Images 30

Chapter 30

I can’t help it. I’m crying with still pent up feelings and hugging both Davey and Billy and hugging them with everything I’ve got. I was never connected to my feelings back then as Jaime and I was and only child too. These boys, My Boys and Tim…they’re the family I’ve always wanted, my heroes, my brothers.

Oh-boy…Just thinking about that, them and family…get’s me worked right up into bawling but it’s happy crying and Davey kisses my cheek and in his quiet voice say’s. “Hey…I know…love you too…Sis…” then Billy hugs me and just say’s “Yeah…” but the kiss on my forehead says volumes and they pass me to Taylor and it’s past perfect me feeling so loved I’m crying and My Husband takes me into those arms of his and he holds me so perfectly tight, so close.

I close my eyes a second just pulling this all into my soul and let the tears come, they’re just good happy tears but they’re healing ones too. Thank you…God…just…Thank You.

I’m not the only one. And to my heart that’s so good.

Tim had gone and got the boys. I get to see him walk in in the construction worker, tool belt gunfighter like stride to Holly and he slides onto one of the stool as the counter then pulls her onto his lap and holds her and buries his face into her neck and her hair. It feel Taylor echoing him and I push my neck into his lips as he’s kissing me. I can feel my heart filling with light and love. Tired? Aches? Bruises? It honestly doesn’t even register to me right now.

Davey goes over to Njinda and they slip into each others arms and she press her head to his chest. His arms go around her and you can see her breathing him in, she’s sniffling. I can here her. “I was scared for you…before in my life….in Somalia, when a good man does the right thing…they do not come back too many times…I...I...am very glad you came back to me David.”

He reached down to her chin and lifts her face to her and runs his fingers through her hair and puts his forehead to hers and they start to share tiny kisses, little sweet ones over and over again. “Always Nin, I’ll always come home to you, I’ll Always find you.”

Then I get to watch Billy walk in like the biker he is and right over to Kendal who’s biting her lip still that scared and nervous to be the girl she is. He walks right up to her and take’s her face in both of his hands and he plants a long deep French kiss on her and he arms wave a little up and down in the whole…OMG…whadda-I-Do? Way before she gets swept away by being kissed and I get to see her arms slip around his neck and her leg go up a little and there’s melting mascara and tears sliding down her cheeks and she’s beaming.

It’s so great to see someone you care about so much just starting to shine. To see a friend find love.

It’s only a small break in our morning but Dallas and Dad cover while we have our moments and even though we don’t want to we get back to work. It’s busy, really busy all day I’d have thought we’d slowed down but there’s a lot of the alternative crowd still showing up. We’re packed to overflowing for lunch.

I’m getting a kick seeing a few short cut hair, dye and pierced lez girls sitting elbow to elbow eating with our rail yard regulars. It’s cool to see them getting along. But Mavericks has a certain kind of crowd that’s the regulars here. We just treat people like people.

It’s lunch so we’re serving up Taylor’s soups, we’re doing a minestrone and then his chicken soup and today with out new crowd he’s got a vegan-veggie soup. I’ve had a mug of it and it’s good.

Extra-virgin olive oil that he heated then fried fresh ground black pepper and some nutmeg, then diced onions and some crushed garlic, then just grated carrots, diced eggplant, chopped tomatoes and a bunch of escarole greens we use for stuff like wedding soup and fresh thyme and rosemary. That’s it really, we serve it up with a big chunk of bread that we butter and toss on salt and pepper and cumin and fry it on the grill.

I’m not a big vegetarian person or vegan food person just too much an Alberta girl but this stuff sells really well but Taylor’s minestrone is the best selling soup we have.

We do our sandwiches too and the whole soup and a sandwich thing is still really popular as a whole. Then there’s our lunch specials of lasagna, and shepherds pie and Mac & Cheese. We do only our special items, we don’t run a place were you can just walk in and get a burger. It’s easier to cook that way but Taylor and I’ve been talking about a daily menu with some permanent items.

We need to do that and if the pace keeps up like this then we’ll have to hire more people. Lunch rush doesn’t end until close to two and aside from the handful of people between things we are busy cleaning up and making stuff for supper rush.

Me, I’m back to baking, making my cinnamon rolls. I think I’ve gone over this before but I just take bread dough and a lot of it and roll it out on the baking table then smear it all with real butter and then add this mixture of brown sugar, a little nutmeg and all-spice and a whole lot of cinnamon. Then I have a spray bottle of water or apple juice and wet down the spices and I roll them up like a jelly-roll and cut them into slices you lay into the pans on their sides.

I put them into a great big baking dish I’ve buttered and added brown sugar too and wet that down too, it melts when I bake it into a sugar caramel and I make pan after pan of them and let them rise. The icing is dead easy, butter, lot’s of cream cheese and icing sugar a pinch of salt and some vanilla and you just smear it out over them while hot and it get’s all melty.

Taylor kisses me into putting a few into a pie plate for him early. No matter how he’s feeling he always seems to be able to eat these. With his treatments I’m making these a lot.

Supper menu…mashed potatoes, and we make several meatloaves and roast beef. Now my contribution is making an African pot pie with Njinda as something to try. Just a stew with some nutmeg and some allspice berries in it and lots of red chili paste in chicken broth we take parsnips and a lot of carrots and sweet potatoes, celery, diced onions. Now we add in regular potatoes and three finely sliced lemons skin and all. My twist is to bake some chicken thighs in Shake ‘N Bake until really browned and crispy and then I de-bone them and toss them into the stew and let it sit. The dry crispy brown chicken sucks in liquid and gets tender and adds a lot of flavor. Nin and I make them put into out deep white soup bowls that we just top with pie crust. Holly comes up with her own twist to use some egg on the pie crust like you would to brown it but we us it to dust them with shake and bake.

Turns out good and we’re busy all over again. The roast beef is always a hit and we go through about six large roasts and potatoes and gravy or fries. Meatloaf is also popular but the chicken pot pies go over well with the new crowd of people that come in.

My cinnamon rolls sell out as desert and a lot get taken home. There’s at least six or seven dozen that get sold. I’m making more, we run out and we had to tell a lot of people sorry.

I end up making them until closing.

Taylor comes down and gets me and wraps his arms around me and kisses my neck and kisses me. He’s got everything done even the office work and we very gratefully head to our apartment for the night.

Actually I get into the bath and take a lot soak and we end up crawling into bed together and watch a little TV with him spooning me. I don’t remember when I fell asleep but I remember waking up about five with Tay pressing into me. I take the opportunity to wake him up and satisfy a craving I’ve been having.

I’ve actually found myself enjoying that a bit more since getting clipped and my hormones seem to be really kicking in. It might be mostly in my head but it doesn’t matter, I love him and I like doing this with him, for him, for me. I know a lot of girls not into oral sex and get turned off by it but not me.

It’s something I actually find as something very personal and a deep, powerful way of me showing him my love, and attention, and devotion.

Of course once he’s been woke up by my surprise. We end up making love and then after my hormones, and shower, it’s just enough time for breakfast.

I love this time of the day. We go downstairs and fire everything up and Holly and Tim are there with the kids and then Davey shows up with Nin and Dallas with her truck and them Angie (Mom) and Dad and Hunter with Billy and Kendal showing last.

It’s a family breakfast with us doing prep and everyone getting fed before work or school and we laugh and carry on and have fun all together and there’d hugs too. Most of us haven’t really ever had this before, either just grew up without this or had shitty home lives.

It’s more than I could have ever dreamt for really.

…………………….Today was the same as yesterday and we got really, really busy but we were getting better at the rush and getting prepared and in between there’s me and the girls hanging and doing our laundry out back in shifts and talk about our guys.

Holly’s the old married woman sort of with all of us and we get to all laugh at her stories and we talk and giggle at Dallas’s dating and war stories of being single. Kendal’s all blushes and giggles over being in real love for the first time with Billy and talking about sex candidly in a group of women.

I get her; I get the light and the glow in her. There’s something just so right in belonging. I the group, but even just belonging in your own life. There’s a lot of girls like Kendal and me that never get to live “Our.” lives.

………………………..The next few days after everything with Troy and the whole paintball fiasco. And we’re hitting our stride and Kendal’s getting our website up for Mavericks and getting us up on Twitter and Facebook and stuff and we are getting a lot of hits, The uniforms from Debbie are in and our menu’s and posters from Chelsea both are two my T-girl friends who came up who does this sorts of printing and wrote off the trip as a business trip and I got the chance to throw some work the way of my friends. Taylor and all of us get together and we start to get things in order for our new menus and stuff.

I Love my husband. I mean not only does he say Our Place when talking to Mavericks but he’s giving an honest say to all of us here and the girls and everything in what we should do. We even end up hiring two extra waitresses and a culinary student. Why? We’re expanding our hours but we’re also making it so we’re not (Taylor and I.) going to be working all the time. (Big Smiles.)

So it’s going to be like this:

Soup and sandwiches are always going to be on the menu. Chicken soup, minestrone, wedding soup and soup of the day. Sandwiches are corned beef, chicken salad, tuna, turkey and mixed cold-cuts.

Breakfast daily is bacon; eggs, fried baloney, hash browns, corned beef hash and house waffles and granola.

Deserts daily; are homemade doughnuts, chocolate cake, soft ice cream and pies we mostly do pies lemon, apple, coconut cream, cherry, blueberry and the pie of the day and of course my cinnamon rolls. I add a desert of the day too.

Monday’s lunch; Mac ‘n cheese, lasagna, shepherds pie.

Monday’s supper; Stew of the day, meatloaf, roast beef dinner.

Tuesday’s lunch; Baked beans, scalloped potatoes, oven roasted ham.

Tuesday’s supper; Corned beef and cabbage, pirogues, bratwursts and summer sausages.

Wednesday’s lunch; Chili and cornbread, spaghetti and meatballs with garlic bread and eggplant parmesan.

Wednesday’s supper; same as the lunch only replace the Chili and cornbread with a Alfredo penne or a penne with bolognaise.

Thursday’s lunch; Shake ‘n bake chicken, biscuits and gravy (Courtesy of Kendal.) Njinda’s home stew.

Thursday’s Supper; Roast Chicken Dinner, Jenna’s Fried Chicken, roasted potatoes, Mavericks Pork Chops.

Friday’s lunch; Chicken stew with dumplings, Maverick’s Goulash, Irish Stew.

Friday’s supper; Fish and chips, strip steak, turkey supper.

Saturday’s all day, BBQ Ribs with corn bread and coleslaw, baked beans and sweet potatoes and greens.

Sunday’s!…… We’re closed. It’s clean up, and prep day but mostly it’s going to be a day off for us.

Our uniforms are black jeans or black denim skirts and a black tee-shirt with the word Mavericks in big red brick letters on the back with a smaller logo on the front in a round patch and a brick red pattern on the waist and neck and sleeves. There’s ball caps and baseball styled button up shirts or large thin football jerseys that are like the tee shirts those’ll be great when it’s hot and lastly we’ve our hoodies, those are staff gifts.

Yeah it’s a lot of stuff but it’ll give us lots of choices and it was a really big order so it was good for my friends.

Sunday…our new day off and when we do our prep work and stuff for the week we have everyone over who can make it for the staff to help out but we start what I’m hoping might be a tradition and that’s the staff/family Sunday dinner.

After the dishes Taylor comes up and wraps those arms around me and gives me a squeeze. I lean into the hug, into him. I love the way his strength surrounds me, that flutter in my heart. “Long week.” I murmur as I turn around and kiss him pushing my breasts into his chest. I love the feel of his hard muscles on my skin, his arms pull me closer, his hands cup my butt.

“Yeah but it’s worth it Jen.”

“I know, it feels like things are starting to get on track.”

“Finally, god it feels like my life’s been on hold forever since I was diagnosed.”

“Well things are different now, I kind of like change y’know.”

“Really?”

“Mmm hmm, you do to.”

“I do?”

“Yeah that is unless you think you’d have been more into football players than me.”

“Uhm no… Jaime might have been seen as cute by the girls, but Jenna is so much more sweet, lovely and beautiful.”

“Oh, that was so the right thing to say.”

“Oh well how about this?”

“This what?” I kiss him and smile.

“Date night tonight.”

“Oh, You’re on a roll.” I kiss him again and head upstairs. “So where are we going?”

“I was thinking a bit of stuff, go to the mall.”

“The Mall?”

“West Edmonton.”

“Okay. Casual stuff then?”

“No get a bit dressy hon, there’s some nice stuff there.”

“Really, I’ve never had been there.”

“Really?”

“Step-dad…I got to play a bit of hockey there with him and went to some of the sporting good stores but never really been there or looked around.”

“Well today I’m going to change that.”

“Can I wear a dress?”

“I’d love that.” He says that with this melt my heart smile. It makes me bite my lip and I run up the stairs and start getting ready. Excited you bet. I’ve never really gone dating and the other stuff. I’ve only ever been out as me with Taylor but it’s been so much more than I ever thought each time.

He never fails to make me feel the way I always wanted to feel.

Shower, and Nair away stuff and then lotion and then do my hair with the blow dryer, I miss my hair, it’s so darned short right now and I kind of do it sort of like the sexy Annie Lennox look and I get powdered and into a nice set of lingerie, lacy push up bra and panties to match La Pearla brand in this light pink with white lace and these knit lacy leggings like stockings but warmer and they have these rubber tops with Velcro to keep them up and over that this three quarter thigh length sweater dress that’s sort of this light mix of peach and pink.

I love the way this looks on me, it just hugs in all my right places and it has a v-neck that makes my boobs look really great. I finish my make up and get on a nice pair of dangly earrings and a nice necklace finishing with a bit of perfume.

I Love the way Taylor looks at me when I come out of the bathroom. He smiles and kisses me and we head down to the truck and lock everything up and he drives us out to the West Edmonton Mall.

I love being with him. I love him helping me into the truck and the fact he armor-alls it and febreezes it before we go out. I love just driving with him. The more I’m with him the more I love him, just talking with him. Even just cooking and being in the kitchen with him even when we’re too busy to talk makes me feel.

Before I was Jenna, I never could really feel anything as Jaime. Or maybe it wasn’t really me so I didn’t connect to the world around me.

The Mall is huge, one of the biggest in the world at one point it was but not anymore, still it’s at least the sized a a good sized town in here.

Taylor takes me inside and we go window shopping stopping for him to buy me a rose. Then we go skating together in the Ice Palace and after a hot chocolate we go to Marine Life and watch the sea lions and stuff then he takes me to supper out at The Red Piano….god what a nice restaurant and Taylor…Taylor had made reservations …I had a really great steak and baked potato and a real chef made crá¨me brule that has me having eye rolling foodgasms.

I’m a blissed out happy girl on Taylor’s arm as we window shop a little more heading to the Scotia-Bank theatre. Today was a good day, today was a very good day.