Little did she know how prepared I was to do that forever.
I walked into the kitchen and saw the island where her parents, my parents, her, and I sat and laughed over the brunch my parents and I brought over. Later that day we went to the mall and Tatiana bought a locket with the allowance money she’d saved up for over a year, and gave me one half of the pendant. She said she picked it out because I loved football. We sat outside at the fountain waiting for my parents to come and pick us up, and her face shining in the sunset and the locket dangling around her neck, matching the one I had; it was too much. I kissed her. I didn’t think anything could make me more excited to see if I’d made the football team that Monday, but I was so much more excited to see her. I was going to ask her to be my girlfriend and that was going to be it.
Happy with my parents, happy with Tatiana; all of that was gone. I had nothing.
I was hunched over the sink and retching the next moment I was aware of. Cristiano was next to me on one side, already running the kitchen sink water to help pass some of the bile I’d given up, and Kya was rubbing my back gently.
“It’s okay, sweetie, we’re here.” Kya’s voice was comforting, but not cleansing. I just felt like I was putting on cologne when I hadn’t bathed. It made no difference. “Let it out. It’s okay.”
When I was confident I was done, I leaned back, wiping the sour taste from my mouth. Cristiano handed me over a bottle of water, which I graciously took, and downed in a single burst. I just happened to glance over, and I saw Tatiana standing in the entryway of the hallway near the front door. I could only imagine how it must have looked; to see the man she couldn’t stand being doted on by her parents. She rolled her eyes, through her backpack over her shoulder and walked out, slamming the door behind her.
“I feel bad,” I admitted.
Kya flicked her hand in that direction. “Don’t worry about her, she’ll be fine.”
“Still, I lost my parents already, I don’t want Tatiana to feel like she’s losing hers.” Both Kya and Cristiano seemed taken with the notion, but nodded in understanding.
Kya tilted her head. “Since we never could get it out of Tatiana, can you tell us what came between you two?”
I looked over at the front door. “I honestly can’t.”
7
Colin
For it to only be two days, the rest of the week at school sapped me of all of my energy. I knew people were just trying to be nice and considerate of my situation, but everyone being hyper-sensitive of me pissed me off. It would have been so much nicer to have everyone going about business as usual, not having completely random people walking up to me and giving me all manner of gifts from food to money. I just wanted to act like things were okay for a couple of days before my parents’ funeral, but teachers and students alike were intent on reminding me that my parents had died at every waking turn, as if it wasn’t something I wore on me every single day.
To make matters worse, things were even more difficult back at home. When Tatiana wasn’t flat out ignoring me, we were scrapping like cats and dogs. A lot of what we fought about weren’t actually things we disagreed on, we were just doing it to spite each other, and we both knew it. Despite this, to try and push a ‘family agenda,’ Tatiana’s parents were hellbent on making us have dinner together. For the second night in a row, we were sitting down at the dining room table in awkward silence while Cristiano doled out dishes that were way too delicious for the circumstances they were being consumed in.
Tatiana rolled her eyes as Kya dished up my plate like a helpless seven year old and I nearly blew my stack. What was so wrong that her parents were decent people who didn’t treat people like trash? That they just wanted to make sure that I was doing okay in the aftermath of a terrible, life-altering event that I would probably never get over? That at the very least hers were walking around while mine were six feet under? I wanted to shout at her to grow up and stop being such a brat, but I didn’t have the energy to knuckle up with her, so I just left it alone.
“I learned this recipe from your mother,” Cristiano announced after a full ten minutes of silence.
My mom was a chef. She’d always loved cooking as a little girl, and as she got older, she went out of her way to learn the craft so that by the time she was graduating from high school, she had already been asked to join several of the most prestigious internships from around the world, including one that was all the way in Japan. To hear my parents tell it, she didn’t even think twice about turning them all down. She was already madly in love with my dad, and wanted to stay in Colorado so as not to disrupt their relationship. She and Cristiano were as close as Tatiana and I used to be, so both my father and Cristiano had gotten the benefits of being so close with a chef. Cristiano developed my mom’s love for food and cooks more in his household than Kya, who lends herself more to housework on the claim that she wasn’t a good cook. Anything she ever made for me was pretty good, so I always assumed she just didn’t enjoy it the way Cristiano did.
My mom decided when she was 25 that she wanted to open a restaurant in Orchard Mesa, and my father proposed to her the day she bought the land on which it would be built, inspiring Undinger’s, for the name. It had been so successful that many investors tried to offer her tons of money to expand it to the rest of Colorado and eventually the country, but just as she had the internships, she turned them down. She didn’t want to leave Orchard Mesa, she didn’t even want to have reasons to travel for long periods of time. She said that Orchard Mesa was her home and that’s where she’d stay. Eventually, Undinger’s became a famous restaurant with “five star food in a three star atmosphere” that could only be found right in our little corner of the world. It was her pride and joy.
She was gone now, and suddenly I had to decide what to do with it. I didn’t have an affinity for cooking like my mom, and wasn’t sure I had what it took to run a “hands-off” business. Couple this with the fact that I’d previously been counting down the days until I could leave Colorado, and I had myself a regular comedy of errors.
“Her Korean barbecue was always my favorite.” Kya took a big bite as she said it, as though she had to convince me.
“Everything she made was my favorite,” Cristiano responded.
I sat there watching them volley. It was one of the strategies I was certain they’d been armed with by my designated caseworker to help ‘ease’ me into a life without my parents. Remember them for the good not the bad. I appreciated what they were going for, but with Tatiana still sitting at the other end of the table trying to set me on fire with her glare, I really just wanted to get up and walk away.
“Um.” Kya eyed Cristiano nervously as she started. “So, I know your parents’ funeral is tomorrow, and your aunt is in town and was planning to take you with her, but I was wondering if you would be more comfortable going with us? I know that you don’t know her very well, and maybe having a few familiar faces at your side would be better?” She shook her head. “I don’t know. It’s totally up to you.”
Tatiana set her fork down next to her plate. Her malicious stare was gone, leaving a look of anguish behind. I thought she was about to puke all over the table. “I’m, um…” She looked at her mom and then her dad. “I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to go, so, I’m not going to.”