Chapter Text
“Daaaaayviiidd,” Moira calls, bursting into his room without hesitation. “Oh, David, there you are! Converge with your father and I in a little venture to the local eatery, would you?”
“I already ate,” he answers, turning back to his phone and the latest draft of a potential vendor email. Ted had happily introduced him to Anita, and at first David was very excited about the possibility of selling her organic pet treats. Recently, though, she has been giving him more trouble than the little biscuits are worth. And it takes a lot for David to think someone is too high maintenance.
“I have never known you to turn down the chance at a second supper.”
“I’m working.”
Besides, it’s meatloaf night. There is no need for second helpings of the cafe’s meatloaf.
Before his mother has a chance to respond to that, his father walks into the room as well. “Oh, David! Just the man I was looking for. Would you like to join us for dinner, son?”
“I already ate,” he repeats. “And I’m busy.”
They don’t have to know this email is the last one he planned on sending before an early night in. There have been far too many late nights and early—at least by his standards—mornings lately. If he doesn’t catch up on sleep before the opening nobody will believe the eucalyptus eye cream he’d labeled just that afternoon works and he’ll go out of business. The dark circles under his eyes will be for nothing .
“Perhaps just a social call, then?” Johnny continues, unperturbed. “You have been… Well, uh— Working? So hard. And I’ve noticed that, well, Stevie and Jakob haven’t been around much lately and—”
“I’m going to have to stop you right there,” David cuts in, unwilling to allow his father to continue rambling. “I have been talking to vendors all day. I’m plenty social. So social I’d even allow a comparison to a butterfly.”
David stands, throwing his phone down on the bed and moving to his parents. He gently herds them toward their door as he says, “so while I appreciate the invitation, I’m going to have to insist that you choke down the mystery meat without me this evening. Have a good night!”
He slams the door behind them, grabbing a chair from the table and jamming it under the door handle for good measure before they can think about a second attempt at cajoling him into a second trip to cafe tropical in as many hours.
Pulling up his favorites as soon as he gets back to his phone, David is relieved when Alexis answers after the third ring.
“They know,” he grumbles.
“Who knows?”
“The parents,” he continues. “They know that I’ve broken up with Jake and that I’m alone and they’ve decided that it’s time for me to give up on love once and for all.”
“Ew, David,” Alexis groans. “What are you talking about?”
“The parents invited me to dinner. Alone. Without you.”
“Well, that’s nice of them.”
“They were just sitting there, staring at me, like they knew this moment was coming.”
Alexis sighs, and David is surprised when there is real sympathy in what she says next. “David, it was Jake. Everybody knew it was coming. They’re just worried about you, but we both know that they’re incapable of worrying about us for more than, like, seven consecutive seconds. Relax, they’ll be over it by the morning.”
“Okay, first of all, when have you ever heard of telling somebody to relax actually working?” He stands and begins pacing the short distance of their shared motel room. Cutting off her retort before she can begin it, David continues, “And second of all, it’s not fair. We just broke up! It just happened. I’m still young! It’s still possible that I’m going to have a successful relationship. You don’t know! My wedding dream binder is still viable!”
“Are you yelling at me or the parents?”
“Neither! The wall, the universe—I think it’s flipping me off via the wallpaper of this godforsaken motel.”
“Well, actually Jocelyn made me read that story and I’m, like, pretty sure that wallpaper lady was just crazy, so don’t flatter yourself with the universe being involved.”
David cuts off his sister again with a biting, “Whose side are you on?”
“Ugh, sorry, David.”
Intellectually he knows. David knows that he is over-reacting to the dinner invite. But that doesn’t not stop him from continuing his rant.
“Everyone knows. They can see it in my face. ‘He’s single, again. He couldn’t make it work, again. He picked the guy who wanted a weird throuple situation, again.’”
“David, I need you to get a grip!” Alexis says, finally interrupting him for a change. “You’re tired and you’re stressed out with the store opening coming up, and you’re not seeing things clearly!”
His sister is almost making sense; David takes a few deep breaths, and he almost achieves a sense of peace he hasn’t known since that time he attended a hatha yoga class Christine Baranski led on a beach in Bali. But at that same moment, his phone vibrates and all that calmness unravels with one quick look at a text from his father—including a picture of his meatloaf—with an invitation that there is still plenty of time to join them.
“Oh, my god!”
“What?”
“They’re not even easing me into this, those bastards.” If his parents are convinced he is becoming a sad, single version of them, then so be it—who is he to disagree? “I give up. I guess I need to start collecting VHS tapes for the store, do a deep dive on Sunrise Bay summaries, find out if I can find a cheap knock-off of Dad’s Balenciaga bathrobe—”
“Well, obviously you’ve got a busy night ahead of you, so I’m going to let you go.”
“Black and white wigs!” David responds, “I’m going to have to find some aesthetically appropriate wigs!”
“Bye, David!”
At his sister’s sing-songy goodbye, David slouches back against his headboard with a sigh. So much for being in the right headspace to finish off Anita’s email.
David wakes with a start, flinging his hand out from where it’s tangled in his bedspread and grabs his phone off the nightstand.
“Stevie, bring your windex,” David mutters after unlocking his phone and calling the number he’d set up for Rose Apothecary last week. “Alexis, schedule instagram post and soft-launch email.”
He throws his phone back onto the nightstand, not bothering to even plug it back in before turning over and attempting to fall back to sleep. A moment later, however, he remembers a few additional things he might not think of come morning.
“Uh, Antia follow up. Ask Ted about potential Anita replacements, fix the logo on labels from the first set of lanolin lipsticks.”
After the second call ends, David sighs like a woman in all those Victorian romance novels Stevie loves but refuses to admit she reads.
“Ehhhhk,” he mutters, throwing his bed spread back and sitting up. It’s not a good sign when he’s up before the sun.
Rising slowly from the bed, David walks over to the door and flicks the light on—thankful Alexis decided to stay at Ted’s so he doesn’t need to attempt to stay quiet for her. Then, he moves as quickly as he can to the counter and fumbles through making a pot of coffee.
When that’s gone, he makes another. And then, when he realizes he doesn’t have any more to make, he walks down to the office and finishes off what is in the carafe there, too. Desperate measures and all that.
A quick shower, an abridged skin care routine, and his comfiest jogger/sweater combo later, David begins his walk into town. Cafe Tropical doesn’t open until six o’clock, but he can hope Twyla shows up early and shows some mercy on him.
In a move a past version of David would’ve certainly scoffed at, he plops down cross legged on the sidewalk just outside the front door and waits. Then he waits some more.
And then a noise to his right startles him.
Assuming the worst, David jumps to his feet and forms fists with his hands—as if he would know how to throw a punch even if the intruder wasn’t one of his best friends—and breathes out a high-pitched, screechy “who’s there!?” before his brain catches up and relaxes at the sight of Patrick. “Oh, hi.”
“David, what are you doing?”
David slumps back down onto the step and sighs, “I need coffee.”
“It’s five o’clock in the morning,” Patrick says. He takes the last few stairs on the rickety staircase that leads to his apartment above Cafe Tropical and approaches David like one might approach a wild animal. “Make coffee at the motel.”
“I did. I drank it all.”
“You drank all the coffee at the motel before five in the morning?”
“Big gulps,” David confirms, nodding his head just once. “Lots of sugar.”
“Alright, get up.” His hands come up under David’s armpits and he hauls him to his feet—giving David entirely too little say in the matter. Patrick starts pushing him toward the staircase.
Distracted enough that he doesn’t even make his usual commentary about how unsafe the stairs feel, David continues on, “I didn’t have any milk or cocoa powder, but I did add a little of Alexis’ gross flavored creamer ‘cause it makes it cold.”
“Keep moving,” Patrick sighs, shoving David onto the first step. He stays half a step behind David, who tries not to shiver at the feel of Patrick's hand still at his hip. When he stumbles on the third stair, he’s thankful for it, though—thankful Patrick could tell he needed someone to steady him even when he himself couldn’t. Patrick’s had a habit of doing that since they became friends when David and his family moved to Schitt’s Creek just over 3 years ago.
“I can’t sleep,” David admits after he catches his balance and continues upstairs. “I can’t turn my mind off. It keeps running and thinking and making lists.”
“Well, David, maybe if you drank a little less coffee, you’d make fewer lists.”
“Oh, I can’t stop drinking the coffee. I stop drinking the coffee, I stop doing the standing and the walking and the words putting-into-sentence doing.”
“Okay,” Patrick murmurs quietly. “I’ll get you some coffee.”
David sighs deeply, possibly the biggest one of his life. “If I wasn’t afraid I’d fall asleep on these godforsaken stairs if I stop moving, I would hug you. In fact, in my mind, I am hugging you—and also, I’m telling you that there’s still shipments of shampoo, conditioner, and body wash from a hairdresser from Elm Valley that need to be delivered by Tuesday so they can get stocked and situated in time.”
Patrick pulls out his apartment keys as they get to the landing and seems to reach a decision. “I’m also making you some oatmeal.”
“I don’t like oatmeal.”
“You’ve got to eat something,” Patrick answers. “Preferably something healthy. And I assume you left the motel before today’s cinnamon buns arrived.”
David ignores him, burying his face in his hands and groaning. “I am so completely stressed. I can’t remember what I’m doing from one moment to the next. It’s never gonna get done.”
“It’ll get done.”
“No, it won’t, and then the store won’t open, and then we’ll both go broke,” David huffs as they walk into Patrick’s apartment. “How’d you do it?”
“Do what? Make us go broke?”
“No, get the grants for the store, handle all the stress of the financial stuff on top of your work at Ray’s.”
“The grants weren’t that stressful,” Patrick admits with a small shrug as David settles on the side of the table he sits at during all of their business meetings—first, detailing what they each expect from Patrick’s investment in Rose Apothecary and later providing progress updates.
“They weren’t?”
Patrick just shrugs again, moving through the kitchen as he grabs everything he needs for David’s coffee. “It was all there—your idea. I didn’t do anything but put it on paper and send it to the right people.”
“Maybe I can’t handle it.” David faceplants onto the table. He doesn’t want to see Patrick’s face when he asks the next part. “Do you think I can handle it?”
“I already told you that you could handle it.”
“When?”
“Quite a while ago. There was a breakdown on Bob’s bench, an offer to get you the money you needed to get off the ground.”
“Did I believe you?”
“Apparently,” Patrick says, setting a coffee cup down in front of David, “you didn’t even listen to me.”
Of course, David had believed him—he was just looking for a little reassurance; that conversation had been months ago, after all. Following a breakdown rivaling the one he’d had after James Franco ghosted him, Patrick had volunteered to become Rose Apothecary’s business consultant. Not only did he invest some of his own money to keep David afloat in the weeks immediately following, but then he’d secured several grants that David knew were responsible for ensuring he could actually open the store.
“Oh, hey,” David says after he’s had two large swallows. He had known this was gonna be the best coffee he’d consumed all morning—Patrick stocked his apartment with supplies to make a better caramel macchiato than anywhere else in a twenty mile radius—but it never stops catching David by surprise at just how right he gets the ratio of skim to sweetener to cocoa powder. “I want you to stop by the store, see some of the progress we’ve been making.”
“Oh, I don’t know, David, why don’t I just wait till the place is repossessed? Then I can see it at the public auction.”
“How can you be so mean to me when I only manage to coif half my hair?” David asks, gesturing broadly to his head. It still looks better than most people’s, but he’d be kidding even himself if he tried to pretend it was up to his normal standards. Patrick’s lips do the amused, downturned smile thing David has grown so fond of, and he has to look away.
“Would we call this mean? Or am I just being practical, you know, as your business consultant.”
“Seriously, I want to give you an official investors tour,” David continues, ignoring the jab. They both know he's gone above and beyond the standard business consultant. “You should see the place. It’s looking really good!”
“I heard there’s not even going to be shampoo, conditioner, or body wash at the soft-launch,” Patrick says, doing air quotes around soft-launch as he sprinkles brown sugar over the oatmeal he’d heated up.
David, not willing to have another semi-firm discussion, powers through. “What do you say?”
“You eat the oatmeal, I’ll stop over.”
“Fine, I’ll eat it,” David concedes. “But I’m making a face the entire time.”
“Looking forward to it,” Patrick says.
After a few bites, David realizes he didn’t know what Patrick is doing awake, let alone leaving his apartment at five o’clock in the morning, so he asks as much.
“Oh, I was just going to go for a hike.”