June
“Good sales today. Many regulars and a pretty good traffic of new faces,” Rio said as soon as I got behind the counter and tied my sage green, organic cotton apron with my store’s logo on it. “The campaign works!” she added.
“Frances said Wayford was good, too.” I smiled at the last customers, who were wrapping up their shopping.
I had arrived in Riviera View half an hour before closing, after battling Saturday’s traffic on the 101 from San Francisco for hours. I usually liked long drives. They gave me a chance to quietly think; the views swooshing by the windows as I flew down a freeway freed my mind, resulting in a flow of ideas for new products and marketing. Sometimes, I just loved singing out loud with the radio, dancing in my seat.
“I told you so! Ava Delaney knows what she’s doing,” Rio said with hardly any stutter. As my most veteran employee, more a friend now than an employee, Rio was deeply invested in our success. She often wished she could afford to invest some money and become my partner. I would gladly welcome that.
We worked well together, and I fully trusted her. With my sisters both not exactly available—Tammy had three kids, a husband, and our mom living with her; and January had her own set of issues to deal with, besides the fact that she and I had drifted apart—Rio had become a surrogate sister to me. We used to make fun of ourselves—the stutterer and the type A doing social media marketing for the masses. That was why we had decided to hire an expert to handle our social media.
Ava Delaney was originally from Riviera View and now lived in Wayford, so she knew how to target both populations effectively. I knew her brothers, Jordan and Luke, too, from the days Riviera had been a smaller town.
“How was San Francisco?” Rio asked, slightly stumbling on the beginning of the last word. She had suffered from stuttering all her life, but years of speech therapy and her kick-ass attitude helped her get it under control most of the time.
“It was good.” I hadn’t disclosed the real reason I had to take the day off, which in itself was a rarity.
“How was your friend from college?” she pushed.
“After the shop talk, we didn’t have much else in common,” I further lied about the imaginary friend who was in town for a day.
“Is she practicing?” Rio asked.
“Not anymore.” Like me, my imaginary friend’s dream to become a doctor had been replaced with the more affordable option of alternative medicine courses.
After the last customer left, Rio and I locked up. Then Frances, from the Wayford branch, sent me an update about the day’s totals.
“Wanna come up for dinner and a movie?” I asked Rio. I didn’t feel like being alone right now. “I can make my killer sauteed garlic green beans and sesame,” I added in a luring tone.
“Can’t. Sorry. I promised Oscar I’d be back for dinner.” Oscar was an old family friend whom Rio was keeping an eye on. She was from Blueshore, a town half an hour from Riviera, and had moved into his house after breaking up with the boyfriend she had lived with for several years. Her brother was Oscar’s grandson’s best friend, so when that friend had called him from England to help him with his grandad, he had offered it as a temporary arrangement. But the house was big enough, and Oscar was stubbornly independent and loved having her around so much that he had asked her to stop looking for a place.
Her older brother’s best friend, Owen Wheaton, was a rather famous soccer player in Europe. I didn’t know much about sports, whether American or European, but Rio kept me updated. At thirty-five, she was managing my shop, creating some of the lifestyle products, and keeping me sane. Most days.
My studio apartment was just above the shop on Ocean Avenue. Back when I had bought the commercial floor, it had been a bonus to get the living space above it. I thought it’d be a temporary solution until I’d get the shop fully operating and find a bigger place to live, hopefully, a family home for a family I’d have. But ten years later, I was still living there, alone. I couldn’t complain, though. Riviera View’s main street and how it led to the promenade and the beach was a favorite of mine, and I had turned my studio into a beautifully designed, cozy haven.
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I collapsed on the sofa in my living room that was separated from my bedroom and kitchen by only a few feet and through the clever arrangement of furniture and accessories that framed each designated space. Instead of aSeinfeldbinge on Hulu, I browsed to findGreen Card. The last time I had watched this movie was when January had needed a place to stay and had spent a few days on my sofa bed. Her words then hit me.
“You have no idea what it feels like to be always dropping the ball.”
“At least you came out to play,” I had muttered.
As a single mother, my sister’s life was complicated, but she had a life, which was more than I could say about myself in the days I cared to admit it.
“You’d never drop the ball, June.”
“How do you know I haven’t?”
I wasn’t ready to tell her how immensely I had fucked up; she was dealing with her own financial pitfall and, back then, I had still been hopeful that I could remedy my situation.
Ironically, she had texted earlier today to let me know she had picked up her stuff from my place and that she was going to stay with a friend in Wayford, promising to drop my key at the shop.
“Wayford, huh?” I suspected who she was staying with. He was an interesting choice.
“It’s roomier there,” she replied.
“This family has secrets. Tell me when you feel you can,” I texted, hoping she would remember later how I hadn’t pushed her and wouldn’t demand I share thingsIwasn’t ready to share.
