Page 2 of Love Notes
The server came over to get our orders.Haider took a moment to make up his mind before settling on the nachos after all, and I ordered my usual: a chicken sandwich with a side of potato skins and a beer.
“I haven’t seen Rebecca around for a while.”
“She’s been running around like crazy getting the house ready,” I said.
Rebecca had recently bought a cute little house on the edge of town and called it Maple Cottage.She’d spent the last few months renovating it, and it was absolutely gorgeous now—not saying that wasentirelydown to the maple wood cabinets I’d built for the kitchen, but they did look fantastic—and she was renting it out to short-term stays.Meanwhile, she was living in an apartment downtown with Chris, her boyfriend, and the three-legged dog they jokingly (I hoped) referred to as my nephew.
We talked for a while about our families and friends, catching each other up since the last few days since we’d spoken.The evening wasn’t anything too exciting, which was exactly how I liked my life.My friendship with Haider was warm and easy and familiar, just the same as it was with Sam and Conor, the other two friends I called my brothers.
The server brought our beers to the booth, and the food came out soon after.Haider cleaned up his nachos quickly enough that I wondered if he’d eaten lunch today; out of the two of us, it was usually me with the terrible time-management skills who forgot to eat.But Haider was carrying a lot of stress lately from his job.Harmony Chocolates, a Caldwell Crossing institution, wasn’t doing so great lately.It was obvious things were pretty serious.Haider hadn’t told me much more than that, but his mouth pinched tightly when he brought it up, and he had bags under his eyes from not sleeping.
I swallowed down my guilt as Haider wiped his fingers on his napkin and held out his hand for my diary, which I kept in a leather book sleeve I also shoved all my emails and quotes and invoices into.Haider set it on the table and unfastened the knot that kept it closed, shooting me a wry look at the mess of folded papers that had accumulated there over the last week.
Ever since Haider had told us his business was struggling, I’d felt bad for getting him to go over the figures for mine.Despite the economy, I was doing okay.Maybe not by anyone else’s standards except my own, but I was making enough that I wasn’t worried about paying off the mortgage on my little lakeside cabin, and I got enough orders that I could pick and choose my customers.About half of them were locals I’d known for years and who thought I was still the high school kid they were doing a favor by asking me to put together some shelves, and the other half were online orders from people who didn’t even blink at the cost to ship a finished piece across the country to them.
Haider flicked through this week’s invoices and fixed me with a stare.“Did you really charge Mrs.Ormond ten dollars to fix her birdhouse?”
“Had to argue her down too.She doesn’t like accepting charity.”
“Ryan.”His expression was both exacerbated and fond.“You’re acraftsman, not a handyman.”
“So now she has the fanciest birdhouse in the neighborhood,” I said and ate the last of my potato skins.
Haider didn’t take long to go through my messy accounting system and put everything in order.Then he held out his hand for my phone, and checked all the receipts and invoices against the figures I’d put into the bookkeeping app he’d helped me install.
“You got a couple of these figures the wrong way around,” he said.There was no judgement in his tone, or impatience, but from the way he had to check back through my paper copies, I knew it was more than just a couple of mistakes and probably more than just transposing the numbers incorrectly too.I was mostly fine with reading my emails and corresponding with clients—I’d found a combination of screen color and font that worked best for me—but the app didn’t have the dyslexic-friendly font I used, so Haider double-checked everything for me and made sure it all reconciled.It didn’t take more than half an hour once a week; it wasn’t as though I was pulling in hundreds of orders.I couldn’t.I only had one pair of hands.But I appreciated Haider’s help more than I could say.Without his support, and the support of Sam and Conor, I wouldn’t be where I was today.
“Do you boys want dessert?”the server asked us when she came to clear our plates away.
“No thanks,” I said.“Haider?”
He glanced up from my phone.“No, I’m good.Just the check would be great, thanks.”
“Do you wanna get a pint of ice cream from the gas station and go eat it by the lake?”I asked.
Haider laughed.“I spent the afternoon taste testing chocolates, Ryan.”
“That’s not a no.”
He wrinkled his nose.“Fine.But I get to pick the flavor.”
I grinned, looking forward to spending some more with Haider that had nothing to do with figures.“Deal.”
WE’D JUST PULLEDup at my place by the lake when I got a call from my sister Rebecca.
“Ryan?”She sounded upset.
“What’s wrong?”
Haider threw me a worried glance from the driver’s seat.
“The cottage,” she said.“The basement’s flooded!”
“What?What happened?”
“I don’tknow, Ryan!Can you come over here, please?Chris is at work.”
“Yeah,” I said.“I’ll be there in twenty, okay?”I ended the call and gave Haider a rueful smile as I reached for the door handle.“Sorry, bro.Looks like the ice cream’s all yours.”
