They Sawed Me Open, So I Stocked the End of the World novel · Chapter 2 of 24
Chapter 2: Harbor Row
She eats her first hot meal in years, buys out half a restaurant strip, and hears the technician's voice counting at a bar.
Jessa did not answer the email.
She read the subject line three times, deleted nothing, and put the phone face down on the table.
The lab knew where she lived.
They had always known, she thought, and that was why she needed to eat first and panic later.
She dressed in jeans and a jacket, took the keys from the hook and went down to the garage.
The Range Rover started on the first turn.
Rhys and Joel had insisted on a heavy, solid car before they let her drive alone in the city.
She had rolled her eyes about it for a week.
Today she was grateful, because the back seat was empty and it was going to be full.
Harbor Row was twenty minutes south, a strip of old dockside warehouses turned into restaurants.
There were strings of amber lights, a boardwalk that smelled of salt water and butter, and people waiting in line for a plate of pasta.
Nobody in line was in a hurry.
It was the strangest thing she had ever seen.
At Ondina's the host called her bella and sat her at a window table.
She ordered without opening the menu: cacio e pepe, a basket of bread and a glass of red wine.
When the plate came, she did not move for a long moment.
Steam curled off the noodles, and the pepper cut through the cheese, and four plain ingredients tasted like a feast.
She ate slowly, twirling each forkful.
In her old cell she had lain on the floor and tried to remember what anything tasted like, sweet or bitter or warm.
Her phone lit up beside her plate.
Her ex: Hey stranger, haven't heard from you today. Everything okay? Call me later? :)
She looked at the name and felt nothing but irritation.
She turned the phone face down and finished the bread.
When the plate was clean she waved off the tiramisu and flagged down the host.
"Twenty trays of the lasagna," she said.
"Forty portions of the cacio e pepe, packed to travel. Actually, forty portions of every pasta dish you make."
"And as many tiramisus as you can put together now."
The host blinked. "That's a lot of food."
"It's a company thing." She gave him a bright smile and showed both dimples.
"Half my office is pulling an all-nighter. I got stuck with catering."
His eyes went somewhere past her shoulder while he did the math, and she watched his curiosity turn into a very good day.
"Two hours," he said. "Is your car big enough?"
"It'll fit."
She spent the two hours walking the boardwalk with her card in her hand.
At the bakery she emptied the display case and asked the girl if there was more in the back.
At the lobster shack she tasted one roll and ordered two hundred.
Then she changed it to four hundred, because in two months she would be grateful for every one.
At the boba stand a teenager asked only for a name on the order, and she gave a false one.
At the coffee roastery she bought bags of beans by the case and the same amount of cold brew.
She held a sealed cup to her face and breathed in.
In a year it would smell exactly like this.
Time stood still inside her space, so the food would keep its heat and its taste for as long as she needed it to.
By the time she came back, the host and a boy were wrestling boxes onto a cart.
It took them three trips to fill the trunk and the back seat to the roof.
"Are you sure you can drive like this?" the host asked, wiping his hands on his apron.
"Positive. Thank you. I'll be in touch about another order."
She waited until the street was quiet, climbed into the back seat and put a hand on the nearest box.
The weight was gone.
The boxes were gone, and only the smell of warm food hung in the air.
She sat for a moment, grinning at nothing.
Then she drove two blocks to a Thai place and did it again.
She took sixty pad thai, forty green curry and every mango sticky rice in the kitchen.
After that came a diner with red vinyl booths, where she ordered a hundred and twenty chocolate shakes.
She suddenly remembered Jethro drinking three in one sitting while Joel lectured him about cholesterol.
By the time the sun went down she had seen eight kitchens and spent a third of her savings.
She did not stop until the car was empty again and her hands ached from carrying.
The last place she stopped was a bar below street level with no sign.
She sat at the end and ordered whiskey, neat.
It was not what she used to drink.
The old Jessa had liked sweet drinks with fruit on the rim.
The whiskey burned the way she remembered from nights in a ruined building, when a scavenged bottle went around the fire.
On one of those nights a hand had closed over hers, steady and warm.
It had pulled away before she could answer.
She had known what the question was, and she had looked away.
She pressed her thumbnail into the base of the glass and told herself to stop.
Behind her a man was paying a tab in cash.
"Five," he said under his breath, laying down the bills. "Four. Three."
The voice was bored and pleasant.
It was the voice that had counted backward while the saw came down.
Jessa turned her head an inch.
He wore a gray jacket with a Halcyon Institute lanyard tucked half inside it, and he was smiling at the bartender.
← Chapter 1 · All chapters · Chapter 3 →
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend