A Measure of Happiness

by Lorrie Thomson

“Sure.” Zach sat up and held the sleeping bag around him. He shivered in the chill air.

  Celeste passed him a hot, steaming mug.

  “Thank you!” He held his face over the coffee and inhaled deeply. Heat radiated into his hands. “Oh, man, you must’ve read my mind,” Zach said, his way of thanking God she couldn’t.

  She crinkled her nose, which looked really cute, until she waved her hand in front of her face. “Hate to tell you, Zach. But you kind of stink.”

  “Hate to tell you, Celeste, but I know.” Zach slurped the coffee. “Mmm mmm good.”

  Celeste leaned a hand against the window frame. “Where have you been showering?”

  Zach sputtered on the coffee. He coughed into his fist to clear his throat. “Lamontagne’s.” His voice came out as a high-pitched squeak around the coffee.

  Instead of backing away from his stench, Celeste leaned in closer and lowered her voice. “There’s no shower at the bakery.”

  Zach pretended to splash water beneath either armpit.

  “You’ve been sponge bathing in the washroom?” she said, her voice doing its own high-rise climb.

  When Zach nodded, Celeste broke into a wide grin. She slapped the roof of the car, the way a good old boy might slap his knee. “If Katherine knew she’d have a bird! No wonder you’ve been spending so much time in there. Phew! I thought you had some kind of gastrointestinal issue.”

  Smooth, Zach, real smooth.

  Zach shrugged and took another sip of coffee.

  Celeste shook her head and turned, as if to leave. Instead, she leaned against Matilda, giving him a nice view of her olive-green hoodie. By the time she turned back around, he’d drained the coffee. He didn’t have a gastrointestinal issue, but his bladder was in serious need of a bathroom.

  Celeste worked a key from her key ring.

  Zach’s heart tumbled in his chest. He broke into a grin and then purposely tamped down his automatic horndog enthusiasm.

  The first time he’d laid eyes on Celeste, he’d imagined this moment, the pretty girl inviting him into her apartment. Hell, he’d imagined—in detail—her welcoming him into her bed. But, now, he wanted to go back to Wednesday and punch the Wednesday Zach in the eye. Obsession or not, woody in the sweltering sleeping bag or not. He didn’t want to one-night or one-week stand this girl.

  This thing he wanted . . . had no name.

  Key between thumb and forefinger, she slipped her hand through the open window and then snatched it back, her fingers seeming to twitch on the retreat. She held the key against her chest. Was she shaking?

  “I’m going to give you my key,” she said. “You can use my apartment to shower. But there are rules.”

  “I’m all about the rules.”

  “No snooping at any of my stuff. No opening the medicine cabinet. No peeking in my drawers. Actually, no going into my bedroom at all. You go in, you shower, you get out and lock the door behind you. You got it?”

  “I get in, I go straight to the shower, I get out and lock the door behind me. I keep my hands out of your drawers.”

  “Zach!” Celeste said, but at least she was laughing.

  “Sorry,” he said, “you stepped into that one. Yup, I get it.”

  This time, when Celeste handed him the key, when she let him take it from her hand, he paid better attention.

  She was shaking.

  This thing with no name, this new thing he felt, made him want to find out why she was shaking and hold her till she stilled.

  Zach rubbed the key between his thumb and forefinger, as though it were his St. Anthony coin. He hadn’t been sure how long he could keep living out of his car without a shower, but he couldn’t commit to any sort of lease, any sort of guarantee he’d stay. Celeste’s offer gave him time to wait and watch and stake out his life. Katherine’s life. Celeste’s life. “This is really nice of you.”

  “Yeah, it is. But don’t let it get around.”

  “That you’re nice?”

  “And that you’re showering at my apartment. I wouldn’t want anyone getting the wrong idea.”

  “You and Katherine are the only people I know in the entire state of Maine. Who would I tell?”

  “I’m serious. Especially don’t tell Katherine. Either promise not to tell or you go back to your sponge baths.”

  “I won’t tell anyone you’re nice.”

  “Pro—”

  “Or that you’re letting me use your shower,” Zach said.

  Celeste didn’t want anyone to think they were sleeping together. Specifically because they’d just met? Or in general, because who she slept with wasn’t anyone’s business? He wasn’t into kissing and telling, the weekends in the dorm guys’ bonding game of you tell me who you screwed, I’ll tell you what the girl with the overbite and kitten posters looks like naked.

  He wouldn’t want a girl talking about him that way.

  He’d never bought into the idea if a guy slept with a lot of girls, he was a stud, but if a girl had a track record, she was a slut.

  He considered himself neither a stud nor a slut. He considered himself a guy who enjoyed sex. Didn’t everybody?

  Something to consider.

  “See you in an hour,” Celeste said. “Get ready to meet the rest of Hidden Harbor, all two thousand of them, and their dogs.” Celeste got into Old Yeller and keyed the engine.

  Zach thought of the Lamontagne regulars. The high school kids who dropped in after school to hang out. The girls who hugged each other, giggled loudly, and swung their hair, pretending not to notice the boys. The boys who talked sports and pretended, less convincingly, not to notice the girls. The moms with rug rats. The construction worker who seemed interested in Katherine and pretended not to notice the older guy, the reluctant cycler Zach had noticed on day one of his Lamontagne’s stakeout. Wasn’t he Katherine’s boyfriend?

  What if she’d had the same boyfriend for twenty-five years?

  Zach’s throat muscles spasmed. The coffee backed up into his nose. Zach swiped his nose with the back of his hand and set the coffee mug on the floor. He stumbled from the car, holding his sleeping bag around his waist, and banged on Old Yeller’s passenger window.

  Celeste rolled down the window. Even though he must’ve looked like an escapee from a funny farm sack race, she didn’t even crack a grin. “The shower control works counterclockwise.”

  If he had any sense, he would’ve played along and asked her about the bathroom light, the fan, and whether he’d find the sink’s cold water on the right or on the left. If he had any sense, he would’ve worried about sounding like a lunatic. “What’s with the reluctant cycler?”

  “The what?” she asked through a giggle.

  Zach scrubbed a hand across his coffee-sputtered face. “The gray-haired guy who comes in to see Katherine every morning.”

  A wary smile tugged the corners of Celeste’s lips.

  Ah, hell. Too late to backtrack. He was all-in. “Is he her boyfriend?” Zach’s voice, apparently having great comic timing and an intense desire to mortify him, rose two octaves.

  Celeste shot him a flashlight-beam grin.

  “Husband?” Zach tried.

  “Ex,” Celeste said.

  Did he know?

  Celeste really and truly slapped her knee. “Oh, my, my,” she cooed.

  “What? ‘Oh, my, my’?”

  “Oh, my, my. You have a crush on Katherine.”

  “Oh, no. God, no!”

  “Nothing to be embarrassed about. It’s happened before. Younger men fall for her all the time. Toddlers, some preschoolers . . .”

  “That’s not even funny.”

  “Gotta go, Zach. I’m off to hang out with your girlfriend. And that, sir, is hilarious.” Celeste repositioned herself behind the wheel. “Don’t worry, your secret’s safe with me, baby cakes,” she said before backing Old Yeller from the space and leaving Zach standing in the middle of the parking lot.

  What the hell was he doing here, in the middle of this
morning that looked like night, in the middle of this strange town, in another place where he didn’t belong?

  The wind moved through his sleeping bag, as though it were nothing, the reason he told himself he was shivering. Circulation returned to his toes, shooting daggers through his feet and nailing them to the pavement. The girl he was crushing on thought he had a crush on the woman who might be his birth mother. What was he supposed to do with that?

  He was both stuck and fucked.

  Zach threw back his head and yelled at the moon, “Now what!” The deaf and dumb moon stared down at him, hanging like a cardboard prop in the morning sky. His secret was safe with Celeste.

  That was the funniest thing he’d ever heard.

  Let the Hidden Harbor Harvest Festival begin!

  Wasn’t that similar to a line about a wild rumpus from the children’s book Where the Wild Things Are? The story about a boy in a wolf suit who gets sent to bed without dinner had once been Celeste’s favorite bedtime story. She’d curled in her mother’s lap and slipped her fingers beneath her mother’s blouse to stroke her stomach as though it were a satin ribbon. Then Celeste ran away to a foreign land and let loose the beast within her. But no matter how far she’d sailed away from home, she’d always ended where she began. In her own room and with a full belly, safe and sound.

  Late morning sun blazed across the town green and highlighted the stacks of pumpkins deposited in the early hours by farmers hoping to line their pockets with both townie and tourist coin. Shops that peddled hospitality—Lamontagne’s included—made the most money in the summer months, between Memorial Day and Labor Day. But lay out enough high-sugar, high-fat foods and orange gourds and offer up a blue-sky day, and townies and tourists alike returned for a last blowout, get up, and party down.

  The Hidden Harbor Harvest Festival—Triple H, as the locals called it—had opened for business an hour ago. But, either slow to get the message or waiting for the last of the fair weather, fluffy clouds to drift offshore, festivalgoers were just now trickling onto the lawn, chasing the sun.

  If Celeste had stayed in New York, today would’ve been like any other day. Maybe she would’ve remembered the festival, held on the same weekend each year. She might’ve even thought of Katherine, standing straight and tall like a security guard before their booth. But, strangely, Celeste found herself here in the midst of the organized chaos, missing the Triple H. No, mourning the Triple H. Her stomach ached around the thought, as though someone had sucker punched her in the gut. As though she were a pumpkin, and someone had sliced around her stem with a serrated knife and scraped her free of flesh and seeds. As if she were here, but not here, trapped in Triple H purgatory.

  As if something was terribly, terribly wrong with her.

  Zach bumped her shoulder. “You okay?” he asked.

  When she swallowed, the tears in her sinuses made a moist sound. “I’m awesome.” Celeste blinked at him.

  Zach’s lips pressed into one of those sympathetic smiles that simultaneously turned up at the corners while the top lip bowed upside down. One of those I see your sadness, you who refuses to acknowledge your sadness.

  “I’m awesome, Zach. Really,” she said, and turned her attention to the sugar cookies. Trays of blank-faced pumpkins, bats, and witch hats covered the better part of the children’s table, awaiting frosting and decorations. She slid the colored sugars to the front of the table and then set them back in a line. She straightened the handwritten table tent signs she’d made for the colored frosting. Frightful blue, raging red, outrageous orange, and midnight black. She proactively told her eating disorder—the annoying, lingering, and much-maligned Ed—to ignore the throat-curdling smells of fried dough, French fries, and sausage.

  When she’d awoken Zach, she’d been fine. Really and truly fit as a fiddle, as her dad used to say. Whatever that meant. Now she was on the verge of bending at the waist and howling.

  At some point every day since she’d come back home, a feeling would pass through her, like a random bout of seasickness. She’d get a hint of knowing that reminded her of a game they’d played in culinary school. First you’d slip a blindfold over your eyes, and then your classmates would hold spices for you to identify beneath your nose. Without fail, you’d miss a scent, knowing but not knowing the smell. Then you’d rip the blindfold from your eyes, revealing your foolishness, the spice obvious now that you’d seen it in the light.

  Behind her, Zach hummed, the buzzing directed at her. She deciphered the tune right away but wanted to draw out the game. “Whistle it,” she said.

  Without missing a beat, Zach puckered up and held his hands behind his back, making himself look like a kitschy flea market Hummel figurine. In a good way.

  “Sing it,” she said, the request coming too late. A traitorous sunshiny smile had knocked out her creeping crud feeling, giving her away. Too bad. She’d really wanted to hear him sing.

  “You know the song,” Zach said.

  “ ‘Don’t Worry, Be Happy’ ?”

  “Yeah, that’s it. Don’t worry, be happy.” Zach tilted his head, and the head tilt shook out another kind of smile. Sympathetic, sure. But this time more happy than sad.

  Maybe it was the breeze from their neighbor’s cotton candy. Maybe she smelled a mixture of buttered popcorn and kettle corn from the cart across the brick path. Maybe what she smelled was something way simpler and way more obvious. She crinkled her nose.

  Zach’s gaze shifted sideways. “Hey! I showered.”

  “Did you use my almond body wash?”

  “I got in, I showered, I got out. I followed the rules. Besides, you didn’t say I couldn’t.”

  A twinge of that earlier creeping crud feeling reappeared. How could she have answered a question he hadn’t even asked? As though she were having an argument with Ed, she talked back at the irrational fear. Get a grip, Celeste, he was kidding.

  Zach held up his hands. “Okay, okay. Here’s what happened. I didn’t realize I’d forgotten my soap and shampoo—”

  “My shampoo, too!”

  “I was soaking wet.And it was, like, either I get out and dry off and run back out to Matilda or . . .”

  Celeste folded her arms, tapped her foot. Pretending to be pissed actually made her feel better. She imagined Zach soaking wet, holding a towel around his waist, and running barefoot across the parking lot. She imagined him using her shampoo and body wash and wondered whether he hummed in the shower or maybe even sang.

  She held up a finger. “Answer one question for me and you’re off the hook.”

  “Anything.”

  “You didn’t . . . use my puff. Did you?” she croaked out in a fake stricken voice.

  “Do I look like a guy who would use a puff?”

  “Body wash works better with a puff.”

  “I didn’t use the puff.”

  “No?” Celeste asked. And then a hint of vanilla pudding scent tweaked her nose. “Bend down,” Celeste whispered.

  “What?” Zach crouched, answering the question he supposedly hadn’t heard. A chunk of hair fell before his eyes, shining in the sun that had sneaked beneath the booth’s awning.

  Celeste lowered her eyelids and inhaled a stronger vanilla pudding–like scent. Her hand rose, hovering near his head. She straightened and lowered her hand to her side, certain now about what she’d discovered. “You used my Flex conditioner,” she told him, the second thought that came to mind. The first thought? She wanted to bury her fingers in his hair, the way she, when Katherine wasn’t looking, hand mixed dough without using sensation-filtering food prep gloves.

  Lying dormant since Monday, Celeste’s below-surface and ever-present hum sprang to life, like a guy’s hidden erection.

  Jerk Justin had once asked her why she was always so horny. That hadn’t been fair. A below-surface hum wasn’t the same as being ready to go. She was only ready to go for certain guys. She could imagine being ready to go for Zach. In an alternate universe where Matt the Rat didn’t ex
ist.

  Great. She’d spent so much time with Katherine, her woo-woo voice was making cameo appearances in Celeste’s mind.

  Zach straightened until he was looking her in the eye. “Guilty,” he said. “You don’t tell anyone, I won’t tell anyone. Deal?”

  “Deal,” she said, and then her stupid hand went and touched Zach’s hair anyway, the way a dieter snuck a bite of pumpkin pie, when she really wanted a whole slice.With extra whipped cream.

  Zach raised his hand to his hair, retracing the path her traitorous fingers had followed. “I generally let the cowlick thingy do whatever it wants. Live and let live. You know?”

  “Live and let live,” Celeste said. From the corner of Celeste’s eye, she spotted her first customers, a trio who’d surely test her ability to do so.

  Abby, Charlie, and Luke stopped to chat with Katherine. But when the word cookies broke through the tangle of voices, Luke dragged Abby up to the cookie bar, leaving Charlie behind.

  Good call.

  “Who’s this?” Celeste said. “Spiderman without his suit?”

  Too late, Celeste registered Abby’s cringe. “Spiderman’s wearing his invisible suit today. We’re saving his other suit for Halloween, so it doesn’t get dirty.”

  “Gotcha.”

  Luke’s big blue eyes peered over the edge of the sugar cookie decorating table. He reached up and dipped a finger into the blue frosting. Abby swooped in and stopped the finger before he popped it into his mouth. “Use a spoon, please.”

  “How about a stool?” Zach said, coming around the table to place one between Abby and Luke.

  Abby hoisted Luke onto the stool. “Thank you!” she said, and threw a questioning look Celeste’s way.

  Zach answered for himself. “I’m Zach, Lamontagne’s newest hire.”

  “Abby, Celeste’s oldest friend.”

  Luke raised his hand. “Hey! How do I do this thing?”

  “Manners, Luke.”

  “Hey! How do I please do this thing?”

  Zach bent down to Luke’s level. “First you choose a cookie—”

  “Bat! ’Cause bats are cool.”

  “Then you put stuff on it. Frosting, sprinkles, these silver balls. Whatever you want.”