“Hey, Bran! Come help me carry something,” she said as she jogged around to the back of her small SUV. I met her at the back hatch and glanced in at several plastic bins with lids. A chill washed over me, and I felt myself shivering from the inside. Nervous chills maybe.
I felt like I needed to say something to her about my dad. I wasn’t surprised James had told Garrett. I was sure James spoke to Andrew as well. He did it because he loved me and was trying to make sure that I was okay when he wasn’t right beside me. Andrew was like a brother to me, and Salem was like a sister to me. Salem had been through a lot of what I’d gone through while we were with Sebastian. There had always been an unspoken understanding between us.
“Thank you for your text,” I murmured as I watched her move around some of the plastic bins. She looked up at me, set a bin down, then hugged me.
“Okay, okay,” Salem said as we pulled apart. She spread her fingers wide and made a motion as if she were pushing air toward the ground. “I told myself I wasn’t going to ask or say anything unless you did first.”
She was sweet and caring. We would have been good friends in high school.
“Maybe in a bit,” I said as I looked toward the entrance of Three Brothers Coffee. I wasn’t about to have any kind of conversation like this in the parking lot of Andrew’s store. “What did you need me to carry?” I asked.
Salem smiled and thrust a plastic bin that was about the size of a shoe box toward me. I held on to it and then she put another one on top of it.
“Okay, you carry those two, and I’ll grab this one.” With a plastic bin under her arm, she took a step back to shut the hatch.
“Wait! Your keys and purse thingy!” I said as I stared at her keys.
“Oh! Thank you, Bran.” Salem grabbed her stuff, shut the hatch, then we walked side by side to the entrance. “And it’s a clutch, not a purse,” she explained.
“I know. That’s why I said ‘thingy.’ I didn’t just say purse. Adding the ‘thingy’ part fixed it.”
Two women were coming out of the store and held the door open for us.
“Thank you,” Salem said as she walked in ahead of me.
I nodded at the women and thanked them as well. The coffee shop was warm and smelled calming to me.
“Morning, Salem and Bran,” one of the women behind the counter called out to us.
“Hey, morning,” I said and gave a chin nod since my arms were full.
“Morning, ladies,” Salem said to the employees as she walked toward the table that Andrew usually used when he was working on scheduling or other business-related tasks. “This table will work.”
I set the plastic boxes down beside hers and unzipped my black hoodie with the Three Brothers Coffee logo on it. Salem and I were working on the displays in the front of the stores. This week we’d put out the new Socks and Coffee mug line and restocked the logo mugs, tumblers, and bags of flavored coffee beans. Tomorrow we were supposed to start all of this again at the store down in Huntington Beach. I anticipated we’d carpool since it was so far.
“What are we doing today?” I asked her as she opened the lids and set them under the bins. The contents of the bins appeared to be art or craft supplies.
“We’re going to make these and put them on display.” Salem held up a glittery purple letter S that had a blue and purple fuzzy ball attached and some silver star charms. She took hold of the hardware so I could see all of it.
“What are they?” I asked. “Keychains?”
“Not just keychains, Bran. They’re super popular bag tags.”
“Bag tags?”
“Yeah. All the kids in high school and probably younger have them. Plus, lots of college kids have these kinds of things on their bags and backpacks,” she explained. She was very energetic talking about them, so I made sure I was patient and didn’t rain on her parade. “But it’s not just kids. People put them on bags to take to the gym or even tote bags when they go shopping. It’s just a way to dress up their things.” She looked up at me excitedly and wide eyed.
I reached for a light brown card that appeared to be the logo for the keychains and bag tags. It read “Salem’s Stuff” and had a circle around the name with sketched flowers. This was her line of, well, stuff. She’d been talking to me about starting her own line of accessories and crafts for a while now, so it was great to see that she was finally making it happen.
“Salem, is this your logo?” Everything about my dad flew from my mind as I focused on what my friend had done.
“Yeah, what do you think?”
“It’s awesome! I’m so happy for you!” I hugged her and then looked at her logo card again when we pulled apart.
“I think I’m going to change from this craft paper to a bright white paper,” she said.
“Yeah? I kind of like this paper. It gives it a vintage vibe,” I added.
