Page 47 of Best Served Cold

He sent chocolates earlier this week, which were melted and infested with ants by the time I got home from work. Then last night, we came home to a flower arrangement, or at least that’s what Otis and I surmised. Some wild animal must have gotten at it after it was dropped off, leaving a trail of broken blooms and leaves across our front porch. All that was left was the mess and a chewed-up note. The only part that could be read said:nah.

It had felt like my bad luck was asserting itself. First there had been Great-Aunt Penny’s plate, cracked in half, and then this…

I’d admitted as much to Otis. But he’d laughed and said it seemed more like bad luck for Jonah than for us.

Of course, he wasn’t the one who’d cleaned it up.

As I head back to the bar to prepare my friends’ orders, I glance toward the closed-off brewing area. Dottie and her partner came tonight too, but her great nephew River, our head brewer, brought them into the back to try his new Kölsch beer, and they haven’t reappeared yet.

Otis would have come, but someone lost a rare albino pigeon and offered him—and presumably lots of other Honey Do employees—an obscene amount of money to try to catch “Fluffnut.”

“It’s just like what happened inAce Ventura,” he’d told me, excited.

He’s still thinking of quitting Honey Do, especially after we did the Myers-Briggs test yesterday and Dottie did a crystal reading for him. Both results were in agreement: he’d do well working with children. Otis was excited and full of ideas. Still, he prefers to drift into new directions rather than force a change, so I expect it will be a while before he does anything about it.

I get my friends their drinks, and the evening carries on with a buzz of activity until Rob and two other guys emergefrom the back with some sound equipment and their instrument cases. One of the band members is tall with longish, wavy black hair and a port wine birthmark on his forehead, and the other has reddish-brown hair and bright-blue eyes. I saw their photos when I looked up his songs, so I know the black-haired guy is Travis and the other is Chance Bixby.

A fizzy, excited feeling rises up in me. Because I really,reallywant to hear Rob sing. These last few weeks, my emotions have been waging a war of highs and lows. I can no longer walk the tightrope I’d gotten so good at toeing across. Watching the wrong commercial can lead to tears or mood swings. Acts of kindness are Superman-killing kryptonite that can send me into a chorus of sobs. It’s like every emotion I’ve tried to suppress has come to the surface at once.

I wave at Rob, and when he sees me, he fumbles his guitar case, and Travis plows into his back.

Huh. That’s strange. He’s not usually clumsy.

I watch as the band members make their way toward the stage, people stopping them every couple of feet to say hello. Then Rob whispers something to them, sets his case down, and approaches the bar with a grin.

“We all came,” I announce proudly, gesturing to the corner booth where I left my friends. But the booth is empty, and now I look like a psychopath.

“Oh, is that your wife sitting over there?” he asks with a lopsided smile. “Give Mrs. Ginnis my best.”

I roll my eyes. “You’re never going to let me live that down, are you? Hannah and Briar came, but they must have moved. Or maybe Dottie took them into the back.”

“More clandestine brewery missions?”

“No, Dottie’s family runs this place. That’s how I found this job.”

He smiles fondly. “Give her enough time, she’ll be running the whole city. She’s really something.”

“Maybe she should be in charge. Everyone would be a lot nicer.”

He raises his eyebrows. “You know how I feel about people who are always nice.”

“Yes, we’re terrible. We should all start pouring beer on people and then declaring the glasses half empty. Speaking of which, I owe you a drink,” I add excitedly, because I’ve spent the last few days testing out nonalcoholic cocktails. My boss tried a few and agreed it might be a good idea to add them to the menu. It had made me feel useful in a way I hadn’t since before my aunt left on her vacation.

Usefulandcreative.

“So you insisted the other day,” he says lightly, but I notice he’s giving me a funny look.

Suddenly self-conscious, I shift the skirt of my red dress with its pattern of golden stars. I’ve been wearing them lately. Dresses, I mean.

It’s a hot, humid summer, and normally I’d breeze through it in a series of different cutoffs or khaki shorts and T-shirts, but Hannah and Briar have convinced me to diversify.

I’ve enjoyed trying out new looks. Until recently, I’d never experimented with clothes, the same way I’d never learned much about lipstick. I grew up an only child, and when I was sixteen, I was sent to reform school. The other kids had scared me, mostly, and I’d made friends with the house mother—a forty-eight-year-old woman named Ruth who made elaborate craft projects with me for the other girls. They were about as appreciative as Rob was of that guitar strap.

Ruth was great, but she’d owned the same shirt in twenty colors and wore only blue jeans. She’d never taken me shopping or taught me about makeup, and the girls at school who caredabout that kind of thing were frankly terrifying. So I’d never really learned what I did and didn’t like. I’d always been embarrassed to try. It would’ve seemed like I cared, and I’d learned that showing you cared was like throwing blood in the water.

Just ask poor Ruth. We’d spent hours creating handmade Christmas crackers for everyone my senior year, and one of the girls had thrown them into the indoor pool.

I told Hannah and Briar that story last week at a bar, although I described Rosewood Academy as a boarding school rather than reform school, and Hannah had put her drink down and said, “That’s it. We’re going shopping, right now. You don’t have to pretend not to care because you’re worried someone’s going to make fun of you or throw your clothes into the pool. If anyone tries to pull that nonsense, you make fun of them right back, until they cry.”

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