7
Grey
It’s cold and dark when Zen and I finally leave the café and head to the townhouse we’re renting for the next few weeks. I’m hungry, tired, and in need of three solid days without people around.
Did not think through my stamina for peopling with strangers when I made the decision to buy and destroy Chandler Sullivan’s café.
And having Sabrina there until mid-afternoon didn’t help anything either. I could use an extra four days to process her reaction to me being her new boss.
I’m still irritated that she ghosted me in Hawaii. And knowing she’s related to Chandler has made me wary. So did her absolutely chipper attitude all day long.
I pieced together enough of what she told me in Hawaii with what I saw of the viral video to assume her desire to do good deeds that night had everything to do with her bride-friend’s wedding imploding. I also completely believe she was blindsided by Chandler selling me the café.
But no matter how nice she was today, I still don’t trust her. Not when she made it abundantly clear that night that she deals in people’s secrets.
“Do you want your phone back, or do you want the highlights?” Zen asks as I pull out of the Bean & Nugget parking lot, taking my thoughts in a direction that probably isn’t any better.
Other than when I took off for Hawaii, intent on ruining Chandler Sullivan’s wedding day, they’ve been holding my phone more or less since the news broke among our family that I walked away from my own research and development lab.
How soon will you sell it? is the primary question I’ve gotten.
Not are you coming home?
Not I heard about what Vince did. Are you okay?
Not even guess it’s a good thing you can afford to start over.
It’s just how soon will you sell it? as if selling a lab is worth anything once the primary research is off the table as an asset in the sale.
I know what they want to know.
How much more money does Felicia’s lawyer need to demand you send her now that you’re disposing of another asset that you owned while you were married to her?
And I know why they want to know.
Because we are on Team Felicia and think you’re an asshole for divorcing her so we want to see her get every dime she can from you so you know what a mistake you made.
“How bad was it today?” I ask.
“Twenty-three texts from Aunt Camille about FroYo Fucklebutt’s birthday party, three from the piece of shit formerly known as your BFF who wants you to sign more papers so he can get utilities restored to the lab, a call from your attorney reiterating that you will not be signing more papers for that shit under any circumstance, and three calls from the real estate agent you picked to sell the other two Bean & Nugget locations. She thinks one location will go quickly and the other will be a pain in the ass.”
I grimace in the dark. Chandler’s desire to run a café empire in the mountains wasn’t his downfall, but that’s what he told people. And the fact that the original Snaggletooth Creek location is doing well is almost insult on top of injury.
Speaks highly of Sabrina’s management skills and everything she said today about how much she loves her family’s café.
The light off my phone glows in the dark beside me under Zen’s management while I follow the car’s GPS instructions out of downtown. “You also missed a call from Mimi.”
I sit straighter in the driver’s seat. “Mimi texted and called?”
“Yep.”
“Is she okay?”
“Other than being worried about you for going nearly radio silent on her, yes. She wasn’t satisfied with your response to her text.”
I wince.
“I told her you were a secret-keeping butthead who didn’t deserve her concerns or to hear her voice today,” Zen says with full sassitude.
They did not, or I’d be talking to Mimi right now and we both know it. “How’d she sound?”
“Tired.”
“More tired or less tired?”
“The same tired.”
Mimi weathered my grandfather dying just fine, but unexpectedly losing her twin sister a few months ago was a blow. It’s been hard to watch. And yes, I know a ninety-something-year-old woman should be expected to die at some point, but my aunt was in good health. Active and fun and spry for being in her nineties.
“Do I need to fly back to see her?” I hate going home to Connecticut. I’d rather gnaw off my own foot. But for Mimi, I would.
“You need to not be within three hundred miles of Aunt Camille until after Ficklerella’s birthday party. Or possibly ever again.”