Page 16 of Resisting the Grump

No, Avery, Christ! Get a grip.

As I was saying, I would play it cool. Because I didn’t want to put myself in a situation where there was no question who was the cat and who was the mouse. And I could tell by the set of his jaw that that man would crush me under his big paw just for sport.

So I wasn’t even going to play the game.

I was going to be a good little barista, bake the breads I was told to bake, and not burn the bakery down.

And under no circumstance would I bring my box spring into this.

T E N

- Oliver -

The last thing I needed right now was for my face to be on the front page of a shitty tabloid saying I’d threatened my neighbor, so I knew I had to respond to Number Eight’s “Is that a threat?” note carefully. So I did. With a cactus. Just a small one. I hoped it would encourage her to keep her toxic attitude away from me, and to my pleasant surprise, it seemed to be working. Hadn’t heard a peep back from her anyway. Then again, I had been playing my music unusually loud.

I got out of the shower and towel dried my hair before glancing at my phone. As impressed as I was by Brownie Babe’s professionalism, I was disappointed I hadn’t heard from her again. She messaged me the last night of the festival to let me know she raised $182 dollars for Hudson House, but after I confirmed I’d still be willing to match her contribution, I hadn’t heard a peep from her. She didn’t say it was nice to make my acquaintance. She didn’t invite me to the café. And she didn’t beg me to pull her pigtails into compromising positions in private. What a waste.

I know I ignored Mac when he joked about the festival being a great place to meet women, but that beautiful baker had certainly piqued my interest. Not only that, but my fascination with her didn’t seem to be fading. Granted, I was probably only intrigued because I hadn’t dated much since my last relationship went horribly, horribly wrong, but I couldn’t shake the sense that I’d met someone. Not just anyone, but someone.

I stepped over Simba on the way to my closet, disregarding his obvious displeasure when I momentarily interrupted the stream of sunlight he was enjoying. Ten seconds later, he walked off in a huff as if my waffling over what to wear had disturbed his peace. It wasn’t exactly a critical decision. I almost always wore black or navy blue, but I had a sneaking suspicion my default dress shirts would be too fancy for the pizza place across town I was reviewing tonight.

Supposedly, the salad bar was going to “knock my socks off,” but I doubted it. In my experience, even the best salad bars failed to feel high end. No matter what ingredients were available, there was nothing classy or thrilling about serving oneself buffet style. Worse, the average diner knew jack about combining ingredients in an inspired way. That’s what chefs were for. It was their expertise that made dining out interesting. Then again, it was a pizza place, so maybe that’s why my expectations were so low. While expertly executed pizza was arguably the perfect meal, I’d learned there were a lot more ways to get it wrong than right.

So much came down to the crust. If it wasn’t crispy and well cooked, it was an insult to the ingredients it supported. And don’t even get me started on the sauce, which was another area people were always screwing up, making it too sweet or not sweet enough.

I’d heard people compare pizza to sex in the past, asserting that even bad pizza is still pizza, but I vehemently disagreed. Bad pizza was a complete waste of calories and bad sex was best avoided at all costs, too. I hadn’t had much of the latter, fortunately, but that’s only because I could spot a bad lay from a mile away.

Insecurity was probably the biggest red flag. A woman who wasn’t comfortable in her skin when she was wearing clothes of her own choosing would never feel uninhibited enough to bounce on your cock bare naked. I don’t know what kind of nonsense women’s magazines were spewing but, as far as I could tell, most women were clueless about what men actually cared about.

I couldn’t give a shit about a dimple of cellulite, for example, if a woman knew how to back that ass up. And I was much more turned on by a feminine woman with an unapologetic appetite than a frail woman who counted calories and lacked the confidence to order her own damn fries. Maybe it was my own obnoxious self-assurance, but I struggled to connect with women who didn’t have a genuine zest for life.

That was the trouble with Raven. She got depressed after the accident and let her despair take over. Meanwhile, I did everything I could think of. Drove her to see different doctors. Hired the best prosthetists on the planet. But nothing I did made an impact, and I finally had to accept that I couldn’t help her if she didn’t want to heal. It was devastating, watching someone I cared about give up like that. I’d never felt more inadequate and helpless in my life. Still, I refused to pity her like the rest of her friends and family, refused to humor the idea that her life was over.

She was young and beautiful and had her whole life ahead of her. I even bought a ring, thinking that might cheer her up. But in the end, I took it back to the jeweler and received the most depressing return receipt of my life. It was the right decision, though. When someone pushes you away that hard for that long, you’re a fool if you don’t respect their wishes. That said, breaking up with her is the only thing I’ve ever done that truly made me feel like an asshole.

Maybe I would’ve handled things differently if my parents hadn’t been so happy together. But if there was one thing I learned growing up, it’s that who you partner up with in this life is the most important decision you’ll ever make. And I’d learned the hard way that there was no pain like loving someone who didn’t love themselves.

That’s what people don’t get about my job. They think it’s the end of the world if I say their clam chowder is indistinguishable from a bowl of snot. But a bad meal is fleeting and fixable. The real Armageddon in this life is when you lose someone you love to the insidious disease of self-hatred.

At least my dad still enjoyed glimmers of my mom’s grace. While her moments of clarity were becoming few and far between, there was no doubt she still remembered him and everything they shared and built together. But Raven stopped surfacing altogether and let her grief swallow her up, swatting me away every time I tried to save her from drowning.

Sometimes I wondered if she turned on me because she didn’t want to drag me down. She said as much once, anyway. And I tried to argue with her. For so long, I tried to make her see that a wheelchair wasn’t a death sentence, that we could get through it. But she didn’t want to. She wanted to wallow. Wanted to be alone with her pain. Wanted me to move on. And when I pretended not to understand, she resorted to cruelty until I finally got it through my thick skull that my love would never be enough to keep her afloat.

So when I saw the sparkle in Brownie Babe’s smiling eyes and got the feeling that her pretty lips hid a sharp-witted tongue, it made me forget the hurt I’d been carrying for a moment. And it felt good. Really good. In fact, the more I thought about how enlivening it was to be in the presence of a beautiful woman who wasn’t hell bent on picking fights with me, the more I realized it might be time to trade my broken heart for a fresh start.

Of course, there was only one way to find out if I was ready to date again.

I’d have to put myself out there.

But knowing Brownie Babe was out there made the opportunity seem too good to pass up. So I decided I’d visit her café. Because her caramel eyes were too sticky and sweet to stay away.

E L E V E N

- Avery -

I gave Grace a thumbs up when the star-shaped plaque in the window was perfectly positioned, and as soon as she secured it, she hurried outside to see how it looked.

“I can see why you wanted to win it so bad,” I admitted. “It does add a little something.”

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