Chapter 16
Spring felt like it lasted about a day and a half. When Caleb had lived in Boston, the joke was if you didn’t like the weather in Massachusetts, wait five minutes. And that applied here, because after several disgustingly warm days, New York was finally blessed with gorgeous weather.
Caleb left work in the early evening, looking forward to walking home in this weather, maybe grabbing takeout from the Tex-Mex place near his apartment, and just watching TV with Hank.
As he walked outside, so did Lauren.
“You guys closed for the day?” Caleb asked.
“No. Paige is closing today. Diane actually told me I work too much, so she’s forbidden me from staying until close on days when I come in to open.”
Caleb smiled. “Forbidden you, eh? Don’t you close at six? Which is in about ten minutes?”
“Yes, but we’re staying open tonight to host a writers’ group after hours. Paige can handle it. If this goes well, we may start a book club or something next. Diane’s letting me hire a couple of extra people, so if we start staying open later, it’s not an undue burden on the current staff.”
“Sounds like you’re expanding.”
“Yeah. It’s weird. I’ll admit, when I took this job, I loved it, but I thought it was kind of a novelty. I used to manage a coffee shop, and a cat café opened up nearby, tucked into this storefront around the corner, but it lasted maybe four months.”
“And you took the job anyway?”
“Diane is persuasive.”
Caleb wanted to ask more about that, but he felt like an idiot just standing on the sidewalk. “Uh, you have plans tonight?”
She smiled. “Not really, no.”
“I’m headed home myself.”
“Oh.” She seemed disappointed by that.
“I was going to walk. Would you like to walk with me? Maybe get some dinner close to my place? Meet Hank?”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
She smiled, which made warmth spread in his chest, a feeling he didn’t want to analyze too closely. “Sure, that sounds nice.”
It wasn’t until they turned the corner to walk north toward Caleb’s apartment that it registered: He’d asked her to do something and she’d said yes and they’d exchanged nary an angry word. Caleb didn’t want to think too hard about what that meant. Had something in their relationship changed? Should it have? Did he want it to?
Best not to think about it. Asking her to come home with him had been an entirely spontaneous decision. He had no motive beyond wanting to spend time with her. And why did he want to spend time with her?
Nope. Not going there.
They walked and made small talk about how nice the weather was for the next block. Then he said, “So how did you end up going from a coffee shop to managing a cat café?”
She laughed. “I don’t know. Life is strange sometimes. My college degree is in art history.”
Well, that figured. Caleb didn’t want to be judgmental, but Lauren did strike him as the sort of person who would spend a lot of money on a degree in something useless.
“I see your face,” she said. “You’re not wrong. My original plan had been to go to grad school and get a job as a museum curator, but one internship at the Met taught me those jobs are pretty hard to come by. But I had a job as a sales associate at Bloomingdale’s, mostly fetching shoes from the back for customers. After I graduated, I got a promotion, and then I saw the opening at the coffee shop and got a job as a manager. Diane used to get tea there regularly, so we’d get to talking. I mean, you’ve met her. She treats everyone like they’re her old friends. When she offered me the job, I thought she was kidding.”
“So, wait, she just randomly offered you the job?”
“Pretty much, yeah. That’s kind of how Diane is. She operates by instinct, not logic, but her instincts rarely fail her. So I came to check out the space, and she showed me the business plan for it. I already knew how to run a café, but adding the cat component was an interesting challenge. I had cats as a kid, but nothing like this. But I was over working at the coffee shop and having to put out fires with wealthy patrons who yelled at me for everything, from not carrying coconut milk to the depth of the roast on the coffee beans to the speed with which my employees made lattes. So when Diane offered me the job, it seemed like a fun opportunity, and at the time, I figured if it was a flop, it might be the kick I needed to try to find a job that was more fulfilling. Luckily it worked out.”
Caleb shook his head. He couldn’t imagine taking such a leap of faith. “So you just…took a job managing a business you didn’t think would last, working for a woman you didn’t know very well?”
