This Spells Love(16)
“Oh hi, poodle.” Aunt Livi’s voice is its usual even timbre. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”
“Why wouldn’t I be okay?”
“Well, Mr. Zogaib called me this morning to tell me your store is still locked up tight. He said he saw at least three different customers try the door and leave. He was worried something happened to you.”
I lift my head from my hands and gaze around Dax’s store. My vision is slightly blurred. It could be the way my eyeballs were pressing into my palms just now. Or maybe something is medically wrong with me. Oh god! What if it’s a tumor?
“What store are we referring to,” I ask, “and why would I be opening it?”
Aunt Livi pauses. The only reason I know she’s still there is because I can hear her raspy breathing. “Your store, sweetheart, Wilde Beauty.”
At the name Wilde Beauty, my heart does this thing where it completely stalls for a good three seconds, then beats like crazy as if catching up. What Aunt Livi’s saying is impossible.
Now I know I must be dreaming.
I pinch my arm for a second time. It stings so badly that there’s definitely going to be a purple bruise there in four to six hours, but I need to be absolutely sure I’m awake.
Years ago, when I was in university getting my business degree, I took a course where I had to create a business plan. Wilde Beauty was the name of the clean beauty, health, and lifestyle boutique I dreamed about owning one day. My plan was to open it up, build a strong brand and supply chain, and then expand. My very own clean beauty empire. This was long before I got the reality check that adulting involves paying off student loans and doing my own taxes. I never told anyone that name. Ever. Even when I submitted the assignment, I chickened out and called it Hamilton Health and Wellness.
This new fact is like a neon warning sign surrounded by flashing lightbulbs. There’s something seriously wrong with the universe.
“Why don’t you come by for supper tonight,” Aunt Livi continues, oblivious to my inner dilemma. “Your sister is coming by to pick up a book I got in the donation bin this week. We could even make margaritas.”
Aunt Livi’s words make something in the back of my brain click. My sister. Margaritas. The book.
No. Noooooooooo.
It can’t be it.
I am not Bill Murray. Or Doctor Who. Or whatever the name was of Rachel McAdams’s character in The Time Traveler’s Wife.
My life is not a romantic comedy. It’s…well, it’s my life. Shit like this doesn’t happen to me.
It doesn’t happen, period.
“Uh…hey there.”
I jump a good two feet in the air, let out a very loud gahhhh, and drop my phone onto the polished concrete floor. Picking it up, I stare up at Dax, who stands in the doorway holding two steaming mugs.
“Sorry to startle you. Just wondering how you take your coffee?”
My sweet Dax. He’s staring at me with his big green saucer eyes and this crinkle in his forehead that only appears when he’s concerned about something. Like when he finds a baby bird flung from its nest or reads about natural disasters in the news.
That look, that crinkle, is aimed right at me. I’m the broken baby bird.
“You don’t know who I am, do you?” I’m trying very hard to keep the panic from my voice, but all of the potential causes I’m coming up with for his sudden bout of Gemma-related amnesia are not reassuring.
“Do you know who you are?” His voice is so deep and so kind that for a moment, I strongly consider diving into his arms, laying my head against his chest, and being that broken baby bird. But I can’t. I need to figure out what the hell is going on.
“The name Gemma doesn’t mean anything to you?”
Dax doesn’t blink. There isn’t even the teeniest tiniest flicker of recognition on his face.
“Gemma Wilde.” I try again. “Wilde with an e.”
He lifts his head. “Like the store down the street?”
“No! Actually…yes, I guess that is my store. But that wasn’t—”
Then it hits me. A possibility. A perfectly logical explanation for everything. And I cling to the idea like it’s a life raft. “Did Kiersten put you up to this? Because if she did, it’s way too fucked-up to be funny, and I need you to end this horrible trick now. Right now, Dax.”
So much for not sounding hysterical.
My nerves are so on edge that I feel like I could easily lift a Toyota Prius or collapse into a heap of ugly tears. It has to be a trick. It has to.
I stare down Dax as if the sheer will of my beliefs will make him open his mouth and confess everything.
He sets the two mugs down on the counter and pulls out his phone again. “Is there someone I can call for you? A family member?”
I need to fix this. Whatever we’ve done. I need to talk to my aunt and put everything back.
“Thanks for making coffee. I appreciate it more than you realize. But I need to go.”
* * *
—
I wander down James Street like I’m a character in a post-apocalyptic drama who’s just emerged from a bomb shelter: staggering, dazed, not entirely sure if the world around her is real or a hallucination brought on by one too many canned kidney bean dinners.
The thing that’s tripping me up the most is that everything is so ordinary. James Street is busy with its normal Tuesday morning pedestrian traffic. Little old ladies with their wire shopping carts on their way to the Jackson Square market. Tight-panted hipsters heading home after an all-night house party. Bleary-eyed parents pushing strollers. Lazy twentysomethings who refuse to buy a coffee maker when there’s a perfectly good coffee shop nearby.