Stuffed: Chapter Six: Part 1

Jennarae has been Ready Since Wednesday

Sapphic Romance | Lesbian Romance | WLW Fiction | Plus-Size Romance | Body Positive Romance | Restaurant Owner Romance | Immediate Attraction | Texas Aesthetic | Foster Care Survivor | Contemporary Lesbian Fiction | Spicy Sapphic Romance | Steamy WLW | LGBTQ+ Romance | Interconnected Series | New Beginnings | Someone’s an Asshole

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First their was Roasted with Holly and Joseph, then Baked & Pied with Ebony & Christopher.

Now it’s time for Jennarae and Natty to get their shine.

Previously on Stuffed:

[embed]Stuffed: Chapter Five — Part 2 Ugh, when your dad gives you a pickup line.bewolf.medium.com

The date…it starts…but not before chaos…and from Jennarae’s POV.

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Jennarae

The apartment was dark when Jennarae let herself in on Monday evening, which was unusual because Blake Morrison did not believe in darkness. He was the kind of person who turned on every light in every room as he passed through it, a habit he attributed to his mother’s influence and Jennarae attributed to his fundamental inability to let anything exist in a state he hadn’t controlled. The foyer light was off. The kitchen light was off. The living room lamp that Blake kept on a timer because ambient lighting created an environment conducive to productive conversation was off. The only light came from under his bedroom door, a thin strip of yellow that told her he was home and awake and choosing not to acknowledge her arrival.

Jennarae set her bag down in the hall, leaned her cardboard tube of floorplans against the wall, and stood in the dark kitchen for a moment, listening to the specific quality of silence that happened when someone was being deliberately absent. She knew this silence. She’d grown up around it, had sat through enough cold shoulders to recognize the particular frequency of punishment disguised as withdrawal. The instinct was immediate: go knock on his door, ask what was wrong, pry the conversation open with her bare hands until he told her what she’d done so she could fix it.

She was reaching for the hallway light switch when Nani Meera’s voice settled over her memory like a hand on her shoulder.

“You cannot fix a person who is using silence as a weapon, beta. You can only decide how long you are willing to stand in the dark waiting for them to turn the lights back on.”

They had been in the kitchen at Grandpappy’s house on Saturday afternoon, after the floorplan session and before the evening dinner prep. Jennarae had been telling Meera about the apartment, about Blake, about the way the air in their shared space had started to feel heavy with things neither of them was saying. She hadn’t meant to get into it. She’d come downstairs for chai and found Meera already at the stove, the kettle heating, cardamom pods cracked and ready, and something about the smell and the quiet and the particular safety of Meera’s kitchen had loosened things Jennarae hadn’t realized she was holding.

“He’s not a bad person,” Jennarae had said, sitting at the island with her hands wrapped around the warm cup Meera had placed in front of her without being asked. “He just thinks he knows what’s best for me, and when I don’t follow his plan, he gets cold.”

“I know this type of person.” Meera had added more milk to the chai because she always added more milk, regardless of preference, because Meera’s chai was Meera’s chai and you drank it the way she made it. “They are not bad. They are convinced. There is a difference, but the result for you is the same.”

“What do you mean?”

“A person who is convinced they are protecting you will never stop. They cannot, because stopping would mean admitting they were wrong about what you needed. So instead of stopping, they become louder. More insistent. More convinced. And you keep trying to show them that you are fine, that you do not need protecting, and every time you prove it, they see more evidence that you are lost.” Meera had stirred her chai with the slow deliberation of a woman choosing her next words carefully. “Save your money with this new job. Save as much as you can, as fast as you can. Find your own place. Do not fight the silence, do not fall into the nonsense.”

“Did you deal with this?”

Meera’s laugh had been sharp and musical at the same time, the sound of a woman who had survived something she was now qualified to find funny. “With my parents, yes. When I left India to marry some old beef-eating American who did not know the difference between India and Indiana.” She had held up her hand before Jennarae could ask the obvious follow-up. “My mother was convinced I was having a breakdown. My father was convinced I was being kidnapped. My sister was convinced I would be back in six months once the novelty of white people wore off.”

“And?”

“And I have been here almost twelve years. My mother calls every Sunday to make sure I am still alive and still married to the correct American. My father sends me articles about Indian women who married foreigners and were unhappy, which I read and then use to line the compost bin.” She had picked up her cup and taken a sip with the serene satisfaction of a woman who had earned her peace. “I did not fight their silence. I did not explain myself into exhaustion. I saved my money, I made my own life, and I let the guilt exist without obeying it. Guilt is not an instruction, beta. It is just a feeling, and you do not have to follow it anywhere.”

Standing in the dark apartment in Somerville on a Monday night, Jennarae let Meera’s words sit where they’d landed. She did not knock on Blake’s door. She did not ask what was wrong. She turned on the kitchen light for herself, heated up the leftover vindaloo that was still in the fridge because Blake would never touch it, and ate standing at the counter in silence that she had chosen instead of silence that had been chosen for her.

She texted Natty while she ate.

“Made it home. Texas misses me already but Boston has better coffee.”

Three dots appeared almost immediately.

“Boston has the BEST coffee,” Natty replied. “Specifically one coffee shop. Run by a very scary woman. You might know it.”

“I might. Does this coffee shop have a cute barista with pink hair who asked for my number?”

“Devastatingly cute. She’s also very humble about it.”

Jennarae smiled at her phone in the quiet kitchen, the vindaloo warming her from the inside while the texts warmed her from somewhere else entirely. Blake’s door stayed closed. She finished her dinner, washed the container, and went to bed without trying to fix anything.

---

The week settled into a rhythm of quiet coexistence that was more exhausting than any argument would have been. Blake did not retreat entirely behind his closed door. That would have been simpler. Instead, he occupied the shared spaces with a precision that made his silence impossible to ignore. He was at the kitchen table when she made breakfast on Tuesday morning, reading the Wall Street Journal with his coffee, his eyes tracking the movement of her phone every time it lit up with a text. He was on the couch when she came home Tuesday evening, watching a documentary about financial markets with the volume set exactly loud enough to fill the apartment without inviting conversation. He was in the kitchen on Wednesday night when she heated leftover butter chicken, and she felt him watching as she smiled at her phone, his reflection visible in the dark window above the sink, his expression arranged into something that wanted to look indifferent and didn’t quite manage it.

He was present without being available. Visible without being engaged. It was a kind of surveillance disguised as normalcy, and Jennarae felt the weight of it every time she reached for her phone and found his eyes already there, cataloging who she was talking to and how it was making her feel.

She did not fight it. She did not explain. She came home, she heated leftovers in the kitchen that smelled like cumin and cardamom, she texted Natty, and she let Blake watch.

Tuesday morning, Jennarae stopped at Abyss before heading upstairs to her office. The line was six deep and Natty was working the register at a pace that suggested she’d already been behind when the doors opened. Their interaction lasted roughly forty-five seconds: Natty’s eyes found her the moment the hat cleared the doorway, something warm and immediate flashing across her face before professionalism took over. She rang up the Peacemaker with the extra mocha and milk without being told, scrawled something on the cup that Jennarae didn’t see until she was in the elevator, and moved to the next customer with the efficiency of someone who wanted very badly to stop working and could not.

The cup said “welcome back, cowgirl” in handwriting that was trying to be casual and failing.

Jennarae carried the cup to her office on the top floor, set it on the desk beside the floorplans that were still pinned to the wall, and surveyed the space with fresh eyes. The room was small, barely more than a repurposed storage room, and it still felt like exactly that. A closet with a window and a desk and someone else’s leftover furniture. She had been working in it for over a week before the Texas trip and it still didn’t feel like hers. It felt borrowed, temporary, like she was squatting in someone else’s space and could be asked to leave at any moment.

She pulled out her phone and scrolled to a photo she’d taken on Saturday evening: Ravi sitting cross-legged on the floor of her old bedroom at Grandpappy’s house, helping her sort through things she wanted to bring back to Boston. He’d been holding up a framed photo of Grandpappy and Meera’s wedding at city hall, the one Jennarae had taken herself because she’d insisted on being the photographer even though she was fourteen and didn’t know the first thing about composition. The photo was slightly off-center and the lighting was harsh, but Grandpappy’s face in it was the happiest she’d ever seen him, and Meera was looking at the camera with an expression that said she knew exactly how the rest of her life was going to go and was satisfied with the arrangement.

“Your office is going to feel like a closet with a window if you don’t make it your own,” Ravi had said, turning the frame over in his hands. “I lived above the restaurant for three months before I put anything on the walls, and for three months it felt like I was sleeping in a stranger’s house. The day I hung up my degree and my mother’s photo and my terrible painting of a horse, it became mine.”

“You paint horses?”

“I paint what I think horses look like. The results are deeply upsetting.” He had grinned. “The point is that you need to claim the space. People take you more seriously when you look like you intend to stay.”

Jennarae had packed the wedding photo, a small Texas flag that had been hanging in her bedroom since high school, and a framed snapshot of Branding Mavericks’ front entrance that Nani Meera had taken the day after the restaurant’s thirtieth anniversary. She’d also taken, at Ravi’s insistence, the terrible horse painting, which turned out to be genuinely terrible in a way that was somehow endearing. The horse had five legs and an expression of existential despair.

She spent the first hour of Tuesday morning transforming the office. The Texas flag went on the wall beside the floorplans, a pop of color against the beige that immediately made the room feel warmer. Grandpappy and Meera’s wedding photo went on the desk where she could see it while she worked. The Branding Mavericks photo went on the opposite wall, and the horse painting went above the door because it made her laugh every time she looked at it and because anyone walking in would see it first and know immediately that the person who worked here did not take herself too seriously.

She stepped back and looked at the room. It was still small. It was still technically a converted storage space. It no longer felt borrowed.

Her phone buzzed.

“You left Abyss so fast I didn’t get to look at you properly,” Natty texted. “That felt like ordering a steak and only getting to smell it.”

“You comparing me to a steak?”

“I’m comparing you to the BEST steak. The one that comes out sizzling and everyone at the next table gets jealous.”

Jennarae bit her lip and set the phone face-down on the desk because she could not afford to flirt her way through the morning when she had floorplans to stare at and a project to figure out. She lasted approximately four minutes before picking it back up.

“If you keep talking about steak I’m going to have to tell you about my Grandpappy’s restaurant and then you’ll never get me to stop.”

“That’s supposed to be a warning? That sounds like a reward. Tell me everything.”

Jennarae put the phone down again. She looked at the floorplans. She picked the phone back up and typed, “Friday. You can hear about it in person. Are we still figuring that out?”

“Assembly Row. Friday evening. I’ve got the whole thing planned. Retail, food, and an activity. Wear comfortable shoes.”

“An activity? Are you taking me bowling?”

“You’ll find out. Just trust me.”

“That sounds like you’re trying very hard to impress me,” Jennarae typed, smiling as she sent it.

“It’s the holidays and trying hard is fun right now. Let me have this.”

Jennarae let her have it. She set the phone down for real this time and turned to the floorplans, tracing the layout with her fingertip the way she’d been doing for weeks, feeling the pull of the industrial back room and the wide side space and the front room facing the street. The restaurant instinct was there, the same as always, tugging at her the way Grandpappy’s kitchen had tugged at her since she was old enough to hold a spatula.

The Saturday session with Grandpappy had confirmed it and complicated it simultaneously. They’d spread the floorplans out on the dining room table after Meera had cleared the Thanksgiving leftovers, weighting the corners with salt and pepper shakers and Ravi’s half-empty glass of sweet tea. Grandpappy had studied the layout the way he studied a new cut of meat, with his full attention and a silence that meant he was thinking, not ignoring.

“Your instinct is right,” he’d said after five full minutes of quiet examination. “This space wants to be a kitchen. The ventilation, the electrical, the plumbing, the layout of the rooms. Whoever built this out originally designed it for food service, and everything after that was trying to force the space into something it wasn’t.”

“A comic book store went in there,” Jennarae had said, counting off on her fingers the way Mr. Worthington had done. “A second coffee shop. A tailor. A graphic design studio. A stationery store. A boutique. A yoga studio. A candle shop. A tax office. A pet groomer. A couple of restaurants that didn’t even last a full year.” She’d tapped the floorplan. “Twelve businesses in that space, Grandpappy. Even the ones that were food-related couldn’t keep the lights on.”

“Because none of them were doing it right for the space.” He’d leaned forward, tracing the industrial back room with one scarred finger. “The restaurants that failed in there, what were they trying to be?”

“I don’t have all the details yet. I need to pull the business records.”

“I’ll bet you they tried to be something the neighborhood didn’t need or something the space couldn’t support at the volume they required.” He had tapped the back room. “Your instincts are correct about food, baby girl. Mine would be too. But I’m not a filthy Yankee.” He’d said this with the particular affection he reserved for people who lived above the Mason-Dixon line, which was zero affection but delivered with a smile. “And this isn’t Texas. You don’t have enough seating for a proper steakhouse. Steakhouse margins need volume, need turnover, need enough tables to push three seatings on a Friday night, and you won’t get that in this footprint. A barbecue joint needs space for smokers that you’re not going to get a permit for in a shared building. The space has the bones for food, but the kind of food has to match the size.”

“So what does work?”

“That’s your job to figure out, not mine.” He had tapped the front room on the floorplan, the one that faced the street. “What I’ll tell you is this: you’ve got a coffee shop right next to you sharing a wall, and a bakery at the other end of that building. Both of those are morning-through-afternoon businesses. Whatever goes in this space needs to either complement what’s already there or fill the gap they leave. Think about what’s missing, not what you want to add.”

What’s missing. Jennarae had been sitting with that question for three days now, letting it turn over in her head while she looked at the floorplans and the neighborhood data and the foot traffic analysis she’d started building from the reports Mr. Worthington had included in the original envelope. Something was taking shape in the back of her mind, still too formless to name, but present enough that she could feel the weight of it settling.

A knock at the office door interrupted her.

Mr. Worthington stood in the doorway, taking in the changes to the room with a quick scan that paused briefly on the Texas flag and lingered on the horse painting.

“Ravi’s,” Jennarae said before he could ask. “He paints horses.”

“That is not a horse.”

“He’s aware.”

Mr. Worthington almost smiled, which was as close to approval as his face typically got. He leaned against the doorframe with the casual posture of someone who owned the building and every building around it and didn’t feel the need to remind anyone. “How was Texas?”

“You knew I went?”

“I had to sign your PTO request.” He said this without any implication that she shouldn’t have gone, which Jennarae appreciated. Some bosses tracked time off the way wardens tracked inmates. Mr. Worthington tracked it the way he tracked everything else: because someone had put a form on his desk and he’d dealt with it.

“It was exactly what I needed,” Jennarae said. The urge to tell him everything was strong, to lay out the Saturday session with Grandpappy and the restaurant instinct and the direction she was starting to see. She opened her mouth to start, and he held up his hand.

“I don’t want to hear it yet.” His voice was firm in the way that meant he’d already thought about this. “When you present it, I need to hear it fresh, the same way the others will hear it fresh. If you tell me now, I’ll have opinions, and my opinions will influence your direction, and then it won’t be your proposal anymore. It’ll be mine with your name on it.”

“That’s frustrating,” Jennarae said.

“Good. Frustration means you have something worth sharing.” He straightened up from the doorframe. “I just need a status check. Do you feel like you’re going in the right direction?”

“Yes,” Jennarae said, and she meant it in a way she hadn’t been able to mean it before Texas.

“Then keep going.” He glanced at the wedding photo on her desk, the horse painting above the door, the floorplans on the wall beside the Texas flag. “The room looks good. Looks like someone works here.”

He left without another word, which was his version of high praise, and Jennarae turned back to the floorplans with a warmth in her chest that had nothing to do with the Peacemaker and everything to do with the fact that for the first time since she’d started this project, someone in a position of power had looked at her work and told her to trust herself.

---

On Wednesday, Jennarae had to decline Natty’s attempt to move the date up.

“Can’t do tomorrow,” Jennarae texted. “I have meal ministry on Wednesday evenings. We prep and cook dinner for the congregation and anyone in the community who needs a hot meal. It’s a commitment I keep.”

“No worries,” Natty had replied. “Friday is still the plan. I’ll survive until then.”

The response came fast enough to sound casual, but Jennarae noticed that the texts slowed down for about an hour afterward before Natty came back with a photo of Chase attempting to make a grilled cheese and setting off the smoke detector. Jennarae filed the pause away the same way she filed away most things about Natty that she wanted to understand but wasn’t ready to press on yet. There would be time.

On Thursday afternoon, she texted Natty a photo of herself at her desk, chin in her hand, floorplans visible on the wall behind her, with the caption “thinking about Friday instead of working.”

“Stop that,” Natty replied. “You’re going to get fired for being too pretty at your desk and I’ll feel responsible.”

“I can’t get fired. I’m the whole department.”

“Must be nice. My boss threatens me with spray bottles.”

“Your boss loves you.”

“My boss is a menace. But yes.”

“Speaking of menaces,” Jennarae typed, “I keep catching myself making the same face at my phone and my roommate is definitely noticing.”

“What face?”

“The kind of face you make when someone keeps comparing you to a steak.”

“That’s a COMPLIMENT face. You should be flattered.”

“I am flattered. I’m also trying to maintain professional composure in an office where I’m the only employee, which means there’s nobody here to see me smiling at my phone like an idiot, which somehow makes it worse.”

“Save the smiling for Friday. I’m planning to earn a lot of it.”

---

Friday arrived with the particular energy of a day that knew it was important. Jennarae left work at four, earlier than she’d left all week, and took the bus home with a pit stop at Curry House because she wanted to eat something before the date and because the vindaloo had become her private ritual of claiming the kitchen even when Blake was making the rest of the apartment feel like occupied territory.

She was in her bedroom getting dressed when the silent treatment ended.

The knock came while she was deciding between the cream silk blouse and a burgundy sweater that Nani Meera had given her on Sunday morning with the instruction to “wear this when you want to feel brave.” She chose the burgundy. She paired it with her good jeans, the ones that fit well and didn’t require the constant adjustment that most of her work pants demanded, and her brown boots because they were her boots and she was going on a date and she wanted to feel like herself. She reached for her hat rack, bypassed the brown beaver felt that had been her daily armor since she’d arrived in Boston, and chose instead the smaller straw hat with the pink band that she usually saved for summer weekends. It was lighter, softer, a different kind of statement than the brown felt made. The felt said Texas and don’t mess with me. The straw said Texas and I’m happy to be here.

“Jennarae.” Blake’s voice through the door was measured and concerned, the tone he used when he wanted to sound like a reasonable person having a reasonable conversation. “Can we talk?”

She opened the door because the alternative was having a conversation through wood, and Blake was standing in the hallway in his after-work clothes, arms crossed, his face arranged into an expression of gentle worry that she’d seen enough times to recognize as a prelude to something she wasn’t going to enjoy.

“Where are you going?” he asked, though the answer was obvious from the outfit and the perfume and the hat she only wore when she was in a certain kind of mood.

“Out,” Jennarae said. “I have plans.”

“On a Friday night? In the city? By yourself?” The questions came in a sequence that was designed to make each one sound more alarming than the last.

“I’m meeting someone.” She moved past him toward the bathroom to finish her hair.

He followed, which she’d expected, and leaned against the hallway wall with the posture of a man who was about to deliver a speech he’d been composing in his head for five days. “Look, I know I’ve been distant this week. I’ve had a lot on my mind. Work has been stressful, and I was processing some things about the holiday. I’m sorry about that.”

The apology was a door he was trying to open so he could walk through it into the conversation he actually wanted to have. Jennarae recognized the maneuver because Blake had been doing it for years: apologize for something small to gain access to something big.

“You don’t have to apologize for needing space,” she said, which was the response that cost her nothing and gave him nothing to push against.

“I just worry about you, Jennarae. Being out alone at night in a city you’re still learning. Things aren’t always safe, and you don’t always know what’s going on.” He paused, watching her adjust the straw hat in the mirror. “Maybe I should come with you. Not on the date, obviously, just to make sure you get where you’re going. I could wait nearby.”

“Blake, I have been living in this city for a year and a half.” She set down the hairbrush and met his eyes in the mirror. “I know how to get around Boston. I ride the bus every day. I walk to work. I have managed to survive without an escort this entire time.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Then what did you mean?”

“I meant that you don’t know this person. Not really. A few phone calls and some texting is not the same as knowing someone. You’ve been on your phone all week, and I can see how excited you are, and that’s exactly the kind of energy that makes people vulnerable. You’re going somewhere you haven’t been with someone you met at a coffee shop.” He uncrossed his arms, and his voice softened into the register he used when he thought he was being his most persuasive. “I’m not trying to intrude. I’m trying to be a good friend.”

“A good friend would say ‘have fun’ and ask me about it tomorrow.”

“A good friend would also make sure the people in their life are safe.” His jaw tightened slightly. “You always think you know enough. That’s the problem.”

Jennarae turned away from the mirror and faced him directly. “I am going out tonight. I am going to have a good time. You are going to stay here and do whatever you want to do with your evening, and when I come home, you can ask me how it went if you’re still awake.”

She closed the bathroom door, finished getting ready, and sat on the edge of her bed to figure out logistics. She’d been planning to take an Uber to Assembly Row, which was straightforward enough, but the conversation with Blake had left a residue she didn’t want to carry into the evening. The idea of standing on the sidewalk outside their building waiting for a car, knowing Blake might be at the window, possibly deciding to come downstairs with one more concern, one more objection dressed up as care, made her stomach tighten in a way that had nothing to do with nerves about the date and everything to do with the feeling of being managed.

She picked up her phone.

“Would it be crazy if I asked you to pick me up instead of me meeting you there?” she texted Natty. “Change of plans on my end.”

She watched the screen. Three dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again. Disappeared. The dots kept coming and going, a pattern of someone typing and deleting and typing again that went on for almost two full minutes while Jennarae sat on the edge of her bed in her burgundy sweater and her straw hat with the pink band, waiting.

Finally, the message arrived.

“Not crazy at all. Send me your address. Fair warning though, I’m coming from Dorchester so give me like 30–40 min depending on traffic. I’ll text when I’m close.”

A second message followed immediately. “I’ve been ready since Wednesday. Picking you up just means I get to see you sooner.”

Jennarae sent the address. She looked at herself in the mirror above her dresser, the burgundy sweater and the good jeans and the boots and the pink-banded straw hat that said something different than the brown felt, something softer and more open, and decided she looked like someone who was going to have a good evening despite the man in the hallway who thought otherwise.

Blake’s door was closed when she walked through the apartment. She did not knock. She did not say goodbye.

She waited outside on the front steps, her breath making small clouds in the December air, and thought about Meera in the kitchen, about guilt that was just a feeling you didn’t have to follow anywhere, about a sunset that looked like a pride flag and a woman who was driving across the city to come get her.

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