Page 56 of Change My Mind
I’d spent the last twenty-four hours hungover and recovering.
Recovery looked like consuming an unseemly amount of pizza (no pineapple) and replaying the image of Addie dancing with her friends, knowing my cum was drying on her inner thighs. Finishing one season ofSight Unseenand then rolling straight into another, where both Addie and I found ourselves getting overly invested in Ivy and Ben’s relationship. To the point of anger at one point.
It was only when I climbed into bed, feeling more like myself, that I realised what the date was and what that meant for the following day.
Today.
The anniversary of my mother’s death had always been an ominous beacon that fell slap bang in the middle of summer. Losing her in her favourite season still felt like the cruellest of jokes. The sun would be hot and casting the city in a different glow. People were largely in a better mood as theyfound a patch of grass to let the sun warm their skin. There was more laughter, and the flowers bloomed brighter. People wanted to make the most of being outside in pub gardens or parks, or any bit of green space they could find.
It was a complicated time to feel waves of grief that swelled up out of nowhere. I had decent enough acquaintances in Manchester who were there when I needed them, but they had also been lucky enough not to have lost a parent yet, so they assumed I would ‘get over it’. They found it increasingly frustrating that grief wasn’t something you just got over, that it continued to affect me.
My one saving grace had always been the deeply toxic industry I chose to work in. It meant that when the grief got too much, I could bury myself in working all hours of the day, drowning out the grief with the noise of a kitchen. I worked every possible shift and let myself get lost in the job that cost me everything until the wave died down and the wound closed enough for me to live with it.
Except, unlimited shifts weren’t available to me anymore. I worked for two men who had made it abundantly clear that I could only work single shifts. The only way to work more was if there was no one else available. And short of my entire kitchen team getting food poisoning, we had the staff.
If I hadn’t been so distracted by my actual life, maybe I would have encouraged them all to take a holiday so that we were short-staffed. I am sure I would have been able to figure out how to get that past Darren and Xander.
But I hadn’t. And now I was going into this lunchtime service hoping it would be a difficult one, full of people complaining about non-issues. If I were lucky, there might be a huge problem for me to solve that would take up all of my brain space. Like a produce shortage or, even better, a poultry shortage. The kind of thing that couldn’t be tied up in a neat little bow in one service. An issue to sink my teeth into andkeep my mind busy. A distraction from the fact that, for the first time, I hadforgottenthis day was imminent.
But even if there wasn’t a crisis, this lunchtime service would be fine. It didn’t mean anything that I was sweating through my chef blacks. The humidity in London was one thousand per cent, sweating was a given.
Nor did it mean anything that I also felt shivery. When the kitchen wasn’t fired up, it was naturally quite a cool place to be. And I was probably still a little bit hungover.
Everything was fine.
Thirty-Six
ADDIE
Today, I was finally going to write actual words on a new document and officially declare my PhD restarted. I had all my notes, both mine and some from my advisor, and a couple of books that I probably wouldn’t use, but it felt like they should be nearby. There was an array of pens spread out on the table and three packs of multi-coloured Post-it notes that also felt good to have on hand, even though, historically, I had never used a Post-it note to write an essay. Ever.
My laptop was freshly charged, and my coffee was fresh.
I was ready to begin.
And then my phone lit up with a call.
“Kayla?” I answered. I couldn’t think of many reasons why she would be calling me half an hour before lunch service was due to start. Briefly, I panicked that something might have happened to Dad, but then I remembered he wasn’t working today, and somehow, it seemed unlikely that Kayla would be the person to tell me if something had.
“Hi, Addie, sorry to call out of the blue, but I didn’t know who else to call. Ummmm, can you come and get Eli?”
“Eli?”
I had seen him briefly this morning, and he seemed tired, but I put that down to the hangover of the hangover. He told me he was fine when I asked. Twice. Looking back on it now, it had been a snappy ‘fine’ rather than his usual ‘fine’.
“Yeah. Um, he’s…I don’t know. Not okay, that’s for sure. I mentioned it to Xander, and he checked in with him. But in another life, Eli might be an award-winning actor because he convinced Xander that he was fine. Fuck, I would have thought he was fine if I hadn’t witnessed him nearly fall to the ground the moment Xander disappeared. I think he might be trying to work through a panic attack. He’s not going to let Xander see him falter, so I think it might be best if someone, ifyou, force his hand and make him leave. I’m worried he’s going to hurt himself with a knife or something.”
Ice slid through my veins. “Oh, okay. Yeah, sure, I can come get him. Or at least try and get him to stop working.”
I was already up and trying to find a pair of shoes that didn’t require lacing.
“Thanks. Sorry again,” Kayla said.
“No, it’s not a problem,” I said, sliding my feet into a pair of boots that weren’t the most London summer-friendly, but met my requirement. “I’ll be there soon.”
I hung up, picked my keys up from the bowl by the door, and ran.
It wasa fifteen-minute walk to Vivi’s, and I did it in eight.
