Chapter Text
“You didn’t forget, did you?”
“No, Mom,” Layla laughed as she balanced the phone between her shoulder and her ear. “I promise I was just about to walk over. I just had to finish this one thing… Just a minute, this is going to be loud.”
She flipped the steamer switch and frothed the almond milk. It had taken her a few weeks to get the frothing down. The sudden sound still startled her sometimes, even when she knew it was coming. After a while, she knew it would be a sound so common to her she would hardly notice it at all. But for now it sounded startling and new.
“Okay,” she said as she flipped the switch off. “All done. I’m just pouring this last latte and I’ll be right over.”
“I thought you said you were walking over?” her mom teased.
“I said I was about to,” Layla corrected as she poured the latte and hid her terrible attempt at latte art with a lid. “I just need to rinse the machine, turn off the lights, and lock up.”
“All right, well hurry up,” her mom insisted. “I’m about to order without you.”
“See you in a minute, mom,” Layla smiled as she ended the call. Rinsing the machine was getting easier now that she’d been doing it a while. She had been terrified to clean it for a while; the machine was worth more than the shop would probably make in a month. She’d made a lot less than that this month, but the newborn shop was only finishing out its third week. Today was the last day of June and she was celebrating her first successful “month” as a shop owner.
She flipped off the lights behind the counter and took her lavender latte to go. Pausing at the door she took a deep, satisfied breath. The golden five-o-clock hour flooded her little coffee shop with a warm aura. She’d chosen this location specifically for its ceiling-to-floor, south-facing windows. Green brimmed from every nook. Shelves on the interior walls spilled over with pothos, ivy, cacti, snake-plants, and more. A lemon tree and two fiddle leaf figs stood in their proper stations in the corners and many trailing plants hung from the ceiling. The shop’s tables were nestled among the plants comfortably, and the ordering counter was wiped down and beaming in the evening sun.
She stepped out of the shop backwards, smiling satisfactorily to herself as she took in a deep breath of the fragrant jasmine that she’d grown in an arch around the doorframe. This was not where she imagined she’d be at 35 –single, no kids, opening a shop with no experience– the last year had marked the hardest decision of her life, but as she was nearing the anniversary of the divorce she felt like she was finally filling up with life again. She was free now, and she intended to thrive. She nodded again at the thought satisfactorily and locked the door behind her before hurrying across the street to Benny’s to celebrate the close of her first month owning the shop.
***
Warren eyed the unfamiliar man looking back at him in the mirror with a strange sort of hope he hadn’t felt in a while. His eyebrows had started coming back about two months ago, and his hair had grown enough to be trimmed into some semblance of a cut a few months before that. But this morning was the first that he’d woken up to feel sandpapered stubble under his jaw again. It wasn’t even really long enough to see yet, there was no reason to shave, but he could feel it when he ran his fingers under his jaw and it made that desperate hope in the pit of his stomach do a little dive.
“Warren!” his mom called from downstairs. “Breakfast!”
He gave his reflection a little bit of a crooked smile before turning back to his room to change. His mom hadn’t changed his room hardly since he left for bootcamp that summer after high school and every time he came back home between tours he had his own apartment and didn’t bother cleaning out his childhood room, taking down the posters of Thursday, The Used, or Circa Survive . Even his posters of Brand New were probably stuffed under the bed somewhere, but he’d had the sense to take them down a few years ago.
She hadn’t even gotten rid of his clothes. It wasn’t until he returned from his second tour that he boxed up all his leather jackets, knock-off combat boots, gloves and studded wristbands he’d used to cover his scars with. It had been so long most of the scars were almost invisible now, and he didn’t bother trying to hide them. It seemed like a lifetime ago he’d been that lonely. That had been before the military, before he’d found brothers stronger than blood. He’d relapsed once last year when it seemed like he had nothing left, when he thought this was where his life was ending: here in his hometown again where his father was rotting away in some cell, where his mother, who he was an emotional and financial burden to even in his late thirties, was the only soul who cared whether he lived or died.
Somehow Jack, despite being halfway around the world on a tour and only available to talk irregularly over a secure video chat, had been able to guess when he’d gone off the deep end and called him on it. It was a relief to find it ended that quickly this time. This time all it took was one more person reminding him they sure as hell cared what happened to him and were going to come and kick his ass if he kept it up, chemo or no. The date was crawling closer to when Jack came home and Warren was counting down the days.
“Morning, honey,” his mom said with a smile as he came downstairs. She handed him a plate with an omelet and hash browns as he gave her a quick kiss on the cheek.
“Good morning,” he said as he followed her out onto the porch. They’d never been a sit-at-the-table sort of family. Something about that seemed too normal for them. He’d moved back in with her for treatment almost 2 years ago and they somehow fit right back into the routines of his childhood. The two of them ate typically in the living room around the TV or the porch when the weather was warm enough.
“How are you feeling?” His mother asked as she settled into her rocker.
“Good,” he replied, taking a seat in the porch swing.
“Any nausea? Lightheadedness?”
“No, Mom.”
“How did you sleep?”
“I slept fine,” he promised, taking a sip of coffee before setting it on the window sill beside him.
“You know I was thinking,” his mother said, setting her own coffee on the little table to her left. “You don’t need to come with me today. I only suggested it because I want you to be happy, to be social once and a while now that you’re in remission. But I was realizing last night what a silly idea it was for me to have; inviting you to the book club. You know, it’s only a group of old ladies like me getting around to talk about books that make us cry. And it’s so helpful for us to eat pastries, drink coffee, and talk about good books together, but that’s not what young men like to do. You like to… well, I don’t know. But I certainly don’t want to hold you back from going out and doing the things you like! I just-”
“Mom,” he leaned forward to put a hand on her anxiously bouncing knee. “It’s okay. I want to come with you.” He hadn’t really been looking forward to venturing out into downtown Maxville, or chatting with a bunch of his mother’s friends about books. But she’d had a point when she brought up her fear that he was too isolated last week. And he didn’t have any better ideas as to how to start a social life either. So he’d at least go once.
“You do?”
“If you want me to come, I want to come.”
“But I don’t want you to come just to make me happy,” she squeezed his hand that was still resting on her knee. Tears welled up in brown eyes as she looked at him. “I wish you didn’t feel like you had to take care of me like you do. It’s for parents to take care of their children, not for children to take care of their parents and I feel like you never had the chance to-”
“Mom, stop,” he pulled her hand up and pressed a kiss to the back of it. “We take care of each other because that’s what people do when they love each other. Remember? I’ve got your back, you’ve got mine.”
“I know but-”
“I’ll try it today and if it's super awkward we can laugh about it tonight over pizza and I won’t come again.”
“All right, if you’re sure,” she said with a small, searching smile. “But if you don’t feel well, you tell me and we can go home. I don’t want you to wear yourself out.”
He hated that she thought of him as frail now. That she’d stopped asking him to move the furniture or change tires or fix the plumbing. It wasn’t so much that he missed doing the things, it was that he hated that he’d been so sick for so long she’d stopped thinking of asking him to help. She was too busy worried about him, too busy taking care of him. Despite what she said, it had always been his job to take care of her. His father hadn’t and Warren had known from a young age that if he didn’t take care of her, no one was going to.
“I’ll be fine, Mom,” he said again.
“What did you think of the first few chapters?” she asked as they went back to their breakfast.
“I like Ove,” Warren smiled. “He reminds me of Mr. Wilson who used to live on the corner of Flight and Handel Ave. He used to yell at me for riding my bike too fast past his house.”
“You’re right!” His mother threw back her head and laughed.