, that’s all. You look better without it.”
“Makes one of you,” he scoffs. “Evelyn thinks it’s part of what she calls ‘Changing Chad.’” He makes an air quote with one hand.
“Changing Chad? What’s that?”
“She thinks I’m losing my edge, acting old.”
“She is an infant compared to you,” I can’t help but cut in with another age-difference joke—at Chad’s expense, of course.
“Sophie.”
“Sorry.”
“I’d hardly call a few years a giant age gap.”
“She’s a junior in college and you’re…twenty-eight?” I rinse the soap suds from the sheet.
“It’s not a huge gap, but enough years apparently for her to think that my not wearing a lip ring and my not wanting to spend my Thursday nights on frat row qualify me for the early-bird special at IHOP.”
“Have you talked to her about it? How it bothers
you?”
“Why do you think we’re arguing?” He heaves a sigh. “I turn down some stuff she wants to do socially, and then we get into a fight, and she goes and stays on campus for a few days with her friends.”
“Oh, wow,” I say, surprised that their arguing is going so far. “She’s staying out? Like…moving out?”
“She’s not moving out,” he corrects with a stern gaze. “But…well…” He awkwardly rubs at the back of his neck. “We’ve talked about it.”
“Wow, Chad.” I feel a small pang for him and Evelyn, even if sometimes their relationship grates on my nerves. They’ve been going out for a while—going on a year this summer—and things have seemed to really click, despite their age difference.
“I didn’t know the fighting was that serious.” I tell him how I’ve noticed on a few occasions Evelyn coming into work looking distraught or in a bad mood.
“She’s probably blaming me,” he says, shaking his head. “Always making me out to be the bad guy.”
“No,” I say quickly. “Not at all.”
“Well she’s not blaming you, is she?”
I wrinkle my nose and temporarily stop my consistently paced scrubbing. “Blaming me? Why would she blame me?”
Suddenly I alight on a possibility. “Does she think I’m working her too hard?” I ask forcefully. “Not giving her enough pay? She pissed that I fired you ages ago?”
I start to rack my mind for all the possibilities. Why would I be to blame for Evelyn’s frustration with her relationship?
“She’s been uncomfortable with Oliver here, maybe?” I grasp at straws. “She thinks he’s a competition for hours, and that puts her in a negative mood?”
“No,” Chad stops me abruptly. “No. She just has a tendency to blame everyone but herself for her bad mood, for what’s going on with me and her.”
“Well,” I say, resuming my washing, “I haven’t noticed anything dramatic, Chad, and she’s never made me feel like I’m to blame—or you, either—for her bad mood.” I give him an empty look. “I mean, yes, she has said that you guys don’t agree on some things, but I’d hardly call that blaming.”
“Maybe it’s just run its course, you know?” He looks across the room, eyes glazed over. “I should take it as a sign we aren’t working out if we’ve been at each other’s throats like this for months.”
“Maybe.” I’m not sure what to say.
“I don’t exactly have a record of being the settle-down kind of guy, you know?” He sniffs a laugh, and all I can do is give a one-shouldered shrug. “Anyway, I don’t like going behind her back and talking about my girlfriend like this. It just helps to talk.”
I set the wet dish to the side rather than handing it over to Chad. He’s still caught up in a far-off daze, and I don’t want to disturb him. He’s obviously not himself tonight.
“We all need to vent sometimes,” I say in a calm and reassuring tone. “You can trust me. I’m not going to go blabbing to her. And I’m not going to judge you.”
He looks at me with a small smile. “Thanks, Sophie.” He pushes away from the wall. “I appreciate it.” He touches my shoulder and gives it a small squeeze.
I glance at his hand and say, “Of course I’m not going to blab. She’s an employee, and I’m not going to do anything to upset her and run her out of here.”
“Give me that,” Chad says with a smirk as he nabs the washed dish I’ve set aside. “I can always count on you to ruffle my feathers, no matter the mood.”
“You are one to talk, Chad Harris.” I rinse off another dish at a faster pace than usual so I can build an untamable pile for him.
“You better hurry it up.” I gesture to the clean dish, then to the one I’m rapidly rinsing off. “You’re getting behind there, frat boy.”
He runs the towel over the dish, a smile playing his lips, and he looks at me with those devious yet somehow magnetic brown eyes of his.
I’m about to say something offhanded or a flashy quip, but instead I’m caught up in the pleasant silence as Chad and I finish up the dishes. He’s not the company I would have preferred on a quiet, lonely night like tonight, and certainly not the company I would have expected. But, like in Paris, his company is spontaneous, it’s familiar, and it’s actually kind of nice.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
I can’t really explain what happened last night. Or, rather, I can’t really explain how it made me feel, or what I think about all of it. But, desperate to keep control of my thoughts, my feelings, my life, I’ll give it a stab.
Chad’s unexpected visit to help close up The Cup and the Cake turned into a lengthy hour filled with more than just dishwashing, sweeping, and mopping. He divulged some more about how rocky things with Evelyn have been and how he’s not so sure he wants to drag things along anymore. He said he wasn’t going to make any final decisions until she came back from spring break in Cancun—they needed to sit down and have a serious discussion.
I’ve never seen Chad so confused and conflicted before, and certainly could never fathom it’d be over a relationship. With Chad it was either wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am or some casual relationship that was all about fun and no pressure. He’d had a number of girlfriends over the years, a few hanging around about as long as Evelyn, but, as far as I knew, they’d never left him looking so discontented.
Regardless of whether or not I can pinpoint what I think of last night or how it made me feel—the feelings that were aroused in me when Chad shared such intimate issues—I know that I liked it. I like the naturalness of our relationship when we’re one-on-one. Sure, we kid around with each other, and don’t get me wrong, he can still drive me up the wall. And so he’s not exactly refined and crosses that line between entertaining and grating, too often boorish just because he knows it gets under my skin.
But, despite all that, I can’t deny the simple fact of the matter. Things can be comfortable and familiar when Chad and I are together. Take our talk about his relationship with Evelyn—it was so natural, so easy. He obviously feels comfortable talking to me about heart-to-heart topics, and I don’t mind lending an ear, even if I take the opportunity to give him a taste of his own jester’s medicine. As annoying as Chad can be, he’s not terribly awful to have around.
Then what does all this mean? Does this mean that… Oh god forbid… Does this mean that I have feelings for Chad? Feelings that cross that hazy line between friendship and something more than friendship? More than friends with benefits? No longer just friends with benefits but… Oh god!
No. No, no, no. I know I can very well chock all these good feelings and thoughts up to us simply being friends who have known each other for a very long time. Naturally, there’s some comfort in the friendship, especially when one of you is lonely, boyfriend-less, and the other is not exactly happy in his current relationship.
The moment a male with whom you get on well wants to hang out with you, you decide that’s so much more appealing than that half-read women’s fiction book on your nightstand or that remaining chocolate-cherry cupcake in the refrigerator. But is that fair? Is that an authentic reason to have a surge of emotions and thoughts fill you after one night closing up shop together? Maybe even thinking that you like him as more than a friend? More than a friend with extremely hot and sexy and mind-blowing benefits?
Seriously. This is Chad I’m talking about. Chad Harris is Chad Harris. He’s a good friend, but he can’t be anything more. (Okay, aside from friends-with-benefits once in a blue moon.) Chad drives me crazy, and not always in a good way. He can be so immature; he’s gone through women like I’ve gone through macaron and cupcake recipes. He’s kind of a loose cannon, and for someone who craves control, having anything beyond friendship with him would probably be akin to World War III.
On one hand I think I’m feeling an inkling more for Chad than what constitutes normal “friend feelings,” and it confuses me. On the other hand (the much more rational and realistic hand), I think I’m only feeling these things be
cause I’m acting on my loneliness and his forlornness. Not to mention, I’ve been reflecting far too often on all those inexplicable memories we’ve shared. My thoughts are running wild. Pure and simple.
I also know, though, that I’m looking forward to Chad’s visit again, tonight at the café. As a friend! Just a friend. That’s not so wrong, now is it? Not so…weird?
“Are you kidding me?” Claire bellows into the phone. “You are kidding me, right? Sophie! There are serious dramas going on over there. How does all this drama happen when I’m not around?”
“Yeah, okay, Claire,” I say in the moment of temporary hilarity. “Our circle of girlfriends is filled to the brim with dramatic episodes. All the time. And I would hardly say that Chad coming to dry some dishes at the café to share a few things that are on his mind accounts for ‘serious dramas.’”
“First Oliver and John,” Claire says, ranting. “Now you and Chad? What is going on over there?”
I echo her words disbelievingly and with reproof, adding, “Don’t lump me with Chad in some romantic comparison. It’s so not like that.”
“You two have a history, Sophie.”
“So?”
“So!” She’s aghast. “So! So that means something.”
“It only means something if there is something. And trust me, there isn’t.” I give a breathy sigh. “I’ve gone over and over this, Claire. It’s baffling.”
“So there is or there isn’t something there?”
I consider my two hands—thinking I’m feeling something for Chad because I actually do feel something for him, or because I’m Single Sophie and so dry on love I’m grasping at straws.
“It’s me, washing dishes; it’s Chad, drying them, making small talk, telling me what’s new,” I say with insistence. I grab a bottle of organic window cleaner and place it in my grocery cart. “Nothing there, Claire. Nothing there but old friends.”
“Okay, fair enough.” She sounds satisfied with the explanation, but then she adds in, “Although I admit I find it hard to believe that Sophie Wharton and Chad Harris are suddenly buddy-buddy given your hot and cold past. I mean, you made it pretty clear to him in Paris how you felt.”
When Girlfriends Find Love Page 29
