Chapter 3
True to his word Dick put gas in Jonathan's car while the young man nervously shifted his weight from one foot to the other. Dick wanted to know why the hospital would have let him out if he was this jumpy on his own. "Where are you going tonight?"
"I think I'll sleep in my car. I'll check into a motel in the morning."
Dick thumped a thick finger against his forehead and then raised it into the air like he had a moment of brilliance and was going to spout a life changing idea. "No, you know what; you'll sleep on the couch at the office, this way I can keep an eye on you."
Johnathan watched him work out the arrangements in his head except what was in his head transferred to his hands. Dick was very animated when he was anxious. "I told you, I'm not going to do anything."
"I know. But I don't think you need to be alone tonight. The head shrinker give you any of those happy pills?" Dick thumped his forehead again.
"Something to help me sleep, but I don't take anti-depressants." He didn't tell the man it was because he didn't want to take them.
Dick climbed behind the wheel of Jonathan's car."You swallow one of them, have a good night sleep and tomorrow I'll help you work this shit out."
.
On the way back to the office Dick drove near the bakery. Jonathan asked him to stop there for a minute. Inside, everything was cleaned up and covered. Jonathan yanked a tarp off of one of the round tables. He took a seat while Dick fiddled around behind the counter. "The Sugar Bee huh? Let me ask you something, why did you call it that?"
"Because I must be some kind of fucking poet." Jonathan didn't want to explain the meaning behind the name. His grandmother, the only woman in his life that never failed him, besides the fact that she up and died without warning when he was barely eighteen, had given the place its name. The bakery was her dream. "Look Dick I appreciate this but you don't need to stick around. I promise I won't light myself on fire. Okay?"
"Listen asshole…" He waved a wooden spoon at Jonathan. "Anytime you want to turn yourself into a Roman fucking candle I'll light the match for you, as long as you don't drag everyone else down too."
"Thanks Dick you're a real pal. A regular stand up fucking guy."
.
Dick put the spoon back into a jar before walking around the bakery, finally coming to a stop in front of the counter. He ran his index finger through a layer of dust. "In the meantime why don't you clean this shit up? Make it into something again. Or are you too much of a romantic pussy to do it?"
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means you got to stop hanging on to the past. So what that you had another man's wife upstairs and banged the shit out of her while Preston was off being an asshole! You got to forget it and move the fuck on. She's gone get over it!"
Jonathan was on his feet in an instant."Don't talk about Emily like that! You don't know what we had. You don't know shit!"
"I know what you had. I saw the tape. I saw the two of you together and all she could talk about was how she loved her husband. You were just a fucking piece of ass to a very bored woman."
"No! Fuck you! Get the fuck out of here before I…"
"Before you what? What are you going to do Jonathan?"
"Just leave, alright? Just go! Get out of here!"
.
Dick left and Jonathan picked up the chair he was sitting on, tossing it across the room. He stood there for a while fuming. He had more than just a sleazy relationship with Emily. It had to be more than that. He loved her and she loved him. Didn't she? Frustrated Jonathan grabbed a rag and tore into cleaning the kitchen. By five in the morning the entire bakery was clean and set up for business. Everything was ready, everything but the supplies to bake. Two in the morning Jonathan had called for a pizza and a six pack of beer. It sat on the counter untouched because he couldn't bring himself to stop cleaning long enough to eat. Now that it was done and the sun was coming up he was starving and thirsty. He grabbed both items and headed to the loft.
.
The place was exactly as he had left it, all but the perishable items. Jonathan plopped onto the mattress, opened a beer downing half of it in one swallow. He took a couple of bites of cold pizza and finished the rest of the beer he had opened. His eyes fell on the picture of Emily and him. Jonathan used to love this picture. He snapped it with his cellphone one day while they sat together. He printed it and framed it for her as a gift and she had put it by the bed. He knew she couldn't take it with her so he happily accepted the fact that she put it up here. He studied the picture hoping to see something to prove Dick wrong. Her smile was large and bright and her eyes danced with laughter. He was looking at her like she hung the moon and stars in the night sky, yet Emily was watching the camera. Her smile was not directed at him like the way he stared at her.
"Could I have been so blind? Was Dick right?" Frustrated he put the picture back, laying it face down. He took off his shoes and shirt before mimicking the face down position of the picture. He buried his face into the pillow giving into the emotions he struggled to suppress these past few months.