Free Web NovelChapter 326: Meal at Carmen’s [1]
Something had shifted after that moment with Shannon. It was hard to name exactl just a quiet settling. Understanding what she was carrying, what she’d lost and how recently she’d lost it, made the clinginess make sense in a way that stripped away all the awkwardness it had carried before. She wasn’t being strange. She was just a person with a hole in her life that was shaped like a brother, reaching toward the nearest thing that fit.
Once I understood that, being around her stopped feeling like something I had to manage.
"Alright, that’s enough."
Maribel stepped forward and peeled Shannon off me, one arm around Shannon’s shoulders, pulling her back and away with a decisiveness that left no room for argument.
"We were having a moment!" Shannon protested immediately, twisting around.
"What moment?!" Maribel said. "You’ve been attached to him since he walked through the door." She paused, then pivoted cleanly. "And shouldn’t you be more concerned about what Marlon is doing downstairs with your mother right now? Alone? In the kitchen?"
The effect was fast. Shannon’s eyes went wide and she was out the door and down the hallway.
The sound of her footsteps faded down the stairs.
Maribel watched her go, let out a long breath through her nose, and then turned back to look at me. The relief on her face lasted approximately one second before it rearranged itself into something more pointed.
"It would help," she said, "if you stopped encouraging her."
"Encouraging what, exactly?" I asked.
"You really don’t see it?" Summer said from behind me, incredulous.
"I mean, at first it felt strange," I admitted. "But I think I understand it now." I glanced toward the doorway Shannon had disappeared through. "She lost her brother not long ago. Her father too. She just needs somewhere to put that, someone to put it on. And honestly, I don’t mind. Not for something like that." I paused. "At least when I’m actually around to be useful in that way."
There was a beat of silence.
I’d meant it simply. The loss of my mother was still something I carried everywhere but it surfaced in moments like this one, when someone else’s grief had the same particular shape. Sydney and Rachel had been the ones who kept me functional in those early days after. I knew what it meant to need that. I wasn’t going to be the person who made someone feel embarrassed for reaching for it. freewebnøvel.com
I’d never had siblings, not real ones. My father had remarried after everything fell apart at home, and his new wife had two daughters. Technically that made them stepsisters. But I had met them exactly as many times as could be counted on one hand, said nothing of substance to them on any of those occasions, and remembered almost nothing about them beyond the vague shape of two quiet girls who had nothing to do with any of what was happening in that house.
What I remembered more clearly was the feeling of standing in my father’s space and watching him be warm and patient with children who didn’t share his blood, while I stood slightly to the side of all of it feeling like I was looking at something through glass. Pathetic, I’d thought back then. Envious, even, in a way that felt shameful to admit. But now, with enough distance to see it plainly, all I felt was the anger.
Anyway.
I surfaced from that and looked up.
Maribel and Summer were both staring at me with expressions I could only describe as deeply conflicted.
"You—" Summer started, then stopped. Tried again. "I genuinely cannot tell if you’re stupid or just completely unaware."
"What?" I asked, offended.
She sighed. "Nothing. Never mind."
"Leave it, Summer," Maribel said, shaking her head slowly. "This guy, I don’t know how to explain it. He is somehow surrounded by women, all the time, and still manages to act like he’s never been close to anyone in his life. Like he just walks through it all completely oblivious."
I felt something twitch in my expression.
"I can’t really argue with that," Summer said, turning to me with a look of patient exasperation. "But regardless, keep a little distance from Shannon. I know you don’t mean anything strange by it and your intentions are completely fine, but she’s young and she’s more sensitive than she lets on. The energy she puts out makes it easy to forget that."
"She’s maybe three years younger than you," I pointed out.
"Three years is significant," Summer said. "And I am more mature than her. That’s also just a fact."
She wasn’t wrong about the maturity, honestly. Shannon was bright and brave and had more emotional resilience than most adults twice her age. But Summer worked differently.
"That said," I started, "it’s a little interesting that someone who sneaks out alone to abandoned malls is giving maturity lectures—hmm?"
Summer moved fast.
One second she was standing an arm’s length away. The next, her hand was flat across my mouth, her aqua green eyes, quite striking up close, that shade of green-blue that didn’t quite look real, locked on mine with a glare.
The message was clear enough without words.
Nobody knows about that. Keep it there.
I held very still.
I nodded slowly, once, against her hand.
She held the look for another second, making sure it had landed properly and then stepped back.
"Good," she said simply.
"What was that about?" Maribel asked, her eyes moving between me and Summer with suspicion.
"Nothing," Summer replied.
"You two have been acting strange since you met," Maribel said.
She wasn’t wrong. We were being obvious about it in the way that people are obvious when they’re trying not to be obvious, which is to say, completely.
I caught Summer’s eye briefly. She gave the smallest, most imperceptible shake of her head.
I understood. With a father like Marlon, a man whose protectiveness worked less like a personality trait and more like a permanent operating mode, Summer’s solo ventures outside the Boardwalk’s walls were not the kind of information she could afford to have floating around casually. If Marlon found out she’d been slipping out alone to pick through abandoned buildings while the world outside was full of things actively trying to kill people, the fallout would be significant and loud and would involve a level of concern that Summer had clearly decided she didn’t want to deal with.
So we’d keep it where it was.
"Come on," Summer said simply, already turning toward the hallway. "Let’s eat."
She walked out without further explanation, leaving Maribel holding her suspicion with nowhere to put it. I followed. After a moment, and one last look between the space where we’d been standing and the doorway, Maribel followed too. freёwebnoѵel.com
°°°
Carmen had set the table while we were upstairs.
It was a rectangular table, modest in size but solid. She’d done what she could with it, a folded cloth laid down the center, mismatched chairs arranged around the edges with the practical warmth of someone who cared about the effort even when the circumstances made perfection impossible.
Shannon had beaten everyone downstairs and had positioned herself in the seat directly beside mine before I’d even fully registered which chair I was taking. She dropped into it, smiling up at me as I sat down like everything had gone exactly according to plan.
Across from me, Marlon settled into his chair. He folded his arms on the table and looked at me with an unreadable gaze he’d been wearing since I’d walked through the door.
Summer took the seat beside him, across from Shannon giving an exasperated look at Shannon.. Maribel pulled out the chair at the near end of the table, positioned at the edge between both sides, and sat down with her arms crossing almost immediately, her expression somewhat thoughtfully.
The seat at the far head of the table, directly across from me, remained empty for now.
Carmen was still in the kitchen. We could hear her, the soft sounds of someone finishing something that required the last bit of attention, plates being lifted, a final check of something on the heat. Then she appeared in the doorway, and the amazing smell that followed her out.
Fish. Real, fresh fish, not tinned, not preserved, not with the flat saltiness of something that had been sitting in a can for months. This was the smell of something that had been alive recently, seasoned and cooked with actual care over actual heat. In the context of how most meals had tasted for the past three months, it was almost disorienting.
She set the plates down, a generous portion in front of Marlon first, then working her way around, each plate accompanied by whatever she’d managed to put together alongside the fish. Foraged greens, wilted slightly but seasoned. What looked like rehydrated grains pressed flat and browned on one side in a pan. Small portions, but composed, thought about.
"I hope you’re all hungry," she said, settling into the head chair right adjacent to me.
"It smells incredible," Summer said with a smile.
"You have Marlon to thank for the fish," Carmen said, glancing down the table toward him with a smile. "He brought them in this morning. Already cleaned and cut, which, honestly, that saved me more time than I can tell you."
Marlon made a sound that was somewhere between a dismissal and acknowledgment.
"He cut the fish," Shannon said, from beside me.
Her voice had gone very stern. I glanced at her. She was looking at Marlon with a focused, narrow-eyed expression.
She really didn’t want Marlon to steal her mom.
"He just cut the fish," she repeated again.
"Shannon," Carmen called out with a warning.
"I’m just saying," Shannon muttered, stabbing lightly at the edge of her plate with her fork.
Marlon looked at her across the table. His expression didn’t shift much, but something in it edged toward a dry amusement.
I kept my eyes on my plate and said nothing, which felt like the correct strategy.
The fish was good. Better than good, it was the kind of meal that reminded you what food was supposed to feel like, before survival compressed everything down to function and calories and whatever you could heat without too much trouble. Carmen had done something with seasoning that I couldn’t identify but didn’t need to, because the result was enough on its own. Around the table, the sounds of eating settled in and the sharp edges of the earlier tension softened into something more manageable.
"What are you waiting for Ryan?" Carmen called out to me then as I just stared at my plate.
I glanced at her and she smiled gently.
"Go on and dig in," she said.
"Yeah," I smiled. "Thanks.
