Page 26 of Waiting for Tuesday

The shelving unit was heavy, so I pulled the large box to the edge of my tailgate and let one end drop to the ground. Then holding one end at my waist, I began to walk backward, shimmying it through the lot and inching it across the pavement. I cringed halfway to the front door when I saw the headlights.

“Perfect,” I muttered under my breath. “Just perfect.”

John hopped down from his truck a moment later and began walking toward me.

Damn, he looked good when he walked.Though to be fair, he looked good when he was doing just about anything. Like standing, or leaning, or breathing.

“Need help?” he asked.

I shook my head. Mostly because his presence stirred the same reaction in my stomach I got before tests, like an anxiously excited feeling—like I was about to jump out of a damned airplane. “Nah, I got it.”

He came to stand beside me, frowned, and then turned around to walk backward beside me.

“You sure?” His head tilted to the side and his deep voice lowered. He wasn’t smiling at all, and there wasn’t a hint of humor in his eyes. I didn’t like it at all. Didn’t like this new, sad man who hadn’t smiled in days.

My throat tightened, and I looked over my shoulder. I couldn’t stand the thought of him seeing me cry. Seeing how weak I’d become, when I always prided myself on being strong. “Yeah, actually.” I dropped the box to the pavement, not caring if the whole thing shattered to a million pieces. My only thought was for self-preservation, to get away from him before tears began streaming down my cheeks again. “You can bring it to the back room.” I pushed my glasses up the bridge of my nose and walked across the lot, without bothering to wait for his reply.

I hurried past the pile of boxes in the back room, knowing he’d see them but not having the time to care. I opened the door to the bathroom, closed it as quickly as I could, and sat on the toilet. I put my head between my knees and forced myself to breathe. “You can do this, Tuesday. You can do anything.”

But the tears came anyway.

* * *

When I cameout of the bathroom a while later, the shelving unit was propped against the wall beside my mess. I chewed my inner cheek and glanced to the plastic door. I could hear the rhythmic hum of the air compressor and knew he’d seen it all. Seen the evidence left behind from my weakest moment. John was the last person I wanted to see something like that, and I began making up excuses in my head. Excuses that were stupid. That I was reorganizing, that I’d seen a rat, but then I forced myself to stop. I didn’t need excuses. I didn’t need to defend myself for something that was none of his concern. I squared my shoulders and went to work, picking up the pieces of my crazy life, one box at a time.

I heard Eddie’s voice from the front room a while later and knew he must have arrived for work. I kept my head down and continued cleaning. Last night had been interesting. It had been just after eight when I finally pried myself off the floor. I’d contemplated staying later to clean up, but I was too overwhelmed to think straight. When I’d pushed through the plastic tarp to the front room, I found Eddie sitting on the counter, waiting. He didn’t say anything. Just jumped to the floor, nodded his head to the front door, and walked with me out to my truck.

I shook my head and thought about my puffy face. The face he’d been gentlemanly enough to pretend he hadn’t seen.

I snatched random soaps from the floor and began organizing them inside a box. Luckily, in my frantic search for lip balm, nothing was permanently damaged. Just disorganized in a way that took me four hours to sift through. Just enough time for Becky to miss the whole ordeal. She strolled into the back room late that morning, her hair in long braids, and she placed a brown grocery bag of food on the counter. “So what’s on the agenda for today?”

“More orders, what else?” I said, resting my hip against the counter.

She frowned. “You look like shit, Day. How long were you here last night?” She nodded to the shelving unit and lifted a brow. “I guess you never found slot X?”

I laughed—a real laugh that felt good after my long night—and I smoothed my hair away from my face. “No, I exchanged it this morning. I’ll work on it again later, once I get the rest of my orders shipped.”

She nodded and began pulling containers of food out of the bag. She threw a tub of seaweed salad onto the counter and made a face. “Here, it looked disgusting, so I knew you’d love it.”

I rolled my eyes and snatched the fork from her hand. “You’d be right. Because it’s delicious, you should try it. You may live longer.”

She shook her head. “Nah. My goal in life is to die at sixty-nine.”

She raised her brows, and I hit her on the shoulder with a napkin.

“You’re such a perv.”

Chapter ELEVEN

John

* * *

Iflickedthe switch on the air compressor, causing the room to fall into silence, and I looked over to the door leading to the back room.She was late again.

Eddie raised his eyebrows from a few feet away, silently asking me what we wanted to do, and I gave him the sign to cut it. I wouldn’t make him stick around another night, and I wasn’t going to either. Not when she dropped boxes at my feet and didn’t even thank me for hauling her stuff to the back room.

I had my own shit to deal with.

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