Page 30 of Your Soul to Keep

He grinned. “I don’t remember you being this difficult.” Dropping his forehead into the crook of my neck, he muttered, “Just cuddle with me. Don’t leave me yet.”

My body softened underneath him.

He grunted. “Better.” Pressing his mouth to my neck, he muttered, “Very fucking nice, in fact.”

“Gabe,” I breathed.

His solid frame was so much heavier than I remembered, thick. His weight grounded me, pushed my overwrought emotions back inside where they belonged.

“Not doing anything,” he paused. “Well, I’m trying not to. What do you have to do today?”

My heart dropped like a stone. “Open the restaurant.”

“Already?” His voice rose with surprise.

“It’s what Nan would have wanted.” I sighed. “In any case, closed restaurants don’t pay the bills.”

If Gabe thought it strange that I pushed him out the door, he didn’t say. I didn’t know much at that point, but I was sure I couldn’t handle whatever was or wasn’t left between us.

I’d much rather live with uncertainty than risk a truth I wasn’t ready to face. If that made me a coward, I was a coward.

Arriving at Ayana’s in record time, I trotted up the walkway, ripped the notice off the door, and rolled into work with swollen, red-rimmed eyes. Entering the kitchen, I noted I was in good company.

God, how they loved her.

Their presence should have been a comfort, a reminder that I was not alone in my sorrow. But the weight of their grief and worry sat on my chest like an anvil. They needed her but were stuck with me. I resembled her in looks but lacked her capacity to love. As extroverted as I was introverted, Nan never met a soul she didn’t make family.

And for most of them, Ayana’s was their family. She was their family.

The familiar cacophony of the kitchen, the clanging of pots and pans, the banter, the steady stream of orders that represented all things Nan and home and belonging, now grated along the edge of every raw nerve.

At first, subdued and withdrawn, they moved around the kitchen quietly. As the minutes ticked past, the familiarity of their tasks leant them comfort, allowing them to reminisce and laugh over memories I did not share. In the way of grief, laughter and sniffles both bisected their mourning.

I lasted an hour in their presence, one hour in which I was largely ineffectual before retreating to the tiny coat check closet to escape their angst, their laughter, their memories, and most of all their whispered remarks.

What do you think she’ll do with the restaurant?

Poor thing has lost so much. She has nobody, now.

There’s no husband, and if she has a boyfriend, no one has ever seen him.

She was engaged once. Did you know that? I heard she can’t have children.

Ayana’s, Nan’s pride and joy, now rested in my incapable hands.

Drawing my knees up to my chest, I covered my ears and squeezed my eyes shut, shutting out the noise for just a little while longer before going back out there.

To do what?

Show them they could depend on me?

I bounced my forehead lightly off my bent knees and inhaled deeply, filling my lungs with the comforting fragrance of butter and garlic, oregano and olive oil, lemon and the faintest hint of vanilla.

Again.

Filling my lungs with the familiar.

Easing my broken spirit.

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