Page 20 of Nine-Tenths

Chapter Sixteen

" Y ou called me," Gemma says instead of 'hello'. "Is the world ending?"

"See, this is why I don't ," I grumble, fumbling to get the phone on the counter before I drop it in the dishwater. I poke at it with a sudsy finger to turn on the speaker.

"Hold on," Gemma says, and then she's on speakerphone, too. I can hear Stuart in the background shouting at Mum to come to the living room.

"Oh, Christ, I'm hanging up."

"No you're not!" Stuart says. "Mum! Mo leanbh 's on the phone."

"Only Mum gets to call me that." I point a soapy knife at my brother's voice. "I didn’t call for a family roast. Gem, can we talk for a minute without the peanut gallery?"

"I've got to get the chicken out of the oven, anyway. Be right back, mo leanbh ," Mum says, and great , by all means, give Stuart more ammunition. I groan.

Gemma clicks off speaker. "What's the what?"

"Auuugh." I’m not sure what to say now that I have her alone. I check the door behind me—still good. "I just… so, I'm seeing someone."

"No, really?" Gemma deadpans.

"Fuck off. I think… I really like him. Like, maybe love him?"

"And you're scared shitless?" she asks kindly.

"That's just it," I admit, rinsing a wine glass. "I’m not. But not being scared is scaring the crap out of me."

"What do you want me to do about it?" she laughs. "Besides telling you to stop worrying yourself into knots."

"I'm not."

"You are. When did you last speak to Dr. Chen?"

My confidence curdles. I haven't talked with my therapist since Beanevolence got torched.

I've been riding too high on the amazing coffee and wonderful dragon kisses to make a new set of appointments.

I try not to be flaky. I don't see her every week, like I used to right after Dad died, in that first terrible lockdown summer when the whole world went to shit, but we still do tune-ups via video chat.

"Ah ," I say, caught out.

"So item number one: appointment," Gemma orders.

"Yes," I grumble. I hate giving any of my family any reason to boss me around. They think just because I'm a big fat mental health wreck that I'm still a child. I want to be better than that, to get all my own adulting right, no chiding or babying.

"Are you writing it down?"

"I'm writing it down!" I scribble it on the white-board stuck to the fridge.

"Good. So," she prompts when I don't add anything else. "You love him?"

I cut my eyes back to the front door in a panic, but no, Dav hasn't snuck in. Thank god. My life is already my own personal Coffee Shop AU, I don't need any other tropes to tiptoe in.

"Yeah, but what if he’s secretly regretting everything and he's gonna ghost me? What if he sees what a trash goblin I am—"

"Whoa," Gemma cuts me off. "Where is this coming from?"

"Gem, he's perfect ." I whine, wiping off my hands and throwing the towel over my shoulder as I turn to lean back against the counter.

I glance at the door. Still safe. "He's nice, and polite, and he's such a great kisser, so obviously he's regretting every second he ever spent pining for me and he's secretly planning to fuck off and never come back, and I don't even know where he lives .

I like him so much and this is such a stupid mistake. What am I doing? Should I end it?"

"What are you doing?" Gemma asks. "Are you actually asking me to help you think up reasons to break up with him because you’ve convinced yourself he's gonna leave you without even saying goodbye?"

" Yes ."

"That’s just the brain weasels talking."

"There's no reason why a dragon like him—"

" What? " Gemma screeches. The silence that follows it echoes like shattered glass.

"Did Mum not tell you?" I ask softly.

"No."

"Surprise?" Even though she can't see them, I add jazz hands, which just end up flinging droplets of gray dishwater all over.

"Okay." She sounds like this is something she's decided to freak out about later. " Dragon . Wow. Okay."

"How do I keep him from vanishing?"

"The cute dragon," Gemma clarifies.

"Yes. The cute dragon."

"The cute dragon who came into the café every morning for like a year and a half."

"Yes, that cute dragon." I don't add that Dav only came in because he was lonely and aimless.

"The cute dragon who looks at you like a besotted idiot in every single photo I’ve seen?"

" Yes , that cute dragon," I snap. "Have you inherited Mum's bad ears?"

"I'm just being sure," Gemma laughs.

"Don't tease! I'm serious."

The thought of Dav just changing his mind and leaving is stupid .

Today has been great. He wanted to cook dinner, so he went out to the farmer's market around the corner and I said I'd stay behind and do the dishes.

As soon as he left, I'd been smashed with this sudden, black-dog, steel-wool, terrible thought: What if he never comes back?

What if I end up standing here in this stupid, yellow, horrible kitchen watching the door and it never, ever opens again?

It's awful and dumb.

It's my goddamn brain weasels and I know that.

Doesn't make it any less awful and dumb.

"Listen," Gemma says gently. "Not everybody you love will leave without the chance to say goodbye. He’s not Dad."

"That's not why I—"

" Colin ."

The way she says my name stings. A hot wave of sorrow crowds my larynx, climbing up my throat into my sinuses, stinging and terrible. "Fine. Maybe it is."

"Did you take your meds today?"

"Yes?"

"Is that a question?"

"No?"

"Okay," Gemma says. "You're sure you took them."

" Yes. " It's the one thing I never forget. I hate where my mind goes when I'm not balanced. If you can't make your own serotonin, store-bought is fine.

"So cute dragon," Gemma says again. "Just enjoy being in love and take it one day at a time, okay? And call Dr. Chen."

"Okay."

"Can I put the rest of the fam on now?"

"Yeah."

She turns on the speakerphone and Mum is right there saying hello. I wonder how much of Gemma's side she heard.

I grimace, but force my tone to stay light. "What's up with you losers?"

Mum tsks at the affectionate insult, and launches into a run down of the dinner she’s making, the changes in the garden, what the neighbors' kids are up to, how Gemma's broken up with that nice young man—"He turned out to be a red pill weirdo, Mum!

"—and how Stuart's new client wants him to divert part of a nearby wetland through their property to become a pretty babbling brook.

"Don't do that, Stu!" I interrupt.

"No?"

"Obviously!"

"Obviously," he repeats, mocking.

"Not obvious to me," Mum says.

"Have you even checked where the watershed runs? Where local fish stocks spawn? What the average water table depth is every year? Never mind destroying a whole micro ecosystem, if you move water closer to a historic property with no modern foundation, it’ll flood every snowmelt.

No way, man, tell them to walk their asses to the riverside if they want to enjoy nature.

Don't fuck around with the current saturation levels. "

"Language!"

"Sorry, Mum."

"If I don't," Stu goes on. "They'll just get someone else—"

"Take it to the city, then. Or actually, you know what, get one of the guys out from Nipissing University to assess the property, talk to the owners.

There's gotta be a professor up there specializing in environmental protections.

Uuuuh, and the Heritage Board… I forget what it's called…

I think Ruthanne from high school's on it?

Point is, come up with something that makes everyone happy. "

"Listen to you, using your degree and stuff," Gemma says, pride radiating from her voice. It still makes me preen, even though her mother-henning bugs the shit outta me.

"Dad would have been proud," Stuart says softly, and that's enough to make me drop the pan I'm scrubbing back into the greasy water and take a few huge gulps of air.

Dad never got to see me graduate, so it hits hard when Stuart says shit like that.

We were in lockdown and construction had been deemed an essential service, and we had all been so careful.

Fuck the Covidiots, anyway. If that asshole electrician had worn a mask, then Dad would never have—it doesn't matter.

Dad did.

So did the asshole electrician.

And that's all there is to that.

"Don’t let them do it without making them think about it, okay?" I ask, working to keep my shit together. Stuart's a jerk.

"Yeah, mo leanbh ," he warbles in imitation of Mum.

Seriously, Stuart's a jerk .

A noise from the doorway catches my attention, and yeah, of course Dav is there, setting down his tote bag and watching me get slammed with one of those deep moments of long-held grief.

He makes a gesture between us, holds out his arms, you want a hug?

I really, really do want a hug. Because the first thing that sings through my blood is: He came back!

Followed by: Of course he came back, you idiot. He's 'besotted.'

Christ, and you love him.

But more than anything, I want him to hold utterly still and be totally quiet, oh my god. If the fam catches on that he's in the room, they'll force me to introduce him. I am not ready.

"Right, I'm hanging up if you're gonna be mean," I say. "Blame Stuart for cutting off the call, Mum!"

"Oh sure," Stuart says, laughing. "It's all on me, like always."

"You're the big brother," I agree. "It’s your job for it all to be your fault, Stu-pid. I'm just the innocent little kid who follows you around, even into the middle of a dock that unmoors—"

"That wasn't me!" Stuart yelps. "How many times do I have to tell you, I didn't untie it!"

"Sure, sure," Gemma says. "Bye Colin."

"Bye Gem. Bye Mum."

" It wasn't me—"

I press the hang-up button, give myself a moment to scrub my face with my water-wrinkled hands, and then nod and open my arms to my cute dragon. "Okay, hugs now, please."

Dav crosses the dingy linoleum in his lemon-yellow, monkey-printed socks, and wraps me in his arms. "That was fun."

"That was the worst ordeal of my liiiiiife," I moan into his shirt. "I can't believe my Mum didn't like, sense you there with her magical Scottish Mind Reading Magic."

"Would it be so bad?" Dav asks, stiffening.

I wriggle to prop my chin on his collarbone and look up at him.

"Hey, it would not be a bad thing to introduce you to my family. Just… not yet."

"Okay," Dav says, and then peels away to fetch the tote and root through the dishes drip-drying in the rack. He starts doing something fancy with butter melting in a pan, then a knife and the biggest leek I've ever seen in my life. "I liked hearing you talk with your brother—Stuart?"

"Yeah." We sort of dance around one another as I set the table, an echo of the way we move in tandem in the café's much smaller kitchen. Noticing how well we move together evaporates the last of the grief. "Stuart and Gemma are twins."

"Stuart and Gemma," Dav says, committing it to memory. It occurs to me that if he has siblings—clutch-mates? Egg-lings?—he's never mentioned them. "I liked hearing you use your expertise. You're clever, Colin."

I clear my throat, trying to sound cool while my heart jumps up to double time: "My thirty thousand dollar piece of paper should be worth something ."

Dav's knife slams down hard into the cutting board, scattering leek everywhere. " How much ?"

"Thirty thousand bucks."

"That's absurd."

"Welcome to late-stage capitalism. Still have all your fingers?"

"What? Oh, yes," he waves his intact hand at me, wiggling said fingers cheekily.

"You sure? Maybe I should check." Feeling silly and bold, I take his hand and make a point of kissing my way down the backs of each of his fingers, ignoring the fragrance of onion.

By the time I'm done, Dav's let the knife clatter to the counter and is pitched toward me like a magnet to iron.

His free hand brushes lightly up the side of my hip, fingers dancing across the denim. "Yeah, all good."

His kiss, when it comes, is hot, and heavy, and open-mouthed. He crowds me up against the corner, and I am happy to let him push me up to sit on the countertop so I can wrap my calves around his ass and hold him there.

"I hear charcoal is coming back as a food trend," I whisper, when he breaks away for long enough for me to get use of my tongue back.

"Huh?" Dav asks, kiss-drunk and pillow-eyed.

"Butter. Burning."

" Coc y gath ."

It’s gotta be a cuss, based on the volume he says it at when he dives for the smoking pan.