“You’ll call if you need anything?”
Nodding with a smile, I pour steamed milk into mismatched mugs and trace our signature heart shape into the foam. The last thing I want to do is work a Friday morning alone. Especially after a night like last night. But living on my own has proved expensive, and I’m in no position to be turning down shifts.
"Thanks, Ellie," he says, grabbing a cold Coke from the stocked refrigerator by the cash register. "Oh. And if you want to hang up a flier for that festival of yours, I cleared some space off on the bulletin board."
“I will, thanks,” I say, watching him leave me with a steadily increasing line of customers. As I continue brewing coffee, steaming milk, and grinding espresso, I think about the connection Mason and I shared. Our love for the music, the heart wrenching story he told about Birdie and Cole. And that hot makeout session at his car. But as I’m making a cappuccino for a lady with unusually purple lipstick, I’m hit with the realization that there’s literally no way Mason could be calling me. I made such a point out of not giving him my number last night that there’s no way he’d want any contact. He doesn’t even know my last name.
Annoyed at myself, I scowl into the gleaming metal of the espresso machine. Thankfully, most of the orders are to go, and the line dispatches quickly.
Twenty minutes later, the cafe has emptied. I pull my phone from my pocket. Five missed calls and a voicemail. I still don't recognize the number, but can't ignore the possibility that somehow Mason found me. He knows how to research. Is it so far-fetched to imagine he'd done some web-sleuthing and obtained my digits? Even if it is impossible, I can't quite squash the hope. With my back toward the front door, I press the play button beside the message expecting to hear Mason's buttery voice from last night, but instead—
John. Immediately and undeniably, I recognize the voice. That stupid southern drawl that used to melt me and tear me down all in the same breath.
The memory of deleting his number rushes over me in a sudden wave. The evening I arrived home from work two months ago to find him gone, I sat on the kitchen counter drinking the Jack Daniels he'd left behind, chain-smoking for the first time in my life, and flicking the cigarette ash into his favorite coffee mug. His clothes, his desk and laptop, his television, even the recliner we'd bought together. All of it— disappeared. He'd become a ghost. Vanished from my life in the blink of an eye. Like a candle burning out into the night.
Sometime after two in the morning that day, I deleted his phone number and blocked all forms of his social media. At the time, I felt empowered and in control. But the red-hot tears streaking down my face and the sinking feeling in my stomach told me otherwise. The sickening hangover I had the next morning comes back to me, and I resist the urge to bend over the small sink beside me here in the coffee shop.
I almost hang up without hearing his entire voicemail, but curiosity gets the better of me. I listen to it for a second time through, this time actually hearing his words.
“Hi, it’s me. Listen, I was shitty to you last night, Ellie. And I was shitty to you back when I left Southport. When I left you and…” His voice trails off. “I mean, I realize how much I hurt you, and I shouldn’t have done that. I just got so scared, you know? Like when you said you were knocked up. Fuck, I mean. Think about that, El. We weren't ready for a kid. We were kids ourselves, you know? You get that, right? It's not my fault, I just— I panicked is all. But I should've been strong. I shouldn't have left you. And I realize that now. Seeing you last night, well. I guess you could say it woke me up. It made me realize— I just wish I hadn't, and—"
For a moment, I don’t hear anything else. He wishes he hadn’t left me.
That was all I’d wanted to hear for months, and now he’s saying it. He could have said it last night, that would’ve been better. He could have not wrenched my shoulder nearly out of its socket. But he was apologizing, wasn’t he?
What are you thinking, Ellie? With my phone still to my ear, I slam a metal canister of oats down on the counter, squashing my train of thought. Are you gonna be a goddamn storm or not?
"—anyway El, I really want to see you. Being at the show last night and realizing the first concert we went to was the Brothers, I mean. That has to count for something. It just reminded me of how good we were for each other. Whenever they sing that bird song I just— I don't know, I can't help but want you all over again. Call me as soon as you get this. Oh, and I hope the planning for that festival community thing is going well. I'm looking forward to it, and—"
Bullshit.
I groan aloud and pull the phone from my ear in disgust. Hitting the end button, I shut off the message before I have to listen to another word from him. Before he brought up the festival, I might have believed he was sorry. But him wishing me well on the festival gig? That’s too far. I’d been helping to plan it for close to eight months now. Eight months. And not once had he bothered to show an ounce of interest in it. Why now?
The bell above the door rings scaring me half to death. I shove the cell phone back into my pocket and turn around with a customer service smile.
“What can I get— oh, it’s you,” I say.
Brooke slides onto one of the barstools opposite the glass jars of coffee beans. "Did I scare you?" She's wearing a stylish green pencil skirt and a semi-sheer white blouse with strappy sandals and a pair of simple gold hoop earrings. Her brassy red hair is clipped back from the left side of her face and her lips are stained with a faint rose color.
I self-consciously look down at my own clothes— faded Levi's, a gray apron over my Dream Bean T-shirt, and my gray Tom's. “Nope, I don’t scare easily,” I lie. “Just a little too much caffeine, I think.”
Brooke narrows her eyes, as if that might help her to read my mind. Then she shrugs and reaches into her tan leather bag, retrieving her iPad and a bottle of Aspirin. She tosses me the medicine without even hesitating.
“Oh my God, thank you. You’re a saint,” I say, jolting it open and popping two pills into my mouth. “How was work? You gotta go back today?”
“Since you asked, it was shit. And no, I’m done. They let me go at eleven,” she says, busy scrolling through something on her glossy screen.
Brooke works for The Villas on Oak Island, one of the most upscale vacation resorts within a fifty-mile radius. Her job consists of convincing wealthy men that buying property there means they’ve finally made it in life. She’s excellent at it even though she hates it.
“What do you think of this one?” She turns the iPad toward me. Bright on the screen is a digital sketch of a royal blue dress cut asymmetrically with dramatic, structured hips and a deep cut out in the back. Objectively, the dress is beautiful. But my fashion sense leaves a lot to be desired.
“Honestly?”
She nods. "Duh."
“It’s gorgeous,” I say, pulling a rack of clean espresso cups out of the small dishwasher. “But you’re probably the only person in the world who could pull it off.”
Brooke groans, and I pop my head back up to see her holding her face in her hands. She smacks the countertop and looks up at me through her fingers. “If I have to be a stupid secretary for the rest of my life, I might end up killing someone,” she says.
The tray of glasses I'm lifting is heavy, and I set it down as gingerly as I can on the counter before reaching back for her screen. "Let me see it again." I spend a good thirty seconds studying Brooke's sketch, the fluidity of the lines, the dazzling colors that pop off the page, the texture she's somehow added even though it's digital. "It's exquisite. Your detail really is perfect."
She scoffs and frowns at me. "It's not exquisite. It's good, but is it good enough for SCAD?"
Laughing, I throw her a salty look. “How should I know? I’ve never been.”
Brooke rolls her eyes with a sigh. "I have to submit a last-minute portfolio by Wednesday for their final decision. I'm freaking out over here." She holds her shiny red fingernails up and studies them. "I'm too o
ld for college as it is. If I don't get in, I'll dry up and wither away here."
Brooke has been talking about attending Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia as long as I’ve known her, and now that the time has come to actually apply, I can see she’s panicking.
I understand her desire to escape Southport though. Even Oak Island. Yes, there's beach and sand and small-town folk with a triple dose of suffocating tourists each summer. But I don't mind it. Brooke, on the other hand, is too big for this town. She'd rather live in a lofty high-rise in downtown Savannah and be surrounded by higher-minds that are stuck on art and design. I get it. But us common folk don't tend to get off on the artsy, fashionable part of life like she does.
“Is that the worst thing in the world?” I ask, examining the cups for water spots. “Being stuck here? You’re amazing at your job. Plus,” I say, grabbing a clean towel to finish drying. “You’d get to stay near me.”
She scowls. "Not happening. I would just as well tie an anvil to my throat and toss myself into the ocean before I willingly stay here another year. Besides, you're lying." She grabs the bottle of Aspirin from the counter, popping herself a pill like it's Xanax. "I'm not amazing at my job, I'm amazing at flirting. There's a difference. I can't help it that the old perverts find me appealing." Defeated, she slides the iPad and Aspirin back into her bag. "I don't know what I'll do if I don't get in."
“You’ll get in.” But the look on Brooke’s face tells me my tone is unconvincing.
Cutting us off, a man with long blonde hair shuffles in and orders a latte. As I prepare his, I make a second one for Brooke and slide it across the counter to her. She doesn’t look up. "John called me," I say in a poorly thought-out attempt to distract her from her nerves.
Jerking her head up, she furrows her brow. “Did you answer?”
"No. I didn't realize it was him until I heard the message. I deleted his number back when we—"
"A message, huh?" Her voice is suspicious, almost serene as she leans against the back of the barstool. She has her arms crossed, and her rose-colored lips are pursed in judgment. I can already tell she isn't going to be thrilled with the story no matter how I spin it. "What exactly did this message say?" she asks pointedly. With a cocked eyebrow, she lifts her latte and holds it with two hands. Her curious eyes glued to me, she takes a slow sip.
I start wiping the espresso glasses down before stacking them on top of the machine behind me. "He apologized. Said he was sorry for treating me bad." I shrug before dropping the bomb on her. "And he said he misses me."
“Whoa. Back it on up, sister. He said he was sorry? You mean, he actually said those words?”
I don't know why, but the astonishing disbelief in her voice grates my nerves and makes my stomach turn. "Yes, but that's not really the point. He also gave me some bullshit line about the music festival. So I know he was full of it."
“Right, well. Even if he was serious, you wouldn’t really consider going back to him, would you?”
As I open my mouth to answer, the bell rings leading two customers through the door. I make an Americano for a middle-aged mother wearing a sunhat and an annoyingly complex Rainbow Frappuccino for her moody preteen daughter.
“Enjoy your day,” I say brightly as they leave, but there’s no response. “You’re welcome,” I mutter under my breath.
“You’re not considering it, Ellie. Are you?” Brooke asks again.
I groan, upset that this even has to be a conversation right now. “I just—” I sigh. “My life has been in shambles since he left. Maybe I messed things up for us. Maybe he’s right that it was my fault.”
“Eleanor Marie Stone! You are not serious!”
My lack of response riles her up causing her to point a frustrated finger at me. “Oh, come on!”
“I don’t know, Brooke. Not everyone can have the godsend, fairytale of a relationship like you, okay? Not everyone is that lucky.”
“He fucking dumped you because he thought you were pregnant, El. Then ran out on you while you were at work. What the hell?” Brooke’s voice has reached maximum volume, and I glance over at the blonde man in the corner. Luckily, he’s wearing headphones and appears not to have noticed us. Brooke is furious, and I can see red splotches of anger forming on her pale white chest under her blouse.
"Don't you give me that look. This is it for me." I look at the espresso machine then over to the case of baked goods. "Slinging java for—" I throw my hand in the direction of the blonde with headphones. "This is all I have right now. Work and the festival. And you were right the other night, okay? I can't even get my writing to mean anything important." I exhale and wipe my hands on my apron. "Maybe John was the glue holding me together at the seams. Maybe that's why everything is slowly falling apart."
After a beat, Brooke’s face melts into a puddle of genuine sadness. She puts her hand out to me across the counter.
Ignoring the uncomfortable gesture, I grab a damp washrag and swipe up some crumbs I’d apparently spilled from the display case earlier. “I need to get my shit together. This can’t be all that I amount to in life.”
"El, don't be so hard on yourself. I mean, look at the Boxley Brothers. You love them now, but they had to hit rock bottom before they ever made it." She shoots me a desperate expression, and I want to tell her the only reason she knows that is because of me. "Just don't tell me you're going to give John the time of day. He's not worth it."
I groan. “You’re right. I’m sorry, I’m not going backward.”
“Good. He also hated the idea of the festival,” Brooke continues as if my denial of involvement wasn’t convincing enough. “He was always telling you what a waste of time it was, that someone else could do it better.”
“Yeah, okay. I freaking heard you,” I snap, the memories stirring me beyond what they should. John used to hold the festival over my head, saying if I hadn’t spent so much of my free time volunteering to help set it up, that we wouldn’t have had the problems we did. Which was ridiculous, and everyone knew it. Including me.
Brooke looks down and takes in a deep breath. Neither of us says anything for a few minutes as I continue wiping down the counter. I know she means well, but my relationship with John was always different from any relationship she'd ever experienced. Her relationships were fairy tales filled with flirty phone calls, bright and blooming flowers hand-delivered to her at work, candlelit dinners for occasions that weren't all that special. The guys she landed would drop anything to be by her side, and I don’t blame them. She’s gorgeous and has a feisty heart of gold. On a bad day, she lands a nine on the Scale of Seduction, and her life is not unlike something out of a steamy romance novel. Meanwhile, I’m over here lucky to be tipping the scales at a five, and that’s if I’m being generous with myself.
“How’s the festival prep going anyway?” Brooke asks timidly.
I'm grateful for the change in subject, so I rattle off an answer. "Pretty good. I've got all the bands lined up— Kismet, Isla Verde, The Pop Rockets, Call Me June, Eleven Skies High, River Talk, The Porters, Monsoon, and Questionable Jargon. I'm working on making their reservations and everything right now." I start refilling the emptied coffee machine as I continue. "Plus I just finalized the vendors. A couple of beer tents, that pop-up wine bar over on Moore Street, a few food trucks from around town, and some of the local shops are wanting booths." Knowing that, in a few short weeks, this festival will finally be coming to fruition, I can't help but smile. "It's all coming together."
Without warning, my mind slides back to Mason. Judging from his connection with the Boxley Brothers, I bet he'd love the band lineup. I mean, I know nothing about him. But based on his draw to last night's show, I find myself hoping against all imaginable odds that he'll hear about the festival from over in Raleigh. Surely he'd decide to come with a lineup like this. Maybe word of mouth will take the message straight to his doorstep. Why hadn't I thought to mention it to him last night? I immediately grow melancholy at the thou
ght of missing the chance to invite him. But then I remember an annoyingly important task I've been avoiding the past few weeks.
“Shit.” I drop a stack of coffee filters on the counter and quickly reach into my back pocket for my phone.
“What’s up?” Brooke asks without looking up. She’s pulled her iPad out again and is zooming in on the tiny, meticulous details of a different sketch.
“I forgot about Monday. I need to see if we can get free press for the festival.” Opening my email app on my phone, I scroll through my inbox. “I think Charlie wanted it done by Monday night’s meeting.”
I find Charlie’s email. It requests the press release be confirmed by our next volunteer meeting which is, in fact, Monday evening. Great.
“Shouldn’t be any trouble for a professional writer such as yourself,” Brooke says with a slight edge of sarcasm.
"Screw you," I whisper through a grin. Suddenly, a tall woman scrambles through the door. After I take her order, she hands me her credit card to run.
“I’m serious, El.” Brooke says, smirking. “Those fortunes aren’t going to write themselves.”
The woman glances over awkwardly at her.
"Ignore her," I say to the woman. I pass her a to-go cup of coffee topped with soy milk and a salted caramel scone in a parchment bag. "She's on loan from the psych ward. Have a good day, ma'am."
Brooke looks up at me as the woman hurries out the door. “I’m serious. You could be a writer if you wanted. You just take shitty jobs that don’t lead anywhere so you won't be disappointed.”
And while her words pierce me again, they’re true.
With a sigh, I pull the tray with the last salted caramel scone from the display case to make room for a fresh batch of raspberry danishes. “I guess I’m heading to the newspaper after work. I’ll see if they can run press for us.”
Out of nowhere, a stream of tourists floods in from the street and forms a line at the counter. The Dream Bean usually gets hit with a noon-day rush, so I start to pick up my pace.
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