Not when I know that black Mercedes means the café’s new owner has finally shown up to do whatever he intends to do with the one place that defines home and family to me more than anything else.
My gut clenches.
In the back seat, Jitter, my one-year-old Saint Bernard puppy, whines and strains against his doggy car seat.
He’s been doing that a lot since I got home from Hawaii.
Maybe I haven’t been as successful at denying my new reality and how much anxiety it’s giving me as I’d like to think.
“It’s okay,” I tell him.
He whines again.
“Yep. You’re right.” I take a swig of coffee out of my travel mug and look back at him again. “Today will likely suck, but we’ll get through it the same way we’ve gotten through everything else. And maybe it won’t be that bad. Maybe we’ll walk in there and the new boss-guy will tell us we’re doing a fantastic job. Maybe he’ll be so impressed with the books here that he’ll tell us he’s going back to San Diego and leaving everything in my capable hands.”
Not that I know anything about the café’s new owner.
I’m off gossip.
I just happened to notice that his assistant’s email signature line indicated a San Diego address.
It’s not gossip if it’s in a signature line.
Jitter harrumphs like he’s calling me out on my plans to keep pretending everything is fine when it definitely is not.
“Don’t start,” I tell him. “If I wasn’t living in my own little happy bubble, there’s no telling if I would’ve remembered to feed you.”
Happy might be a stretch for my bubble, but the lies I’ve told myself have at least kept me functional.
No, Emma won’t hate you forever for not telling her that Chandler set Theo up to spend time in jail for a crime Chandler committed, and yes, she’ll talk to you again whenever she gets home from her solo honeymoon.
No, Chandler didn’t really sell the café to some stranger who knows nothing about Snaggletooth Creek and what Bean & Nugget means to both you and the town.
No, you didn’t spill every last secret you know to the kindest, sexiest, funniest stranger on the planet, and you don’t spend any time at all wondering if he hates you for the way you ghosted him.
I should not be dwelling on that last one.
I shouldn’t have thought it once in the past nine days. Never mind thinking it once hourly for the past nine days.
In the grand scheme of life problems, what happened to Duke after I left Hawaii isn’t my concern. I’m not the dwelling-on-a-man-I-slept-with-once kind of gal.
And I left a note with the hotel staff to tell him I was alive when I asked them to take ice up to the room.
Jitter snorts again like he knows where my brain went.
Or possibly I need to let him out of the car so he can do his business and shake it all out one last time before we head inside to meet the new boss.
I’d been hoping to get in and start the coffee before Mr. Greyson Cartwright, the new owner of my family’s café, arrived for his first actual day in town and on the job, but even before five a.m., he’s beat me.
Not good.
For so many reasons.
After a week of regular communication from his personal assistant with instructions to keep the café running as usual for now, I had convinced myself that the new boss would forever be a distant presence. That I’d keep running the café the way I have since I got home from college. That I could pretend it was still in my family, and I could sign us up for a booth at the spring festival, for sponsoring the rodeo when it comes to town this summer, and for participating as a crew in the fun run this fall, and know that we wouldn’t be backing out because the new boss didn’t like it.
“Think positive, Sabrina,” I mutter to myself while I climb out of the car and into the cold morning, clutching my coffee tumbler as if it’s my lifeline. I let Jitter out of the back seat and walk with him to the edge of the parking lot, where he does his business like a good puppy while I finish caffeinating myself. Then I turn my back while he does the one thing I wasn’t fully prepared for when I decided I wanted a Saint Bernard.
He gives his massive, furry, still-not-fully-grown-even-at-a-hundred-pounds body a shake that makes his jowls flop and sends drool flying in all directions.
“Good boy,” I say. “Shake it all out. Good boy.”
We have an agreement.
He shakes it all out before we go into the café.
If he shakes it all out inside the café, he doesn’t get to come back.