Harder (Caroline & West #2)(51)

“It’s a poorly stocked mart, that’s for sure.”

“Figured you’d rather have beer and a giant sausage than a copy of Hustler.”

Krishna flicks his eyes at Bridget. “You can put the beer in the fridge,” he says absently. “Open one for me, though.”

“You got it.”

“We picked up two kegs for the party later.”

“Two? You’re not screwing around.”

“You only turn twenty-one once.”

I set the sausage down, twist off two caps, hand him one.

“Grab a chair,” he tells me. “I’m making minestrone.”

“You’re wearing a f*cking apron.”

“I know. Trying to look like you, killer. You were always rocking the apron at the bakery last year.”

Nostalgia and disappointment, pleasure and pain.

So many times he came by the bakery just to hang out for an hour before he went home to crash.

So many shifts I spent with Caroline sitting on the floor doing her Latin homework, talking through some idea for a paper or highlighting up her textbook.

Gone now. I haven’t even walked by the bakery. I didn’t ask for my job back because I got myself f*cking arrested out of the bakery, and I can’t look the owner, Bob, in the eye.

I burned all these bridges behind me when I left Putnam, thinking I was going home when there wasn’t any home for me to go to. Just work and worry and people f*cking things up while I tried to be someone they could count on.

And to be that guy, I betrayed what I had with every single person in this kitchen.

I take the chair next to Caroline.

She’s wearing jeans and a T-shirt, just a plain white T-shirt with a pocket on it. Her hair’s down, against her back, still damp from the shower. Her feet, in thick gray socks, are hooked over the rungs of her chair.

She looks amazing to me, even with that tilt to her head and that wrinkle between her eyebrows that means she’s trying to figure me out.

“Check the garlic bread,” Bridget says to Krishna. “The broiler’s tricky, and it can burn if you’re not paying attention. I think it’s been in there long enough—”

Krish talks right over her the way they always do. “I set a timer.”

“—timer is a good idea, but it’s not smart to rely on it completely, because sometimes the broiler is so hot that—”

“It’s fine. The timer’s going, so I’m not checking it.”

“It’s burning, though, I can—”

“It’s not burning.”

“Krish, I can smell it burning. You have to—”

By the time he’s found a hot pad, there’s smoke coming from under the broiler, and the whole kitchen smells like singed bread. Krishna is swearing, throwing doors open, while Bridget flaps around making a lot of noise.

Caroline and I take it all in, unfazed, and I don’t know, it’s nice.

It’s nice sitting next to Caroline, looking at her thighs in her dark blue jeans, her elbow on the table, listening to Bridget and Krish bitch at each other.

He puts the bread in a basket, a f*cking basket, and sets it in front of me like I’m the king of France. “It’s still going to be a while on the soup. I guess I was supposed to start it sooner and the bread later.”

“You know you were,” Bridget says. “I sent you that text when you were in class to remind you, and I said I could pick up the Parmesan so you didn’t have to waste your time, but you think you know everything—”

“—but really that’s you, right?”

And then Krishna smiles at her in this way that completely betrays him.

I’ve seen him look at her before, but never this obvious. I glance at Caroline, wondering if she sees it, too.

She lifts an eyebrow. What?

I glance from Bridget to Krishna and back to Bridget. Mouth the word, Fucking.

She nods.

“No shit?”

She makes a circle with her left hand, thrusts into it with the index finger of her right, smiling at me with her eyes.

“No shit what?” Krishna wants to know.

“Nothing,” we say in unison, and for a second it’s just like it always was between us. Easy.

I pick up a piece of garlic bread and shove it into my mouth.

I’m f*cking ravenous.



Ten more minutes, I tell myself.

I have class tomorrow.

I’ve got work in the afternoon, Frankie to talk to, my whole life to sort out.

Ten more minutes, and then I’ll go.

Dinner did something to me, though. The bread was frozen and burned, the soup so salty it about sucked all the moisture out of my body, and for dessert a cheesecake that Bridget made Krishna from scratch.

It was good. The food and the company, the way I could close my eyes and almost pretend I was an ordinary college guy eating dinner with his friends, drinking a few beers, joking around about big sausages and who’s gonna do the dishes, talking about nothing.

Ten more minutes. Ten more.

Instead, I take my cup back to the keg and draw another beer.

I have just enough to drink to push my guard down, and the music keeps it there—club music, dance music, loud throbbing anthems, and dark catchy songs that make people want to huddle in corners and talk real close together and put their hands on each other.