Page 7 of Puck Daddies
Meg didn’t see it at first. When they were both behind the counter, little things started to go wrong. A milk order went missing. A pastry tray went out with the wrong tags so the nut-allergy sign wasn’t where it should have been. The espresso machine got “accidentally” powered down right before a rush. Meg got blamed enough times that she started taking the blame before anyone could say it.
Bea didn’t want a war in her shop. She never did. She wanted harmony and hot drinks and a line that moved. When Meg and Callie rubbed each other raw, Bea solved it by scheduling them on opposite shifts, like moving pieces on a board to stop the clash rather than asking why the clash kept happening. It kept the peace. It avoided scenes. It also taught one person that consequences are negotiable if you make yourself useful and keep saying the right things.
I loved Bea. Everyone did. She fed people. She gave second chances. Sometimes she gave seventh chances. I always thought she was too lenient with Callie. Her taking Meg’s boyfriend and parading him in front of her is the ugliest version of what I worried about.
Hudson sets his mug down too hard and wins the award for Most Honest Sound. “I owe him a broken nose.”
Meg laughs once, ugly and wet. “Not tonight. I just need a place to sleep.”
Oliver answers before the last word lands. “You’re staying here,” he says. No question mark, just a period. Then he glances at us, because he’s a good man even when he’s certain. “Right?”
“Of course,” I say. Hudson grunts something that means the same. Oliver bought the apartment, so it’s technically his to offer, but the walls have our fingerprints on them and the couch remembers all of our weight. Meg has slept in the guest room after wins that felt like a parade and after losses that felt like a hole. She knows where the spare blankets live. She knows which cabinet hides the good glasses. She’s practically roommate number four.
Oliver takes her bags and walks them down the hallway. He tells her he put fresh sheets on the bed last week because he washed all the linens at once. He makes small talk because small talk is a bridge. He flips on the lamp in the guest room because the overhead is too harsh when you’ve been crying. Meg thanks him without looking at him for too long. Sometimes looking at kindness makes everything harder. He shows her where he put the tissues because he knows she won’t ask. He does that thing with his shoulders that makes rooms feel less sharp.
I watch Hudson while they walk down the hall. He has the look he gets during a bad shift when he’s trying to hide that his body is ready to do something he’ll regret. It lives in his jaw and the way he doesn’t know what to do with his hands. He flexes them. He puts them on his thighs.
He loves Meg. He has loved Meg for a long time. He’s tried to be ethical about it. He’s tried not to show it. Right now, his face says he is holding a door closed with his back.
“You going to be okay?” I ask him, quiet. I don’t make eye contact until I have to. Men lie less when they don’t have to look at you.
“I’ve been over it,” he says too fast. “Long time. I’m fine.”
I lift my eyebrows. I don’t push. I got used to not pushing with him when we were twelve and he needed space to not say the wrong thing to a teacher who didn’t understand his volume. There’s his first answer, and the one that might come eventually. The second one is the real one.
Oliver walks into the living room looking taller because he had to duck his head to get through the guest room’s short frame. He rubs the back of his neck and looks at me. I look back. We don’t say anything. We don’t need to. We make a triangle around the space where Meg used to be and guard it like people whose whole lives started as a triangle.
We all sit because there’s nothing else to do when someone you love is crying a little in a room down the hall and trying to be quiet about it. The apartment is mostly quiet with her. The pipes click once like they heard an argument and changed the subject. The fridge hums. The heater breathes. I can hear the small drag of tissue from the guest room and then the stillness again.
Hudson looks at me because I’m the person he asks questions he thinks are stupid. “You going to be okay with it?”
I put my elbows on my knees and the mug on the table, and I lie. “I’m not the one with a crush.”
He snorts, but it isn’t mean. “Sure.”
Neither of us believes me.
Oliver looks between us and knows exactly what just happened without hearing the words. He leans back, lets his long legs take up space, sighing.
Hudson stands when I do, not because he needs to, but because he can’t sit still. He looks at the front door like it insulted him. He makes a fist and then smooths his fingers one at a time. “Gotta get to bed or I’ll find that asshole and give him a new face. Goodnight.”
“Goodnight, Hud.”
Tomorrow we all have places to be. Hudson will knock on doors with paper bags and smile even if someone scolds him for being five minutes early. Oliver will put on a hard hat and pretend he’s just another pair of hands until the crew lets him carry something heavier. I’ll be at the rescue before dawn, filling bowls, straightening blankets, humming at dogs that shake the way Meg’s hands shook when she walked in. In the morning we’ll make coffee, speak quietly, and pretend nothing cracked.
The fact that the world keeps spinning should be a comfort. But the woman we have always had a crush on is brokenhearted and sleeping down the hall, and none of us will ever do anything about it because we don’t want to ruin a fifteen-year friendship.
That’s life, I guess.
4
OLIVER
This is bad.This is very bad.
Not because anything dangerous is happening in our apartment. Not because Meg is the kind of storm that knocks pictures off the walls. She’s quiet when she’s hurting.
That’s what makes this worse for me.
