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‘Sure ya do…’ she jokes.
This could be a complete disaster, but I feel the need to do this. For her sake, not his. I see her all the time anyway; the least I can do is check in on her and listen like she often does for me.
3
JADE
‘Hi, I need two Venti Americano coffees with room for cream and sugar. Four of the blackberry scones. Two of the banana bread slices and these.’ I drop the cheese and fruit trays onto the Starbucks counter, expecting to spend fifty bucks from my tips last night on a breakfast I didn’t make but am going to lay out as if I did. Typically, I would have, but last night I was preoccupied with mine and Conner’s last night together for a while, so I snuck out before he woke up and drove like a madwoman to the nearest coffee shop.
The woman at the counter rings me up, bags my items, then hands me a drink tray with the two coffees. For safekeeping, I seatbelt the tray into the front passenger seat, setting the food bag onto the floorboards before racing home. With the bag over my arm and coffee tray in my hand, I unlock the front door and head in, hoping Conner is still asleep. I hear the shower running, so perfect timing.
‘Hai, pretty lady!’ Spike squawks, making kissing noises as though I’ve been gone for a week and not twenty minutes.
‘Does he know I left?’ I ask as if he’s human. With as many things as he says, it sometimes seems like he is.
Spike is my roommate, my talking Congo African gray parrot I inherited from my grandfather. He’s twenty-two years old, knows too many words, refuses to learn the silent game, and hates his cage. He’s been calling me ‘pretty lady’ since I was three. If a stranger walks by my apartment door or windows, he yells, ‘Intruders will be shot!’ It’s as good as having a guard dog.
‘Lemme out!’ he screams.
‘Nope, not while Conner is here. He can’t afford to lose a finger before he leaves this afternoon. He needs all those fingers to help repair broken bodies.’
‘Conner. Conner. Conner,’ he repeatedly says, bumping his body up and down as he walks around the elaborate cage setup.
My place is nothing special. There’s a kitchen to the left of the large living/bedroom you walk into. At the far end is an enormous bathroom. It’s practically as big as the kitchen. Almost everything in here was passed down to me from my grandparents’ home after they passed. Or I’ve utilized one of my favorite pastimes and thrifted it.
‘Spike, no like.’
‘No like what?’ I ask as I spread the Starbucks contents across my kitchen island, quickly pouring the coffee into two mugs.
‘Spike needs out. Hurry! Fuck!’ he commands.
Yep, Grandpa taught him all the swear words. Along with catcalling when I ask how I look, speaking about himself in the third person, knock-knock jokes, dirty jokes, games, and songs that he now annoys me with on a minute-by-minute basis. It’s kind of nice, though. You could say I’m never lonely, and it’s like a piece of my grandpa still exists through smart-ass comments and unexpected conversations. He still makes me smile even though he lives in an urn on my dresser.
‘Not until Conner leaves, buddy. I’m sorry, you can be a tad mean.’
He stares at me wordlessly, as though he understands and is deeply offended. After a moment, he turns his back on me and stares out the window. Finally, the silent treatment. It’s rare, but it does happen. How a bird with a brain the size of a peanut responds more intelligently than some humans I know is beyond me. I’m not sure he even realizes he’s a bird.
When Conner exits the bathroom, his hair is still wet and he’s shirtless as I get the evidence that this is store-bought into the garbage. I can hardly keep my eyes on what I’m doing.
‘Good morning! I made breakfast.’
He glances over at me with a smirk. ‘Sure you did. That’s why you were gone when I woke up?’
Damn it. ‘Note to self: do not apply to be a spy…’
Conner chuckles as he pulls on a T-shirt. ‘I don’t have much time; my flight got moved up. Can you help me pack? I need to leave, like an hour ago.’
‘Your flight got moved up? How?’ I ask the first thing that comes to mind allowing the words to snap out sort of angrily. We haven’t done anything he promised we’d do. No wedding date is set. He only told his parents yesterday. And I’ve looked at exactly zero rings.
‘Because I requested it.’
‘You requested it? But why? I thought we were going to spend the day together, shop for rings, and discuss the wedding.’
He’s tossing the clothes he’s left here over the last couple of months into a suitcase on my bed that I swear wasn’t here when I got up. Did he bring it over from his parents’ place? ‘No time, babe. I promised Blake we’d meet up later, and considering I haven’t seen him in months, I can’t cancel.’
My heart sinks through my chest. He’s leaving, just like that, without a second thought about how I feel right now. I meander around my apartment, looking for his things and tossing them onto the bed. Who in the hell is Blake, and why is he taking precedence over my ring shopping?
‘At least have some breakfast or coffee?’ I suggest.
