When they were done, I wrapped each in brown butcher paper and tied them with baker's twine. The cardstock tags that were tied onto each tasty package were letterpressed with a watercolor design of that particular sandwich and a quirky but inspirational quote.
Then Jemma and I loaded the boxes of sandwiches into my bike trailer and hauled them to Ida's General Store. I huffed as I pushed my bike, dragging the heavy cart behind it. I wiped the sweat out of my eyes. It wasn't even nine in the morning, and it was already boiling.
"Hey, look!" Jemma said as we turned on a side street. "That building's done. They have all the paper out of the windows." We stopped to peek inside.
As I looked through the windows, my heart sank. "It's a gallery."
"It's not as nice as yours," Jemma said as we peered inside. Except I knew she was lying. It was a beautifully decorated gallery with gorgeous art.
"What am I going to do?" I moaned. "This is turning into one of the worst days of my life." A woman came out of the back room.
"I think she sees us," Jemma said and started to pull me away.
I knew she did. The tall, waifish woman with the perfectly straight blond hair sneered when she recognized me. There was a real boss babe, in her designer clothes and mile-high stilettoes. She even walked like she ate men for lunch.
"McKenna?" I asked when she opened the door. "What are you doing in Harrogate?"
My nemesis from art school stood framed in the doorway, hand on her hip, towering over me. She had made art school miserable by sabotaging my work, making hurtful comments about anything I produced, and spreading rumors about me. When I moved home, tail between my legs, ego stinging from the failure of not making it in the New York City art scene, my only consolation was that I would never have to see McKenna again.
Yet here she was. Scratch what I said before—this wastheworstday of my life.
"If it isn't Hazel." McKenna flipped her glossy hair.
"Why aren't you in Manhattan? Why do you have to be here?"
She inspected her perfectly manicured nails and smirked. "Harrogate is a happening place. There are lots of people with money from Svensson PharmaTech here."
"Oh, of course, we should have known—you're here for a Svensson billionaire," Jemma shot at McKenna. My friend had been there through the years when McKenna's nasty comments had caused me to call Jemma, crying, from the bathroom.
"Unfortunately the Svenssons here are a little out of your league," my friend continued. "They like women with souls, not plastic harpies."
McKenna looked down her perfect nose at Jemma.
"Billionaires like the Svenssons want women they can show off at parties, not ones who serve the food at the parties." She looked pointedly at the cart of sandwiches. "Are you a caterer now, Hazel?"
"She owns a café," Jemma said. "And it's very successful!"
That was an oversell, but hey, thanks for sticking up for me, Jemma.
"Do you?" McKenna sneered and looked me up and down from the top of my frizzy ponytail to the rolled-up hems of my white overalls that were admittedly a little snug on the boob and hip areas. "You do know you're supposed to sell the food, not eat all of it?" With that she swept back inside the gallery.
Feeling dejected, I pushed the cart after Jemma.
"Don't worry. The Art Café is so much better than her little gallery," Jemma assured me.
"Except it's not," I said sadly. I had done what I could with the café, but my real vision was exactly what McKenna had done to her gallery. I wanted those pristine white walls, the impeccably restored stamped-tin ceiling, the terrazzo floor, the minimalist paintings like bright spots of lipstick on an attractive man's shirt collar.
Stop. You are not thinking about Archer.
"I know what you're thinking," Jemma said.
"I'm not thinking about Archer!" I shrieked.
"Whoa, that was not where I was going," Jemma said, "but good to see your libido hasn't completely shriveled up and crawled into a ditch to die. I was just saying you have to put McKenna out of your head. Haters are the reminder that you're doing something right."
I tried to relax and only channel positive energy into the universe when Jemma and I rolled the cart into Ida's General Store. Ida hustled over and hugged us.
"My favorite artist and my favorite shop girl!"
