Episode 25: Stale Denial
When Mallory sauntered into Sugar’s office unannounced, she didn’t pay him any mind. She was in the middle of working on the schedule for the week after next, as she always did on Fridays. There were some changes to make: two waiters wanted to switch shifts, one of the kitchen staff was taking a week off for a family reunion in Chicago, and one of the evening receptionists now needed Mondays and Wednesday evenings off after deciding to go back to college. Scheduling felt like putting mismatched pieces together to form a functioning puzzle.
A time-consuming task.
Then, Mallory did something uncharacteristic: he shut the office door. That caught Sugar’s attention. She lifted her gaze from the computer screen and arched an eyebrow at him. Her baby brother never shut the door on his own; she usually had to demand it, and even then, there was no guarantee he’d follow through. She eyed him for a moment, searching for any telltale signs of illness or alien abduction, but Mallory seemed like his usual pestering self, so she returned to her task.
He plopped down in one of the cushioned chairs in front of her desk, leaned back comfortably, stretched out his legs, and intertwined his fingers, twiddling his thumbs with a cheesy grin spread wide across his face. It was a grin she knew all too well.
A perfect warning that Mallory had juicy information about someone, somewhere.
Since childhood, he’d worn that goofy smile whenever he discovered something that was probably none of his business. He’d snuck into Odette’s room to read her diary, blackmailed Rochelle into doing his chores after catching her sneaking out to make out with some boy, and eavesdropped on Sugar’s phone conversations with her then-boyfriend, Lance.
“Weren’t you supposed to leave an hour ago?” he asked, cocking his head.
She intended to leave an hour and a half ago, but she had barely made a dent in the schedule between calling employees to ask about different shifts and bringing others into her office.
“I really need to finish this,” Sugar answered.
Smoothly, she added, “Plus, I have plenty of time.”
That was a lie. She had very little time to get ready for her thing with Chef.
Yes, thing. Not a date. Labeling it a date would mean admitting she was potentially interested in dating him.
She wasn’t. So, she called it a thing.
A very, very complicated thing.
Mallory untangled his fingers and pulled out his phone. “What did you say you were doing tonight? I forgot.”
“I never said.”
“Hm,” Mallory hummed as he scrolled through his phone. “It must be mighty important for you to want to leave early on one of the busiest nights of the week.”
Sugar closed her eyes and sighed, already annoyed. “Is there a point to this conversation, Lory? If not, go make yourself useful somewhere.”
His goofy grin widened.
“The point is, I know about your boyfriend, Shug,” he said, as if he’d known it for a while.
Sugar blinked, caught off guard for a moment, but quickly recovered.
“I don’t have a boyfriend,” she assured.
It wasn’t a lie.
“Really?” Mallory arched an eyebrow, then leaned forward and slid his phone across the desk for her to take. “Then who’s this?”
Sugar pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes at her brother, exhaling through her nose in frustration as she picked up the phone. A social media app was open, displaying someone’s profile.
Her eyes widened as she stared at the picture on the screen. It was an older photo, likely scanned and uploaded. A younger Chef stood at an amusement park with an adorable toddler propped on his shoulders. The little girl had bone-straight black hair with blunt bangs and wore a Minnie Mouse ear headband. Sugar could see pieces of Chef in her face, and her heart clenched as she remembered that the girl was no longer alive.
She scanned the profile details, her eyes falling on a particular section:
Name: Miles Thibodeau
Age: 46 (November 8)
Occupation: Proud ex-Marine, owner of the Salty Marine
Relationship Status: Taken (last updated May 26)
Her eyebrows furrowed at the relationship status.
Why does it say taken?
And why did he update it on the night he invited her to the Jazzmyne Garden Club?
She couldn’t recall any indication she might have given him to assume such a thing, prompting him to trot back home and change his relationship status to “taken.” On her profile page, her status still said: “single!”
Sugar clenched her jaw. “Was it Odette who told you?”
Out of all the Hartwell siblings, Mallory was closest to Odette. As the youngest two, they had stayed at the Hartwell household long after Sugar, Sullivan, and Rochelle had moved out.
“Nope.”
Sugar frowned. “What?”
“It wasn’t Ettie,” Mallory said.
She tossed out a far-fetched guess. “Rochelle?”
“Uh-uh.” Mallory shook his head.
“Katrina?”
Mallory gave her a be-serious look. They both knew Katrina would take a secret to the grave.
“Then who?”
“Helena.”
Sugar jerked her head back in shock, her face twisting in confusion. “Why would Helena tell you? And as a matter of fact, why are you two even talking?”
She never would have thought Mallory and Odette’s sister-in-law were that close. They were probably on friendly terms due to family ties, but close enough to tell other folks’ secrets like they were schoolgirls at a slumber party?
“Me and Helena kick it at the club sometimes,” Mallory admitted.
She bit back the words: Of course, you two do.
The two of them loved all that clubbing nonsense.
Sugar pinched the bridge of her nose. “Please don’t tell me Helena is one of your little girlfriends, Lory. Tell me you’ve got some common sense.”
“It’s not like that, Shug. We just chill, sip, and dance a little.”
Sugar gagged in disgust, knowing exactly what it looked like when Helena ‘danced a little.’ The woman twerked, gyrated, and grinded on the dancefloor like a video vixen straight out of a 2002 hip-hop video.
“It’s harmless fun,” Mallory assured, rolling his eyes. “Helena’s cool, but she’s too wild for me. Though, once she settles down a bit, maybe—”
Sugar clapped her hands over her ears and chanted, “La-la-la! Can’t hear you.”
The last thing she needed was to imagine Mallory and Helena together like that. She shuddered, repulsed.
Mallory shook his head slowly. “You’re so damn dramatic.”
She dropped her hands. “I don’t want or need to know that.”
“When Helena starts drinking that Patrón, she can’t hold water for nothing. I just asked her about that girls’ night you missed because you were sick, and I didn’t think she would tell me you got caught red-handed with your boyfriend.”
“He’s not my boyfriend!”
Mallory sighed, unconvinced. “Then what is he, Shug?”
“He’s just a friend, Lory. Nothing more, nothing less.”
Mallory gave her a yeah-right look. “Look, from that dude’s pictures, he’s got that sexy, dark, mysterious thing going on with all the muscles and tattoos. No grown woman in her right mind would keep him as just a friend, Shug. They’d climb him like a jungle gym and do acrobatic shit on his di—”
“We’re friends. Nothing more, Mallory,” Sugar cut him off.
He crossed his arms, pursing his lips. “But you’re going on a date with him tonight?”
“It’s not a date. It’s just a,” Sugar paused, her irritated smile tight, “friendly meet-up.”
A meet-up that—ten times out of nine—would end with her in his bed.
