Beneath This Ink (Beneath #2)(6)

He flicked the end of my ponytail as he walked past me.

“Follow me, and I’ll show you what I’ve got planned for you.”

What Con had planned for me became evident when we entered a huge, gleaming kitchen. Where the outside of the warehouse looked like it was on the verge of being condemned, most of the inside was immaculate and new.

“You know how to cook?” Con asked, flipping on still more lights.

“Do you?” I asked.

“I gotta eat, so yeah, I can cook.”

I wished my relationship with food were so simple.

I ate because it was an evil necessity. It didn’t mean I enjoyed it or looked forward to it. Too many years of being the chubby girl with the pretty face and a mother who just wanted me to be thin like the other kids had screwed me up royally in that area.

Vanessa, you have to watch everything you put in your mouth. You could lose this weight if you’d just be more mindful. Vanessa, I just want you to be healthy, that’s all.

She’d been gone for years, stolen from my father and me much too soon by ovarian cancer when I was in eighth grade. The doctors had caught it too late, and she was gone within months. One of my biggest regrets: the words of hers I remembered best weren’t the ‘I loves yous’ she’d whisper tucking me in at night.

“And I’m still waiting for your answer,” Con said.

“I can handle the basics.” To myself I added, as long as you don’t expect me to eat with you. There was a very select group of people I was able to eat in front of without my stomach twisting into a Gordian knot. I knew it was a messed up problem, but if you put yourself in the shoes of a younger me, and thought about what it would be like, at a birthday party, to have a friend’s mother watch you eat a piece of pizza and say to another mother: I can’t believe she’s eating that; you’d think she’d know better by now. If Madeline were that heavy, you’d never see another piece of pizza on her plate ever again.

After that day, I’d stopped eating anything but fruits and vegetables in front of other people.

Shaking myself out of that lovely trip down memory lane, I watched as Con opened the freezer and pulled out giant trays of premade lasagna and set them on the stainless steel prep table in the center of the room.

My stomach tensed just looking at them.

“The hard stuff is already done; you just have to throw it all in the oven, babysit it, and put together PB&Js for them to take home.”

I could do that. I could so do that.

“What’s with the PB&J?”

Con looked up from where he was now turning on the oven. “They’re burning a ton of calories here, and they need the fuel. So we feed ‘em dinner every night, and lunch if they’re here during the day, and then send them home with a snack. It’s not like they’ve got overflowing pantries. Although, between you and me, I would guess that most of them hand off what we give them to a younger sibling.”

I was floored. “You really feed them every day?”

His face took on a militant quality. “If we don’t, they might not eat. And that’s not something I’m gonna let happen.” He surveyed me before continuing, “Come on, Van. You fund plenty of soup kitchens and food trucks. The fact that a good chunk of this city is going hungry on a regular basis can’t have escaped your notice.”

He was right. My psychological problems with food were nothing compared to actual hunger. I’d read the grant applications. I’d made recommendations about different programs we should fund. And I’d felt good about what I was doing. But I was ashamed to admit I’d never done more at a soup kitchen than attend a ribbon-cutting. I’d never handed out meat and bread and fruit to someone waiting in line at a food truck with a laundry basket. And here was Con, bad boy of the first order, combatting childhood hunger from the front lines. My shame multiplied, but I tried to mollify it by telling myself that those food trucks and soup kitchens have to be funded by someone. And if the foundation didn’t do it, who would? I was making a difference, dammit.

“Have you applied for funding for your program? You could probably get a grant.”

Con opened the freezer again and yanked out several loaves of garlic bread.

“You don’t get it, do you, princess? This isn’t about the money. This is about the kids and making sure they go home tonight with a full stomach and something to stop it from growling later.”

“I get that, but if you’re shelling out all of your own money on this…”

“I got plenty, if that’s what you’re worried about. Besides, I don’t have time to waste filling out some hundred-page grant application and justifying what we do here for a few bucks. Reggie started this thing on his own, and he and I will make sure it stays going.”

He laid the bread on the table in front of me and grabbed several aluminum cookie sheets from the counter. “You think you can handle this?”

I grabbed the bread, and, in an attempt to turn this conversation back to something lighter, I tossed out, “I’m pretty sure anything you want me to handle is way out of my league, Leahy. But I’ll give it a shot.”

His answering grin was brilliant. “Holy shit, you do have a sense of humor. I would’ve been willing to bet good money that you didn’t know how to crack a joke.”