Sweet Forty-Two(64)

“Oh, Georgia, that would be wicked. Please do it.” Regan shoved the rest of the cupcake into his mouth.

“Okay. What time do you record tomorrow? I’ll make some of the stuff tonight and the rest in the morning.” It felt good to be wanted rather than needed.

Ember picked up the last two cupcakes. “I’m going to bring these into the other room. Regan can just bring the goods with him when he comes tomorrow. Regan,” Ember raised an eyebrow to him, “be nice to her. This food is delicious.”

I felt worse by the minute for having misjudged Ember’s character due to a few shitty days she’d had. While I didn’t envision us ever sitting around painting each other’s nails, I no longer wanted to claw her face. It was progress.

“They’ll pay you, too, you know.” Regan wiped crumbs from the counter and tossed them in the trash.

“Oh ... that’s not why I said yes,” I spoke quickly, not wanting him to misjudge my intentions. Especially since I didn’t even know what my intentions were.

He laughed. I could get lost in that sound. It was deeper than his speaking voice, but full of this mouthwatering joy. “I know that’s not why, but I’m just saying ... maybe if you do it regularly enough, word will get around and you can, like, run this place full time.”

I looked through to the seating area and watched Bo and Ember. They looked noticeably more relaxed than I’d seen them even in their own oceanside environment. My mom and her mom had been right; food brings people together, and sweet food is even better.

“Maybe.” I shrugged, glancing up at Regan’s face.

“Why haven’t you opened it? The real reason.” He leaned sideways against the counter and crossed his arms in front of him.

I wanted to make something up. But, given the events of the day that had him crying in front of me more than once, lying to him seemed particularly horrendous. I couldn’t get in to it with Bo and Ember here, though. They were surrounded by hippies all day and took no issue with weeping in front of strangers. It wasn’t that I planned on crying, but I’d have to be more honest with them than I’d ever even intended on being with Regan in the first place.

“We can wait till they leave, if you want. But, I want you to talk about it, okay?”

I hadn’t realized I’d been staring for so long at the loving couple until Regan spoke.

I nodded. “Yeah. When they go. Go hang out with your friends. I’ll clean up in here.”

I bought myself some time. Time to come up with a story. One that would have been a lot easier to come up with had I not curled up on the couch with him, and inhaled the saltiness on his skin that made me miss home. And his lips. God. It had been so long since I’d felt lips against mine, I was certain they’d burst with eagerness.

Looking out at their booth, I caught Regan mid-smile and it honestly took my breath away. Hours earlier he’d been the saddest human being I’d ever seen in the flesh. How could he turn it around so quickly? How could he move forward—so open and not boxed in by his pain?

Maybe I wanted that. That was the only explanation for why I was turning over in my mind ways to keep him around.





After another half hour, Bo and Ember said their goodbyes to Regan and me. Bo made sure that I was serious about sending baked goods to the studio tomorrow. I assured him I was and laughed as Ember poked at Bo’s rock-hard stomach and begged him not to get soft. I’d soften him up just to spite the skinny bitch. I said I no longer wanted to claw her face, not that I was going to sympathize with her ever running into the issue of bringing something into a dressing room, only to find out it’s too big.

Regan locked the door behind them, without me asking him to, and came back into the kitchen, leaning against the counter with his hands in his pockets and smiling like I was holding a camera. “Thank you for letting me just bring them down here like that. I wasn’t really thinking...”

I was about to make a snarky comment about his supposed thoughtlessness, but when I looked up, he was looking away. Not down, not off into the distance, but to somewhere no one else around him would ever be able to see.

“It’s okay. I was afraid they’d be upset about you being in my apartment, or something.” I realized how stupid it sounded as soon as I said it. We were two adults and we weren’t found in bed, so to speak. And, really, even if we had been, what would anyone say?

I was too unsure of the ghost of Rae to know exactly what anyone would have really said.

Regan shrugged, allowing his vision to come back to the present. He opened his mouth to speak, but closed it once before opening it again. Then, he took my hand. “Come in here and sit for a minute.”

I followed without argument, because you follow someone who looks that sad when they ask you to. As a matter of practice, someone should really always just follow someone around who looks that sad. He brought me over to the booth he’d been sitting in with his friends. A few cupcake wrappers and errant crumbs were young fossils of the happiness that briefly inhabited this space.

In the looming greyness that tomorrow would bring, those crumbs gave me hope.

“So,” Regan started, “I’m sorry if it was weird for you up there in your place ... all that crying and stuff. I didn’t know if I was going to show Bo the card, and I certainly didn’t plan on doing it in your apartment.”