Page 19 of Unmoored: How to Fail at Hating the Boss

Quincy sighs again, this time with watery eyes staring up at me. “Oh, Reef. I’m sorry. When did she pass?”

I can’t keep making eye contact like that when I’m so ashamed of what I did to my grandmother’s house. I cut my eyes to the wallpaper. The fucking wallpaper, with its gold and brown sketches of tea kettles and fireplaces and fruit baskets. My brain echoes a memory: “It’s a kitchen inside a kitchen!” one of my aunts said about the wallpaper, because my grandmother had the exact same thing in her house.

I shake my head. “Five years ago.”

“I’m sorry,” she says again.

“There was nothing left of her after I was done with that house. I wish I would have kept it the same and let her see it. It might have given her…what’s it called…um…”

Quincy moves her hand to the side of my neck, right where my pulse is, basically forcing me to look at her. “Reminiscence therapy.”

“How do you know about that?”

“Because that’s what my sisters and I had to do with our grandmother when our mom couldn’t…well, you know. She just…couldn’t handle it anymore.”

Hers too?

“Did you send her somewhere?”

She shakes her head no. “The decline was quicker than we expected. We all tag-teamed and did our best to keep her at home, where she was comfortable. Where she had all of her familiar things. In the end we had to have a full-time nurse.”

Damn.

I pull away from Quincy and quickly swallow down the shame and the painful memories. “Cake time. It’s getting late,” I say. I let the feeling run down the drain as I wash my hands and prepare for the task at hand.

I feel like I’m looting the place as I search out the measuring cups and spoons, mixing bowls, hand mixer, cake pan, cutting boards, knives.

I can feel Quincy watching me as I do it.

“Reef,” she says. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“No.”

I examine the oven, making sure the pilot light is on. I open the door to find the inside of it as pristine as the outside.

Quincy is right next to me as I move to the fridge to grab the eggs, then to the pantry to get the oil. I turn, trying to tell her to relax, and that I don’t need her help. But her forearm brushes against my chest as she points up to the shelf where the vegetable oil is kept. Her warmth and sweetness jolt me inside this small closet of a pantry, and I find my stubbornness crumbling.

I clasp my hand around her forearm where she reaches past me. “Quincy, I don’t need your help.”

She stares up at me. “You need help all right. A lot of it.”

“Quincy.”

Her eyes widen in response to some kind of reaction she sees in my face. “I didn’t mean to insult you.”

I soften instantly. “I don’t want you thinking that. I didn’t take it like that. But I don’t want to talk about it. I just need to feel like shit for a damn minute until it passes. Understand?”

Her bottom lip trembles, but she nods her head yes and backs out of the pantry.

She watches me from the other side of the kitchen, where the linoleum disappears into a darkened hallway. Her arms are crossed as she watches me do what I do.

This lasts for about five minutes.

The feeling doesn’t pass.

And honestly, I don’t want to feel like shit anymore.

I turn off the pre-heating oven and eat up the distance between us. I back her against the far wall of the hallway and kiss her full on the mouth, locking her in my arms so I can feel the expansion of her chest as she gasps for breath. It’s a long,claiming, thorough kiss, with my hands hitching up under her shirt to feel the damp heat of her bare skin.