I take the stairs, drop the ice bucket at the front desk, and ghost the nicest man I’ve met in years.
4
Nine days later…
Sabrina
There’sa black Mercedes sedan parked in my normal spot behind my family’s mountain café when I pull up at an ungodly early hour for my second Monday at work after Emma’s wedding disaster.
Do you know what this means?
This means that the happy, reality-denying bubble I’ve been choosing to live in since I came home from Hawaii is about to pop.
No matter how much everythinglooksthe same—the piles of late January snow around the parking lot, Mr. Durbin’s beat-up old VW van parked next to the dumpster, the string of fairy lights glowing in the morning darkness on the balcony of the apartment over the art gallery next door to Bean & Nugget—nothing is the same.
Not when I know that black Mercedes means the café’s new owner has finally shown up to do whatever he intends to do with the one place that defines home and family to me more than anything else.
My gut clenches.
In the back seat, Jitter, my one-year-old Saint Bernard puppy, whines and strains against his doggy car seat.
He’s been doing that a lot since I got home from Hawaii.
Maybe I haven’t been as successful at denying my new reality and how much anxiety it’s giving me as I’d like to think.
“It’s okay,” I tell him.
He whines again.
“Yep. You’re right.” I take a swig of coffee out of my travel mug and look back at him again. “Today will likely suck, but we’ll get through it the same way we’ve gotten through everything else. And maybe it won’t be that bad. Maybe we’ll walk in there and the new boss-guy will tell us we’re doing a fantastic job. Maybe he’ll be so impressed with the books here that he’ll tell us he’s going back to San Diego and leaving everything in my capable hands.”
Not that I know anything about the café’s new owner.
I’m off gossip.
I just happened to notice that his assistant’s email signature line indicated a San Diego address.
It’s not gossip if it’s in a signature line.
Jitterharrumphslike he’s calling me out on my plans to keep pretending everything is fine when it definitely is not.
“Don’t start,” I tell him. “If I wasn’t living in my own little happy bubble, there’s no telling if I would’ve remembered to feed you.”
Happymight be a stretch for my bubble, but the lies I’ve told myself have at least kept me functional.
No, Emma won’t hate you forever for not telling her that Chandler set Theo up to spend time in jail for a crime Chandler committed, and yes, she’ll talk to you again whenever she gets home from her solo honeymoon.
No, Chandler didn’t really sell the café to some stranger who knows nothing about Snaggletooth Creek and what Bean & Nugget means to both you and the town.
No, you didn’t spill every last secret you know to the kindest, sexiest, funniest stranger on the planet, and you don’t spend any time at all wondering if he hates you for the way you ghosted him.
I should not be dwelling on that last one.
I shouldn’t have thought itoncein the past nine days. Never mind thinking it oncehourlyfor the past nine days.
In the grand scheme of life problems, what happened toDukeafter I left Hawaii isn’t my concern. I’m not the dwelling-on-a-man-I-slept-with-once kind of gal.
And I left a note with the hotel staff to tell him I was alive when I asked them to take ice up to the room.
