Noah’s hardened face softens, and he drops his arms from his chest, settling his hands on his hips. He exhales heavily. “All right. Fine. You can move the furniture. Decorate however you want. Just don’t ... don’t touch the hockey stuff, all right?”
“Wouldn’t dream of it, Bubs.”
His perpetual scowl deepens at Izzy’s old nickname for him. “And especially don’t touch the puck, all right? That’s the puck I got when I—”
“Scored a hat trick in game seven of the Stanley Cup Final against Detroit to secure the Cup—a five-to-four double-overtime win,” Izzy and I finish simultaneously, having heard this story countless times over the years as if we hadn’t been there to watch it.
We exchange a grin; then I shoo him away.
He throws his hands up as he backs toward the bar. “Fine. I’ll be over here if you need me.”
“I could use another Face Off,” Izzy tells him once he turns around.
He lifts his hand, signaling he heard her request for the green apple cider, then disappears behind the counter.
We plop onto the sofa, and I pull my phone from my pocket, scrolling through the list of ideas I have jotted down as Izzy rattles off her own.
“We don’t have much time to turn this place around,” I say when she finally takes a breath. “I guess it’s a good thing your best friend is a miracle worker, huh?”
“Is that what you’re calling yourself now? What was the last review you got?Set my wedding on fire. Do not recommend.Or something like that.”
Even though he’s right, Noah’s words don’t sting any less. I’m not a miracle worker, and my failed weddings prove that.
But you can be. You can turn it around. You can make it right with Izzy’s wedding.
I tell myself that over and over as Noah sets fresh ciders in front of me and Izzy—a fresh cider I didn’t ask for. He can act like a big grump all he wants, but he did that out of the kindness of his heart.
He pulls my jacket from his shoulder and sets it beside me with my purse. “Keep your shit together. You never know what weirdos are lurking around.”
“But this is Port Harbor.”
“Exactly,” he says with a disbelieving huff before returning to his post behind the counter.
He’s only semi-joking. Or at least I assume so. Port Harbor does have its fair share of weirdos. We might be a small and close-knit community, but a few people here are just ... odd. They don’tminglewell, to put it nicely.
Like Mr. Garrison, who has been yelling at kids to get off his lawn for the last sixty years even though the place is littered with trash and old cars. Dale down at the hardware store who used to be a clown and still occasionally shows up to work with his old red nose and makes balloon animals for customers.
And, of course, our strangest of all ... Peaches.
She’s our resident hippie, and while she’s a hoot half the time, the last thing you can do is trust your bag around her. Not because she’ll rob you—she would never—but you can expect her to dump a cat in there. She has a hoard of them and always tries to get residents to adopt one. She slipped one in my bag six months ago while I was working on the Stewart wedding, which is how I got Beans.
Peaches is lucky I’ve been lonely lately and can use Beans’s company. I can’t imagine my life without her now, even if she drives me up the wall half the time with her need to “make biscuits” on me at two in the morning when I’m dead asleep.
“He’s right. I stopped at the coffee shop this morning and heard that Peaches managed to palm off two more cats just this week,” Izzy says.
“Are we ever going to question this woman about where she’s getting these cats? Because they can’t all come from her.”
“Who knows?” She takes a sip of her cider. “Anyway, what’s on that list of yours?”
“I’m so glad you asked.”
I launch into my ideas to make the property wedding-ready, including rehabbing the barn and creating a space for the wedding party to get set. I also have a contingency plan in case it rains—this isthe Pacific Northwest, after all—and my proposal for what to do with the animals.
“While I think Tootsie would make an incredible wedding guest,” I say, “I don’t think the other attendees would agree.”
“I don’t see why not. She’s so cute. I mean, look at her.”
Izzy nods toward the windows, and I turn to find the Houdini-like chicken out of her enclosure and strutting up to the taproom. I can guarantee this isn’t the first time she’s done so this week. She always finds ways to escape, even when she definitely shouldn’t.
