“How’s the new owner?” Grandpa asks me as he studies the chessboard in the brightly lit community center in the middle of his retirement home complex.
I wince. Grumpy? Stone-cold? Vengeful? Yes, I did, in fact, get an email from a friend in construction who got a request for a quote to gut and re-imagine the entire interior of the building right as I pulled up at the senior center. “I’m saving my opinion for later.”
“That’s not like you,” his friend, Pearl, says. She’s in her seventies and retired from being the secretary to the mayor for fifty years, so she knows as much as I do about town.
I hitch a shoulder up. “Everyone else in town loves him so far.”
Pearl squints at me like she can ferret out that I slept with him in Hawaii, he’s pissed at me for ghosting him, and I noticed today that every time anyone said Chandler’s name, Grey would clench his fist and get this look on his face.
I actively ignore the squint and stare at the chessboard. Not really my game, but I can kind of tell that Grandpa’s losing.
“It’s hard to see Bean & Nugget in someone else’s hands,” I acknowledge. “I’m not exactly impartial here.”
“Should’ve come to me for money,” Grandpa says while he moves one of his pieces.
“I didn’t know until too late.”
“He should’ve come to me for money.”
He being Chandler.
And while I adore my grandfather—he’s the last of the really good men in the world, I swear he is—I don’t intend to insult my cousin in front of him.
“Is the new guy cute?” Pearl asks as she carefully selects a piece and moves it, knocking one of Grandpa’s pieces off the board.
Grandpa grunts while my entire body has an oh my god, yes, reaction to the question.
“What does that have to do with anything?” Grandpa asks.
“Sabrina’s single. If he’s cute—”
“You didn’t ask if he was single.”
“Oh, honey, if he’s not, that’s solvable.”
I force a laugh I don’t feel. “Miss Pearl, I am not seducing a man to get the family café back. Sorry, Grandpa. I have my lines.”
“This is war, Sabrina,” Pearl replies. “You need to use all of your feminine wiles on him.”
Grandpa grunts again and takes his turn.
“What are you doing?” Pearl says to him. “Are you trying to throw this game? If you didn’t want to play, you should’ve just said so.”
“If you wanted to play this game, you’d quit talking about my granddaughter’s wiles.”
Pearl looks at me.
I hold up my hands in surrender. “Okay. Okay. I’m clearly a distraction. I’m going. But here. I snuck some lemon scones out of the kitchen today.”
There’s nothing guaranteed to make this entire room of senior citizens move faster than the promise of my grandma’s scones. Jitter, who was happily panting on his back while getting all of the love from three different friends at once, whimpers, flops to his belly, and slinks behind a pink flower-patterned couch to get out of the way of the mad rush of senior citizens.
Poor puppy’s tired after a good day at doggy daycare.
“You pay for these?” Grandpa asks.
“Getting fired for stealing on the new boss’s first day wasn’t in my plans, so yes. I paid for them.”
One more old man grunt.
The only other time I’ve seen him grumpy was when Grandma died.
He’s hurting. Bean & Nugget was a part of his family too. He built it, and he lived long enough to see Chandler squander it.
Wonder if he heard too that the new owner is planning to completely change everything.
I hope not. But I know it’s a legitimate possibility. My friend told me he knew he wasn’t the only contractor in town who was contacted about getting a quote.
Other people will be talking about this soon enough.
I kiss Grandpa on his puffy white hair and squeeze his shoulder gently. “Don’t give up on me, okay? I won’t let anything happen to Bean & Nugget, even if it’s not ours anymore.”
“We have faith in you, Sabrina,” Pearl says.
I’m talking big talk, and I don’t know if there’s enough faith in the world for me to pull this off.
I know I need to apologize to Duke—to Grey, as he asked everyone else to call him today. I know I need to get on his good side. And I know I need to use every tool at my disposal to stop him from ruining Bean & Nugget.