Free Web NovelChapter 324: Invited At Carmen’s [1]
I followed Maribel through the Boardwalk’s inner stretch, hands in my pockets, still not entirely sure how I felt about where we were headed.
"Why do you look like that?" Maribel said without turning around, apparently able to read my expression from the back of her head. "Everyone here would jump at the chance to eat at Carmen’s. You’re acting like it’s a chore."
"Because everyone would jump at the chance," I said dryly. "And we both know why."
From the little time spent here I saw how popular she was among adults men.
Maribel stopped and turned to look at me. "Huh?"
I stopped too, catching the genuine surprise on her face, and felt the awkwardness of what I’d just said settle over me like a wet blanket.
Smooth, Ryan.
"I mean... I’ve heard people talking," I said, shrugging it off as casually as I could manage. "Around the Boardwalk. Some of the others. She’s..." I searched for the least loaded way to finish the sentence. "She’s clearly someone people notice."
That was putting it mildly. The few comments I’d caught in passing from the men around the Boardwalk, mostly the older ones, who had apparently decided that subtlety was optional in the apocalypse had made Carmen’s standing in the community’s general appreciation fairly clear.
Maribel studied me for a moment with narrowed eyes. "You’re not getting any ideas, are you? Because I will make your life difficult. I’m warning you right now."
"What? No," I said, wincing. "That’s not what I—"
"You better not," she said, turning back around. "She doesn’t need that."
She doesn’t need what?!
I followed her in silence for a few steps, choosing not to argue. I had four girlfriends. Four. The last thing any reasonable version of me was doing was entertaining ideas about anyone else. If I’d said that out loud, though, Maribel would probably have stopped walking entirely and stared at me with a contemptuous look.
So I kept it where it belonged, firmly to myself.
"Besides," Maribel added after a moment, her tone shifting into something more matter-of-fact, "you’re too young for her anyway."
"Probably," I agreed without much resistance. ƒrēewebnoѵёl.cσm
We walked a little further before I said, "She has a thing for Marlon, doesn’t she?"
Maribel glanced at me sideways.
"What makes you say that?"
"Shannon said, something about it." I paused. "She didn’t seem to like the idea of him and her mother."
Maribel was quiet for a beat. "Maybe. I don’t know the details. But Marlon’s..." She seemed to consider her words. "He’s decent. Better than most of the men floating around out here, that’s for sure."
Then why Shannon didn’t like it?
Maybe she still felt attached to her deceased father and didn’t like the fact that her mother liked someone else.
But from what I had heard...
"Carmen was already divorced before everything fell apart, right?" I said. "So it’s not like—"
"Yeah," Maribel confirmed. "Long before."
So it wasn’t really surprising. A woman who had already rebuilt her life once, already redefined what family looked like for herself and her daughter, of course she could do it again. Of course she could find something worth caring about in someone. Nobody had any business telling a mother she’d used up her chances at that.
I found myself thinking, briefly and without fully meaning to, about my own mother.
She’d never done that. Never even come close, as far as I could tell. There had been men over the years who had clearly been interested, moments where something could have started, and she had always — quietly, without making a production of it, stepped back from it. Closed the door before it opened.
I’d understood it even as a kid, in the vague and incomplete way kids understand things that are really about the adults around them. After my father, after everything he’d done, all the ways he’d used me as the easiest outlet for whatever was eating him on a given day, she hadn’t wanted to bring another man into our space. Hadn’t wanted to risk it. Hadn’t wanted me to feel uncertain or unsafe or like I’d lost the one corner of the world that was just ours.
She’d done that for me.
All of it, for me.
And I had given her back, what, exactly? Years of her worrying. Years of watching me carry things she couldn’t reach. And then the world had ended, and I hadn’t—
I shook my head. Not hard, just enough to interrupt the current before it pulled me under. I’d been doing that more lately, catching the thought before it became a spiral, redirecting before the weight of it got too settled. It didn’t always work. But it was better than just letting it go where it wanted to go.
"I see..." I nodded briefly.
Maribel shot me a sharp look then. "Anyway, behave yourself in there. I mean it."
"What kind of person do you think I am?" I asked, mildly offended.
"A man surrounded by too many women," she said flatly, turning back to the path ahead.
I opened my mouth. Closed it.
Kept walking.
Then stopped.
"Wait," I said slowly.
She kept moving.
"How exactly do I come across?" I asked, catching up to her. "Like, from the outside. To people here. What does it look like?"
Maribel glanced at me without breaking stride, something unreadable moving briefly across her face. "What do you mean?"
"I mean—" I tried to figure out how to ask what I was actually asking. Sydney, Rachel, Cindy and I had never exactly made formal announcements about anything. We existed in our own orbit most of the time, close enough that we probably didn’t notice how it looked from the outside, far enough from the Boardwalk’s day-to-day that I hadn’t really stopped to think about what picture we painted for people who didn’t know us.
But we weren’t always careful. Sydney especially was not a person who prioritized careful.
"What are you even asking?" Maribel’s eyes narrowed, suspicion sharpening her expression like she was trying to read between lines she couldn’t quite find.
"Nothing," I said quickly, and started walking. ƒree𝑤ebnσvel.com
She fell into step ahead of me a moment later, moving faster than before, like she’d decided to put some distance between herself and whatever that conversation had been edging toward.
I let her go.
What am I even doing?
Standing in the middle of a Boardwalk work shift talking to Maribel about my relationship situation, which was already complicated enough without me poking at it out loud to someone who barely knew me. I grumbled under my breath and pushed the whole thing to the back of my mind where it belonged, following her through the narrow stretch of road between buildings.
Hiding what I had with Sydney, Rachel, and Cindy was becoming harder by the day, though. Not because we were careless exactly, but because the three of them were not small personalities. They took up space. And when we were all together, we had a way of falling into our own world without really noticing it. From the outside, looking in, I didn’t know what that looked like anymore. I probably should have thought about it sooner.
I shook my head at myself and kept walking.
A couple of minutes later, the house came into view.
"Did you even tell them we were coming?" I asked, slowing slightly.
Maribel’s stride didn’t break. "Don’t worry about it."
"That’s a no," I said.
"Carmen always has something going. And whatever she has going is better than anything you’d find anywhere else on this Boardwalk." She glanced back at me with something that almost resembled a smile. "Just come."
I followed, still not entirely comfortable with the idea of showing up unannounced and essentially expecting to be fed. It felt like I was leaning too hard on the goodwill that had come from saving Shannon, turning someone’s gratitude into a meal ticket. That wasn’t the kind of person I wanted to be. Saving her hadn’t come with terms attached.
Maribel knocked.
A few seconds passed. Then the door opened.
Not Carmen. Not Shannon.
Summer stood in the doorway, one shoulder leaned against the frame, looking between us with the mild surprise of someone who had not been expecting this particular combination of visitors.
"What are you doing here?" Maribel asked, visibly thrown.
"Shannon invited me," Summer said simply, with a light shrug that suggested she found the question slightly unnecessary.
"You eat here too much," Maribel said.
"You are the last person who should be saying that," Summer replied, and the smile that followed was warm but had a point to it. "We all appreciate Carmen’s cooking. Nobody here is pretending otherwise."
"I came to accompany him," Maribel said, tilting her head toward me. "I’m responsible for him while he’s here."
Summer’s gaze shifted to me and stayed there for a moment, a brief, quiet beat of something I couldn’t fully read behind her eyes before it passed. "Oh. You must be Ryan."
What a great actress.
"I’ll just eat somewhere else," I said, already half-turning. "I don’t want to crowd the place—"
A hand closed around my arm.
Shannon had appeared from somewhere inside, materialized without warning, and was now pulling me through the doorway with a cheerful smile.
"Stop standing there and come in," she said.
"I’m here too, you know!" Maribel said from behind complaining.
Shannon turned just long enough to stick her tongue out at her, then continued pulling me inside.
"This girl—" Maribel stepped through the door behind us, muttering. "Why is she attached to him like that?"
Honestly, I was asking myself the same thing. I hadn’t done anything to encourage it.
The inside of the house was warm just like before.
"Ryan, welcome."
Carmen appeared from the kitchen doorway, a dish towel folded over one arm, her expression open and pleased.
"Thank you for having me," I started, "I didn’t mean to just show up—"
"Don’t be silly," she said, waving it off before I finished.
Then movement behind her.
A familiar figure stepped out from the interior, filling the kitchen doorway.
"So you finally showed up, brat."
Marlon looked at me sternly.
I stared at him dumbfounded.
What was this old man doing here?
