Page 86 of A Taste of Vanilla

Today.

Apparently now.

Apparently, he’s coming here. To my bakery.

I stare at the message, panic building in my chest.

But it doesn’t bubble over.

It’s a small ripple of dread. Some curiosity. A vague concern about meeting my best friend’s protective older brother while I look like I spent the night losing a fight with a very large man’s mouth.

Marley’s brother exists in my mind as a category rather than a person.

Warren.

The name floats through years of stories like folklore. Warren raised her more than her father did. Warren made lists. Warren sent money while she was in college and he was overseas in Germany, where he lived and went to school to be a master baker. Marley had said on several occasions that Warren could be blunt enough to bruise but would fly across the ocean if she needed him.

He’s always been important to Marley, and therefore important to me, but still an abstract shape.

In high school, he made himself scarce, and Oliver and I were never allowed to go to Marley’s house. When she was at ourplace, Warren would stay in the car to pick her up. Nine months into her fifteenth year on this earth, Warren took her to get her learner’s permit. He had been teaching her to drive for years in a Safeway parking lot. During the summer, they used the school’s empty lot.

The second she turned sixteen and a half, he took her to get her provisional license and bought her a car. She had wanted to start contributing to the household bills, and he wouldn’t have to pick her up from soccer every night. Among the three of us, she was the first one with a car, but it was for good reason.

It was a Subaru with a large enough back seat that Oliver and I used to hide under blankets as she drove us home from the Columbia mall. She’d call out when a cop was driving by and we’d go still under the blanket, the thick pink bag containing our Wockenfuss candy crinkling as we shushed each other like the officer could hear us.

Oliver turned eighteen first, and he graduated to the passenger seat. She turned eighteen second, and I graduated to the backseat.

It made the hours driving back from the beach a little less tedious.

Marley lost her phone for a week one time after her brother found out. He was a rule follower and was terrified that he’d fuck Marley up more than they were already predestined to be by their upbringing. He thought for sure that she’d get pulled over and her driving privileges taken away.

She was fine.

But in my head, Warren is a brother-shaped warning label.

Define “finally got to Baltimore.”

I have no idea what to expect or if I should have coffee ready and available and a chipper smile on my face.

He texted “arrived” at 5:58 like a serial killer.

That does sound like him.

You barely know him.

I’ve met him spiritually.

No you haven’t. He’s way worse in person.

Comforting.

He’s meeting me at Bitter Bloom in a bit. Don’t be weird about the fact that I have a brother.

I’ve always been weird about the fact that she has a brother who’s never wanted to meet her friends.

I am literally never weird.

You once named a latte “My Chemical Slow Burn.”