Page 29 of Everything You Hate
Bodhi turns on her, and the kitchen goes very quiet.
“Take him to court.” He repeats it flat. “With what money, Wren? The diner’s barely breaking even. The bookstore’s in the red. Colter’s running the farm on a shoestring. The ferry and tours are carrying us, but if these dock permits fail, we’re fucked.”
She shoots a look at her oldest sister. “But Shea said the bed and breakfast?—”
“Will close if we don’t have a good tourist season this year. Which we won’t if we don’t have the dock permits to ferry the tourists into our businesses.” He doesn’t raise his voice, which somehow makes it worse. “And you’d know that if you showed up to a single one of the family business meetings I’ve been emailing you about for three months.”
Wren’s phone disappears into her back pocket, and her chin comes up. “I’ve been busy.”
“Busy.” Bodhi sets his laptop down on the sideboard with a careful click that says more than shouting would. “Doing what, exactly? You’ve changed your major twice, dropped out of the community college program Shea got you into, and now you’re—what? Baking cookies at the diner three mornings a week and calling it a career?”
The air in the kitchen turns thick enough to cut.
Wren’s jaw sets. Her arms cross, and the phone in her back pocket buzzes once, twice, but she doesn’t reach for it. “I’m figuring it out.”
“Figure it out faster. Everyone’s pulling their weight around here but you.”
“Bodhi,” Henry snaps in what I can only assume is his dad voice. “Enough. We have company.”
That’s when Bodhi finally sees me.
His gaze snaps to me and stops, and for a second I’m not sure he’s recognized me at all. Then something clicks behind his tired eyes, and his jaw tightens another notch.
He looks past me at Dean with a look that says, clear as a headline,what the hell is she doing in my kitchen?
Dean tips his head, barely, toward Mimi, who is at this moment gesturing with that wooden spoon and informing Colter that if he touches the dumplings before she’s ready, she’ll break his fingers.
Bodhi’s jaw works.
Dean lifts one shoulder.What was I supposed to do?
So Bodhi told Dean to keep me away from the family. I’m not going to lie, the fact he failed and will likely get bitched out by Bodhi later gives me a little tingle of pleasure.
Serves the grumpy bastard right.
Bodhi exhales through his nose and turns back to his sister. “I’m sorry, Wren. I’ve had a shit day. Wasn’t fair to take it out on you.”
Wren stays stubbornly silent for a second, then sighs. “Don’t apologize for caring. I know you’re trying to keep us all afloat.”
And then she crosses the kitchen and throws her arms around his neck, and he catches her, and for a second neither of them says anything at all.
I stare.
Ninety seconds ago he told her she was baking cookies and calling it a career, in front of a stranger, and now she’s got her face in his shoulder and he’s holding on like she’s the one who needed it.
In my family, that argument would have lasted through Christmas. Two Christmases. My mother could hold a grudge across a decade and three time zones, and she never once apologized for anything, because apologizing meant admitting there had been something to apologize for. And at that lunch table this afternoon, Malcolm said one word to his daughter—Cordelia—and Corey drained her wine and didn’t speak again for twenty minutes.
Nobody here is keeping score. They said the ugly thing, and then they put it down.
I didn’t know you were allowed to do that.
Bodhi releases her, rubs his temples with his fingers, and his shoulders drop an inch. He looks like he hasn’t slept in days.
“Bodhi Haven,” he says, turning to me with a hand extended. “You must be Scarlett Crawford.”
“Guilty as charged.” I take his hand. His grip is firm, his palm calloused, which surprises me. For a man who runs the business side of things, he has the hands of someone who works with them.
“I’ve heard a lot about you,” I say, because it’s true, and because I want to see if he flinches.
