A Measure of Happiness

by Lorrie Thomson

  Zach squeezed her shoulder.

  “Anyway,” Celeste said. “We were drinking—”

  “You and the guy friend who wasn’t your boyfriend?” Zach asked.

  “Yeah, me and Matt.” Saying his name made her heart kick into gear and her throat narrow. She took a slow breath into her belly, inhaling the fragrance of her shampoo from Zach’s hair, the cottony smell of Zach’s T-shirt, and the scent of Zach himself. “I must’ve had too much to drink because, the next thing I knew, I woke up in Matt’s bed.”

  Zach’s breathing changed—one of those shoulder breathing jobbies he’d cautioned her against.

  “Still with me?” she asked.

  “Right here.”

  “Seems Matt didn’t share my memory issue. He had no trouble bragging about his little conquest to his buddies. He had no trouble with specifics.” She remembered the way Matt had described her birthmark—more identifying than dental records. The fact that he’d detailed the birthmark meant they’d messed around a lot and with the lights on.

  How could she have forgotten something so personal?

  Another shoulder breath from Zach. She shivered, as though she were still in Matt’s bed, naked and disoriented. As if she were still in the hallway outside the Barnstead Hall practice kitchen. As if Matt’s words were still stripping her bare. The red-and-black painting’s abstract brushstrokes swirled like a lava lamp and settled into a face. Matt’s face.

  “What an asshole,” Zach said.

  “Guys have been assholes to me before. The boy I loved in high school,” Celeste said, although she hadn’t intended to expand the specifics to include Justin. “After we broke up, he trashed my reputation pretty badly. It was, like, his favorite hobby. And he was good at it. That’s why I think I freaked out. This kind of shit is cumulative. It makes you wonder about half the human race.”

  “It made you wonder about me,” Zach said.

  Celeste searched her mind, comparing Justin to Matt and coming up with a few similarities. Both of them were overconfident about their abilities; both refused to rectify whatever they’d done wrong. And, of course, both of them had trashed her and simultaneously bolstered their reputations.

  Neither of them resembled Zach.

  She turned to Zach. Sweet, sexy, defender of bakery owners and skinny-assed punks. Defender of Celeste.

  “When I overheard Matt, it made me wonder about me. What had I done wrong? We were friends. Why did he turn on me? Was I that bad a judge of character?”

  Zach gave her braid a tug—something Abby would do—to pull her out of the doldrums. He aimed a sympathetic smile her way.

  “Justin and I were friends before we went out. He used to be good friends with one of my brothers—”

  “One of your two dozen brothers.”

  ‘That’s right.” She grinned; she couldn’t help herself. Did Zach remember everything she said to him?

  “The boy you loved in high school,” Zach said.

  “The only guy,” she blurted out, the tone hushed, as though the words were a revelation. She’d been in lust a few times since with guys she’d never considered long-term options. She’d even been in intense like.

  But not love. Not couldn’t-live-without-him, spark-plug-to-the-internal-organs love.

  That kind of intensity would mean she had too much to lose.

  “I guess you could say I’m kind of effed up, too,” Celeste said.

  Zach slipped his arm from around her shoulder and angled sideways on the couch so she had to look at him. “You said you only had a couple of drinks, right?” Zach asked.

  “Screwdrivers.”

  “And you never get drunk because your two dozen brothers taught you how to drink.”

  “Maybe I was exaggerating. I mean, seriously, everyone gets faced sooner or later. There’s a first time for everything.” At least she thought everyone got faced. Somewhere between waking up in Matt’s dorm room and climbing the stairs in Barnstead Hall, she’d even imagined that Matt had gotten faced, too. She’d thought he was as regretful, as horrified, as she’d been. Why else would he have sat by his bed, waiting for her to wake up?

  “Celeste . . .” Zach worried the ends of her braid the way she’d seen him nervously brushing his own flop of hair from his eyes.

  “What? What is it?”

  “The story’s not gelling for me. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Sounds pretty simple to me. I got drunk, I blacked out, I woke up next to a giant sphincter muscle. End of story.”

  “Have you ever blacked out before?”

  “I didn’t have anything to eat, Zach, even though I know that’s a big no-no. I was saving my calories. I basically drank my dinner. I can admit when something’s my fault. Okay? I got myself drunk. I trusted the wrong guy.”

  “And you don’t remember anything, in between drinking and waking up?”

  She thought about telling Zach she’d kissed Matt. That tonight she’d remembered a bit more about the game that had inspired the kiss. But how could she admit she’d kissed Matt on a bet? How could she admit to playing with someone’s affection without leading Zach to wonder whether she was playing with his?

  She covered her mouth, shook her head. When she met Zach’s gaze, her eyes moistened.

  And Zach totally misread her. He moved her hand away from her mouth and held it in his. “For one of my criminal justice classes, the professor took a true crime story and sliced it up. Every student got part of the story pie, with a slice or two missing. The assignment wasn’t to figure out who did it necessarily. Although, yeah, you got extra points for that. The goal was to figure out which logical pieces were missing.”

  Zach gave her hand a squeeze that was meant to be reassuring. Instead, the gesture pumped adrenaline into her heart. “Hate to tell you, Celeste, but there are logical pieces missing from your story. I think—in my most humble opinion—you should play detective and dig deeper. Was there anyone who saw you drinking before the blackout? You should talk to them. You know, kick ass, take numbers, and figure out the missing pieces of the pie.”

  “I hate to tell you, Zach, but in my humble opinion, I believe the saying is ‘shoot first, ask questions later.’ Neither of which will get me any answers. Plus, I’m not going back there. Ever.”

  Zach notched his head toward the telephone on the side table, that curious invention that supposedly worked both ways. But she’d yet to hear back from her parents. All week, their answering machines had played a wicked game of phone tag until Celeste had lost track and given up. And every time she’d phoned one of her brothers, she got a sister-in-law on the line and a rundown of which niece or nephew had lost a tooth, learned to skateboard, or earned an A on a vocabulary pop quiz. Celeste adored her sisters-in-law, but they kept her one degree of separation from her brothers. The guys who’d seen her at her worst and loved her the best.

  “There’s this girl Natalie I could call,” Celeste said.

  “A friend of yours?” Zach asked.

  Celeste grinned. Such a direct question shone light on crap she’d yet to fully consider. “Culinary school is a weird place. Everyone acts all buddy-buddy friendly. ‘You help me, I’ll help you.’ But underneath the spin, it’s a big competition for most people.” Why, then, had she thought her friendship with Matt had been different? That somehow their relationship had been special and unique? That the two of them were like low tide at Popham Beach, where you could walk the exposed sandbar to Fox Island and not get marooned?

  The shithead had marooned her.

  “Are you like most people?” Zach asked. “Competitive?”

  “No,” she said, the word knee-jerk and awkward. First day of class, the dean of students had delivered a speech and urged each student to compete with him- or herself, to strive for his or her personal best. But then the grades for every Monday quiz posted on Tuesday outside the practice kitchen for the other student chefs to see, the high-minded lesson buried beneath the lowbrow subliminal truth. Succe
ss was relative.

  And Matt was neither her brother nor her friend.

  “Anyway, I don’t know whether I had any real friends at school. But I could probably call Natalie.”

  Zach stroked the back of Celeste’s hand with his thumb, as though she were a worry stone, a touchstone, something solid to hold on to.

  She met his gaze, and the memory of their kiss—before everything had gone to panicky hell—passed between them.

  Zach wasn’t Matt, but he wasn’t just a friend, either. The kiss and Zach’s crush confession had shot that notion to hell.

  “I really think you should call this girl who’s not a real friend.” Zach nodded, the gesture meant to encourage Celeste’s reflexive head wagging.

  Celeste wasn’t that easy. “I don’t know. Maybe I will.”

  “Good girl,” Zach said, as though he were trying to insert an inspirational quote into her brain, a voice of reason to rise up and do battle with the naysayers. The part of her that agreed with the way Justin had portrayed her as a sex-crazed slut and the way Matt had lent his voice to second the motion.

  “We could call this girl together.”

  “There’s only one phone.”

  “You could call, and I could hold your hand—”

  “Seriously?”

  “I could hang nearby for moral support.”

  Interesting choice of words.

  She touched his cheek and rubbed his nighttime scruff. “You’re a good guy, Zach Fitzgerald.”

  “You’re changing the subject.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  When Celeste had nearly polished off her first drink of the night, Matt had gone to the kitchen to get her another. Celeste and Natalie had wandered into the line for the bathroom. Inside the bathroom, the buzz had hit Celeste like a rogue wave. Everything had slowed down, as though she were swimming underwater. She’d stared at her mirror reflections—the girl behind other people’s fingerprints, smudges, and splatters. She’d leaned closer, trailed her fingers across her prominent cheekbones, and wondered at the transformation.

  When had she stopped looking like a girl and started looking like a woman? When would her insides match what the world saw? When would she stop feeling like a fraud?

  Celeste slipped her hand from Zach and gulped down the rest of her water. The cold numbed her throat and iced her belly.

  When she’d stepped from the bathroom at Drake’s party, Matt had been waiting. His expression, come to think of it, was a close cousin to the look he’d sported when she’d awoken in his bed.

  And Natalie had been right by Matt’s side, hanging out, fussing with her short, spiked blonde hair, and letting the girl next in the line for the bathroom pass before her. “Don’t you have to go?” Celeste had asked.

  “Just keepin’ you company, sistah,” Natalie had said. Then she’d taken Celeste’s empty drink from her hand and switched it out with the fresh drink Matt had been holding for her, a boozy relay race.

  Celeste flipped on the TV. Middle of Cops. Different episode, same overall feeling of squalor and despair.

  A big-ass grin spread across Zach’s face.

  Distraction successful.

  Half-asleep with her eyes open, Celeste nestled into Zach’s side. She retrieved his hand. She set her heels on the coffee table and notched up the sound on his show. A man in blue was once again speaking in hushed tones to a sickly, skinny woman.

  “Are you sure?” the man in blue asked. “We can write him up, give you some time to think about this.”

  The camera zoomed in on the “him” in question. From the back of a police cruiser, hands cuffed behind his back, a bull of a man leaned forward and directed his crazy-ass message through the closed window at the skinny woman.

  The skinny woman shivered, but she held her ground. Her man had gotten to her first. “Yeah. I’m sure,” she told the officer. “Let him go. He’s calmed down. He won’t cause no trouble.”

  Another case of double negatives betraying the truth.

  Celeste might take Zach’s advice and give little miss “just keepin’ you company” a ring. Maybe.

  Cut to the officer shaking his head at the skinny woman and unlocking the bull of a guy’s cuffs. Cut to the skinny woman’s face, her eyes red rimmed with spent tears, staring off at the cruiser. Cut to the big scary guy leading her into their split-level house and the cruiser driving off in the distance.

  The theme song played, the oh so catchy “Whatcha gonna do when they come for you?”

  The bad boy had answered that question, brilliantly. Made Celeste want to don a superhero cape and save that poor woman from ending up on a future episode.

  Maybe Celeste would contact Natalie. But there was no way she’d phone within earshot of Zach. When you were digging for the details of one of the worst mistakes you’d ever made, did you really want a witness?

  Hell, no, sistah. Hell, no.

  CHAPTER 12

  “Monday, Monday” played in Katherine’s head, The Mamas and the Papas crooning about the lack of guarantees. She hadn’t thought of the tune in years. Now it arrived uninvited, clear as the daybreak that was yet to dawn, every word enunciated, on key, and emotionally true. Come nightfall, would Celeste and Zach remain in her employ and Hidden Harbor? Would Barry still love her?

  Could she keep her secret about Zach without losing everyone she loved?

  Celeste set a carafe full of hazelnut coffee on the Lamontagne coffee bar alongside a sugar dispenser, the lone survivor of Blake’s crusade. Katherine breathed in the coffee aroma, more delicious and pulse enlivening than the best toilet water. Earlier, Celeste had ground the beans Katherine purchased from Maine Line Roasters. Katherine’s flour came from Portland via a driver Katherine had known for over a decade. Her milk and cream from Bitsy’s down the road and cows Katherine had personally petted and thanked. Desperate for a family, she had scrabbled together a bakery-related tree. But at the end of the day, that wasn’t enough to sustain her soul.

  Her real family came down to three brittle unrelated branches: Celeste, Barry, and now Zach.

  Warmth from her kitchen filled every corner of her bakery, but a chill prickled her arms. “Thank you for taking care of Zach,” Katherine said. “Was he comfortable enough to sleep last night?”

  “He slept on my couch,” Celeste said. “If that’s what you’re after.”

  “No,” Katherine said. “That’s not what I meant at all.” Was Katherine such a bad communicator? Or was Celeste predisposed to imagining people thought badly of her? Katherine’s jaw ached with the familiar childhood sensation of knowing everything she said was wrong.

  In the month following Katherine’s eleventh birthday, she’d used extreme measures to deal with the problem, keeping mum in hopes that her father would follow suit. But then she’d learned that body language could incite suspicion and anger and that her father—who’d never cracked the spine of a book or forked over coin for the daily news—was an excellent reader.

  “Are you okay?” Celeste asked.

  Katherine swiped her cheek, and her hand came away dry. “I’m perfectly fine.” Her father’s voice rang through her brain: You’re not crying, baby Katherine, are you? Her father’s setup was designed to make her cry and then berate her for crying. “But Zach . . . was he in pain?” Katherine cradled her right arm with her left, the way you reflexively healed yourself. Could her healing thoughts touch Zach? May Zach be well. May Zach be happy. May Zach be at peace.

  Celeste shot Katherine a wicked smile. “I drugged him.”

  Even though Katherine knew Celeste was kidding, her pulse did a double take. She knew Celeste well, unless she didn’t.

  “What must you think of me?” Celeste held her hand to her chest, a faux-insulted gesture, but Celeste’s tone and expression told the true tale. Celeste had caught Katherine’s flash of concern. “Acetaminophen and ibuprofen, just what the nurse ordered. When I left, he was sleeping like a baby.” Celeste fluttered her lashes. She pressed her h
ands together, held her hands to her cheek, and made her lips into an O.

  An image of a sleeping newborn Zach flickered before Katherine’s eyes. When she pushed the thought away, Zach the man pushed back—through the door and into her bakery. “Speak of the devil, who’s not sleeping!”

  “Get out of here, Zach,” Celeste said, but she couldn’t hide her pique of delight, the smile that filled every corner of her being. “You’re making a liar out of me. I just got finished telling Katherine you were sleeping like a baby on my sticky couch.”

  Sticky?

  Zach bit his lip. He made a slicing motion with his left hand, palm-side up. “I unstuck myself for my shift. Five-forty-five, right?” He looked from Katherine to Celeste and back to Katherine. “Why are you both looking at me weird?”

  “I wasn’t expecting you to come in this morning,” Katherine said.

  “Why not?” Again Zach waved his left hand.

  Katherine and Celeste nodded toward Zach’s right arm.

  Zach peered down his nose at the sling, as though the cast were news to him. “Pfft,” he said through his teeth. “No big thing. I’ve skied with worse.”

  “I thought you said you broke your arm playing soccer,” Celeste said.

  “You thought I meant—that was the first time I broke a bone. I broke my leg skiing in ’92. Broke my collarbone in ’93.”

  “Skiing again?” Katherine asked.

  “Just messing around with my best buddies. A little living room wrestling. I won the match, so it was totally worth it.”

  His poor mother.

  Katherine’s collarbone ached. Her wrist throbbed. The backs of her knees weakened. And her hand reflexively covered her heart.

  “Make sure you leave a stack of dishes in the sink at the end of your shift,” Katherine told Zach.

  “I might be as slow as a one-armed dishwasher,” Zach said, “but I can still do my job.”

  “As a favor to me. Blake’s coming by after school. I’m making him work to pay me back for the damage.”

  “Brilliant!” Zach said.

  “I don’t know how brilliant it is,” Katherine said. “He vandalized the place as payback for not getting a job here. I’m kind of giving him what he wanted. Minus the pay, of course.”