Page 21 of Roommate
“He’s kind of quiet,” Audrey says.
“You don’t say.”
Audrey laughs. “It’s just the way he’s made. I mean—he’s the best kind of guy in the world. He’ll do anything for his family. But he’s not a charmer. Zara and I don’t like to leave him alone with the customers for too long. He isn’t rude or anything, he just has RGF.”
“Resting…grouch face?
“Exactly!” Audrey giggles. “My whole point is this—don’t take it personally. People sometimes get the impression that Kieran doesn’t like them. But that’s not the case.”
“Gotcha,” I say. But I’m really thinking, Oh, honey. You have no idea how much he wants me gone. “Is his dad going to be okay?”
“Yeah,” Audrey says as she hands me a bag of coffee beans to pour into the grinder. “It’s back surgery, which sounds dreadful. But it’s not the sort of thing that kills you.”
I stay quiet, hoping she’ll keep talking about Kieran. My curiosity runs deep. What’s the other job he runs off to every afternoon? Is he single? Does he date men? Women? Both?
But Audrey doesn’t elaborate. “I’m going to flip the sign, okay?”
“You go, girl.”
She unlocks the front door, flips the sign from CLOSED to OPEN, and hangs the Open flag outdoors.
I hope we have a flood of customers and sell every last one of the onion bialys that come out of the oven. I need the Busy Bean to be the most profitable business on the planet.
And I need that paycheck.
* * *
Kieran reappears after a couple days. He’s taciturn behind the coffee bar, serving customers promptly but silently. He doesn’t have much to say to me either, but I’m not offended.
“Are you sure six work days a week isn’t too many?” Zara asks while pondering her new work schedule. She has me baking alone in the kitchen on three mornings and coming in later on three more.
“It’s all good. I need the hours,” I assure her. That’s what happens when you walk away from your life with nothing.
“Okey dokey,” she says.
My first morning opening the kitchen alone is on a Saturday. And it’s Kieran who’s scheduled to show up at eight. I hear him walk in the front door, whistling. “Hello?” he calls out.
“Hey,” I reply. “It’s only me back here.”
There’s a pause. I wonder if he’ll even respond. Would he really ignore me completely? “Oh. Hey,” he says a beat later. “Morning.”
I go back to work shaping the bagels I’m making, but he doesn’t appear in the kitchen. I hear the sound of chairs moving around on the wood floors as he checks the front of the house.
Then it gets quiet.
I have a tray of muffins to bring up front, so I step out of the kitchen. At first I don’t spot Kieran, but then I realize he’s standing on a stool behind the counter, his hand raised as he sketches something on the signboard.
Taking another step, I see the blackboard wall has been swept clean, and Kieran is drawing a new design. In multicolored chalk he’s fashioned a big turkey—a tom with a colorful spread of tail feathers. There’s a speech bubble beside his beak that says, Life is short. Eat dessert first.
“Wow. Do you draw everything on the displays in here?”
Kieran startles. For a second his balance goes haywire, and he comes close to falling off the stool. “Shit,” he curses under his breath. He puts a hand to the wall to steady himself. Luckily, only the chalk falls down.
“S-sorry,” I sputter.
“No problem,” he says, but his eyes close briefly, displaying his irritation.
“That’s a killer drawing,” I say, even though he probably doesn’t care what I think. “I assumed Zara did all the art and wrote all the notes. Because the quotes around here are so…”
