Page 28 of A Taste of Vanilla

My personal life feels like a junk drawer with cup holders.

“Where are you?” I ask.

“With Oliver. Ten minutes away.”

“Is he mad?” I wince.

“At Grant?”

“At me.”

Marley makes a sound of pure disgust. “Why would Oliver be mad at you?”

“I don’t know. Because he has to come get me.”

She clicks her tongue. “He likes being useful. It feeds his Victorian orphan soul.”

“I heard that,” Oliver says faintly in the background.

“You were meant to,” she responds. But to me, she says, “He’s not mad.”

“He always sounds mad. He sounded mad at a baby last week.” It’s true.

“The baby threw a lime wedge at me,” Oliver says.

I can feel Marley’s eye roll through the phone. “You were behind the bar. The baby understood the setting.”

Oliver has a few parents that come in during the day to talk, but he has a firmno-babiesrule past 4pm.

I laugh again, but a sob breaks through.

“Hey,” she says. “We’re almost there.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Stop apologizing or I’ll punch your boob.”

“I made you leave work.”

“I was designing email graphics for a dentist who believes beige is a brand identity. You saved me, I promise.”

“I made Oliver leave the bar,” I wail.

“Oliver leaves the bar all the time.”

“No, he doesn’t.”

“He does if someone he loves runs out of gas during a betrayal fugue.”

My chin trembles.Betrayal fugue.Sounds accurate.

“I didn’t know where else to go,” I whisper.

“I know.”

“I thought maybe Florida.”

“To your dad?”