Vote Then Read: Volume I

by Carly Phillips

  And the longer I stayed sober, the more I realized how alcohol had affected me even when I wasn’t drinking - which wasn’t often.

  It shorted my fuse and grew the bomb. It made me distrust those around me. It made nothing I did good enough. And it made me unforgivably vengeful toward two people I loved. It made a situation that didn’t involve me become a personal attack, a breach of loyalty. Regardless of what I told Blake about my feelings - about why I did what I did - there was no true excuse for the asshole I’d become. There would never be.

  A man is no better than the pain he’s caused his loved ones.

  And I’d caused a lot of pain.

  Larry’s old, not-so-wrinkled eyes stared hard at me. I knew there was a cup of espresso to be had at his shop when this was over.

  Pushing eighty, Larry owned Ocean Roasters, the town’s only coffee shop. It had been in his family for four generations, and the legacy his family built for this town was the reason why he was its grumpy, stringent king. Beneath the rugged, no-nonsense exterior was a heart of gold; it was just heavily buried under strong cups of coffee, four glazed donuts, and a face which had weathered war, and far too many losses to tell.

  “I’m happy for her,” I went on. “But I almost cost her that happiness. And when she asked when I was coming home, that was when I thought about having a drink. It was just for a split second, because she doesn’t know; she doesn’t know just how much of a failure I was,” I confessed, my fingers thumbing over the rubbed-worn five-month chip I’d transformed into a bracelet. The thought had been fleeting – a shadow of the crutch I’d once relied on. But leaving it to the shadows is what would allow it to fester. “But, I didn’t. So, today, I’m grateful to have made it to one-forty-nine.”

  Everyone clapped for me. Everyone but Larry - the worsening arthritis in his hands made it hard, especially on rainy days like this. The group’s support filled the hole of inadequacy where I used to dump oceans of alcohol even though it never made a difference.

  After the hour was over, I waited outside the small community church until I felt a hand on my shoulder.

  “You going back?” Larry asked as he came up behind me, letting me steady him as we walked down the front steps and began the few-block trek down Ocean Avenue, the main drag in Carmel Cove, toward Roasters.

  My jaw ticked and then released with a sigh. “For the wedding, of course. But now?” I shook my head. “I don’t think so. I’m not ready.”

  Translation: I’m not good enough yet.

  Two weeks after the tour ended… two weeks after everything had worked out for Blake and Zach, I told everyone – family and friends – that I was heading out west for a change in scenery and a new job for a little while.

  Only there was no job. There was barely a destination. And there definitely wasn’t a choice.

  I didn’t tell anyone about my addiction because it wasn’t their problem to fix; it was mine. So, I left them with the impression I needed a change and some space after what happened on tour – that I needed a break, though the truth was that I was already broken.

  It was one more lie, but it was the only one I didn’t regret.

  Something happened to me the night I found out about the two of them. Something that I couldn’t explain – though ‘the beginning of the end’ had a poignant ring to it.

  I’d continued to fall after that night, only harder and faster. Reprehensible choices. Disgusting lies. But it was when I stood at Blake’s hotel door after my sister had ripped me a new one that my eyes met Taylor’s and the expectation held in those green spheres was both familiar and a slap to the face; she looked at me like she needed me to remember how to be a better man.

  Like she could still see that better man.

  I shuddered. The memory of it still unnerving for reasons I couldn’t explain.

  Funny how some people forget that rock bottom and the moment things begin to look up are one and the same.

  I didn’t stop drinking cold-turkey. Guilt wasn’t a magic pill for sobriety. But the more I tried not to touch any liquor over the next few weeks, the more I realized the life I lived and the industry I was involved in would make what was necessary, impossible. I didn’t know what I needed in order to get better, but I knew I wasn’t going to be able to find it there.

  “Your usual?” Larry asked over the steam of his still-manual espresso machine which had survived through every generation of Ocean since they opened.

  I nodded, waving to a few friendly faces already inside.

  “Hey, Larry,” Josie, the owner of the Carmel Bakery down the street, sing-songed as she strolled in for her afternoon coffee. Kind eyes and a round frame said she enjoyed sampling her pastries just as much as she enjoyed baking them – a fact she would cheerfully admit to.

  Ocean Roasters was a daily stop for most of the locals - and not just for coffee. Everyone knew Larry, and Larry knew everything. I hadn’t been here long, but it was long enough to learn coffee meant community in this town – and Larry was the heart of it.

  “Mornin’, Josie,” Larry greeted her with a weathered smile, shuffling about to make her usual large, half-decaf coffee. “You want to look at photos?”

  Larry had served in the war with Josie’s dad, only her father hadn’t come home. They’d been good friends, so Larry had looked out for Josie ever since. And one of their frequent pastimes when she stopped in for coffee was Larry would pull out an older-than-the-Bible photo album and they’d look at pictures of Josie’s dad from before and during the war while Larry recounted old tales. I was sure she’d heard the same stories hundreds of times by now.

  But a good memory of a loved one never grows old.

  “I can’t today.” She gave an apologetic smile. “I have to get back to Cam.”

  “How’s Cambria doing?” Larry immediately asked.

  Cambria was Josie’s daughter who’d just moved back home after finishing her massage program. I hadn’t met her yet, but I’d chalked it up to being too busy with my restaurant to do much else.

  “Good,” she replied, and a look passed between them that said there was more to discuss about her daughter later.

  “Ash.” Josie turned her attention to me and smiled. “How’s the restaurant coming?”

  “It’s coming,” I replied with a chuckle. “Homestretch now.”

  “Oh, wonderful.” She reached out and pulled me in for a hug. “I’m so proud of you. I can’t wait to taste your first official meal.”

  “Who says you get the first one?” Larry teased, handing Josie her coffee.

  She gasped and waved him away with a laugh, murmuring to me conspiratorially, “I’m willing to bribe you with extra apple fritters.”

  “Coffee is more important than fritters,” came Larry’s response.

  He had a point.

  “We’ll see about that.” Josie winked at me. “Alright, boys. I have to run. I’ll be by in the morning with fresh muffins.”

  The bell dinged signaling her departure.

  Roasters was small and looking a little more rundown even in the five months that I’d been here. An L-shaped counter held a glass partition behind which sat various plates of food and pastries, some that were made here, and some made by Josie which she brought over at the beginning of each day.

  And sitting front and center behind that counter was the original La Pavoni espresso machine that Larry’s great-grandparents had brought over from Italy; it had been here so long, it was nicknamed Pavi. And it still shone and purred just as smoothly as probably the day it was installed.

  Nothing made an espresso like this machine.

  Not Starbucks. Not Nespresso. Not even God.

  The rest of the space which appeared not to have been updated since the eighties was filled sporadically with small cafe tables. On the left, just inside the entry, was a wall-length bench, the navy and white stripes of the fabric so worn they looked light blue at first glance until you went to sit.

  Above it was a mass of framed
photos, going all the way back to when the first generation of Oceans opened the place in nineteen-oh-six. Photos with the roads still unpaved in that dusty sepia-tone that made the place seem like the Wild West instead of the West Coast.

  But it was the photos of the people, the generations of the Ocean family, spreading down the wall like a branch of the family tree that made Roasters feel like it was the roots of this town, like everything that grew in Carmel Cove, came from here.

  New people. New businesses. New futures.

  Maybe that was why it had been easy to stay here – because the fact I wasn’t family never seemed to make a difference in how I was treated as though I were.

  “Hey, Eve,” I greeted the cheerful, local girl who popped out from the back carrying armfuls of travel mugs.

  She brightened when she saw me. “Hey, Ash.” Her small smile was as brief as a breeze as she deposited her haul, grabbed new plates filled with food and was off to serve them to waiting customers, tossing over her shoulder, “Any chance you miss this and want to come back?”

  I chuckled.

  My first job out here had been behind this bar, serving a different kind of addiction.

  Eve had been here part-time, so we’d worked together for two-and-a-half months until I finally purchased the house and land for my restaurant. Since then, she’d been bumped up to head barista while I took more and more time off for my own business.

  “Tempting,” I threw back.

  The head barista position at Ocean Roasters seemed to be a revolving door for broken souls. It made sense… If there was one thing coffee could teach you, it was that being in hot water only made you turn out stronger.

  Ever since Larry’s granddaughter, Laurel, left for school and hadn’t come back, filling the position had also helped soothe the piece of him that missed her.

  Her picture hung on the wall, too. Laurel, her father and Larry’s son, Mark, and Larry - it was taken shortly before the boating accident which killed both Mark and his wife, Fiona, leaving Laurel in her grandfather’s care. He never talked about it - or Laurel. And I didn’t ask…

  I knew the look of someone who’d failed a loved one all too well; it was one that greeted me in the mirror every morning.

  “When is Eli coming back?” I wondered, realizing it had been a few days and I couldn’t remember what he’d told me.

  Eli Downing was broken barista number one, AKA my predecessor. He’d gone up to Monterey a few days ago for a job; he was the best and the most trustworthy contractor in the area – and not just because Larry said so; but he’d started off here, in Roasters, just like I had.

  And if Larry and I were close, well, Eli was like a son to him even though they weren’t related.

  “Next week sometime,” came Larry’s gruff response.

  Just like I did, Eli had stepped back from Roasters to grow his construction business, and recently partnered with Madison Construction, run by two brothers – twins – Mick and Miles Madison. They were new to Carmel, having moved up from Texas.

  But more and more, Eli was being pulled back to the coffee shop because Larry was getting old and worse, far too stubborn to be left to his own devices.

  “You think I should go back?” I asked with a low voice, returning to our earlier conversation about my sister’s engagement.

  Eyes peered at me from underneath loose lids that made them always look partially closed and as though he was constantly scrutinizing you - which he probably was.

  “I still… I still have thoughts. I’m still struggling,” I admitted, taking the Americano from his hand. “I don’t think I’m ready. Still feels like I’m missing something.”

  And I didn’t want to go back until I was whole - until I was whole enough to tell Blake and my family the truth of why I’d come out here.

  I didn’t want them to worry.

  I didn’t deserve their worry.

  “Gonna be waitin’ a long time if that’s what you’re holdin’ out for,” he groused, pulling off the lid to the hopper. “You’ll always be missin’ somethin’, boy. You’re human.”

  I cleared my throat. My gaze catching on the carved wood plaque mounted above the machine.

  Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.

  The phrase almost as well-known as Larry Ocean – the man it came from.

  It gave me déjà vu to the day I arrived in Carmel Cove with no plan, wandered into Ocean Roasters and couldn’t stop staring at the words, wondering where I was, what I had, and what the hell I was going to do with myself.

  And then Larry handed me my coffee in a to-go cup with the name of the church and a date and time written on the coffee collar.

  I didn’t need to ask… hell, I didn’t even need to show up to know that it was an invitation to an AA meeting. But I’d gone the following day, intrigued by the man who knew more than I’d told him, and I’d been going to the same one every week since.

  “Was that a compliment?” I chuckled, trying to lighten the profound truth of his words.

  Larry was notorious for guarding full-blown compliments - worse than Gollum guarded the ring. Not the chatty type, Larry only spoke when necessary and with a purpose, which meant when he spoke, everyone listened.

  And when he complimented, it was more confirmation than seeing your name on Santa’s nice list that you’d done the right thing.

  “You tell anyone, they’ll never find your body,” he straight-faced retorted as he wiped down the steamer on the machine.

  I laughed, taking a long drink of the dark, unsweetened liquid.

  It wasn’t just with that coffee collar that Larry changed my life. He gave me a place to stay even though I had enough money to afford a hotel, threatening me bodily harm if I left before I was stable enough in my sobriety to get a place on my own.

  Leaving Nashville, the band, and the entertainment industry was a huge step in getting alcohol out of my life, but it also meant leaving friends and family who cared about me. Maybe I was dumb to walk away from their support, but I didn’t deserve it. I’d fucked up my life – demolished it like the explosion at Chernobyl. And they’d survived the blast; I wouldn’t ask them to linger in the toxic environment to help me clean up the pieces.

  Larry didn’t ask questions. He saw the void and he filled it with his donut cravings, trips to the gym at six in the morning to leg press weights that would have good old Mayor Arnold Schwarzenegger balking, and his famous Sunday spaghetti and meatballs topped with magic marinara was open to anyone who needed to be anywhere but where they were, and with anyone who would listen; he filled it without asking and without asking for anything in return.

  “So, you were spackling?” he asked as we made our way out the back.

  Tuesdays were shipment days so I knew there would be a truckload of boxes with to-go cups, napkins, utensils, filters, and, of course, paper straws. With Eli away, I wasn’t going to let Larry try to carry it all inside like his stubborn mule of a self would attempt to do.

  “Yeah.” I grunted as I hoisted the box marked ‘Heavy’ over my shoulder. “Mick and Miles are working a job over at the Rock Beach Resort, so I figured how hard could it be?”

  I’d never been one for manual labor before. But here, there was something to be said for building up something from scratch with your own two hands, my business and myself.

  After two months of recovering, of living with Larry and earning my keep working at Ocean Roasters, I finally felt like I had a footing - not completely stable, but with enough support to help me weather the challenges ahead. So, I used my considerable savings which, thankfully, hadn’t been wasted on anything but alcohol, and bought a property along the Big Sur coastline.

  I paid cash for the expensive but rundown house which probably would’ve been cheaper to tear down and rebuild, but maybe that was what drew me to it.

  At one point, I thought it would have been easier for life to just tear me down instead of fixing me up. And here I was. Being fucking fixed.
r />   After the purchase, I reached out to Eli who brought Mick and Miles into the project and the rest is history.

  “How long?” Larry asked as we carried the last of the boxes inside.

  “Four weeks,” I said, my heart pumping faster at the thought. It had taken three months, a new foundation, almost a new everything, but the original framework was preserved. And now I was four weeks of hard-ass hustling to finish everything in order to open in six.

  Six weeks until I opened my own restaurant. Until I was responsible for my own success instead of someone else’s.

  And I was fucking proud.

  It didn’t matter if it wasn’t open yet, and that I had essentially nothing but an empty space with a bomb-ass view. I’d climbed out of the worst possible version of myself. I’d scratched, clawed, and beat back demons I’d invited into my soul years ago and was doing something good.

  “On track then,” he mumbled. “Good.”

  “For now.” And for the duration, if I had anything to say about it.

  “You pick a name?”

  “Larry’s Lounge,” I joked.

  His glare made me laugh harder. “Don’t you tease me, boy, I’ll push you right off that cliff if you go and do something foolish like that,” he said with a tone that was ornery rather than threatening before changing topics, “You coming for dinner tonight?”

  Most days that I saw Larry came with his invitation to dinner. And it wasn’t just to me. His door was always open to anyone in town who needed a friend, a conversation, and a good meal to remind them the little things are just that… little.

  “Nah, I’m good but thank you.” I glanced down at my watch. I had a few hours before I had to meet Danielle at Ciao!, the Italian restaurant in town.

  “You seein’ that girl again?”

  Couldn’t put anything past him… not in Carmel Cove. “You know Danielle. You know everyone here. You should stop calling her ‘that girl.’” The air quotes came complete with an eye-roll.

  Danielle was a master vintner at Cliffside, one of the many wineries sprinkled along these parts. But that’s definitely not where I met her; we’d met at Roasters. She came in for her hazelnut latte every morning since before I’d moved here.