From now on I’m going to be more careful.
12
Coffee O’clock
Paisley
The red leather creaks as I plop down. Kate peeps over her shoulder at me while pouring coffee into the blue-dotted mug of a stocky man with a mustache and a lumberjack’s shirt. From the jukebox come the raw sounds of James Arthur’s heartache.
“Paisley!” she calls out with a warm smile. With her free hand she tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear and walks over. “How nice to see you. Coffee?”
“Absolutely,” I nod, and blow into my hands to wake up my still-numb fingers. “Are you sure that we’re in Aspen and not somewhere in…I don’t know, Siberia?”
Kate laughs. Her flower-covered apron swells as she spins around to grab a colorful mug from behind the counter. “You need thicker gloves,” she says and offers a meaningful glance at the thin woolen ones I bought last year at a ninety-nine-cent store. Back then, they were red, but now the material is so faded that they could pass for pale pink at best. “With those things on, I give you one week before you show up here without any hands.”
“I bet you’re right…” With a thankful smile I take the now full coffee cup. My nerve endings immediately begin to tingle as I’mfilled with warmth. After taking a sip, a pleasant sigh crosses my lips. “I was hoping to run into Gwen,” I say. In the meantime, Kate has begun to arrange donuts and muffins in the display case. “Since training yesterday, I haven’t been able to get in touch with her.” I lift my phone up and frown. “Her phone’s off.”
For a moment Kate glances at the ceiling before turning back to her muffins. Suddenly her jaw looks tense, her lips a narrow line. “I don’t know if she’ll be coming down,” she says. She pauses a moment then sighs, closes the display case, and smooths out the lines on her forehead with her thumb and index finger. “Gwen is…”
She doesn’t manage to complete her sentence. Gwen rushes through the back door. “Morning!” Her thick, wavy hair flies through the air, and the right side of her wide-cut woolen sweater almost slips off her shoulders as she reaches for a muffin. She kisses her mother on the cheek, then sees me. “Paisley, hey!” Gwen beams. Her gloomy mood from yesterday has obviously disappeared. She sits down across from me cheerfully, takes a bite of muffin, and washes it down with a gulp of my coffee. “How cool that you’re here! Should we go over to the rink together?”
“Everything okay?”
“Of course,” she smacks. “Why?”
“Your phone,” I say and point at my own. “I’ve been trying to reach you since yesterday. I thought…” Hesitating, I lower my eyes onto my cup and run my finger over a deep notch in the ceramic. “You were going to drive me over to the Winterbottoms’.”
“Oh,shit.” Gwen was moving to take another bite. Instead, she pauses and opens her eyes wide. A few dark crumbs fall from her mouth onto the table. She puts the muffin to the side and looks at me apologetically. “Shit, Paisley, I totally forgot! God, what a mess. Can I make it up to you somehow?”
“It’s all good,” I answer and wave my hand, happy to know she just had a bad day. “I was just surprised. But now that we’re on the subject…” I allow my glance to wander over my left and rightshoulders, then bend down and whisper, “You could’ve told me thatKnoxwas aWinterbottom.”
“I didn’t?” She sounds surprised, which doesn’t quite fit the mischievous grin on her face. Without further ado, she grabs her muffin, takes another bite, and shrugs. “I must’ve forgotten.”
“Of course.”
“How’d it go? Do you have the job?”
“Yeah, but…”
Gwen stops eating midmouthful. “What?”
“There’s a catch.”
“You slept with him.” Her jaw drops, giving me a rather unappetizing glimpse of the mushy muffin inside her mouth. “No way. How was it?” She puts her elbows onto the round table and bends forward. “How was he? Did he pull the washing-machine number? They say he pulls that one with all the chalet…”
“Stop!” I interrupt her and am about to stick my fingers in my ears and start humming a tune to get the images out of my head. “We…ugh. God, no.” Think of something else. Quickly. “There’s nothing going on. Nada. And there’s not going to be, ever. Okay?”
Gwen shrugs. “Whatever you say. Where’s the catch?”
“I’m going to be living there,” I say and make a face. “Not with the rest of the tourists, but withhim!”
My new friend blinks. Then once more. “I don’t understand the problem.”
“For real?”
“Yeah. I mean, you’re going to be living at Knox’s. Now, the guy’s a walking problem for sure, but, holy guacamole, you’ve got a free ticket to see him without his shirt on all the time!” Her eyes become dreamy. “Or without his underwear.”
Okay. Unwanted film in my head.
