But I’m quaking as I step into the dining room. I’m quaking so hard, I actually leave my coffee on the checkout counter for fear it won’t settle well, which is a fear I’ve had maybe three other times total in my entire life.
When I say I lived in this dining room while I was growing up, I mean it.
Until I was old enough to walk to my grandparents’ house after school, this was where I was if I wasn’t in school or at home with Mom. I colored on the walls under the booth closest to the register. I’ve sat at the tables in the picture window or at the stools along the bar and listened in on countless conversations while I pretended I was daydreaming or stared at the lake down below town. I helped Grandma convince Grandpa to replace all of the taxidermy animal heads with local artwork—no disrespect to Emma’s dad, who stuffed them all—and when Grandma passed away, I took over her job of picking the artists that we’d feature on the wood plank walls, which are currently lit up while the rest of the lights in the dining room are off.
I’ve changed dozens of lightbulbs and cleaned thousands of spiderwebs off the low-hanging metal dome light fixtures around the dining room. I’ve rewritten the chalk menu boards on the wall behind the bar quarterly like clockwork since I was fourteen. I convinced Grandpa to add the picnic-style tables that now take up half the dining room, and until the Great Chimney Incident That We Don’t Talk About right before I graduated high school, I’d refill the wood in the massive stone fireplace in the center of the room all winter long.
Now, it’s a gas fireplace, the flickering glow casting a dancing light across the easy chairs on this side of the stone structure.
They’re Grandpa’s preferred seats now whenever he comes into the café, but this morning, there’s someone else occupying one.
My new boss’s haircut strikes me as odd before I realize he’s wearing a beanie and I’m seeing the curled tips of his hair beneath the cuff. I notice his hands next. They’re large, and he’s rubbing them together near the fire as he leans his elbows on his knees. I can’t fully see his profile, as he’s turned away from me.
“Sit,” he says gruffly to me as I approach, making me nearly certain he’s watching me approach in the reflection of the dark windows.
This doesn’t feel like it’s shaping up to be a happy conversation.
Or maybe that’s lingering anxiety over everything that’s changed.
I brace myself, sit in the open easy chair, and reach deep for the Sabrina Sullivan charm that’s propelled me through every day of my life working here at Bean & Nugget.
I say charm.
Some people say bullheaded, take-charge attitude.
It’s a mix of both. And honestly, the past week, I’ve been completely faking all of the happy, everything’s fine things.
“Good morning, Mr. Cartwright. I’m Sabrina, the manager here. Welcome to Snaggletooth Creek, and thank you for what you’ve done for Bean & Nugget. I hope the wind didn’t make your travels too difficult yesterday.”
“You want to discuss my travels?” my new boss repeats to me, like I’ve just asked if he tried the new colon cleanser that at least seven customers were talking about yesterday.
A tiny alarm pings in the back of my brain in the space that’s reserved for you are missing a very important clue in this discussion.
“Oh, are you from nearby? I assumed you—never mind. Apologies. I’ll quit making assumptions.” I googled this man, but I hate the internet.
Hate it.
It never works right for me, and I don’t want to spy on people from behind a screen. I want to talk to them face-to-face. Find out their story. Who they are. What matters to them. Feel it for myself.
When I googled Greyson Cartwright, the first page of results included a blog about succulents, a recipe for cornbread, and random facts about ocean tides, because that’s how my search engine works.
I might’ve been born in the internet generation, but the internet isn’t having me.
When I added person at the end of my search for my new boss, I got a list of high school athletes, musicians, and pages and pages of Facebook profiles that I didn’t want to comb through, none of which looked anything like this bearded, stiff, apparently cold man in the shadows.
I can’t tell how old he is. What color his eyes are. If he’s passing judgment because of me already doing something wrong, or if there would be some clue about something making him uncomfortable that I’d notice if I could see him in the light.