DISHING UP LOVE

by Robichaux, KD

  I grin. “Technically, it’s still a light roast, so you’ll still get an amazing kick of go-go. It’s the chicory that makes it taste so bold. But add the right amount of sugar, and oh my Lord. Heavenly.”

  His eyes lock with mine and I can’t help but jerk back a little at his possessive look. He leans forward, and I brace myself. “You just gave me the biggest boner of the day.”

  My brow furrows in confusion, but I immediately burst out laughing. “What the hell?”

  “No lie, sugar. You have no idea how much you just turned me on,” he admits.

  “What’d I say? What’d I do?” I shake my head, a big grin on my face.

  “Do you have any idea how many people think the bolder the coffee the more caffeine or kick they’ll get? It’s astonishing how many times I’ve had to explain during my lifetime that dark roasts come from roasting the coffee beans longer, which in turns cooks the caffeine out of the coffee. The darkest roast there is, is decaf,” he tells me, shaking his head.

  “Right? I always secretly chuckle at the people who order like ‘Gimme your darkest roast,’ thinking they’re some kind of badass for being able to tolerate how bold and caffeinated their drink is. I’m like, bro. Order a large blonde roast and you’re a true bad motherfucker.” I giggle.

  “Fucking. A. Yes. God, you’re freaking amazing,” he says, and my auto-pilot turns on momentarily to joke away his compliment.

  “I mean, I have been known to order a grande or two of blonde roast.” I flip my ponytail.

  Suddenly, my hand is in his and my attention is on his handsome face as he pulls me closer across the table. “I mean it, Erin. You’re amazing. And I know your joking is some kind of defense mechanism—hell, maybe it’s even from that OCD of yours, a compulsion or automatic response when someone tries to get close to you. But just so you know, it won’t push me away. I’ll keep on complimenting you, telling you how goddamn wonderful you are, until you finally accept it, and thereafter too.”

  I nod, glancing down at my coffee and trying not to let the tears form in my eyes that want to fall so badly.

  “But we’ll delve into that later. Right now, I want some lighthearted donut talk. Tell me about Zack and Addie,” he jokes himself, making me lift my chin to see the twinkle in his beautiful eyes.

  I sniff once, getting my emotions under control before he allows me to extract my hand to take a sip of my coffee. “As I said. Hot. Mess. Express. They were doomed from the start really. I did a paper on them in college, so if you want, I can go into way more detail than Ronnie did on the tour.”

  He holds his hand out, palm up. “Please. I love hearing you talk.”

  I choose to ignore the compliment instead of making a joke. Baby steps.

  “Zack Bowen was a charmer. He was a bartender here in the Quarter, a super good-looking young man who left an impression on everyone he met, according to people who knew him. He grew up in California as well, so he had the laid-back way about him, like you do. He married young, to a woman ten years older than him named Lana. They had two kids, and in order to take care of them, he joined the Army for the benefits. A lot of stuff happened overseas, and that’s probably more tragic than what ended up happening at the end of Zack and Addie’s story,” I say quietly, leaning forward to take a bite of a beignet. I dip it in the powdered sugar that had fallen off onto the plate and hold it out for Curtis, but instead of taking it from me, he leans in a takes a bite, his eyes closing. How the man could still look so fucking sexy, even with white powdered sugar all over his face as he groans in delight, I have no idea. I smile at the simple pleasure.

  “My God, that’s delicious.” He licks his upper lip, and my pussy clenches. “Why do you say that’s more tragic? What happened while he was deployed?”

  “Well, one of his fellow soldiers he was close to was killed, and then a child he befriended while he was overseas was murdered for speaking to American soldiers. It really fucked him up, understandably. And it may seem silly to add but is actually pretty important to the story—he developed a really painful case of hammertoe because of his army-issued combat boots. Seems like small potatoes, but physical pain on top of high emotional distress can be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. It was all a terrible mix of shit that turned his once sunny outlook on the military into something he begrudged. Lana was sick with Hep C and alone with their two kids, and he was lonely, and in pain, and missed them terribly. So he started failing PT tests on purpose until he finally got discharged. This is the part that hurts my heart the most when it comes to Zack Bowen. No one helped him. No one took the time to care for the guy. No one made sure he got the medical attention, both mental and physical, that he so desperately needed. They just discharged him and sent him back into the civilian world with a slap on his ass, like ‘Good luck to ya!’” I shake my head. I can’t help but think about how if he’d just gotten treated for his depression and PTSD, there wouldn’t be this awful story to tell all these years later.

  “Anyway, enough about the depressy stuff. Because I could go on and on about shoulda-couldas and what-ifs, but there’s nothing we can do for him now. I do what I can for people who come into my office with the same diagnosis, and in my head, that’s my way of trying to make up for the people who failed Zack,” I say, taking another bite of beignet before I move along the story. “So Zack comes back to NOLA, and he self-medicated the way a lot of veterans sadly do—with drugs and alcohol. He takes odd jobs to try to make money for his family, but eventually, Lana leaves him, adding to his depression. Until he meets Addie Hall.”

  “Dun-dun-duuuun,” Curtis singsongs before taking a sip of his coffee, making me smile.

  “Right? Addie was known as a free-spirited, feisty, and independent artist who found herself in the bohemian New Orleans lifestyle after a rough childhood in the Northeast. She was a poet, artist, dancer, and bartender here in the French Quarter with a lot of friends. She was hesitant about relationships with men—”

  Curtis clears his throat at that, pinning me with a look. “Must be a NOLA girl thing,” he murmurs with a playful lift of his brow.

  I choose to ignore him. “—because of the abuse she experienced in her past. She was always looking for the perfect muse for her art, and then she finally found it in Zack, all the while battling her own demons and addictions.”

  “Oh shit. You weren’t joking when you called them the perfect storm. Even if I didn’t know how their story ends, I could tell you right there that these two would probably not be good for each other,” he says with a wince.

  “Seriously. So Addie meets Zack while they’re both bartending in the Quarter. According to people who knew them, she liked to give him a hard time and play the mean girl as her way of flirting, but in all honesty, it was just a test to see what he could handle, to see just how far she could push him. Addie had an ugly side of her own. Her diagnosis included bipolar disorder, and taking the medication to treat her mental illness irregularly caused horrible, uncontrolled outbursts. Many of their friends remember their outrageous fights, saying they had a tumultuous relationship from the start, which was fueled by drugs and alcohol,” I continue, taking a sip of my coffee.

  “Fast forward a couple weeks, they were together a while before Katrina started making its appearance in the Atlantic. Zack had every intention of evacuating the city and holing up with Lana and their kids so he could get out of the storm. The thing about hurricanes is you can see them coming days and days ahead of time; you just can’t tell how terrible and where exactly it’s going to make land once it’s here. But it was forecasted to be so disastrous that Lana even welcomed Addie to evacuate with them.”

  “Wow. That was… pretty fucking nice of her. You don’t really hear about an ex-wife offering such a thing to the new woman,” Curtis inserts, and I nod.

  “Not too often. But Addie, being Addie, refused the offer. Her independence and need for a life all her own with Zack far exceeded any need she had to leave the city. On his way out
of town, Zack went to check on Addie, and he ended up not being able to leave her, so they decided to weather the storm together in her apartment. The category five hurricane hit our city dead-on, leaving catastrophic flooding and nearly two thousand fatalities in its wake,” I explain, shaking my head.

  “You didn’t stay behind, did you?” he asks, and I look up to meet his serious expression.

  “Hell no. It was 2005 and we were fresh out of high school. Emmy and I hightailed our asses to Houston,” I reply, seeing his look of relief.

  But then he winces when he asks, “Was there a lot of damage to your home when you got back?”

  “Miraculously, no. The majority of the French Quarter was unscathed, just fallen tree limbs, broken signage, and scattered debris. But back to Zack and Addie—they gathered the few people who waited out the storm, and they all made dinners together over campfires, drank booze, and stayed up late singing songs. Some of the survivors mentioned looking up and being fascinated by all the stars they couldn’t see before because of the streetlights and brightness of the city. But our star-crossed lovers were so swept up in the romance of it all that they were completely oblivious to the chaos just blocks away at the Superdome and surrounding areas. They fell deeply in love and made a life for themselves in the weeks following the destruction in the empty French Quarter. They were inseparable from that point forward, made a name for themselves as they served alcohol and meals to their fellow survivors, and were even photographed for national magazines and newspapers, interviewed for their choice to stay in the city instead of joining the mandatory evacuation. They felt like King and Queen of the Quarter during those blissful weeks,” I tell him.

  “I mean, I can see that. It sounds like some kind of apocalypse romance movie or something. I can’t believe this actually happened, and right here! Not like, in some other country. Right. Fucking. Here.” He gestures out with his arm, and I can’t help but look out across the street to Jefferson Square, the cathedral glowing beautifully behind the tall hedges and iron fence.

  I nod. “Hell of a backdrop, huh?”

  He gives a sad smile as he looks toward the Square as well, wiping his hands on his thighs and leaning back in his chair. “So what happened when they gave the all-clear for everyone to come back home?”

  “Well, when the lights in the city turned back on and the stars disappeared once again, reality set back in and the clean-up began. Zack and Addie were forced back into their old life, a life neither were ready to have to live again. Bills, job schedules, responsibilities—all that replaced the bonfires in the middle of their street that they cooked on, the comradery with their fellow survivors, and all the time in the world to just sing songs and… be. And on top of all that, Addie just wanted Zack. She didn’t want the responsibility of his children and ex-wife. Their time on a deserted island was over, and they dealt with everything as they always had, with vast amounts of alcohol and drugs, their addictions growing exponentially over the months to come.”

  “See, that just boggles my mind. You’d think that being in those conditions for that long would’ve been awful. Wouldn’t it have triggered Zack’s PTSD in some way, essentially living like the people he saw while he was deployed?” Curtis questions.

  “Everyone handles their diagnosis differently. In Zack’s case, he thrived in those conditions. He had a sense of purpose, felt at home helping in ways he knew how,” I explain, and he nods. “Zack wasn’t triggered until the military vehicles moved in and the destruction Katrina left was finally revealed around the rest of the city. His PTSD was in full force then, and with the natural high of the hurricane gone, they had to look elsewhere for their next high. And unfortunately, violent fights erupted, and the couple began to drift apart. Their only solution to reignite their passion was to get a new apartment together and start over from scratch. That apartment just so happened to be above a famed Voodoo temple and was available immediately. The crazy thing was, though, reported later by the landlord, was they had barely even moved in when Addie came to him and asked that the lease be in her name only. Turns out, she discovered Zack was cheating on her, and that was the final straw. The landlord wrote a handwritten contract and asked Addie to sort it all out, hoping they would get back together. But once Zack learned of her deception, he became… let’s just say really, really angry.”

  “Understatement of the century if this is where Ronnie’s version of the story picked up.” Curtis snorts.

  “Yep,” I say, popping the P. “That’s when ole Zacky decided to strangle Addie, dabble in a little necrophilia, and go all Hannibal Lector on her ass.”

  “Oh fuck. He ate her?” Curtis grimaces.

  “Well… actually no. I take that back. He put parts of her in the fridge, and other parts of her in pots on the stove and in the oven. But there was no actual evidence of him being a cannibal. I can’t remember if he put it in his suicide letter to the police or if it was their assumption later on once they looked at all the evidence that he was actually trying to get rid of her body by cooking it, but the smell was so bad he gave up, just turned the AC on crazy high and got his ass out of there. Twelve days later, he jumped from the seventh floor of the Omni Royal Orleans Hotel.”

  “They never stood a chance. So sad,” he murmurs, taking the last sip of coffee in the glass mug before pulling the paper cup full toward him to fix with sugar.

  When he hands over the dispenser, I stir with one hand while pouring with the other, focusing on the swirling vortex the spoon creates. “Do you…? Ah, never mind.”

  “No, what? Do I what?” He leans forward, eagerness filling his every feature.

  I pooch out my lips, contemplating my words first. “Do you believe in fate? Do you believe everything happens for a reason, is all part of some predetermined plan?”

  He narrows his eyes a moment before answering. “I do. I suppose I always have.” He nods.

  “Then what do you suppose was Zack and Addie’s purpose? Like, nothing good came from any of that. Their entire lives were nothing but tragic,” I murmur, something that’s always bothered me about their story.

  He tilts his head. “Well, that’s hard to say. But it could be tons of things. Zack’s only purpose could’ve been to father those two kids. One of them could end up being the sole person to like… end cancer, or world hunger. Maybe Addie’s art fell into the perfect customer’s hands that inspired them in some world-changing way. Like, look how infamous their story is. Maybe it sparked a fire under someone’s ass and could one day change the way veterans with PTSD are cared for. Or…” The way he breathes the word in excitement pulls my eyes to his, and I see the ah-ha in his features.

  “What?” I can’t help but smile at his enthusiasm.

  “What if their purpose was for little Elizabeth to hear their story one day from the very tour guide whose friend is a psychologist, who would then, a decade later, fund her scholarship to college? What if little Elizabeth in turn becomes that person in the future who changes mental healthcare for all veterans in the years to come? That, sweet sugar, could be fate’s plan. The whole reason for their tragedy,” he tells me, and not even seven words into his explanation, my throat grows tight and my eyes fill with tears at such a beautiful thought.

  I give a short laugh even as a tear spills onto my cheek, and I flip it away as I nod vigorously. “Yeah,” I breathe. “Let’s go with that.”

  Chapter 12

  Curtis

  IT TAKES EVERYTHING in me not to reach across the table and pull Erin into my lap to swipe her tears away and comfort her. The only thing that stops me is seeing clearly that they are happy tears and somehow sensing what I said heals some part of her that was hurting. And knowing I’ve done that for her, that my words have made her feel better about something that’s obviously bothered her for some unknown reason, is the best feeling in the entire world. So I leave her be and let her bask in the glow I see starting to spark inside her, and I decide right then and there that it’ll be a lifelong goal of
mine, for the rest of my goddamn life, to see just how bright I can get that glow to shine.

  We sit in comfortable silence, finishing up our plate of beignets, until I can’t hold it in any longer… literally.

  “I made a mistake.” I wince.

  Her eyes immediately lose a bit of the light I put there before she shutters her expression, and I regret my words instantly.

  I lean across the table a take hold of her chin, looking her square in the eye when I say, “I broke the seal earlier, and now I really, really gotta pee.”

  Relief overtakes her expression as she laughs, pulling back from my hand and then standing. “Goob. Come on, I’ll show you the closest bathroom. It’s down past these shops a ways.”

  I pull out my wallet and put two twenties under the napkin dispenser. The waiter deserves the huge tip for the amount of powdered sugar every-damn-where, which he has to clean up. We pick up our to-go cups of coffee and exit the canopied café, heading back toward the French Market. We pass several souvenir shops, a Harley Davidson store, another green-canopied café on our left across the narrow one-way street, and a bar, until we finally come to the public restrooms. They’re situated back into a courtyard of sorts, and I in no way feel comfortable leaving Erin out here alone. Especially with the group of what look like gypsies sitting on the ground next to the building.

  “I’ll just wait here,” she tells me, but I hesitate going into the men’s room. “What’s wrong?” she asks when I just stand there, looking between her, the four young men and women in ratty clothes surrounded by backpacks and a scruffy-looking mutt on a leash, and then the bathroom that’s practically screaming my name.

  Without giving it a second thought, I dip down, knowing she’d totally fight me otherwise, and pick her up over my shoulder, hauling her into the bathroom with me, her squawks echoing off the brick walls around us as she complains about me “almost” spilling her coffee.