“What about the Outer Banks? The Carolinas? Warm. Younger old people. Older young people. Bet you could get your shuffleboard on.”
She laughs a little, and the tightness in my chest eases.
I worry about Mimi.
She and Zen are the only two family members I have who appreciate me for me, and I do my damned best to return the favor. My father is the only child she had, much to my grandfather’s disappointment. The old bastard made sure everyone knew nothing was enough for him.
One kid? He should’ve had six, and they would’ve all been his property. Three houses? His acquaintance had four,allwith pools and gardens. Mimi went gray before his friends’ wives and needed to dye her hair. His lawyer’s kid went to boarding school, so his son and his grandchildren needed to go to a better boarding school. Those Vanderbilts had that mansion down in North Carolina, so the Cartwrights needed a mansion on their original apple fields in upstate New York, which is eventually what drained the family trust fund.
But that wasn’t my grandfather’s fault.
It was lazy contractors doing shitty work and asking for too much pay.
Mimi did her best, but my old man turned out just like his old man.
I used to ask her regularly, when I was younger, why she married him.
Because life isn’t always what you hoped it would bewas the only response she’d ever give me.But you, young man, have a pure heart, quick brains, and a good soul. Don’t settle for anything less than what you deserve.
I realized after Felicia that she didn’t say I hadgood judgment when it comes to women.
“I’ll figure out where to go,” Mimi says. “Enough about this old lady. Tell me about you.”
I turn the corner from the living room into the kitchen and nearly jump out of my skin.
Zen’s leaning in the doorway to the mudroom, watching me with the kind of suspicion in their eyes that you’d expect of someone who probably saw me spying on the neighbor and decided to hang out quietly to scare the shit out of me instead of calling me on my stalker behavior.
They’re probably hoping—again—that I pull my head out of my ass, give up on this plan to change the café, and ask Sabrina out.
We can find another building to have a kombucha bar, they’ve said more than once.
And I’ve replied every time withwhy would any smart businessman give up the best real estate in town?
“I’m alive and well,” I report to my grandmother.
She makes a noise like she doesn’t believe me.
So does Zen.
“How’s work?” Mimi asks.
Heat creeps up my neck. “Fine.”
“Zen told me you haven’t even started thinking about building another lab or looking for loopholes to get you back to working with bees.”
“That’s why it’s fine.”
She laughs for real this time. “And what, exactly, are you up to with all of this time suddenly on your hands?”
Guilt claws on top of the heat.
I don’t like lying to Mimi, butI’m failing spectacularly at vengeance against an old bully since I’m done being shit on by the people who are supposed to love me or at least not hate meisn’t something I’ll be telling her. And as much as we’ve researched and believe in the idea of the kombucha bar, we wouldn’t be on this path, in this place, without the initial vengeance part.
“I’m going to a different beach,” I report.
I was technically on a different beach about two weeks ago.
Zen glares harder at me.
