Page 41 of Better Hate than Never

“Good morning, sunshines!” Sula hollers, slamming the back door of the shop and making all three of us wince. Bea and I clutch our heads. Toni whimpers. “Long day ahead,” she barks, walking her bike toward the back of the store. “Eat up those pastries, pop some painkillers, and let’s get to work!”

“Speaking of the pastries,” I call, “did you send these?”

“No!” Sula calls back. “But I’m glad someone did, because you three look like corpses and corpses aren’t much use for restock day.”

Another whimper leaks out of Toni. “I’m gonna die.”

“I’m dead already,” Bea whispers.

“Wait.” Toni points at me. “No more sling? You can help with restock!”

I grimace exaggeratedly and rub my shoulder. “Don’t think so. It’s still healing.”

Setting down the card, I help myself to a wide wedge of quiche that’s speared by a tiny flag with lettuce printed on it, signaling it’s vegetarian. Plucking out the flag, I take a hearty bite and sigh withpleasure. That creamy tang of goat cheese. Bright, crunchy asparagus. It’s a favorite flavor combination.

Bea shoves the last bite of quiche in her mouth and goes for another slice.

“Hey,” I say around my mouthful. “These are for me!”

“I need another piece so I can get my veggies in,” she says primly, helping herself to another wedge. Hers looks like broccoli cheddar. “Jamie will be so proud.”

Toni rolls his eyes. “You could subsist on lollipops for the rest of your life and that health nut wouldn’t crack one bit.”

Bea smiles to herself. “Yeah, I know.”

My sister has a number of textural aversions when it comes to food, and vegetables have proven to be a tough frontier. I can admit I found it a little surprising that my vegetable-loathing, sugar-loving, erotic-artist, tattooed sister ended up with a nutrition-conscious, straightlaced, marathon-running, polite and proper pediatrician, but I’ve been pretty delighted to see all the ways Jamie seems completely taken by the things about Bea that are different from him.

In fact, maybe I’m just a tiny bit jealous.

Just atinybit. And only on the very brief, rare occasions since I’ve been home, when I allowed myself to think about the fact that I’ve never met someone who saw the hard-to-like parts of me and liked me anyway. The only people who’ve liked me are the peoplelikeme.

I used to think it was closed-mindedness, people’s aversion to my inconvenient fuck-the-system views, that it was onothersthat I didn’t click with those who were different from me, who disagreed with me.

But lately I’ve been wondering how much I had to do with that, too. If I’ve held at a distance people I perceive as being at odds with me not so much because I disagreed with their views, but because Iwas protecting myself fromtheirrejection for those differences, because it felt safer to write someone off rather than risk being written off first.

It’s a bleak path to go down, and I’m saved from wandering it any further when the bell jingles on the overhead door as it opens, bringing in our first customers of the day.

“Not it,” Toni mumbles, grabbing his cinnamon roll and hightailing it toward the back.

Bea sighs and drops her quiche.

“I got it,” I tell her.

Her head snaps up. “What?”

“I’ll handle these customers. You go ahead and help Toni get stuff sorted for restock.”

One of Bea’s biggest struggles with working here is how draining it is for her to interface with lots of people, especially when she’s tired, let alone hungover. I’m not in a much better place myself, but the need to help and take care of my sister is overwhelming.

“You sure?” she asks. “You’ve only done customers two other days and—”

“I promise I’ll text you if I start to drown. I won’t overreach.”

She nods. “Okay.”

And then she slips—with the pastry box under her arm, the brat—toward the back of the shop.

I don’t greet the customers with a chipper welcome, but I do offer them a polite nod, before turning back to my plate and popping the rest of my quiche in my mouth.

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