by Bella Grant
“Thanks,” he replied. “And this is for you.” He placed the cappuccino in front of her. This time, he had poured the espresso and milk to reveal a heart in the foam. “On the house. A perk of the job.”
“I don’t know what to say,” Ava replied, looking up at him. “Just…thank you.”
The rest of the day passed Carter in a blur. He tried to convince himself he was thinking rationally. The problem was, he was fantastic at debating, and whatever rational argument his brain came up with, his emotional response could out-match it. You’re playing with fire, he chastised himself. She’s too young for you, and she has no experience, and you’re paying her way too much. What the hell are you thinking?
Carter was not swayed by his rational brain. He convinced himself she was a worthy investment and that the best way to cultivate and retain good staff was to pay them what they were worth. She was an investment. And she’s not too young. Not that I’m going to do anything about it, but if I were going to, so what? She’s ten years younger. That simply means she’s not full of self-interested ambition yet. It’s not like women my age are working out so well.
As he locked the door behind him at the end of business hours, Carter knew he was lying to himself. She had been on his mind all day, penetrating his thoughts, pushing in while he tried to reconcile the books, place orders, and create schedules. He wasn’t sure why, but this girl had burrowed deep inside his head, and she hadn’t even done anything. It was a stark contrast to the last woman he’d dated, one who was hardly on his mind even when she was right in front of him. This girl—Ava—captivated him.
Chapter 3
Ava
Ava left the café feeling as if she would burst. What the fuck was happening? Was there a full moon or something? This could not possibly be real. She woke up and wandered downtown at the break of dawn, hoping someone somewhere would need help, desperate to find a job that would pay the rent. And voilà. She hadn’t expected anything to come of the café but figured it was worth a shot. Now, she was one background check away from the best job she’d ever had, one that could change her life.
For the first time in her twenty difficult years, Ava was on the edge of self-sufficiency. The thought was like a high, independence her drug of choice, an elusive feeling she had chased after and was unable to attain. Now it was here, and she rode that high for dear life.
She walked down the sidewalk without knowing where she was going, eventually realizing it was in the opposite direction of her apartment. Dazed, she turned around and nearly crashed into a woman. “Sorry… excuse me, so sorry…” she said, dodging the other pedestrians. Ava was drunk on happiness, and she needed to get herself home before she became a danger to others. Clearly, walking was not within her capabilities right now.
When she got home, she burst into the apartment. “Mat!” she yelled. “Mateo! You’ll never believe what happened!”
Mateo stuck his head out of the bathroom with a toothbrush in his mouth. “What?” he mumbled, still brushing, his mouth foaming white.
“I went back to that coffee shop, from yesterday? The guy gave me a job. As general manager. I’ll be making $29,000 a year! Can you believe it?”
“Holy shit! Are you serious?” Mateo replied, spitting the toothpaste in the sink. “Back up…what happened?”
“I talked to the guy from yesterday, the one who gave me that latte? I went there to apply for a job as a barista. He said they were all filled, but he needed a manager. He offered me the job! He said something about how he’d rather train someone with no experience right from the start than try to make them unlearn bad habits. He’s letting me work thirty hours a week so I can finish school and paying me enough money so I don’t have to worry about, like, anything anymore!”
“That’s incredible,” Mateo said, stunned. “Wow. Congratulations, Ava. That’s amazing.”
“Why do you seem…unhappy?” Ava asked, caught off-guard by Mateo’s restrained reaction. “Isn’t it great?”
“Yeah, I mean…it seems too good to be true,” Mateo replied, choosing his words carefully.
“I know!” Ava replied enthusiastically.
“No, I mean, it seems too good to be true. What’s the catch?” Mateo asked cautiously.
“What? There is no catch. What do you mean?” Ava asked, her happiness transforming into doubt.
“I just worry about you. That’s all. You’re too trusting of people. I…I want to make sure he’s not using you. And that he doesn’t…well, expect anything from you,” Mateo replied finally.
“What? No! Why would he be using me?” Ava asked defensively.
“Because no one in their right mind pays someone $29,000 a year to work thirty hours a week managing a coffee shop. Let alone someone with no experience,” Mateo explained.
“He’s just a nice guy,” Ava defended, realizing how stupid those words sounded aloud.
“Yeah, probably that,” Mateo said, his mouth screwed up in a doubtful smile. “I guess I’m being a protective big brother. I hate that I won’t be here for you.”
“You are! You will be. This is a great thing,” Ava replied. But the thought had wormed its way inside her head. What if she was wrong? What if she had misjudged his intentions? What if Carter did expect something more from her?
What troubled Ava more than that speculation was her reaction to it. So what if he did want something more? Maybe that was okay. What if she wanted that, too?
Ava had never been with a man before. She’d never even kissed a boy, except once when she and Mateo had snuck out of the foster home and were sitting on the edge of the river at three o’clock in the morning, desperate to get away from their angry, belligerent drunk of a foster dad. Ava was fifteen and Mateo seventeen, and for a while, she had wondered if she liked Mateo, or like-liked him, and she thought maybe he had wondered the same thing about her.
As they sat on the edge of the river in the dark on a night in early September, she had shivered and Mateo had taken off his jacket and wrapped it around her shoulders. When she looked up at him, she saw him looking back at her with a question on his face, and she had the same question on hers, and in a moment, he had leaned forward and kissed her.
Ava had frozen, and although the kiss was nice in an objective sort of way, it had cleared up any and all feelings she might have thought she had for Mateo. And when he was done kissing her, Mateo pulled away with a funny look on his face, and as she debated how to tell him she didn’t think she wanted that kind of a relationship, he started laughing.
“Holy shit, I’m so sorry,” he said, laughing quietly to himself.
His laughter had been contagious. Ava started giggling too, and what started out as a quiet, lilting chuckle turned into raucous, rib-shaking laughter, echoing across the dark water. When they ran out of breath and their laughter had subsided, Ava wiped a tear from her eye and looked at Mateo.
“So that’s a no, right?”
“Yeah, no,” Mateo replied. “Never again. You’re my sister. Nothing more. Ew. I mean, no offense or anything…but that was way too weird.”
“Agreed,” Ava said. It was the only time they had ever discussed it, and it was the one time Ava had ever been kissed by a man—or a boy, honestly— and until now, she had never had any interest in such things.
Carter James had changed that. Ava had an interest in him. She wasn’t sure why, or what it was, or what to do with such a feeling, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to tell Mateo. Not because she was worried he’d be jealous. He wasn’t harboring any secret love for her. That was indisputable. She didn’t want to tell him because she knew he’d warn her off it in his over-protective, big brother kind of way, and right now, it was too new and too special a feeling to be polluted by doubt. Ava wanted to live in this feeling of attraction.
That evening, Ava stood on the curb, watching Mateo pack the last of his belongings into the U-Haul truck he was driving to Harvard. The day had gone by too fast, and although Ava had gone to the coffee shop
that morning with the hopes of securing a job as a gesture of good faith to Mateo, some kind of signal that she would be okay without him and he didn’t need to worry about her, had backfired.
Mateo was naturally skeptical of people, and after thinking about it more, Ava could see why he was worried about this new job. It did seem too good to be true. All she could do to calm her anxiety was remind herself how it had felt standing in the silent morning with Carter, in his beautiful coffee shop that felt like another world, a magical, ethereal world from some days of old. But the feeling that had flared through her fingers and up her arm and into her chest when he’d reached out to grab her hand to stop her from leaving pressed on her brain, and she couldn’t help reliving the delicious tingling for almost a minute after he’d let go.
There was no way she could explain to Mateo what it felt like to be looked at like that by a man, nor would that be the reassurance he needed. Right now, all she could do was keep her mouth shut and focus on the moment. She had to say goodbye to her best friend, the boy who had helped her through the system in one piece, the boy she owed everything to. He had led by example, would never ask you to do something he wasn’t willing to do, and she knew her time depending on him in life was over. He had given her all the lessons she needed to get by on her own, and if she could send him off with one thing, it would be that knowledge.
“I’m going to miss you,” she sniffled, the tears falling freely down her face. It had started to rain, and her hair and clothes were soaked. She was glad because she could pretend it was rain and not tears leaving a wet spot on Mateo’s shoulder.
“I’m a phone call and a plane ride away,” Mateo reminded her. “This isn’t goodbye. It’s see you soon.”
“I know.” Ava nodded unconvincingly.
“Promise me you’ll be careful and take care of yourself,” Mateo said, grasping her by the shoulders and giving her a long, hard look. “Promise me you won’t be taken advantage of.”
“I promise, Mat,” Ava said honestly. “I will be fine. I have you to thank for that.”
“Okay.” He nodded. Then he pulled her in for one last long, bone-crushing hug, the pain of which Ava embraced whole-heartedly, wanting to etch this moment into her memory. “Okay,” he said again and released her. Mateo paused for one moment and pressed his forehead against hers. Then he turned without saying a word, got in the truck, closed the door, and rolled over the engine. Ava stood in the rain on the curb, watching him, unmoving, feeling as if she’d just lost a part of herself.
Inside their apartment—now her apartment—she turned on the shower and rinsed the rain water off her. She wrapped a towel around her head and pulled on a tank top and a pair of boxers. The rain had chilled her, but her apartment was filled with sweltering, humid summer air, and she instantly felt clammy. Ava was exhausted, emotionally and physically, and unable to think of anything better to do, so she crawled into bed to ride out the rest of the storm asleep.
She spent the next three days in a blur. She felt as if she was grieving. She kept thinking of things she wanted to say to Mateo, and each time, she relived the realization that he was not in his bedroom next door to hers but somewhere several states away, on his way to Massachusetts, where he would spend the next few years. Her heart ached, her eyes were red from seemingly endless tears, and her nose was raw from being assaulted by so many tissues.
By the time Sunday morning arrived, Ava was spent. She didn’t feel any better. She had simply become immune to the physical symptoms of losing her best friend. Her tears weren’t endless and her nose stopped running, and although her heart still ached, she woke up to her alarm, determined to impress her new boss and do this job to the best of her ability.
She had put in notice with her other job as a cashier for a small market and was surprised to learn that the owners were relieved. “Business has been slowing down for a while now,” the elderly owner told her, “and we were afraid we’d have to let you go. We didn’t want to, of course, but this is good timing for another job.”
Ava didn’t bother to ask if they had planned to let her in on this, or if she’d show up one day to find she was no longer needed. She wanted to assume they’d give her enough warning to find another job, but she didn’t want to think any less of them if that wasn’t the case. She wished them well and left, filled with a new-found appreciation for Carter and his generosity.
At just before five in the morning, Ava arrived at the shop. Carter had texted her and let her know that her background check had cleared; he would leave the front door open for her, and she should come on in. There were no other instructions, and when Ava arrived at the shop, she saw one light on upstairs in the office.
As Ava climbed the wrought-iron spiral staircase to the side of the counter to the second-floor balcony, her palms began to sweat and her tongue felt too large for her mouth. She usually felt like she had control of her life, but looking around at the incredible product of one man’s vision and hard work, Ava felt totally out-classed. There was absolutely no need for Mateo to worry about him taking advantage of her. A man like Carter James didn’t need to take advantage of anyone, and he surely wouldn’t be interested in a stray cat like Ava.
She raised her hand to knock on the door when she realized it was already cracked. Through it, illuminated by the light, she saw Carter—shirtless and buckling the belt on his pants. He turned and reached for the shirt hanging on the back of the chair, his hair still rumpled from sleep although the shirt was freshly pressed in a dry-cleaning bag. Once Ava was sure she hadn’t walked in on him with a woman, that he had merely spent the night in his office, she couldn’t help but watch him for a moment.
His chest was bare and sculpted, and his tanned skin rippled in a way Ava hadn’t known she was missing out on her whole life until that moment. This was a man. This was the man she wanted. And you’re just a stupid kid, she thought, disabusing herself of the notion. Get a fucking grip. There’s no way a man like that wants a girl like you.
The spell was broken, and once she was sure he’d had time to button his shirt, she gave the door a couple quick raps with her knuckles and called, “Hello? Carter?”
Chapter 4
Carter
After Carter spent the morning showing Ava around the coffee shop and giving her a tour of the employee-only zones, he made them each an espresso and led her to the private balcony above the café. There, they sat in a small alcove in leather club chairs, shaded by hanging plants and Edison bulbs. Carter liked this balcony because it reminded him of New Orleans. Not the city, exactly, but of the time he went to Disneyland with his parents and his brother on one of their few luxury vacations, and they walked through the Mark Twain Riverboat section and ended up in New Orleans Square, where the twisted metal railings and the enormous Boston ferns captivated him.
“How did you come up with the concept for this place?” Ava asked, rotating the coffee cup absently.
“I took this business marketing class my senior year of college, back when I thought I was going to be a CPA or something, and it totally changed my concept of what people want. I became obsessed with the idea of creating a space for them to live out the lives they wish they had, I suppose. I did it for me, which is a terrible reason to do anything in business, but I got lucky and other people related to it.”
“I’m not sure I understand,” Ava said, tilting her head curiously to the side.
“Well, you know how stores like Urban Outfitters and Anthropology and Free People have those catalogues where you can hardly figure out what they’re trying to sell? It’s like that. They fill them with sexy people doing sexy things, and you want to live that life so you buy a two-hundred-dollar pair of jeans, thinking it will transform you into them. Don’t get me wrong, I think coffee is damned sexy, but retailing it loses a lot of its…I don’t know what to call it—allure? Think about Dunkin Donuts, you know? All orange and pink, a favorite of the blue-collar New Englander. Nothing sexy about it. I wanted to transport people
to another place and time. Lots of bars do that these days, you know? Throwback cocktails and speakeasy vibes.”
Carter realized he was rambling and stopped for a beat. Ava watched him intently, and there was no sign of her getting bored or her mind wandering elsewhere. She actually wanted to learn something about the business, so he continued.
“No one is doing that kind of facelift for coffee, which is basically your daytime cocktail. I wanted a place that felt a bit other-worldly, where you don’t know for sure what year it is, or what you are being sold, which is more of the experience than the beverage itself. I had this idea for a coffee shop like that, and I worked my ass off in my early twenties to scrape together enough capital to go to investors and ask them to match me. Most of them said no because on paper I’m basically betting the farm on nice furniture and houseplants and shit, but in reality, that’s what people want. That’s what brings my customers through the door. I mean, let me ask you—what brought you in?”
“Honestly, I liked all the plants,” Ava confessed, laughing.
Carter gave her a hard, appraising look. She had a wonderful laugh, lilting and silvery. This girl confused him. She wasn’t the stop-you-dead-in-your-tracks kind of attractive. Realistically speaking, Carter had plenty of those girls in his phone. Girls with tight dresses and tanned skin. Those were the girls who knew precisely how much a man was worth before they went on a date with him, and they treated him like an investment. Carter hated that kind of behavior, and it had soured him on dating in general.
Ava had none of that pretense about her. Some people knew they were ridiculous, and some people tried very hard to pretend they weren’t ridiculous, and most of the women Carter saw fell somewhere between those two categories. But here was a girl who wasn’t ridiculous at all, who didn’t try to be anything but what she was, and although Carter hadn’t entirely figured her out yet, the possibility of doing so was extremely appealing.
