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nomorelonelydays · 5 years

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kick your pretty feet up on my dash

Part 1 | Part 2

Two days after the Instagram account opens, Sidney unofficially gets put on naming duty.

The strawberry shortcake biscuit is named The Taylor.

The cream cheese-stuffed banana muffins, crusted with dark chocolate ganache, is The Fleury.

The slice of warm spiced peach cobbler (available for just two weeks), topped with a generous portion of thick, whipped cream and vanilla ice cream, is The Deidre.

He shares the account password with her, but she seems more interested in digging up her mom’s old recipes from an ancient box filled with yellowed index cards than photographing.

“I’ll leave that up to you,” she says, then passes him a card titled, ‘Cherry Layer Chocolate Cake.’ “I think I’ll make this for the holidays. What do you think?”

Deidre makes just one and a half cakes for a trial run (the other half, which had come out lopsided, is sitting in the back of Sidney’s fridge). It’s another instant hit.

Sidney watches a couple, two teenagers who are making it pretty painfully obvious that they’re on their first date, split a slice in a corner seat. She’s chasing the cherry around the plate with her fork, and he watching her like she hung the literal moon. He laughs a little too hard at her jokes, his eyes crinkling like Geno’s when he’s chirping Sidney. But with the way she’s beaming, it’s clear that she doesn’t mind at all.

He’s not jealous—or, at least, he doesn’t think he’s jealous. Having hockey and having a boyfriend have always been mutually exclusive. But now, with no obligations to the NHL, he’s supposedly free to do everything that he’s wanted to. He doesn’t dwell too long on it though, because the last thing he needs is to have an existential spiral in Deidre’s store over whether or not he’s missed his his golden hour to be happy the exact minute the Penguins drafted him all those years ago.

He finishes lettering the card for the cherry chocolate cake and slides ‘The Jack’ neatly into its proper holder.

Geno calls him on Thursday nights now, like clockwork. He’s grateful for the routineness of it, especially when he knows how much Geno lives on spontaneity. It’s always the same—updates on how the team is doing (good, the weather over in Pittsburgh (not so good), another dumb prank the rookies are trying to pull (hilarious, but slightly unoriginal with the shaving cream), even though it’ll never be as good as the ones Flower used to plan.

“How are you?” Geno asks one night, while Sidney is puttering around the kitchen to figure out what he wants to make for dinner. “Your tomatoes grow?”

“I think those are a goner,” Sidney grimaces. The entire plant had shriveled up weeks ago, despite Sidney faithfully watering them. “Guess I’ll just have to stick with the storebought ones.”

Geno is silent for a bit. Then, “Is quiet in locker room without you.”

Sidney pauses. “I doubt that’s true.” There’s plenty of rookies every year, eager to prove themselves on the ice and to establish themselves as a personality on the team. Besides, Sidney has never been the life of the party—that’s always been Geno himself.

“No, is quieter.” Geno sounds like he’s swallowing a yawn. “Different without you.”

Sidney’s heart flounders, and he has to blink a couple of times before his throat unclogs. “Maybe you should get to sleep. It’s pretty late over there.”

“No, I’m not tired,” Geno mumbles, sounding very drowsy. Sidney can almost picture Geno, hair-mussed and sleepy eyes about to close as he curls up on his mattress. “Want to keep talking.”

“I know you have practice tomorrow, G,” Sidney says. “You have the C now, you can’t get there two hours late anymore.”

“I’m never late,” Geno huffs. “You too early.”

“Get some rest,” Sidney says gently. “I’ll still be here next week, same as usual.”

“Maybe I call tomorrow.’

“I won’t go anywhere.”

“Wish you still here, Sid,” he murmurs. “Miss you so bad, some days.”

Sidney doesn’t miss a beat. “I miss you, too,” he whispers, because any louder and he knows his voice will crack. “I’ll be here tomorrow. And the day after, if you still want to call.”

“Okay,” Geno says. “Okay.”

Sidney’s restocking the brioche rolls when Deidre’s voice casually pipes up from the coffee machine, “You have a secret admirer, you know.”

“I know. It’s Samantha. PTA President,” Sidney says, trying to not sound exasperated. He only knows her name and title because she must’ve giggled it at him as a greeting every single time she’s marched in. “She asked me what the main ingredient was in the banana muffins and I told her banana like, three times.”

“She just likes to hear you say banana. And no, it’s not Sam.” Deidre makes a come hither motion with her hands and slides a napkin towards Sidney. “Yesterday afternoon, there was a young man, maybe around his 30s, who stopped by for a latte and he asked where you were.”

“Oh.” There’s something he can’t name fluttering in his stomach. The words on the napkin scrawled out, Jeremy, and a string of numbers. “What did you say?”

“I told him, ‘He’s a cute one, isn’t he? He’s the store eye candy, bringing in all the sales.’”

“Dee, you didn’t.”

“I did, and he went full red. It was adorable. And I told him that you pop in in the mornings and in the afternoon to help with opening and closing.” She leans forward, grinning. “I’m just saying, think about it.”

He thinks about it.

At night, he tells Geno, “I think I have a secret admirer. Or a stalker.”

Geno’s voice suddenly becomes infinitely more awake. “Have what? Someone stand outside your house? I read about this before, you need call police.”

“No, it was at the bakery. I got his number on a napkin. Well, the owner gave me his name on a napkin, so I don’t really know what he looks like. He could be 100. People in this town are usually…around that age range.”

Geno still sounds perplexed. “So say no.”

“What?”

“Say sorry, only go on dates with girls. But thank you.”

Sidney’s brain feels like it’s stuttering to a pause. “Geno, what the fuck?”

“What?”

“I don’t ‘only go on dates with girls.’ I—” Well, to be quite fair, he hasn’t gone on any dates at all. “You know this.”

It takes a full ten seconds for Geno to crackled back to life on the line again. His voice is hesitant. “You only bring girls to events. Like Halloween, or—”

“They’re my friends, I’ve told you. I’m not going to bring a guy in front of you guys,” he exclaims, then reigns in his voice. His heart is beating like a jackhammer boring straight through. “Hey, listen, I have a pretty early day tomorrow, I’ll talk to you next week, okay?”

“Sid, wait—”

He hangs up and puts his phone face down on the nightstand. It’s not his proudest moment.

I’m sorry(((, the text reads. The timestamp indicates that the message had been sent at 2 AM. You should go on a date with secret guy. Maybe he’s secret Ryan Reynolds.

Geno’s texts are never longer than five words, usually cryptic versions of a yes or no, accompanied by eyeless smilies. Sidney wonders if he’d been painstakingly worrying over each word since Sidney hastily ended the conversation.

I don’t think he’s Ryan Reynolds, Sidney sends back. Besides, no one in this town knows hockey. That’s gonna be a problem.

Geno’s reply is instantaneous, as if he’d been waiting.

Picky)))))

More messages follow in quick succession, before Sidney can even start typing.

But always best for u. Deserve the best only.

He laces up his shoes and heads to Dee’s.

It snows a little mid-December.

He helps Deidre with the decorations, hanging up tinsel and little snowflake cutouts on the window. She has a box of Christmas lights stored away in a dusty box from the attic, which definitely looks like they haven’t been disturbed since the 80s, but the one of the bulbs dies with a sad fizz the moment Sidney plugs it in. So they have to make do with the other nonflammable options.

The store looks nice. ‘Well-loved’ is a better word for it, with its mismatched decorations and ancient garlands. He snaps a photo of the mini tree on the counter for Instagram before he goes to help Deidre frost the rest of the ornament-shaped sugar cookies.

There’s commotion on the streets from all the tourists and families coming back for the holidays. He thinks about flying to Nova Scotia for the holidays, but then he realizes that none of Deidre’s children will be coming to Cardwell Point.

“They’re busy,” she shrugs indifferently, but she turns her back to Sidney as she busies herself with rearranging the shelfs. “It’s alright. That’s what Skype is for, right? Besides, I have to watch the store.”

He thinks about Geno, who’s probably headed to Florida soon to escape the onslaught of winter chill that he absolutely abhors, no matter how much he loves the city. He could Skype Geno, or Facetime him. Except Geno would always have the angle wrong, and Sidney’s sure he’d just get an on-brand mugshot of Geno’s nostril from the bottom up for the whole conversation.

He did ask Sidney if he wanted to go to Florida, except the way he had asked had felt like a given tagged with a question mark at the end (Florida w me this year?). Nonetheless, Sidney had been tempted.

But he also wonders if he’d feel even more homesick when Geno is physically standing in front of him again, all tall and loud and too big, too much, too many years of his unrequited love staring at him and making Sidney think that he has a chance. He doesn’t want to go to Florida to watch Geno pick up strangers at a club.

“I’m not going anywhere, either,” he tells her.

She looks over, finally, pursing her lips like she’s trying to hold back her smile.

@DeesBakeryandCafe

Season’s greetings and a happy New Year to our wonderful customers and families here in Cardwell Point. Hope everyone is spending time with their loved ones this holiday season.

Winter refuses to go. The clouds hang over the streets stubbornly, and each days trudges on like it’s dragging its feet.

He misses skating.

He misses Geno. Especially as it gets closer to February and teenagers and adults alike start coming to the shop in twos, their gloved hands clasped together as they squeeze through Dee’s tiny corridor when it’s really much easier to be in a single-file line.

He’s not jealous. He is not.

But he is lonely. And really fucking cold.

He serves up at least thirty slices of The Jack, which is apparently the most popular item these days thanks to Instagram. Deidre switches up the decoration, so the cherry-glazed design in the middle forms a big, gaudy heart. The Internet completely eats up. Sidney doesn’t understand it.

“It’s like a Titanic reference, right?” a customer asks, as he picks up the cake for his wife. “Like, an ‘I’ll never let you go,’ kind of thing. Jack and Rose?”

“Sure,” Sidney says. It’s really for his first childhood crush, but he can work with the Titanic.

The moment Deidre fills her last custom order of The Jack (and there had been plenty of those, for anniversaries to birthdays to just becauses), she tells Sidney that she’s figured out how to make her mother’s cheesecake.

“Finally worked out how to stop the goddamn filling from clotting,” she says, cutting him a slice. The cake has a brownie bottom, and the inside is perfectly creamy and smooth and dotted with dark chocolate chips. “What do you think?”

“I’m biased,” Sidney says, trying to not scarf down the whole thing like an animal. “I love cheesecakes. This one is my favorite so far.”

“Good,” she tells him. “You can name this one, then.”

His fork stops mid-air. “Weren’t you going to call it ‘The Lily’?”

She pats his arm affectionately, not unlike the day she did when Sidney told her why he ended up at Cardwell Point. “I figured she wouldn’t mind. This can be our second February special. God, I’m sick of The Jack.”

The next week, Sidney carefully slides The Geno in its display cabinet.

(Deidre doesn’t ask about the peculiar name. She never does, and Sidney is grateful.)

After over a decade in the NHL, he’s well aware of what he can and can’t have. But lately he’s been feeling selfish. He snaps a photo of the cheesecake and sends it to Deidre.

It’s a good photo.

“I got invited to a neighborhood potluck yesterday,” Sidney mumbles into the receiver, when Flower asks him how retirement is treating him. “I don’t know what to bring. Maybe I’ll bring something from the bakery.”

“Do you officially work at the bakery or are you just there because the owner is blackmailing you? Does she know who you are?”

“I just help out when I can. And no, I told you, it’s not a hockey town. They do have competitive knitting here. It’s a thing.” Sidney doesn’t have much to do these days, aside from working out and catching up on reading, which means that he does end up doing most of the latter in the café. Maybe he should take up competitive knitting. “I started an Instagram for her shop. We just hit 200 followers.”

“You know how to do that?” Flower asks, because he’s a little shit. “I’m kidding, I know you’re not actually a senior citizen.”

Sidney rolls his eyes. “I haven’t checked it in a while though. I let Deidre handle the posting now. It’s her shop, anyways.”

“What’s the handle?”

He tells him. Flower is quiet for a bit as he searches through the page. “Pretty cool, eh?”

“Yeah,” Flower says, his voice slightly off. “Yeah, it’s—it’s good. Looks like the real deal.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? Of course it’s the real deal.”

Flower makes a noncommittal noise. “Nothing. Cheesecake looks good. Does Geno know?”

“No,” Sidney says. “I mentioned the bakery once or twice. He didn’t ask. Not, uh—not after I told him about Jeremy.”

“Secret napkin man?” Flower remembers. “You didn’t go on that date?”

“No, I didn’t go on a date with ‘secret napkin man,’” he mimics. “I don’t think he’d care.”

“I think he’d care.” Flower always sounds so sure when he wants to be serious, and it’s one of the things Sidney missed most when he left for Vegas—there’d been a metaphorical hollow within the team for a good few months following his departure, and that void never quite got replaced no matter what.

“Maybe.”

Sidney can only hope. But he’s a little too old for hoping these days.

Foot traffic is slower when they hit March, but Deidre promises that it’ll pick up when Cardwell Point’s 11th Annual Theater Festival starts in the middle of the month, because that’s apparently the other big thing aside from the 4th of July Carnival Bash. Sidney has just packed up another dozen of red velvet cupcakes for Samantha the PTA Queen when the front bell jingles.

“Hello? I’m look for—”

Sidney heart leaps to his throat.

“Sid,” Geno says softly. He looks like the wind knocked him in (it probably had), mismatched Frakenshirts and all. “Hi, Sid.”

Samantha may as well not have even walked into the store at all.

“How are—“ He must be imagining things. But Geno takes another step, until he’s right in front of the counter and Sidney can reach out and touch just how real he is. He hasn’t changed much--still the same eyes, the same nose and lips, and maybe his hair is a bit thinner but he still makes Sidney’s chest feel too small and too big all at once. “Where did you—how are you here?”

“Fly,” Geno says sheepishly. “Wanted to see you.”

“What about—”

“No games until Friday.” He’s staring at Sidney like he’s looking his fill and he can’t get enough. “I—I see your post, and I just—buy ticket.”

“What post?”

Geno pulls out his phone and flips through it until he lands at a familiar Instagram account. He passes it over to Sidney, his hands warm as it brushes against Sidney’s fingers.

@DeesBakeryCafe

‘I love you’ tastes a lot like our chocolate chip cheesecake, The Geno.

“Oh,” Sidney breathes. “Oh.”

#retirement fic #sidgeno #okay!!! getting closer to the final part #probably wont be any posting during the weekday because need to do Real Job things #but hope you guys enjoy #wish i knew graphic so i can like...make a graphic header

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nauseateddrive · 4 years

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MYSTERY LIGHT by Catherine Sinow

Something terrible happened one night while Cassie and I were parked on a cliff in Los Feliz. It started off innocently enough; we were looking over a valley of twinkling homes in her 2005 Mercedes, her mom’s old car, listening to Iceage, a band we both love. A Yankee Candle air freshener hung from the mirror, which might have been ironic, which I loved because doing things ironically is so her. The car always made me feel cozy with its vintage leather smell and I imagined that I’d drive something similar if I ever upgraded my tattered old Subaru.

Cassie and I often enjoyed going to Griffith Observatory, sometimes combining it with a trip to Permanent Records, our favorite record shop. We would always park on cliffs and chat afterwards; it had totally become Our Thing. I always enjoyed being with her; just the way she looked at me with her blue-green eyes and laughed at my jokes like she was in a little fit. I really found her kind of flawless, even her weird aspects, like how she had a few too many pictures of her with her grandpa on Facebook.

We’d been hanging out less though since she got her boyfriend, this tall dude named Owen, about six months ago. They met because our good friend Jack is in a band with him. Owen plays guitar, drums, and keyboards, and his voice is pretty smooth, not going to lie. I don’t even understand how one person is so good at so many instruments. But whenever that gets me down I remind myself that he honestly has kind of shit taste in music. I mean, he’s a little too into Tame Impala and Beach House, and everyone knows those bands are cliché and unoriginal. He also has bleached hair and plays a Telecaster. Kind of a poser music boy thing—my style’s a lot more original (I wear mostly beige tones) but also classic (Converse and natural hair color). And I mean I’m pretty tall, too, 6’1” in fact, but this dude is TALL. Like, so tall that other people force him to be on basketball teams. Anyway I was so grateful to have Cassie as a friend, even though I really wished I had gone for her before Owen got to her. She’d been spending less time with me due to him and I can respect that even though it makes me kind of upset.

The Iceage album ended and Cassie switched the music to Ava Luna, a great band we got into together after seeing them play live at Origami Vinyl. Whenever I listen to them I think of her.

“I’m always better at cleaning my room while drunk! I just get the irresistible urge to clean!” she said. I loved little quirky comments like these. We always had great conversations when alone.

“Really!” I said. “I’m better at almost nothing while drunk. I’m better at like, talking about my embarrassing moments from 6th grade while drunk.” She laughed with her cute little scrunched-up-nose giggle. I kind of hoped she’d ask further—I’d been getting pretty good at telling this story about how I was the flag monitor and I left the flag up over the entire two-week winter break. She didn’t ask, unfortunately, but like the sharp girl she is, found a hysterical thing to say instead.

“I’m better at getting the mail while drunk,” she said, giggling. See what I mean?

“I’m better at stowing away in an airplane wheel while drunk,” I said, which really got her going. It made me feel accomplished—an Oscar moment.

Afterward she started to open up to me about some issues she was having with Owen,so I listened attentively. It seemed like even though he always took her amazing places and got presents for her, he was missing a key ingredient—he had a hard time sitting down and really emotionally empathizing. And Cassie’s a really sensitive person, so I know that matters. I found my advice always ended up with the bottom line of “You can do better,” but deep down I wanted to help her talk out her issues and respect her decision to stay with Owen. It was her choice, after all, and I try to respect the choices that people make.

“Jake, look! What the fuck is that?” She pointed out the window. It was plain as day: a big flash of white light trailing through the air. It was completely silent, but it kept expanding in big circles.

“FUCK,” I said.

“What? What? Is that a plane? Is that not just a plane?”

This was bad and I knew it. “I’ve been watching some videos about this recently,” I exclaimed. “It’s a Christ damn nuclear missile. Look, it has that shape. I think the shape determines it.” Yes, I do like looking at Wikipedia articles about strange things such as nuclear missiles.

“Fuck, like, how long do we have to live?”

“I have no fucking idea,” I said, my heart pounding. “Minutes? Look, do you want to make out with me?” I felt the words tumble out of my mouth and a feeling of otherworldly liberation washed over me.

“Um—um—yeah I do! What if we fucking die! I’ve lived such a good life! I miss Owen! My mom was so sweet to me and I was a little brat to her. Fuck, it’s all flashing before my eyes. I can’t stop thinking about this road trip to Utah we took as kids and how my parents took this picture of us by this gigantic sandstone rock formation that was like, these two arches!” She made a perpendicular gesture with her hands. “I thought it was cool then but I think it would be even cooler now! ‘Cause I’m an adult! And it’s all ending! Will I ever get to be old?”

Tears seemed to dribble out of her eyes and she looked so infinitely sad that it felt profound, more profound than any work of literature I’ve ever read, probably. I wanted so badly to comfort her. Now, I need to let you know that I actually thought I was going to die at that moment. Well, not completely, but maybe like a 75% chance? I don’t remember, but I do remember thinking there was a pretty good chance that this was the end of the world.

We crawled into the back seat and started making out. It felt so, so good to plant my mouth on hers, tasting her rose lip balm, after having only stared (both in real life and on social media) for so long. I tore off my beanie and removed her rounded glasses, tossing them into the front seat since I knew she would never need them again, and let my hands meet her inhumanly smooth skin, her shoulder-length dark brown hair, her denim jacket, her modest but subtly curved body. We panted and slammed our clothed forms over each other like the shirts and pants were barriers to break through. My final fuck, I thought. Just do this and maybe everything will be so beautiful, so powerful, that the world won’t really end after all.

“I’m so scared,” she said as she took her jacket, then long-sleeved shirt off. “The world is actually ending.”

“Just make the most of our last moments!” I shouted. So we had sex in my backseat, me on top. I had only had sex once before, with this girl from Tinder, but it seemed like that one time was decent enough practice for the end of the world. I really felt during that sex that Cassie and I combined into a singular human, maybe not even a human, but a unified plane of energy. I savored every raw bit of emotion outwardly flowing from the pits of our stomachs combining with this incomprehensible fear, knowing that in minutes our entire lives and the entire world would be obliterated into nothing. All my middle school classmates, the toys I got for all my Christmases, every vinyl record I had taken the time and money to purchase was for nothing, all at the devastating hands of fate and the man’s technology careening out of control. All my life, all the life and history of the world spiraled into her and my passion I was driving forward. I cried out her name, and she cried out mine.

After we finished she propped her head on my chest and let the sterile, stony moonlight cast over her face. I wasn’t really thinking anything at all, mostly luxuriating in the afterglow. Then she suddenly jolted upward and I had an internal freak-out. She covered her chest with her denim jacket without putting it on and reached into the front seat for her faux leather backpack. My heart tightened. I saw a message from our friend Molly: “Hey are you free? We’re about to start AHS Hotel but we can wait for you”

This was bad. This was really bad. I felt relieved the world wasn’t ending but that relief wasn’t that significant, probably because I didn’t fully believe that in the first place.

“I don’t think the world is actually ending,” she said, mumbling to herself out the window. “At all. Did I ever think that?” I looked out the other window; the mystery light was now nowhere to be seen. I decided to put on my clothes in the meantime. She eventually did too. We said nothing. And then:

“Just drive me home.”

She sat in the back seat and buckled herself in. I walked around to the front of the car and drove her just like an Uber, but in complete silence. I’ve actually always wanted to be an Uber driver; I think I’d be pretty good at it. I’d be one of those drivers that keeps bottled water and pretzel pouches in the cupholders.

I knew I was totally fucked. I honestly don’t think the sex was bad at all; it was actually pretty great. I found myself wondering if this would cause a rift between her and Owen, giving me a chance to slip in, but at the same time I knew that was unrealistic.

I woke up the next day and snapped some of my friends about the mysterious light. My friend Derek who’s a total news hound told me that it was a nuclear missile test—unarmed—by the government in Eastern California, sort of an empty threat in response to a North Korean missile. So, sort of the end of the world, but not really. I was almost right. I’m a pretty intuitive guy, but intuition can’t get you everywhere.

At the moment my entire friend group is trying to work their schedules around me not seeing Cassie, and I know they’re probably doing the same for her and Owen. I think they’re really good people by trying not to take sides. I haven’t heard from Cassie at all—maybe Owen isn’t allowing for it. I’m pretty sure I lost my best friend that night. It might not have been the actual end of the world, but a big part of my own has ruptured.

Catherine is an ambient music fanatic in the Pacific Northwest. She tweets at @ConceptualCamel

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