Elodie loved the bakery. She’d been there for fifteen years. Her shifts weren’t alw
ays early. Not until Neera was old enough to stay home alone in the mornings and get herself off to school. When she was, Elodie finally took that promotion that had been waiting for her for a long time and became the bakery’s morning baker and opener. She started at five, which was ungodly early considering commute time and everything, but she always said that she was used to it and that she liked having the rest of her day free, since she got off at two in the afternoon.
“I’m sorry to spoil your dinner, honey,” Elodie said. “Are you mad at me? I could just go and open up and come right back.”
Neera stood up and walked over to hug her mom. “Not one bit. You go ahead. Stay as long as you want or think you need to. I’m just fine. The food is amazing. Thank you.” She kissed Elodie’s cheek, then sat back down at the table while Elodie rushed around the kitchen, grabbing her phone, her purse, and her keys.
“Be back in a couple of hours then,” she promised. She waved at them both before taking off out the front door.
Scarlet and Neera sat frozen. Neither of them said anything. They weren’t eating either. They were just sitting, like two statues, staring at their plates. Neera was the first one to break the silence with a rough cough.
“This really is good. It’s just crazy awkward, I guess. We should eat though, or Mom will be all worried when she gets back and she’ll have questions. I swear, she’ll take inventory of the leftovers.”
“Are you serious?”
“No. Probably not. But she would be hurt. She would think her chicken was off or her potatoes were soggy, and Mom takes that pretty seriously.”
Scarlet knew Neera was probably right. She managed to shovel half her potatoes and peas into her mouth in record time, then probably broke another world record for how fast she consumed the two drumsticks on her plate. After, she pushed away from the table and took her dish to the sink. She scraped the bones into the trash and rinsed her plate off.
“I should probably go,” she said. There wasn’t any probably about it. She knew she should go. It would be weird sitting there with just Neera, although they’d spent plenty of time alone together in the past.
A few weeks ago, it wouldn’t have been awkward. A few years ago, it certainly wouldn’t have been. But this wasn’t a few weeks or a few months or a few years ago. It was now, and everything was vastly different. Scarlet would rather have gone streaking down the street wearing nothing but a string bikini in the dead cold of frigid January than sit there with Neera, waiting for Elodie to come home.
Mostly because she didn’t trust herself, and god help her, she was not going to do anything with Neera in her best friend’s house, while her best friend was gone, like a couple of raunchy teenagers who fully subscribed to the whole when my parents are away, of course we’ll play theory.
Neera stood up quickly. “You don’t have to go. You could stay. We could talk.”
“Talk?”
“I could make tea.”
Scarlet felt like she was swallowing a bowling ball and her mouth tasted like ash. “I feel like I’m betraying Elodie just by being here. By not saying anything.”
“Nothing else happened. I don’t even know if anything else will happen,” Neera said evenly, without the heat of emotion, but then her tone softened. “If I knew what you wanted to do, then I would talk to her, but I can’t do that yet. You heard me say that there are things I haven’t told her because I think she’d worry too much and that’s the truth. It’s because I don’t want to hurt her. If you don’t want to do this, then I won’t say anything. That would be best. If you do, though, or if you’re telling me that you’re not sure and to wait awhile, then I’ll wait. Or I’ll talk to her. But you aren’t betraying her. You haven’t done anything wrong.”
“Other than eat her daughter out, you mean.”
Neera gasped. “That’s kind of crass. But I— I kind of like it.”
Scarlet threw her hands up in front of her because that was the only thing she could do to let out her exasperation. “I’m going. It’s not safe for me to be here.”
“We worked together the past few days just fine.”
“Don’t you think that was torture?” she demanded. It had been. Raw, aching, horrible torture in every sense of the word.
Neera’s lips parted and her brow furrowed as she frowned. “Why didn’t you say anything? You don’t have to suffer in silence.”
“That’s me, though. The strong, silent type.”
“You don’t have to be that way with me.” Neera rounded the table, and she was there, reaching for Scarlet’s hands before she could say anything or make a break for the door.
It was cold out and she would still have had to put on her boots, and the damn things were laced up and took forever anyway. It wasn’t like she could have grabbed her jacket and made a run for it. Maybe it was better to hash things out than to turn tail and flee into the night.
“I said it would be okay before,” Neera whispered as soon as Scarlet raised her head and looked at her. She had no makeup on, and her hair was pulled into a messy bun, but she was so ultra-gorgeous it both hurt and warmed Scarlet to look at her.
She’d probably always feel that way. Time changed things, but it would probably never change the way Scarlet felt, now that she was aware of it. “It will be because we’ll work like crazy to make it that way. Things just don’t magically become okay. it takes a lot of time and effort, but I’m willing, if you are.”
“Time,” Scarlet said in low tones. “Time doesn’t erase things and it doesn’t heal wounds. It just makes them more stitched together than they were before, or it creates scars. There isn’t anything that we can leave untouched if we do this, including my friendship with your mom and your relationship with her.”