Maggie closed her laptop and dropped her head to the wooden table with a groan. “There’s nothing. No jobs that are even remotely suited to a burned-out flight attendant living in a small town.”
Yes, she was being dramatic. And yes, she was doing it in the middle of Bloom. She didn’t care.
She yelped at a zing of pain through her upper arm and shot up, grabbing at her bruised skin. “Did you just pinch me?”
Polly lifted a brow. “When you’re being pathetic, drastic measures are necessary.”
When her own best friend was calling her out on it, it had to be bad.
Polly leaned over the table. “You were a flight attendant for over a decade. You have a squillion years of travel experience. You have a super-popular travel blog and tens of thousands of followers on your social media accounts. Do something with all that.”
She rubbed her arm, mentally calculating whether she could pinch her friend back without retaliation.
“You can’t,” Polly said, reading Maggie’s mind.
Maggie rolled her eyes before glancing back at the closed laptop. “I stopped posting on my travel blog and social media accounts after…”
“After that crazy person started stalking you.” Polly shook her head. “I hate that someone did that to you.”
“I do miss engaging with everyone though. And it took me so long to build the following I have.” She tapped the top of her laptop.
She knew so much about the travel world. And there’d sort of been this part of her that thought maybe she could help others plan their trips. The idea needed more thought though.
Maggie turned to glance around the café. God, this place was beautiful, with deep woods everywhere—the countertops, the tables and chairs, and the beams on the high ceilings.
And the smell, man, it was glorious thanks to the fresh flowers that filled a long table to the right of the entrance. Some were already in bouquets, others in pots of water ready to be wrapped. The hanging greenery from the roof also helped the aesthetic.
Then, there were the huge bookshelves on the back walls, with the comfortable leather sofas around them.
All of that in combination with the coffee and cake—Polly had built something amazing and unique.
Maggie turned back to her best friend. “I’m not like you, Polly. You envisioned this place when you were eighteen and worked three part-time jobs to make it happen.”
“You make it sound like I had all these skills that you don’t. That’s not true. I just had a vision and I made it happen. You can too.”
“I’m supposed to have a job and an income and a house by now.”
Polly scoffed. “Adulting is overrated.”
“Overrated, but necessary.” She frowned at the empty tables. “Where are all your customers? Ten is usually your busy period for breakfast and coffee.”
Polly scowled. “Basil offers fifty percent off his pancake stack with eggs and bacon on the first of every month. He steals all my regulars,thencomes by in the afternoon and gloats about how busy he was all day, serving thebest pancakes in the world.” She used air quotes for the last part. “They’re not the best in the world. They’regoodat best.”
Maggie’s lips twitched. They weren’t simply good, they were amazing. He did this thing where he sat a stack of thick pancakes in a pond of homemade honey-butter syrup with extra butter on top. The pancakes were the perfect combination of moist and fluffy, and if Maggie could eat them three times a day without turning into a pancake herself, she would.
“And even if they were that good,” Polly continued, “my iced wildflower lemonade and French toast are better. Plus, my café smells like wildflowers.”
“And his smells like butter and bacon.”
Polly gasped. “Whose side are you on?”
“The there’s-enough-business-for-everyone side.”
“He’s the one who makes this a competition. The other day, he saw me walking past his shop and yelled out, ‘Not busy, huh? Guess everyone’s in here.’”
Maggie bit back a laugh. Or at least she tried to. A small chuckle slipped out, and Polly’s eyes narrowed.
“I’m sorry.” She really was. Polly was easy to rile up, and as her best friend, it was Maggie’s job to soften the blows.
