“Come on,” he pointed to the Beachwood Cafe on the corner, where a worker had begun their morning preparations.
“I don’t think they are open. It is,” I squinted at my phone. “Five in the morning.”
“Maggie is always open for me,” he said through a laugh that made my face scrunch.
What the hell did that mean? Never mind. I understood.
It had been one week, seven days, and 168 hours since I last touched Thay, but as much as I wanted to be okay without him, I wasn’t. Each breath felt like fiction, or some strange purgatory stemming from a waking coma I could not escape from. I couldn’t sleep. My food tasted off… And there was this phantom itch inside my veins that never went away. In the calm moments when I was not searching placentas or reading Finn’s notes, I would look for flights home, then spend the rest of my evening talking myself out of it.
“Come on!” Finn gestured, lifting the attention from my phone.
It had been half a day since I heard from Thay, and aside from attending births or the nature of his work, he never drifted this far for too long.
“Hey,” Finn nodded at the worker covered in tattoos before barreling through the glass door into the seaside cafe. I might have allowed my eyes to linger a tad too much on the distraction of unfolding chairs, because Finn’s brows perked in faint disinterest when we passed.
“Is that what you are into?” Finn asked, shuffling through the winding tables of handmade jewelry, boho art, and artisan soaps.
“What do you mean?” I mumbled, taking a whiff of “Dark Romance,” which smelled of cedar and ancient sea spray, before tucking the $54.00 bar of soap back into place.
“They are all imported from Illusory Farms in Upstate New York,” a creamy voice explained from behind the counter. She was warm, bouncy, and had literal hearts in her eyes for the male beside me.
“Xaden,” Finn answered my question, completely ignoring her. “I am pretty sure he is out on work release,” he clarified, as if that condemned his moral character. Half the men I loved had done time, but that did not make them less, only complicated.
“What for?” I asked, searching the menu for anything resembling food. Somehow, the gluten-free lemon pepper truffle poppers or the spinach egg-white-only croissant with red daisy jam weren’t going to cut it.
“Drug dealing, I think,” Finn commented, keeping his eyes forward. “Maggie is good at second chances.”
“And third ones,” she flirted, and I appreciated her flair.
Finn did not move, but the smirk upon his lips read that he got it.
“I’ll take one of those,” I pointed at the lemon bar as big as my face, “and a sparkling water.”
“That is not breakfast,” Finn groaned, and I waited in silence for his order.
What would it be? A cup of egg yolks. A protein shake? Grass.
“It is today,” I remarked with a smile, but he only scowled. “Sorry. I don’t run off chia seeds and kale like the rest of my kind.” He eyed me. “I am Daphne, by the way,” I said to Maggie, whose eyes were searching for any evidence that this male had seen me naked. “I am one of the interns working with him for the season.”
“Oh!” she exclaimed with a sigh of relief. “I am Maggie. Pleased to meet you.”
“I’ll get the croissant and a cup of drip with Irish Cream.”
“Finn, I know how you take it,” she said, licking her lips, turning toward the prep counter just out of reach. My eyes shifted to Finn, who stared at her through a long breath.
“So, then what do you eat for breakfast if not kale and chia seeds?”
It seemed like a jab, but I moved around it.
“Honestly?” I ran my fingers through a string of silver chains on a side table. “Toaster waffles! With syrup in each square and pressed together like a sandwich.”
Finn shrugged his head, laughing.
“Because you are eight years old?” he teased, but my eyes only darkened.
“You know that might have been my age the first time I had one. My parents weren’t particularly great at feeding me, and Thay used the only ten-dollar bill we had stashed for emergencies to purchase a box,” I explained. “I don’t know. We ate it like it was Thanksgiving, and I suppose to us, it was.”
Finn’s expression faded into a pitiful twist that I had spent most of my adult life trying to avoid. Fuck me, I shouldn’t have told him.