Page 1 of Cross To Bear

Chapter 1

Breaking up with someone over potato salad, I wouldn’t have thought it possible if I’d read about it online, but today was the day I was going to do just that.

Waking up because your alarm goes off sucks. It’s a special kind of hell when you hear it on your day off. That became ten times worse when I blinked and sat up straight in bed, realising that I hadn’t set an alarm. It was the smoke alarm going off, letting me know I had completely different problems than having my planned sleep-in curtailed. I yanked on a t-shirt and stumbled out into hell.

Not actual flames flickering, though by the look of the smouldering tea towel on the ground, it looked like they had been present before. No, instead, my personal hell was this. A pot of potatoes that appeared to have boiled over, the starchy water leaving brown, burned on stains all over the cooktop. But that didn’t explain why there were potatoes all over the floor, the pot lying on one side. My eyes flicked over the kitchen like some kind of detective, looking for clues, only to find more crimes.

A pot of eggs boiled dry next to it, the stink of sulphur filling the room, propelled by a thin spiral of smoke. I jerked forward to turn the heat off, forced by the stinky smoke to stumble back once that was done. I couldn’t just leave it there. As it was the source of the smoke, I was forced to grab some potholders from the drawer and try to bring it over to the sink to douse the burned contents in water. I almost made it, but as I got close, kicking potatoes away as I went, I trod on one, my eyes going wide as I felt it squish under my heel. I went skating across the floor like I was wearing roller skates. The pot landed in the sink with a clang, my hands gripping the bench for dear life to stop me from falling on my arse. However, hauling myself upright just drew my attention to more mess.

Parsley and green onions, hacked up and left to litter the bench top because they’d been cut on the laminate, not a chopping board. Bacon that could be carbon dated, it was so crispy, the rashers shattering into a million sooty pieces. Opened jars of mayo with butter knives stuck in them. A mixing bowl with a great glob of it congealing in the bottom. Grated cheese spilling from a bag. It was as if all of the ingredients of my potato salad recipe had staged a revolt in the kitchen, destroying the whole room in protest.

A room I’d spent the night deep cleaning.

We had a rental inspection on Monday, and I would be at work all day. The apartment was a bloody mess, and we’d risk being kicked out if the property manager saw it. I’d wiped and scrubbed, using an old toothbrush to get grime out of the grout because the woman who looked after our property was notoriously picky, and I’d done it all by myself. The sliding door opened and a harried looking Jesse walked in from the balcony, his hand waving the smoke away as he entered the room.

“What the fuck happened?” I said, which was a mistake.

Jesse’s head jerked up, and he frowned as he stared at me.

“I burnt my fucking hands is what happened, Maddie,” he said, thrusting them my way so I could see the red welts across the fingers.

“How did you burn your fucking hands?”

I needed to rein this shit in, or we’d be screaming and yelling within minutes. Correction, he would and I’d walk out. But I couldn’t stop the welling feeling of hysteria.

Was this my life? Was this what I wanted?

I’d been having those thoughts more and more lately, but as per usual, I shoved them to one side to deal with the current situation.

“What were you doing? Why were you making enough potato salad to feed a bloody army?”

“Because the last time I asked you to do it you bitched me out.”

When I met Jesse, he was the hot guy on the gorgeous motorcycle my friends and I stared at while drinking at the pub. When he walked in the door, everyone turned around to watch him pass. With that wave of blond hair, cheekbones for days and blue eyes that usually sparked with mischief, he looked like Jax Teller’s hotter brother. I’d sat at the bar sighing, just like my girlfriends, as we watched him pass. That’d turned into some kind of an outer body experience when those eyes locked with mine.

Why me? that’s what I thought as he stared. I had the same thought as he settled down beside me. Those full lips curved as he set his helmet on the bar, like he could see all of the Sons of Anarchy fantasies running through my head. Ones where I was Tara, though instead of all the drama, we lived in the suburbs and had hot monkey sex constantly.

“Hey…” he’d said. No great pickup lines were needed here. “Can I buy you a drink?”

Three years later, he was still the hot biker dude, just one with a sour expression and even sourer smell. He’d been out drinking with ‘the boys’, again, so the stink of stale beer hung over him. And while he’d gone and played with his friends, I was forced to adult, scrubbing every inch of the kitchen and had intended to get to the rest of the rooms over the weekend. There wasn’t even any hope of getting him to help, because… I turned around to look at the makings of a potato salad, exhibit A, B, and C splattered all over the kitchen.

“That’s your explanation of why you made the salad,” I said carefully, knowing somehow there was another emergency brewing on the horizon. There always was an emergency with him. I had nerves of steel because I was forced to keep them locked tight all the time, just like every muscle in my body. “Not why salad needs to be made in the first place.”

“We’ve got that thing at Mum’s?”

Jesse said that like it was entirely self-evident. It wasn’t. I loved his parents so much, but I hadn’t heard word of anything that required salad making.

“What thing?”

“The barbeque? I told you about it!”

No, he hadn’t. I fished my phone out of my pocket, checking my calendar app just to make sure and he let out a hiss of frustration. This was yet another one of my ‘anal’ habits, apparently. I scanned the contents and found no mention of a family barbeque.

“When?”

That’s all I asked, not when or where or how long ago had he found this out. Just when.

“Lunchtime,” he replied. “We’re supposed to be there…”

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