Good thing his shop is right off Main Street so all I have to do is drive down Main as if it’s a normal day. As if I’m not going to spy on him. I could be going to run an errand over his way. No one will know.
As I get closer to his shop, I slow down and look over my shoulder and see his truck parked outside. Some guys arewalking in and out of the bays, but I don’t see him. I let out a heavy sigh and head back home.
I feel guilty about having to drive by his shop. I should trust him. I do trust him, so why do I have the nagging feeling of something being off?
Zayn walks into the kitchen as I sit at the kitchen table, about to eat. I thought I was going to eat alone again tonight after what happened last night. After cooking dinner, I usually serve us both, and if Zay’s not here by the time I’m done, I put his in the microwave.
He opens the microwave and grabs the plate without warming it because I did just put it in there. Surprisingly, he sets his plate across from me and heads back to grab himself water.
As he moves around the kitchen, I try to avoid eye contact with him because deep down, something feels off. I don’t know what it is, and I hate this feeling. I don’t feel like I can talk to him about it either. Especially not this soon after his blowup last night. So instead, we sit here in silence. Him scrolling through his phone and me glancing over at him every so often, never actually making eye contact with him.
The room fills with so much silence that I can hear the faint sound of his fingertips tapping his phone. He’s lost in whatever he’s looking at. I glance over at him and watch his rigid body eat and scroll. We’re only a chair apart from each other, but I feel like we’re miles apart right now.
My heart races as the silence stretches even more, causing my hunger to disappear. I grab my plate, throw away my food,and set the plate in the sink without even washing it. Because all I want to do is curl up into bed and fall asleep. The lack of sleep from last night isn’t helping my emotions either.
I pass by him, eyeing him from the side, hoping he’ll give me one little glance, but he doesn’t budge.
The ringing of my alarm wakes me up at seven o’clock sharp. Once again, my eyes burn from the lack of sleep. I waited all night for Zay to come to bed, and once again, he never did.
Why am I being punished for his outburst? It isn’t fair, and it makes me anxious. All night, I traced back to the previous days to see if it was anything I did. I couldn’t come up with anything, and that only made my anxiety worse. A fear of him leaving me surfaced. I‘ve never had this fear before, and I couldn’t figure out why I did now. Is it because he’s all I’ve ever known? Even though he’s physically here, heavy loneliness started creeping in. Something I’ve never felt before. It was hard to fall asleep with all those racing thoughts.
The bright light shining through the windows burns my eyes even more as I stumble my way into the kitchen, half asleep. I expect to see Zayn’s work shoes sitting by the mudroom door, like they normally are in the morning until he returns home from the gym. To my surprise, they’ve gone. I pause in my steps to do a double take. I make my way into the laundry room to see if he took a pair of work clothes with him. But that doesn’t answer my question because he has several pairs of the samework clothes. I rummage among the dirty clothes for something. Anything. I’m not even sure what I am looking for here. His shift doesn’t start until nine o’clock. He always goes to the gym, comes home, showers, eats, and leaves for work. I stop rummaging through his clothes and think to myself, why the hell am I doing this? If Zay went to the gym, he should be home soon, anyway. I guess time will tell.
I don’t have many orders to cook today, but I have a lot of orders I need to drop off at the local cafés.
After spending the entire morning busy, and loading my car with orders to deliver, a thought creeps into my mind. Zay never came home after the gym. As I head to my first stop, I can’t quit wondering if he went to work earlier than normal. He has been staying late at work. But now he is also going early.
All of this is making me question so much I don’t normally question.
I park my car at the first stop, Cup of Comfort. As I walk in, I’m greeted right away by one worker grabbing the box out of my hands. “Hey, let me help you?” Chase says.
I’ve gotten to know a lot of the workers at the cafés that buy from me. It’s nice to know that the small business cafés can keep their employees for a while. That’s one of my biggest fears if I ever open up my own bakery—making sure I’m creating the kind of place where people actually want to stay.
“Thank you, Chase,” I say as I follow him to the counter and wait for him to make sure he got everything that was ordered.
He raises his eyes back up toward me. “Everything looks like it’s here.”
“Great. Thank you.” I wave. “It was nice seeing you.”
“You too,” he says, waving back.
As I turn around, Sydney is smiling right at me with her laptop sitting in front of her. I walk over to her. “Hey, Sydney. How are you?”
She’s a local that ordered from me a lot when I first opened my business. She’s the one who put me in touch with this café. She was truly a godsend because after I started baking for them, word of mouth got around, and I got more business coming in.
“I’m good. How are you?” she asks, shutting her laptop.
I take a seat in front of her and let out a small sigh. “Good.” I let out a yawn. “I’m just tired.”
She tilts her head. “Have you been working a lot?”
I shrug. “Yeah. But I haven’t been getting good sleep these past few days.” I yawn again. “It’s catching up.” I giggle.
“I hear you. Having your own business is hard.”
“How is yours going?” I ask. She’s a gut health dietitian, and that’s how she found me when she was trying to eat better.
“It’s going good. Busy as usual.”
