Page 2 of Best Served Cold

“How could it possibly be your fault that he’s running around town getting blow jobs?” The thought is distressing enough to reduce me to a puddle, and I grab the phone and sink down to the floor. It’s sticky, suggesting the toast isn’t the first snack Otis made today. I mopped it last night, and I’m going to have to mop it again later. Only this time, I probably won’t be able to tell myself,Only four months left before the rest of your life begins.

I was supposed to move in with Jonah after the wedding. We’d picked out new curtains together, and he’d surprised me with his very particular opinions about thoseandthe bed linens. Why would someone with very particular opinions about such things cheat on his fiancée?

He and his mother had also controlled every stage of the wedding planning. I’d wanted to DIY the invitations and favors, but his mother had thought I was joking—and then responded with genuine horror when she realized I wasn’t.She’dchosen the invitations. Jonah had selected the venue, after rejecting my idea of holding it at Buchanan Brewery, where I work as a taproom server and part-time manager. I couldn’t contribute financially after blowing most of my personal savings on my wedding dress, so I hadn’t felt like I was in a position to argue. My parents weren’t helping either, given we weren’t on good terms, and I wouldn’t accept a dime from my great-aunt.

“What am I going to do?” I ask. “What am I going todo?”

Otis makes a worried sound, then opens the fridge and removes a beer. He pops the top with the bottle opener fridge magnet and hands it down to me. It’s from the six-pack of Hair of the Dog IPAs I brought home from work last night. I’d gotten the beer for Jonah, but he’d turned up his nose and insisted Big Catch’s IPAs were superior.

Now, that seems doubly insulting.

“It’s 9 a.m.,” I say numbly.

My cousin pops open a second beer for himself. “Yeah, but I don’t know how to make a mimosa. The proportions always get messed up.”

“You’re staying?”

He sighs and settles onto the sticky floor beside me. “Yeah. Sorry I tried to leave. I know you don’t have any other friends. Grandma would have been disappointed in me if I’d left.”

One of the pieces of my shattered heart digs into my chest, in danger of metaphorically puncturing a lung. He’s right. I don’t have any friends here. I moved to Asheville less than a year ago, after Otis’s grandmother, my great-aunt Penny, was diagnosed with breast cancer.

At the time, she was living alone, and she’d refused to move in with Otis’s parents, who’d vacationed in Florida five years ago and stayed. Otis had moved in with her, but he frequently forgets to feed his goldfish, so the family had insisted she needed someone else to take care of her—and everyone knew I was the most in debt when it came to Ginnis family karma points. So I’d ditched my plans, left Greensboro, and moved into this house.

For the first time in my life, I’d felt necessary to someone. But Aunt Penny had pushed me to get out of the house, insisting I needed to meet other young people or I’d “wither on the vine.” It was true that she hadn’t needed help around the clock, so I’d gotten the job at Buchanan Brewery.

To be clear, I don’t have a huge interest in beer, but our next-door neighbor’s family runs the brewery. She’d agreed with my great-aunt that it would be unthinkable if “a sweet young thing” were left to wither, and the next thing I knew, I was working in the taproom.

I met Jonah that very first week, after accidentally spilling a beer on him. (Don’t ask.) He’d been wearing an expensive suit, because he’d been there in an official capacity. He was a distributor who helped breweries get wider distribution for theirbeer, and guided stores and bars in choosing the local, or local-ish, beers that would sell well for them. Basically, he made a profession of being charming. He joked that he was the best middleman money could buy.

Instead of flipping out about his ruined suit, he’d asked me out.

I’d never had a charmed life until that moment. In my experience, bad luck usually led to more bad luck, not a date with a man in an expensive suit. So obviously I’d said yes.

Meeting him had felt like a turning point.

Right around then, my aunt, who’d been reacting badly to the chemo, had started drinking a tea blend our next-door neighbor, Dottie, had made for her, which helped her tolerate the treatments. My first date with Jonah had gone shockingly well, and he’d asked me out again, and again.

I’d felt usefulandwanted.

True, Aunt Penny had never really taken to Jonah, whom she’d called a huckster, but she thought every salesperson was a huckster.

My aunt’s cancer had officially gone into remission last month, thank goodness, and she’d left on a three-month long European vacation with her best friend to celebrate “kicking death in the balls.”

For all intents and purposes, my role in Asheville is over. I could quit my job at the brewery and start working toward my dream again, but the thought makes me strangely anxious, as if it’s a balloon lost to the wind.

And now this…

I take a sip of the beer, then a glug of it.

That’s the spirit,” Otis says as I start coughing. “So…I can’t think of a chill way to say this, but we both know what’s going on here. If you tell Jonah, he’s going to make up some excuse.Maybe he’s already on his way over here to switch the phones back. He’s got to be panicking.”

I take another glug of beer, trying to dampen my own panic. “He…he’s got a meeting this morning, at one of the breweries he distributes for. He won’t be able to leave without offending the owner.”

“Is it at the blow job place?” he asks.

I flinch. “No. Big Catch is owned by one of those megacorps. They do their own distribution. His meeting’s at Silver Star. The owner is really touchy about technology. He doesn’t let any of the employees use their phones while they’re working.”

“Well, Jonah’s going to panic when he realizes he messed up, and he’ll have some explanation, and…”

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