“Do I need to fly you back to see her?”
“And leave you solo with the vultures here? No. Only one woman asked if you were single today. You know what that means?”
“I’m unattractive and moody?”
“They’re talking about you behind your back.”
“Don’t care.”
“Yes, you do. Your shoulders just hunched up to your ears.”
“It’s the cold.” It truly is stupidly cold here. I wasn’t prepared for that, even if I told myself I was.
“Or maybe it’s that they were so very, very, very nice to both of us today, and now you’re grumpy because you don’t know if they’re only being nice to your face, or if they’re actually good people that we can trust to help make your vengeance dream turn into something beautiful.”
I slide a glance at them in the dark.
“Yes, yes, I’m the tornado calling you a thunderstorm,” they say. “But I’m not wrong.”
They are indeed not wrong. “Sabrina Sullivan runs this town. She could’ve told them all to manipulate us so we don’t change a thing.”
“Before or after you slept with her?”
“I don’t know.”
“Makes you want to light the whole place up with dynamite, doesn’t it?”
In response, I blow out a slow breath that coats the windshield in a light sheen of fog. “It makes me glad there’s wine and a puzzle waiting at the townhouse.”
“I’d tell you to call Mimi, but it’s past her bedtime. Also, I don’t think you’ll call her until you can look her straight in the eye and tell her you bought this place because it was a long-standing dream to be a mountain-kombucha-bar man and not that you bought it because you want to destroy a man’s life and needed something to actually turn it into.”
“She’d understand.” I am absolutely not calling her until I decide what I want to do with the rest of my life now that it’s shown me, again, that research into how to save the bees might be my first true love, but it’s not what I’m supposed to do.
As for what I’ll do if I discover this kombucha bar isn’t the path for me, I’ll sell it.
After it’s no longer recognizable as the café Chandler grew up with. “I found a place to get a new SCOBY so we can start brewing kombucha samples.”
“Are you picking it up or am I?”
“I’ll get it tomorrow.”
We pull into the parking lot of the little townhouse neighborhood, and Zen steers me to the correct row of parking garages across the street from the line of brown, two-story townhouses where our unit is located.
“Do you remember the code for the door?” I ask them after we’ve parked and pulled out the rest of our luggage that we didn’t bring in with us when we arrived late last night. They let us in, and I haven’t looked at the reservation.
“Does a duck wear shoes?”
“Can you get the code for the door again please?”
They flash me a grin in the dimly lit parking area. “Ducks totally wear shoes. Grab my bag too. I’ll go get the door.”
I fling Zen’s backpack over my shoulder and grab a rolling suitcase with each hand. They’re already across the street from the parking garage to the front door of the townhouse. And I’m moving as swiftly as I can to follow.
It’s fucking cold out here. Hope the heater’s set above seventy.
Should’ve sent them to bring in the rest of our bags hours ago.
I’m nearly to the sidewalk in front of our unit when a laugh at the next door over catches my ear.
“You’re so silly, puppy,” a little girl says while a massive dog licks her face.
“Jitter, be nice,” a very familiar female voice says somewhere on the other side of the dog.
And even though I know that dog, and I know that voice, my chest tightens in undeniable desire.
Not for Sabrina, I tell myself.
But for the life she has.
The dog. The little girl shrieking with laughter. The lights glowing inside the house.
Home and family the way you see it in the movies.
I scowl to myself, put my head down, take three more steps, and everything goes topsy-turvy.
Ice.
I hit ice.
I hit ice, and my feet slip from under me. The bag on my shoulder drops, throwing me more off-balance. I grip the two suitcases, but both are on wheels, and both go in opposite directions, which leaves me landing hard on one hip and an elbow at the snow-covered curb.
“Uncle Grey,” Zen says.