The Perfect Blend

by Allie Pleiter

  “No, really. People love all these flavors.”

  “Women love all these flavors,” Will revises my theory. “When’s the last time a strapping young man came into Carter’s and ordered a raspberry white chocolate latte?”

  Ha. I got him now. “Wednesday.” I smirk.

  “Who wasn’t ordering for his girlfriend?”

  Rats. Why is it always the tiny details that do you in? “Okay, you may have a point there, but half my customer base is bound to be female.”

  “But I am not.”

  Trust me, there’s precious little chance of my forgetting how male William Grey is. “The latte,” I say while gesturing for him to take another sip, “is all about the combination. Too much milk and it tastes like a kiddy drink. Not enough, and it’s too biting. So?”

  His eyes narrow in thought. “It tastes like that high tea you took me to the other day. A lot of window dressing around a middling product.”

  I cross my arms. “Are you calling my latte middling?”

  “I’m saying I don’t care for it. Not that it’s a bad product. I told you I’d give you my honest appraisal, and that’s what you’re getting.”

  “You’d be getting a lot less drink on a middling machine.” I make the word middling as whiny as I can. I stare at him. He stares back. “Great,” I finally exclaim, throwing my hands up. “You’re not convinced. I go through all this trouble—did you know there are people who would kill to get three drinks from a machine like this? Do you have any idea how fabulous these drinks are?”

  “No,” he says, smiling in the most irritating way, “because I prefer tea.”

  “Well,” I snatch back the espresso, downing the contents because it would be a crime to let such liquid gold to go waste. “Why don’t you take your tea-hyping, limey hat off and think like a banker. Like a coffee-loving banker. Like a man who sees the value in excellent equipment to produce a superior product.”

  “Couldn’t you achieve superiority in beans for a far smaller cash outlay?” Will puts down the latte with the same expression my nephew Charlie gives to his broccoli.

  Supremely irritated, I snatch that back, throw an extra dollop of foam on it and down it. It’s a stunning latte. Balanced to perfection. The Bible verse about “pearls before swine” jingles through my head. “It’s about both. I can’t just take a batch of fabulous beans and throw them through your great-aunt Matilda’s percolator and make what people want.”

  Will makes for the cappuccino before I can get my hands on it. “My great-aunt Lydia drank tea.”

  I snatch that drink out of his unappreciative hands, too. “Well, jolly good for her,” I bark as I head back to the machine.

  Will gets up and follows me.

  I glare at him. “You don’t like it. You won’t go for the good machines, will you?”

  “Do you always assume you know what I think?”

  “Isn’t it obvious?”

  “Well,” he says, “I was going to say I have a compromise to propose. However, I don’t think it qualifies as a compromise when one party hates the idea.”

  If he won’t spring for the La Marzoccos, how much worse can it get? I start shutting the beautiful, unappreciated machine down. “Hate it, will I? Now’s who’s assuming?”

  “Oh, I rather have a feeling you will.” There is an unveiled challenge in his eyes.

  I settle onto one hip, pitcher still in one hand. “Try me.”

  “If you want to spend this much on equipment and push your budget up that high, then I’m going to recommend that you get your parents to cosign on the loan.”

  Kick me next time I say something like “How much worse can it get?” Kick me hard.

  “My parents? Were you listening to me just now at all?”

  “You’re smart, you’re talented, but you’re not exactly loaded with collateral for a loan that large. It would lower the risk for you. I do believe it’s the best way.”

  “What about rich Uncle Ian?” I say, clutching the dials of this machine now slipping out of my reach. There’s got to be another way.

  “He’s already the source of over half your capital. If you want to ask for all that money, you need your parents.”

  I slump against the counter. “Well, you’re right, I don’t like it. As a matter of fact, I hate it.” Will says nothing. He’s right: this isn’t compromise. It’s extortion. “You’re just joking, right?”

  He shakes his head.

  I sigh. I knew Higher Grounds was going to cost me, but I didn’t count on it costing me my pride. The absolute last last thing I wanted was to have to get my parents’ help on this. Higher Grounds is my flag of independence. My baby. I would have refused their help if they offered it. But believe me, they’re not going to offer it. Dad’ll be against this in spades. Mom will be too worried to talk him into it. I’m thinking it would be easier to get Will to down six more cups of coffee than to get them to back my shop.

  Talk about your God-sized problems. This is huge.

  “I know it’s not how you pictured things, so why don’t you think this over? Pray about it?” Will says.

  I whack the coffee puck out of the porta-filter with more force than is perhaps necessary. “I don’t want to think it over. I don’t need to think it over. I want these machines. Higher Grounds needs these machines. If that’s what it takes to get them, then—” I try not to grind it out through my teeth “—that’s what we’ll have to do.”

  Will looks startled. “We?”

  “You don’t think I can convince them on my own do you? I need the bank to back me up on this. And you’re the bank. So back me up.”

  “And if they say no you’ll consider less-expensive machines?”

  “Oh, they’ll say no. The first time I ask them. Which is why I hope you like pot roast, because it’s going to take a slew of family dinners to make this happen.”

  “Pot roast?” Will gulps out.

  I hand him the bag of coffee beans I brought with me. “Fire up your British charm, William Grey III, we’ve got a loud Irish family to win over.”

  “I’m quite sure I never agreed to this when I said you could show me these machines.”

  That man sends my brain into a nonfunctional overdrive.

  Do you know how I know? For starters, I invited Will Grey to have dinner with my family. Repeatedly.

  I also know because it’s now three o’clock in the morning, I’m wide awake and I’m only just now realizing that I downed the equivalent of three shots of espresso.

  Chapter Twenty

  Testing theories

  “I can’t do this.”

  I’m staring at my parents’ front door from Will’s car.

  This suddenly seems like a horrendous idea. And this is only the beginning. Tonight is supposed to be getting them just used to the idea of Higher Grounds. Wait till we get to the money part. I’ll be heading to China to put the Pacific Ocean between me and my dad.

  “Come now, everyone gets a little nutters about their family.”

  I look at him. I’ve got to tell him now, before we go in the door. I’m an idiot for not fessing up to this earlier, but there’s no helping that now. “Will, they don’t know about Higher Grounds. Not at all. We’re starting from square one here. So be really, really charming.”

  He runs his hands nervously through this hair. “Nothing? You’ve told them nothing at all? Just a little awkward, wouldn’t you say, Miss Black? How are you going to explain my presence as your loan officer if they don’t even know you’re thinking about opening a business?”

  I just ignore that, because nothing can come from getting into that right now. “I’m punting, okay? Now, remember, no politics, no religion, no finance yet. I’ll bring up Higher Grounds when I think they’re ready. Oh, and stay away from art and baseball, too. And don’t get into music with my brother John, or he’ll never stop talking…and…”

  Will puts a finger over my mouth, puts his hand on the top of my head and murmurs something.
/>
  I look at him, slightly puzzled.

  “I believe prayer may be our only hope this evening. I just asked God to bless you.”

  My heart does a tiny, blessed, somersault.

  I stick both my hands on top of his head. “The Lord bless you and keep you, Will Grey.” I open one eye and look at him. “’Cause you are so gonna need it.” I open the door latch. “Let’s go.”

  “No, you don’t!” Will reaches across and keeps me from opening the door. He smiles at me and the tiny blessed somersault becomes a triple backflip. “A proper English banker always opens the door for his client.”

  “So you banged up my baby’s nose in the park?” my dad asks as he shakes Will’s hand in the foyer.

  “Not exactly,” Will replies smoothly. “A teammate did the damage. I just served as the rescue squad.”

  “And I’m fine, aren’t I, Dad?” I pull Will into the living room where the rest of the family is waiting.

  Will whistles softly when he sees most of the Black clan gathered one room. “Look at all that ginger hair.”

  “Ginger hair?” my brother John says, hoisting a curly-spiky lock of his wild teenage hairstyle. “You mean red hair?”

  Will laughs a bit. “Yes. We call it ginger hair.”

  “Sounds nicer,” my sister Cathy chimes in.

  John shoots her a look. “Well, if you’re a girl…”

  Suddenly a tumble of ginger-haired children— Cathy’s kids tangled in with my brother Steve’s two girls—roll in from the den. “Well, hullo, you.” Will crouches down until he’s eye-to-eye with Charlie, who stares at Will.

  “How come you talk funny?”

  “I’m British. Like…um…Winnie the Pooh and Christopher Robin.”

  That seems to be explanation enough for Charlie. “Okay.”

  “Like Mary Poppins?” my niece Abby calls out.

  “Exactly.” Will says. “You have ginger hair. I talk funny. We’ll get along just fine, if you ask me.”

  Abby looks like she’s about to question that particular theory for a moment, then decides it will work for her. “Yep. Okay.” Charlie then pokes her in the ginger hair, and the quartet of cousins tumbles off into the den again, screeching. Followed by Brewster, our huge golden retriever.

  “Even the dog is ginger-haired in this house.” I laugh. “Come on, you need to meet Mom.”

  “Well, that failed to work. I tried to steer the conversation toward Higher Grounds three times and each time you stymied it.” Will is pulling a large clump of ginger dog hair off his pant leg as he walks up the little patio that leads to my apartment door.

  “Stymied?” That man has the oddest choice of verbs.

  “Would you prefer I say chickened out?”

  Ouch. He’s right though, that’s exactly what I did. I chickened out. Three times. I just can’t bring myself to even talk about Higher Grounds, let alone ask them to cosign my loan. “I’m working up to it, okay? I need a little more time.”

  Will stuffs his hands in his pockets. “You haven’t got loads of time, Maggie. Besides, a few more dinners of that size and I’ll rival Art in weight and end up a forward on the team.”

  “Okay, okay, point taken. Can we leave it rest now?” I lean back against the patio railing, taking in the weather. We’ve had extraordinary weather for Seattle this fall. It’s one of those sparkling October nights where the rain has held off and the air is an energizing cool that begs you to pull on a sweater and go take a walk. The street is bustling with people taking in the beauty of the night. Seattle didn’t get its reputation for rain out of nowhere—we cherish our nice weather here because we don’t have a lot of it to enjoy.

  Spanish guitar music lilts out over the dusk from the record store down the street. A spicy smell tells me the Mexican restaurant must be crowded tonight. Again, I’m reminded of why I cherish the colliding textures of my neighborhood. As if to prove my point, a wildly dressed teenager in striped leggings on a unicycle rides up the street, singing at the top of his lungs. Will shakes his head. “You live in a crazy neighborhood.”

  I nudge him. “I love Fremont. The color, the sounds, everything. Walking to work here is entertainment, not endurance. There’s always something weird and wonderful to see. I mean, come on—we even have our own troll.”

  Will shakes his head. “Oh, that’s right. I’ve heard of it.”

  “You’ve seen the troll, haven’t you?”

  “Only in pictures.”

  I push myself up off the railing. “Oh, well, we gotta fix that. You need to see the troll. It’s only a few blocks from here. Come on. It’s the absolute perfect night for it and you can walk off some of that meal. How can you miss the chance to tell the folks back home you’ve seen the famous Fremont Troll?”

  Will gets out his car keys. “I think the folks back home can survive without a mesmerizing account of the famous Fremont Troll.”

  “Nope.” With a quick move born of countless family squabbles, I snatch Will’s car keys out of his hands. “I’d never forgive myself. Anglo-American relations and all.” I begin walking toward the bridge where our troll resides. He’s not real, our troll, but I imagine you caught on to that. He’s a giant, playful, concrete sculpture under the Aurora Avenue bridge. You’ll find him in every guidebook and I just adore him. “Do you have any idea,” I say to Will as I dangle his car keys just out of reach (which means I’m practically running to stay ahead of him), “how ridiculous you sound saying the folks back home? Try saying y’all come back now, y’hear?”

  “Absolutely not.” Will lunges for his keys, but a quick pass behind my back—along with a bit of bobbing and weaving—keeps them out of reach. “You’re nutters,” he says, lunging again, “You know that?”

  “Part of my sales and marketing strengths.” He’s not really trying to best me, you know. The guy plays rugby; he could pick me up and shake the keys out of me if he really wanted to. But there’s something so wonderful about this side of him. Feeling bolder, I scoot behind him and cover his eyes. “Oops, stop here.” I turn him around the corner so he’s facing up the hill toward our famous under-bridge dweller.

  “Will you look at that?” Will says under his breath when I uncover his eyes.

  “You can climb on him. Come on.” Now, I haven’t climbed the troll in a good five years, but tonight I find it irresistible. I dash up the hill toward the sculpture. Will hesitates for a moment, shaking his head, then he starts up the street after me. Within minutes we’re scrambling over the troll like kids—exploring his head, eyes, nose, hair and the huge hand that clutches a life-size VW Beetle.

  By the end of our juvenile adventures we’re breathless and silly. Panting, we collapse onto the massive wrist, staring down the bridge pylons and listening to the rhythmic hum of the cars going over the bridge above us. The evening has darkened to a sapphire blue, the lights of Fremont and the drawbridge over the bay twinkle like a mirror of the star-filled sky. If I had to brew up the perfect fall evening, it would look like this.

  “Dinner was…rather wonderful,” Will says after a comfortable silence.

  “Really?” I blink at him skeptically. “I counted seven different arguments. Were you in the same room with me?”

  “How do you do that? How did you learn?” Will leans back on his hands to look at me. A pair of young parents to our left pry their crying child off the troll’s hair, telling him it’s past his bedtime and it’s time to go home.

  “Learn what?” I blow an unruly curl out of my eye, laughing at the child because I don’t want the night to end, either.

  “To argue with all that noise but all that…love.”

  “You’re talking about my family? The sixteen-person riot we just had dinner with? Are you sure you were in the same room with me?”

  “I don’t see how you can do that,” Will says, his voice full of amazement. “You all never stopped arguing with each other all night but I never for a single moment felt anything but affection. How…how do you all do
that?”

  I realize, with a tender sting of pity, that I don’t know how I could ever explain such a thing. I’ve known that loud kind of love since my first breath. It would be like explaining breathing—it just happens, you don’t try to make it happen. “I don’t know,” I finally reply with a quiet voice, kicking at the gravel around my feet. “It’s just how we love each other, I suppose. It’s how it’s always been.”

  Will falls silent. I stare at him, his face shadowed in the dappled light streaming though the bridge. Over our heads, the rhythmic thumping hum of passing cars feels like the troll’s giant heartbeat. I know, without his saying a word, that it’s how it’s never been for him. I know, even though he’s right next to me, that his thoughts are halfway around the world and a dozen years in the past.

  I look at him, see the furrow in his brow and the tight angle of his mouth. I wonder, suddenly, if he looks like his father.

  It was at that moment that I became the bravest of all. “You need to forgive him someday, Will. Maybe that’s why you’re here. Why you’ve met my family. God knows how much you’ve hurt over this for all these years. Maybe God wants you to realize that the hurt will never go away until you can forgive him for being who he is.”

  A long time and several deep breaths pass before his reply. “Why is it you are always going places I’m trying not to bring you?” There is both pain and thankfulness in his voice. Slowly, his hand comes across the concrete to rest quietly next to mine.

  We have touched before, Will and I. Minutes, hours, days and weeks ago. But tonight, as our hands sit touching side by side, it feels altogether new and different.

  When he turns to me, his eyes rival the night sky. “There’s something I should have done a long time ago. Are you free Tuesday night?”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Not even in sonnet form

  Saturday morning, Diane dumps half a cup of cream into her mug. The woman puts so much cream and sugar into her coffee it’s hard to even call it coffee anymore. “So.” She plunks herself down backward in a kitchen chair, staring at me with inquiring eyes after I’ve told her the entire coffee-tasting and dinner-eating story. “You chickened out. Will’s right, you know, you should tell your family. I mean, if not now, when?”