Emma: *grumpy emoji* Sorry. I dislike being rude. But we’re in a very uncomfortable position and I don’t want to see you.
Unknown Number: I’ve been properly chastised by my sister-in-law for making the assumption that I was doing you a favor by disappearing without explanation or a way for you to contact me directly. The timing wasn’t intentional. I swear. I meant to be there in the morning, but someone showed up and insisted I leave, and if I hadn’t, things probably would’ve been even worse.
Emma: We might have different definitions of “worse.”
Unknown Number: I understand. If you need me, you can reach me here anytime.
14
Emma
After seven yearsof gaslighting by my former fiancé, if there’s anything I dislike more than mind games, I don’t know what it is.
Which is why I’m charging into Bee & Nugget, Sabrina’s café, after dropping Bash off with my dad for the day on Wednesday.
She’s changed a few things since we were kids coming here after school, back when her grandparents ran what was then called Bean & Nugget.
Along with the slight name adjustment, now there are plexiglass beehives in a third of the picture windows. Not the windows with the view of the lake and the mountains, but the windows facing the side street and the extra window that she and Grey put in between the café and the art gallery next door. There’s also a giant fiberglass and metal bee drinking coffee hung on the outside corner of the building.
All essentially gifts for Grey after he saved the café from a money problem—also my ex’s fault—right around the same time I got pregnant with Bash. They serve locally-brewed kombuchafrom the kombrewchery that Zen runs on the other end of Main Street. The hours have expanded since we were kids too, and the café is open for dinner now, instead of closing after the lunch rush.
But it’s mostly the same old mountain building with the massive stone fireplace in the middle, wooden walls hung with local art, the bakery counter full of croissants and muffins and occasionally lemon scones, and the bar along the back wall.
It also has the same staff who have been here forever working the morning shift. As soon as they spot me, they wave Sabrina out from the kitchen.
“What is this supposed to mean?” I say, shoving my phone in her face over the bar.
Sabrina lifts her brows, which perfectly match her curly copper hair, and studies the last message Jonas sent me after our short, intermittent communications over the past few days.
He’d text. I’d sit on it. I’d eventually text him back.
He’d reply nearly immediately.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
And four days later, I need help interpreting all of it.
I have him labeled in my phone now asRandom Stalkerin case I die and anyone reads my messages, but I know Sabrina knows who it is.
She looks back to the kitchen and bites her lip before turning her green eyes back to me. “Where’d you park?”
“That’s an ominous question.”
“We can’t talk in the kitchen.”
“Is he in the kitchen?”
She doesn’t answer.
Instead, she trots out from behind the bar, her pregnant belly hidden today under her apron, and grabs my hand. “C’mon. We’ll sit in mine. Back in a bit, Willa.”
“I’ll bring coffee,” Willa calls back. “Decaf, of course.”
Sabrina’s five two on a normal day. Five six on a good day in heels. And she knows all that goes on in Snaggletooth Creek.
“Jonas is still in town, climbing the walls with regrets, which isnotme trying to convince you to forgive him and talk to him. It’s just what I was told,” she says as soon as we’re tucked into her small SUV. It smells faintly like dog and more strongly like honey.
“Told by who?”
