“Yes, please,” I said. “Thank you.”
Jude grabbed the box and walked out of the room.
I went back into the walk-in for another case of ground beef and to cool off my overheated body.
*
We served a lot of tacos. Hundreds of them. By eight o’clock I was ragged from constant trips between the serving line and the prep stations.
“What are we doing with the leftover refried beans?” Denny asked. “Is this enough to take over to the food pantry tomorrow?”
“No,” I said. “Compost it, or take them home with you.”
“Woo-hoo!” Denny said. “Nachos for me tomorrow.”
My eyes tracked across the room, where Jude was slipping on his coat. I watched him leave. And then I cleaned up for another thirty minutes. By that time, I decided it was safe to follow him home. I put the last of the clean dishes in the storage cabinets and closed them for the night.
In the kitchen, I found Denny waiting for me, my coat in his hands.
Crap, I thought immediately. And just as quickly I felt guilty for it. Sometimes Denny walked me out to my car, just to be nice. I supposed I could always drive my car around the block and re-park.
This reminded me of high school, and not in a good way. Hooking up with Jude forced me to sneak around like a teenager.
Denny held up my coat.
“Thanks,” I said, slipping my arms into the sleeves one after the other.
He lifted it onto my shoulders, then gave me a pat. When he spoke, his voice was so low that I almost couldn’t hear it. “Please be careful, Sophie.”
“What? Why?” When I turned around to check his face, he wore a sober expression. That’s when I realized that he was onto me. “How did you…?”
He lifted his chin toward the pantry, and I felt my face heat. He must have seen us going at it against the walk-in door. Smooth, Sophie.
“I’m just worried about you,” he said, fishing a pair of gloves out of his pockets. “Do you know the rate of relapse among opiate addicts?”
I shook my head, because I was suddenly too upset to speak. How dare he imply that Jude would start using again? None of this was any of Denny’s business. And not only was it rude to Jude, it also implied that I was an idiot. I knew Jude’s road was a tough one. But when a man was working so hard to stay clean, it seemed impossibly cruel to say out loud that he wouldn’t make it.
“Over fifty percent,” he said.
Stepping backward, I yanked my gloves out of my pockets. “If I ever have a problem with addiction, remind me not to come to you for encouragement.”
Denny’s mouth fell open, and he wore the startled expression of someone who had just been slapped.
“Goodnight,” I said through clenched teeth. Then I turned and ran out of there. My shoes clicked on the tiles as I pushed the church’s pretty wooden door open.
Moving quickly, I headed down the sidewalk toward Jude’s street. The cold air on my face was a relief, and it helped to cool my anger. I knew Denny was a good guy usually. And he had always been a loyal friend. And he’s jealous, my conscience put in. But the real reason that I would be able to put this awful moment aside was that Denny didn’t know Jude. He’d never seen the way that Jude took care of me. He’d calmed me down a million times when I was stressed out over school or mad at my father for belittling me.
Jude had shored me up in so many ways. The least I could do was show a little faith.
And what’s more, he’d always told me that I could beat the odds. When I wanted to make music my career, he’d never said, “Do you know the rate of failure for singers is over fifty percent?”
Life was risky. All of it. And I wasn’t about to give up on Jude just because some medical researcher didn’t like the odds of kicking his habit.
My feet took me closer to him.
The streets of Colebury were silent at night. Decorative candle-style lights lit the windows of many of the old wooden houses I passed. That was a thing in Vermont. We left them up all winter, too, not just at Christmas. These days there were solar-powered light-sensitive models—you didn’t even have to remember to turn them on. I’d bought a set at the grocery store last year so that the police chief’s house would look as though somebody cared enough to turn on the holiday lights.
When I turned onto Jude’s street, the houses got smaller and the porches saggier. But there were candles in many of the windows.
Not his, though.
I climbed the stairs as quietly as I could. After a light tap on the door, I tried the knob. It released in my hand. “Jude?”
The only sound came from the shower.
Ten seconds later I’d tossed my coat and all my clothes onto his desk chair. Stark naked, I went into the bathroom. Without a word of warning, I pulled the curtain open.