“Yeah, well, that’s a Max nickname only.”
“Mm, I don’t know about that.” She releases my hand. “I’m partial to it.”
I shake my head and then put the truck in drive.
“Hey, Cole?”
“Hmm?” I glance over at her.
“Thank you for telling me.”
No, thank you, Storee, for coming back, for caring, for helping me smile again.
“Thanks for listening, Storee.”
Storee
“Sooo, this looks just like Chadwick’s Candy Shop,” I say quietly to Cole.
“Yeah, sore subject.”
“I don’t get it,” I say as we wait for Theodore Garvey to bring out the ingredients from the back of the kitchen. “Why would Mr. Chadwick send us here for lessons when clearly Theodore is stealing all his ideas from Mr. Chadwick?”
“I think it’s many things. One, Jefferson doesn’t have to deal with us. Two, people can see how Theodore’s is a rip-off. And three, if we fail, Jefferson has a reason to hate Theodore more.”
“Makes sense, I guess.”
Since Cole and I showed up together, they put us as a group. Jimmy and Ursula are in a group as well. Beatrice didn’t come—apparently, she knows what she’s doing—and there are two other couples who are here that seem to be out-of-towners, based on the number of photos they’re excitedly taking.
Just like Chadwick’s back in Kringle, the store is white with red accents. Red-and-white striped curtains in the window, a display case of candies that stretches across the back of the store, and even the logo is the same: an oval with red lettering. Whereas Chadwick’s advertises that his store was established back in the early 1900s, Theodore’s is the early 2020s. What a joke.
But despite all of that, it feels kind of odd, but also nice, being here with Cole. The conversation in his truck was heavy, and I’m sure it’s going to weigh on my chest for a very long time, because I wasn’t there for him when he needed a friend. And that’s not something I think I will ever get over.
But since we accepted each other’s apologies, things feel…different.
He’s not so uptight.
He’s smiling more.
Friendly.
Talkative.
It’s as if he was holding on to the past, what happened between us, and it was building and building into a dark cloud that hung over him, and the minute he let it out…it all dissipated.
It’s a relief.
“Have you done this before?” I ask him as I take in the copper bowl in front of us.
“Never,” he says. “But I heard it’s not easy, so good luck to us.”
“Great,” I say as Theodore reappears. His assistant brings trays with our ingredients and then hands us a recipe.
“There you have it,” he says. “I’ll be around if you have any questions.”
Uhhh…what?
What happened to the lessons? Does he really expect us to do this ourselves?
