Page 12 of Silver Linings

seven

. . .

“Why do you have zucchini in your basket? Are you feeling alright?” Kena searches my eyes, putting his stupidly soft hands on my forehead, checking for a fever.

“Stop being so dramatic.” I swat him away.

He looks affronted. “Oh, I’m the dramatic one? Silver, I have not seen you touch a vegetable since the time you mistook an artichoke for a paperweight.”

“Well, who the hell uses vegetables as decor!”

“It was a staged autumn-themed cornucopia for a Thanksgiving table spread! It was for Home & Garden, for fuck’s sake.”

Looking around, I notice a few people have stopped to stare at us, so I smile, loop my arm through Kena’s and steer him towards the snack aisle of the grocery store.

“Seriously Sil, what’s up with the zucchini?”

I pause and look at him, trying to decide if I’m really about to admit this out loud.

“I thought it was a cucumber,” I frown. “I was going to try to make my own pickles.” All the talk with Nan about pickleball gave me a weird craving for the food.

He just stares at me before he bursts out laughing. “Oh thank God, I thought it was for something salacious.”

Now it’s my turn to be offended. “Excuse me! I do not need produce for that , thank you very much.”

“Well, I never know what you’re into nowadays.”

“Okay, well, let me assure you, it is not now, nor will it ever be, phallic produce.”

We loop around the store for around twenty more minutes, grabbing random things we both need for the week.

This is a ritual of ours that we do at least twice a month when we have the time.

With his new position at Maison Atelier and me deciding to lean into the delusion that led me to buy a bookstore, we’ve had less time than normal to see each other.

“What is going on in your romantic life? You haven’t mentioned anything lately.”

“Ew, don’t call it my romantic life. You know how commitment gives me a stress rash.”

“Stop deflecting. What’s going on with your hot maintenance guy?”

I groan. Absolutely nothing is going on with Hendrix, and I would very much like it to be.

I’m not really sure where I went wrong when we were eating lunch together a few days ago, but the mood shifted, fast. I must have said something wrong, or pried too much and upset him.

I’m usually good at reading signals, and I thought we were getting to know each other.

I was attempting some light charm, and I thought it was going well…

until it wasn’t. I haven’t stopped thinking about it.

I can’t place what it is, but I can’t stop thinking about him, and it’s freaking me out. Is it the thrill of the chase? I’ll admit, that’s a bit of a novelty for me. Men are…simple creatures, after all. But something about Hendrix has me stumped.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing? You?” Kena is shocked. He’s never known me to back down.

I tend to be singularly focused when I set my sights on someone.

It’s been the same song and dance since college—we have fun for the night, and then I’m gone before they think to ask for my number.

Easy. Satisfactory. No messy feelings involved.

“I don’t think he’s interested.”

“Really?” A large, bright smile stretches wide across Kena’s ebony face, and suspicious glee lights up his eyes.

I slap his arm. “Don’t look so happy about it, asshole!”

“I feel for you.” I cast a scowl his way. “I do! That man is…” He whistles and fans himself. “He’s probably the hottest man I’ve ever seen you go after. I mean, his tattooed arms alone?—”

You should see his abs.

“Do you have a point?”

“I just think the pining is good for you. It’ll build character.” He pats my arm.

“I am not pining.”

“Tell that to your face. You’re pouting.”

“Well, you can wipe the smug look off your face. He’s not interested. I’ve all but climbed into his lap, and he’s not taking the bait. I think he might be hung up on someone back home.” I think about the look on his face when I started to pry.

Makena looks contemplative. After over twenty years of friendship, I can always count on him to help me see a situation clearly.

After my dad died and my mom left me with Nan, I learned leaning on people would only end in heartbreak.

Nan was all I had until Kena’s family moved into the building.

As kids, we ran around the building together, had park play dates, and went to the same school.

As teenagers, we ravaged bodegas and used our fake I.D.s to get into bars.

As college students, we were still ravaging bodegas after a night spent going to those same bars, only legally now.

He wore me down over years of persistence, so I let him in, and it became a party of three.

Him, Nan, and me. That was all I needed. All I wanted.

“Why don’t you try being his friend first?”

I slow blink. That’s certainly a novel idea. “Friends…” I repeat slowly, as if he asked me to explain quantum physics to him.

He places his hands on my shoulders and crouches down a little to meet me at eye level.

“I know it’s not what you’re used to, but if he is hung up on someone else, you don’t want to get in the middle of that mess.

Maybe he just needs friends right now. Invite him to hang out with us soon and get to know him—as friends .

If something is going to happen between you two, it will. ”

“You have to stop watching those ’trust the universe’ TikToks. They’re rotting your brain and making you use logic.”

“One of us has to be the voice of reason, and we both know it won’t be you.”

I groan. “I hate how fair that is.” I take a deep breath and push it back out. “Okay, you’re right. I’m going to let it go.”

He grabs my free hand in his and holds it up between our chests, affectionate to a fault as he stares in my eyes. “You are Silver fucking James, you don’t chase after men. You are always the prize.”

I stare into the deep espresso eyes of my best friend in the entire world, one of the only people on this planet who knows me beyond surface level niceties.

I nod so he knows I understand what he’s trying to tell me.

It’s what he’s been trying to tell me for two decades.

I’m worth sticking around for, I’m worth loving.

But hearing and understanding are two different things.

So, I deflect.

“You have got to tell me what hand lotion you’re using.”

Half an hour later, I’m getting out of a taxi with a billion bags of groceries because I overbought while at the store like I always do and couldn’t lug it all home on my own.

Thanking the driver, I hoist a few bags on each shoulder and then grab the rest in my hands, making my way into the building.

I go to grab one of the doors when Tony runs over, looking flustered as he shoulders the door open to help me get through with my bags. And then I hear it. The raised voices.

“Keep your gremlin in line!”

“Don’t call her that,” a voice growls back.

“If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck…”

Mrs. Evans and Simon are yelling back and forth at each other in the lobby while the rest of us watch on in horror.

“What’s going on?” I ask Tony as I set my groceries down.

“Mrs. Evans is on a tirade because she claims she can hear Isla running around their apartment late at night, and it’s disturbing her, since she’s in the unit below them.”

“She’s not doing anything wrong! She’s five years old, she’s in bed by eight p.m., and you’re delusional and bitter.”

Mrs. Evans squares up to Simon with all the fury of an agitated badger. “I know what I hear.”

I see sweet Isla over in the corner by the mailroom on the verge of tears, and I make my way over to her to comfort or distract until this argument blows over.

But I don’t make it even halfway across the room before Mrs. Evans gets me in her sights and decides I’m the new target of her ire.

“And you.” Her lip pulls away from her lined mouth in a snarl.

“Here we go.” Out of the corner of my eye, I see Hendrix standing in the doorway that leads to the hallway his office is down. I steel my spine for whatever vitriol she’s about to spew my way.

“I am so sick and tired of the revolving door of men you have coming in and out of this building.”

My face flames, and I have to work to not glance over at Hendrix. “Slut shaming is very two thousand and two of you, Joyce.”

“Mrs. Evans,” Tony tries to interject and diffuse the tension in the room, but nothing is going to work. She is primed and ready to explode like Mount Vesuvius, and I am Pompeii in the way on her path of destruction.

“Constant strange men–”

“It’s not constant ,” I grumble.

“–in and out of here like I’m living in a brothel! It’s indecent and immoral. They’re probably all criminals, and you’re letting them into this building and endangering us all!”

My eyes finally connect with Hendrix’s, and a muscle ticks in his jaw as he leans against the door frame, taking in the scene and watching me be scolded. I need to end this quickly. I look over at Simon and motion to Isla in the corner.

“Get her out of here.” I turn to Mrs. Evans as Simon gathers up his distraught daughter and leaves. “I don’t think this is the best time to—” She cuts me off before I can get another word out.

“I. Don’t. Care. You parade around here in your skanky clothing?—”

“That’s enough.” Lethal calm is the only way to describe Hendrix’s tone.

I look over at him in surprise, and he looks exactly as he did a few minutes ago: arms crossed over his broad chest and seemingly unaffected, minus the muscle feathering in his jaw.

But there’s a fire in his eyes now as he looks over at Mrs. Evans, and you could hear a pin drop as they face off against each other from opposite sides of the room.

She glances at me and rolls her eyes. “You sleeping with him too?” She glances back to Hendrix. “Word to the wise: don’t get involved with this one.” She hooks her thumb and indicates to me.