Page 9 of Puck Daddies
Meg’s brows lift in the middle, hope given expression. “Really? Luke refused to eat anything I made. Said I’m a bad cook. He’s not the first boyfriend to say it.”
The way she saysboyfriendhits me in the throat. The word has always been wrong on her when referring to Luke. I don’t let that thought show. I scoop another bite of egg puddle and tell thetruth that matters. “Thank you for making breakfast. I needed it.”
Hudson nods, mouth already occupied so he can’t say something that will make her cry in a way that starts a day off in the ditch. Rocco adds, “I like the…seasoning,” and then coughs into his coffee because even he hears how that landed. Meg laughs for real this time, which is a win in my book.
Hudson wipes his mouth and says, casual and bright, “Apropos of nothing, who makes the baked goods for Bea’s?”
Meg answers without thinking, which is the point. “Kenny’s Bakery downtown. We get the deliveries before open.”
That tracks, I think before I can stop myself. Not out loud, just in my head. Meg is a manager and a maker in the ways that matter—coffee and community and schedule Tetris and names and faces and the ability to make a room feel like it belongs to the people in it. She doesn’t need to cook to be good here. We can do the cooking.
Normally, we just grab protein bars and coffee in the morning. When she stays over, we order breakfast in. But with her staying here more than one night, we’ll just have to take over the kitchen before she tries again.
Meg sways a little on her feet, the kind of tired you don’t fix with sleep, and I want to pick her up and put her on the couch and tuck a blanket around her and turn on a stupid show about people who build tree houses. I don’t. I hand her the good mug and refill it. She needs space.
We talk logistics without making it sound like we’re planning around her. Hudson reads off his route like a mantra. He knows which stoops are icy even when the forecast says fifty. He knowswho will ask him to stay and talk for fifteen minutes and who will wave him off with a “go, go, go” like he’s on a power play.
Rocco checks his phone for the early intake at the rescue and says the name of the anxious hound he’s been working with like it matters more than saying his own. It does, a little.
I go down the list for the build this morning and then stop, because saying too much makes me sound like I’m bragging and the whole point is to be useful, not important.
We clear the table. Hudson cleans the pan because he’s a problem solver and that’s the problem he can solve. Rocco finds the toaster setting and shows it to Meg like a nonjudgmental museum guide. She rolls her eyes and smiles and says, “So that’s why it does that,” and I love her a little more for not pretending this hurt turned her into a chef overnight.
I don’t want to leave her alone today, but I must. There’s a family who needs a home, and I can help. I grab my work boots from the hall and kiss the tips of my fingers and tap the photo of us at a charity skate because I do that every time I leave, and I’m superstitious in stupid ways. Hudson runs the route of the apartment twice like a safety check—lights, stove, lock sounds. Rocco grabs his shelter hoodie and a cap and flips the brim backward in a way that feels like it’s belonged to him since we were ten.
Meg stands in the doorway and looks smaller than I like. I put a hand up like a traffic cop in a cartoon and say, “You sleep if your body says sleep. You don’t owe the morning anything.”
“I have the mid-morning shift with Aqua.”
“Of course you do. But once that’s over, sleep. Got it?”
She rolls her eyes and smiles. “Sir, yes, sir.”
I should not like her calling mesirthat much. “Don’t forget to breathe today.”
She nods, and the relief there is why I don’t mind my heart doing whatever it’s doing. I can handle my stuff. I can be a place to land and not a thing that takes over. I want to be her safe space.
I head out to the truck with my boots knocking against my calf and the good ache of being needed humming under my ribs. Foundation pour this morning. Sunrise and wet ground and a family who thinks I’m doing them a favor when it’s really the other way around.
5
MEG
Boring.
Boring, as if a woman sayingnoto a velvet room is the same thing as a woman sayingnoto herself.
“Aqua, ask me what I would most like to do to a luxury sedan,” I say, not looking up from the till as I count down the drawer to open.
Aqua Tofana, in full drag—six-and-a-half feet of glam queen with wing eyeliner so sharp it could sign a declaration—does not miss a beat. She’s not trans, but I think of her as trans-adjacent. Sometimes, she comes in as her legal identity—John Grady. Those are he/him days. But when she’s Aqua, she/her.
“Key it,” she says, nails flashing like righteous knives as she cuts a biscotti for sampling. “And then I’d like to do a delicate, artful, Jackson Pollock tire slashing. Just like…expressive, honey. Cathartic. You say when.”
“It would be so satisfying,” I say, and let myself picture it for half a second. “But you would get caught.”
“Rude.”
“You are a skyscraper in heels. You’re also a beloved neighborhood institution. There’s a difference between poetic justice and an arrest record.”
