You Love Me(You #3)(3)

You wink at me. Your hair is red and yellow. Your hair is fire. “Don’t fret, Joe. I’ll eat the beef and you eat the broccoli. No one has to know.”

“Ah,” I say, because the beef and the broccoli are a reference to the show. “Sounds like someone went to Cedar Cove to check it out.”

Your fingertips hit the keypad and the keypad is my heart. “Well I told you I would…” You’re a woman of your word. “And you were right…” BINGO. “It is a nice ‘antidote to the hellspace reality of the world right now’…” That’s me. You’re quoting me. “All the bicycles and the fight for equity, it kinda lowers your blood pressure.”

On you go about the pros and cons of escapism—you learned my language and you want me to know it—you are sexy, confident—and I forgot about sexual tension. Beginnings. “Well,” I say. “Maybe we can start a fan club.”

“Yeah…” you say. “But first you’ll have to tell me what got you into it…”

You women always want to know about the past but the past is over. Gone. I can’t fucking tell you that Cedar Cove helped me survive my time in prison. I won’t tell you that it was my Mayberry-scented salve while I was wrongly incarcerated and I shouldn’t have to spill the details. We all go through periods when we feel trapped, caged. It doesn’t matter where you suffer. I shrug. “There’s no big story…” Ha! “A few months ago, I hit a rough patch…” Fact: The best prison reads are “beach reads.” “Debbie was there for me…”… when Love Quinn wasn’t.

You don’t badger me for details—I knew you were smart—and say you know the feeling and you and I are the same, sensitive. “Well, I don’t want to bring you down, but I must warn you, Joe…” You want to protect me. “This isn’t Cedar Cove, not by a long shot.”

I like your spunk—you want to spar—and I tilt my head toward the empty table where you stood with that old man. “Tell that to the Mothball who just went home with the Murakami you suggested. Now that was very Cedar Cove.”

You know I’m right and you try to smirk but your smirk is a smile. “We’ll see how you feel after you’ve made it through a couple winters.” You blush. “What’s in the bag?”

I give you my best smile, the one I never thought I’d use again. “Lunch,” I say. “And unlike Judge Olivia Lockhart, I brought a ton of food. You can eat the broccoli and the beef.”

I said that out loud—FUCK YOU, RUSTY BRAIN—and you get to hide in your computer while I stand here being the guy who just told you that you can eat my beef.

But you don’t torture me for long. “Okay,” you say. “The computer’s acting up. We’ll take care of your badge later.”

The computer has some fucking nerve or maybe you’re testing me. You’re leading me toward the break room and you ask if I went to Sawan or Sawadty. When I say Sawan your Meerkat looks up from her Columbine and makes a barf signal. “Eew. That’s so gross.”

No, kid, being rude is gross. She raves about Sawadty and you side with her and I don’t speak your language. Not right now. You put a hand on my back—nice—and then you put a hand on the Meerkat’s shoulder—you’re bringing us together—and you tell me that I have a lot to learn about Bainbridge. “Nomi’s extreme, but there are two kinds of people here, Joe. There are those who go to Sawan and those of us who go to Sawadty.”

You fold your arms and are you really that petty? “Okay,” I say. “But doesn’t the same family own both restaurants?”

The Meerkat groans and puts on her headphones—rude again—and you wave me into the kitchen. “Well, yeah,” you say. “But the food’s a little different at both of them.” You open the fridge and I stash my lunch and you’re being irrational but you know it. “Oh come on. Isn’t this small-town quirk what you wanted when you moved here?”

“Holy shit,” I say. “I live here.”

You rest your hands on my shoulders and it’s like you’ve never been to a sexual harassment seminar. “Don’t worry, Joe. Seattle is only thirty-five minutes away.”

I want to kiss you and you take your hands away and we leave the break room and I tell you that I didn’t move here to take the ferry to the city. You peer at me. “Why did you move here? Seriously. New York… L.A.… Bainbridge… I’m genuinely curious.”

You are testing me. Demanding more of me. “Well, I joke about Cedar Cove…”

“Yeah you do…”

“But I guess it just felt right to me. New York used to be like a Richard Scarry book.”

“Love him.”

“But it lost that Scarry feeling. Maybe it was Citi Bikes…” Or all those dead girls. “L.A. is just somewhere I went because that’s what people do. They go from New York to L.A.” It’s been so long since anyone wanted to know me and you bring me home and away all at once. “Hey, do you remember those black-and-white pictures of Kurt Cobain and his buddies in the meadow? Photos from the early days, before Dave Grohl was in Nirvana?”

You nod. You think you do, yeah.

“Well, it just hit me. My mom had that picture up on the fridge when I was a kid. It looked like heaven to me, the tall grass…”