chapterone
Sunny
Today’s Special:
Disaster over an Herb Salad
I was completelyout of control. That was one thing I knew to be certain.
There was no other explanation. I mean, if I was in control ofanythingat all, would I be the newest resident of the same small town that I’d plotted to escape as a teenager? No. Hard pass. But that was the problem with big plans and the rate at which spinach went bad in my fridge and the whole damn world: I couldn’t control any of it.
Another thing I knew was that this messy, chaotic universe loved to hand me things I didn’t see coming and didn’t know how to handle. But the joke was on the universe because I loved mess and chaos, and I was an expert at figuring it out as I went. I could even pretend it was part of my plan all along.
My present chaos was a series of mostly happy accidents that forced me to push the far limits of figuring it out. There was no pretense of a plan. No one could’ve anticipated any of this and I was still impressed at how I was tap dancing my way through these flails and flops.
Exhibit A. Last summer, I won the deed to an abandoned bait shop on a random piece of waterfront in a poker game with a bunch of real estate moguls. As one does. Imagine the jump scare at realizing this property was located in my small hometown of Friendship, Rhode Island—and was the meeting place for all the area raccoons. I was hoping one of those real estate guys would be happy to win the bait shop back the next time they played poker at my tavern but the universe swooped in with a hearty chuckle of “You fucked around, now it’s time to find out!”
Exhibit B. My boss Murtagh—the crustiest, curmudgeoniest man on any planet—decided to close up The Soggy Dog, the tavern he’d owned forever and a day. While Murtagh was a complete grumble bucket, he’d let me run the tavern for almost two years, kept his complaining about my regular time off for travel adventures to a low snarl, and only threatened to fire me once or twice a week. Losing that job was my least favorite kind of mess, and seeing as I’d spent the past handful of years following my moods from New York to Boston to Maine to Rhode Island, I didn’t have a solid next step lined up. But crusty old Murtagh made out like a bandit when he sold the building he’d owned since around the time of the Louisiana Purchase, and he gave me a small chunk of change from the proceeds for, as he put it, “not being useless.”
Exhibit C. One by one, all of my favorite people suddenly experienced big changes in their lives. Within a month or two, my best friends and I all lost jobs, partners, or promotions, and we now had unscheduled wiggle room to come together and have fun with this chaos. Our version of fun was hatching a plan to rehab the old bait shop and open a vegan café that also dabbled in book clubs and sunrise yoga and full moon ceremonies. As one did. If it was weird and wonderful, we wanted it. The wonkier, the better.
The past few months had been like juggling knives on a roller coaster while tequila drunk. I knew there would be more juggling to come though the roller coaster would be different, but I couldn’t believe this was the mess the universe had made for me. If I’d asked the sixteen-year-old version of myself if I’d be opening a vegan café with three besties when I was twenty-eight, and doing it in the Rhode Island town that had felt more like a cage than a cozy, quirky, seaside enclave, I would’ve laughed.Hard. But that was the whole thing about chaos. You had to take your mismatched parts and soul-sucking career prospects and the childhood epilepsy you never outgrew, and build a life out of it. Create a path that didn’t make you dread Monday and every day after that. Construct a world for yourself, even if you had no idea how to do it.
Fuck around and you’ll find out.
So, here I was, turning off Friendship’s main road and down the narrow side street leading to Naked Provisions. We were ready to put the finishing touches on this weird brainchild of ours before opening the doors and serving our first customers today. The only things left to do were fill the window boxes and pots lining our freshly refurbished patio, and wait to discover the multitude of things we hadn’t planned for.
From the looks of the crushed shell parking lot, two of my partners were already inside the café, prepping for the day. Since I was useless in the kitchen, I headed straight for the patio on the back end of the building, my fold-up wagon loaded with potting soil and plants.
It wasn’t hard to love the old bait shop now that it was clean, airy, and raccoon-free but I especially loved the patio. We were on a knobby outcropping of land known as Small Point, at the edge of Friendship Cove where it became Narragansett Bay, and something about this in-between spot—thick with old trees that bent at breakneck angles from wind howling in off the water, and marsh grasses along the rocky shores—felt like a secret kind of magic. Every time I saw the sunlight sparkling over the waters of the cove, I reminded myself that mess could be the best.
Another thing I loved was that we were only a few minutes’ walk from the town center though it felt like we had our own private world out here. Private except for the semi-famous oyster bar on the other side of the parking lot. I’d almost perfected my ability to ignore its existence.
My service dog Scout sniffed at a pot overflowing with lavender, rosemary, oregano, and hardy geranium, then sneezed and stalked away as if repulsed. The two-year-old chocolate Lab settled in a sun-drenched spot beside Jem, the German shepherd who refused to accept that he’d flunked out of service animal school. “A bold statement coming from someone who spent five whole minutes licking rocks this morning,” I called as I started on another pot. “Come over here. Just give it a chance. I know you’ll love this.”
“I cannot see a single reason why that would be the case.”
I snapped my head from the plants to findhimglaring at me.
Even if I had a hundred chances to guess the nightmare from my past who would stomp out of the oyster bar next door and across the small parking lot we shared, I never would’ve namedhim.
Before I could get my hands out of the soil or make sense of the irritable man and his expensive-looking dress shirt rolled up to the elbows, he continued. “I’m not sure who you are or what you think you’re doing but this is private property. You need to take all of this”—he motioned to the pots and garden supplies with a quickwhat the fuckshake of his head that I remembered all too well—“and leave immediately.”
It was him andhe didn’t remember me.
I wasn’t self-centered enough to assume anyone would remember me after twenty-ish years, but when it came to this guy, there was nothing I wouldn’t hold against him. His entire existence was a problem for me to the point that I’d built an iceberg of resentment for him. A massive, fatal, frozen mountain I’d forgotten about until seeing his face again and now I could feel frost swirling around me like I was made of things that only existed in subzero conditions.
Still kneeling on the patio, I glanced down at the soil and flowers, and brushed my hands together. So this was the thing we hadn’t planned for. It would’ve been so much better if we could’ve blown some fuses running six juicers at the same time or got locked out of the point-of-sale system. This could not be solved with a hard restart.
It stood to reason that I’d run into him sooner or later, what with his family’s restaurant beingright thereand all. But by all accounts he hadn’t set foot in this state for years. I’d hoped for later. A lot later. “Actually, I don’t have to go anywhere. This isn’t your property.”
“That’s inaccurate.” He slipped a phone out of his pocket and thumbed in a code. “I know who owns this building and it’s not you.” He raked an impatient glare over the maxi skirt pooled around me, up to my sleeveless top, and eventually settled on my face.
I was older now but I still had a baby doll face with the same round, rosy cheeks as ever. Everyone remembered these cheeks.Everyone.Even if they forgot my name, they’d smile and point to their cheeks in a makeshift sign language ofI remember your face!Not a single flicker of recognition in those dark eyes of his.
“Let’s move this little flower cart operation along before I have someone do it for you.”
Of course it was him. Of course the universe would fling this insufferable ass my way at the exact moment I thought my life was finally coming together. Of course he’d be just as rude and arrogant and dismissive as he’d always been.
