"Oh, Snowdrop! The promise of new beginnings and warmer days," Crystal said with a clap of her thin hands.
"I moved to Florida a few years ago and hated most of it. Spring is my favorite season, which I haven't seen in too long. I own a cafe in Orlando that is pretty successful; I'm magic with coffee. I look great in hats and last year I got sudden onset insomnia and I have hot flashes like I'm a sinner sitting in church. Oh, and if I start crying it lasts the length of a movie now. You missed the earlier showing."
"Ah, the change before the change!" Tilly said. "I put on deodorant six times a day. And I've gained weight without any reason."
"Those fucking hot flashes are no joke," Jen added. "I'm already a brash woman, but these mood swings, ooooh!" she said shaking her head andtsking.
"Right?" Eloise asked scooting to the edge of her seat. "Last week a customer complained that one of my baristas was wearing an inappropriate shirt showing too much cleavage. Andwithout pause, I picked up the soda gun and sprayed him in the chest with soda water."
Bursts of laughter filled the room.
"And when he started opening his mouth to say something else I sprayed him in the face to stop the words. Was dangerously close to waterboarding him."
Everyone was in fits of laughter, hands slapping the kitchen island, Kelsea leaned into Eloise's side, her body shaking.
"I never would have done something so irrational a year ago, I swear," she said wiping a happy tear from under her eye.
"Uh, yes you would have," Ursula argued with a wide grin.
She conceded with a shrug.
"Sounds like that man should have been sprayed with a soda gun years ago if he thought what he said was rational. Men," Crystal said shaking her head. "Blaming women for years for being temptresses and the whole world glossing over the fact that in the words of their blame, they are admitting their lack of self-control."
"Did the woman showing too much cleavage feel embarrassed?" Kelsea asked, her question holding the kind of curiosity that sits inside of a woman for years because she has been too afraid to ask.
"A little, but I gave her all the tips from that day and told her to go buy something scandalous to wear if it made her feel good. I just promoted her to my assistant manager and she's managing the cafe for now."
"And do you have plans to stay here for a while? Because personally," Jen said, laying a perfectly manicured hand over her left breast where her heart beat, "I would like to invite you to join our coven."
"I second that," Tilly said.
"Third," Kelsea and Crystal said over each other with smiles.
Her friend looked at her, thousands of past looks and smiles and secrets that they had shared in the new lines around her eyes. "I fifth."
They lifted their goblets together in another toast and as Eloise's glass clinked with the others, she wondered what if she stayed? What if she gave up the hot, stickiness of a place she never particularly fit in, and the place that held a darkness that had forever changed her?
What if she found herself again in a place that smelled like burning leaves and bonded women's laughter?
"I think I'll stay a while, and I would be honored to join your coven."
Laughter and conversation were braided together over the next hour while they ate soup and bread with honey sea salt butter. Then they finished the evening in the living room with a popping fire and herbal tea that tasted of vanilla, chamomile, and bourbon. Sitting like this, splayed over couches and chairs and the warm rug with women, it was a gentle lapping of delicacy and strength at its most honest, and it reminded Eloise of what she had been missing for so long.
The women had left two hours ago and Ursula and Eloise had been catching up as the fire spit and popped, dying down slowly. They talked about what they had been up to, how Casper had come to be Ursula's loyal sidekick, Eloise's favorite part of owning the shop. But they danced around the pivotal things. Until silence and vanilla mixed with remorse and sadness and the smell of blooming peach blossoms.
"I shouldn't have told you to go. I shouldn't have said most of what I said to you that night at my house," Ursula's words were said to her, but her eyes were staring into the fire.
Eloise watched her friend's delicate profile, the words sinking into her skin. The truth was, she had forgiven Ursula a long time ago.
"I shouldn't have listened. I was being stubborn and I gave you an ultimatum, like you couldn't keep a friendship with me if you stayed with him. That isn't what a friend does."
Ursula turned her face, her eyes looked black in the dim light and the flickering of the fire danced over her pale skin. She rested her cheek on her bent knees.
Ursula laughed without humor. "He despised you. And he didn't hide it."
Eloise smiled, wickedness in the corner of her mouth. "I despised him too, and I didn't do a very good job at hiding it."
"I understood why you had to leave. You were hurting. You didn't know how..." she paused when Eloise closed her eyes against the words she knew were coming. It wasn't just a man that came between these sweet friends causing Eloise to flee.
