by Fiona Grace
Ali accepted the call, feeling worried. “What’s wrong? Is it the kids? Jackson? Has something happened?”
“Everyone’s fine,” Hannah replied, in her usual flat affect. “It’s you I’m worried about. Teddy said you’re leaving LA?”
“I’ve already left,” Ali said, looking at her stack of boxes.
“What happened?” Hannah pressed. “Teddy said you lost your job.”
Ali put her hands on her hips. “What else did Teddy say?”
“Otis dumped you, you lost your job, and you’re leaving LA,” came Hannah’s blunt reply.
Ali huffed. Was nothing sacred?
She shoved her cell between her ear and shoulder and lifted the first box into her arms.
“First of all, I didn’t lose my job,” she said, as she headed round the corner toward the front of the house. “I … instigated my departure from it.”
“What the heck does that mean?” Hannah asked.
Ali reached her new front door. It was electric blue.
“It means I smooshed a crème brûlée with my fist all over a balding Hollywood exec,” she said into her phone.
She placed the box down on the stoop. As she straightened up, she noticed the curtains of her new neighbor’s house twitching, and a pair of eyes peeping suspiciously through the gap.
Ali waved brightly and the curtains flapped back into place.
With a shrug, Ali headed back around the corner to fetch the next box.
“That sounds like the actions of a totally sane person,” Hannah said sarcastically in her ear. “And what’s the deal with Otis? Teddy said he came out as gay.”
Ali snatched up the next box. “Sounds like Teddy’s already told you every last detail of my life.”
“So it’s true?” Hannah pressed. “Otis is gay?”
Ali twisted her lips to the side, a wave of melancholy washing over her. “Apparently so.”
She began her next trip to her front door.
“Look, Allison,” Hannah said. “I know it’s probably very difficult to know you turned your boyfriend gay, but don’t take it as a sign you need to change anything about yourself.”
Ali stopped outside her front door and grimaced. “I didn’t turn my boyfriend gay. It doesn’t work like that.”
The neighbor’s curtains twitched again. Once again, Ali waved, and they snapped shut into place.
“I’m just saying don’t get all insecure and think that you need to wear nicer clothes or get a better haircut,” Hannah said bluntly. “You’re fine the way you are.”
“Gee,” Ali said, dryly. “Thanks.”
Of course Hannah was only trying to cheer her up, but she had a special brand of tactlessness that did nothing of the sort.
Ali headed to the lot for the final box.
“Hannah, why are you calling?” she asked.
“I wanted to see if you needed anything. Teddy said the place was a mess.”
Ali rolled her eyes. She couldn’t imagine Teddy talking about her behind her back (to Hannah of all people), but he was one to get a little bit carried away with a story, so she could see how her slightly scruffy store might be turned into a pigsty for drama’s sake.
“I’ll be fine, thanks,” she said, lifting the last box. “I’m looking forward to doing the place up. I can decorate it just how I want.”
She reached her door and unlocked it, then began relaying the boxes into the small, bare apartment.
“I’d better warn you that Mom knows about your little venture,” Hannah said.
“She does?” Ali asked. “How did she find out already?”
Teddy hadn’t blabbed to the both of them, had he? Ali was going to kill him!
“Your bank sent a letter,” Hannah said. “They wanted to double-check the change of address wasn’t fraudulent.”
Ali frowned. Like most people, she’d bank-hopped over the years to get new customer deals, leaving a trail of breadcrumbs in her wake. But since she wasn’t going to be able to just head home and pick up her mail whenever she felt like, she’d been careful to switch all her details. Something must have slipped through. Even so, any correspondence from the bank would be addressed to her, rather than her mother.
“Wasn’t the letter addressed to me?”
“It was,” Hannah said.
“But Mom still opened it?”
“Of course.”
Ali rolled her eyes at the complete lack of privacy. Then she heard a beep in her ear that told her she had an incoming call.
“Hold on, Hannah. I’m getting another call.” She checked the screen of her cell phone. It was their mom. “Speak of the devil.”
“Is it her?” Hannah asked.
“Yeah. I’d better take it. You know how moody she gets when we don’t answer her calls within five rings.”
Hannah laughed. “Good luck,” she said, before ending the call.
Ali connected to her mom’s line.
“What took you so long to answer?” Georgia Sweet demanded.
“Hi, Mom, how are you? That’s good. I’m fine, too thanks,” Ali quipped.
Her mom sighed. “Yes, yes, very funny. So? Why did it take you so long to answer?”
“I was chatting with Hannah.”
Ali knew her mom wouldn’t stay mad if she knew the two sisters were talking. She was always worried about them not getting along well enough.
“That’s nice,” Georgia said. “Did she tell you how silly it is to be opening a store in this current economic climate?”
Ali’s eyelids fluttered closed with mild frustration. “Actually she was just calling to wish me luck.”
“Was she?” Georgia said, sounding surprised. “Because when we spoke yesterday she gave me a bunch of figures. Retail footfall is going down. Store rent is going up. People want to shop online these days, Ali. What makes you think you can run a store?”
“It’s a bakery,” Ali told her, firmly. “People don’t buy pastries online, do they?”
“No. Because they don’t buy them at all,” Georgia said. “I mean, have you even done any market research? Hannah must’ve said a million times that the reason ninety percent of businesses fold in their first year is because they didn’t realize there was little demand for what they were offering!”
Ali narrowed her eyes. Her mom’s anxiety was practically oozing through the phone. It took all her patience to remind herself her mother was speaking from a place of love and concern, and not that she was just trying to dump on Ali’s dreams.
Ali decided to try steering the conversation toward the positives.
“You should see it here, Mom,” she said, walking to the window and peering out. “It’s beautiful. I can see the ocean. There’s a pier with rides on it. All the houses are painted colors of the rainbow…”
“It sounds like a hippie den. Why are you slumming it in a hippie den, Ali?”
“Mom! It’s just a gorgeous, laidback seaside town.”
But her mom wasn’t listening. “What about your degree? And your doctorate? And your mentorship under Milo Baptiste? Doesn’t any of that matter to you anymore? Are you really throwing that all away to make croissants?”
“Mom, all I was doing before was making crème brûlée. Now I’ll be doing so much more. I’ll be a business owner. A creator. I was basically a robot before. Now I’ll actually get to use my brain.”
“Using your brain means staying in a good job with decent health insurance, not going it alone. You’re not thinking rationally.”
Ali sighed. “You know what? You’re right. I’m not thinking rationally. Because I thought rationally all my life and all that happened was I became a crème brûlée robot. So it’s time to stop thinking rationally and start following my heart.”
“Well,” Georgia said, sounding affronted. “If that’s how you feel, then so be it.”
And with that, she hung up.
Ali stared at her phone, feeling like steam was billowing out of her ears. This was not how she’d
wanted the first day of the rest of her life to begin.
With an angry huff, Ali knew what would make her feel better. Getting to work on her new store and paving the way to her future. She was going to prove her mother and her sister wrong.
CHAPTER TEN
A huge scraping noise came from behind Ali. She turned to the open door of her store, where Teddy was halfway through shoving a large stove inside. He’d driven down to help her set the store up, and the screech was quite obviously the sound of the stove damaging the floor.
“Teddy!” Ali exclaimed.
She hurried over to him. She’d chosen to wear denim overalls for their DIY day, and had tied her thick blond hair into two plaits with a fabric tie, because she may as well go the whole hog.
Teddy flashed her a guilty expression. “Sorry, sis.”
She took one end of the stove, and together she and Teddy waddled it across the floor. As they went, an enormous dent was revealed in the peppermint green tiles.
“Perfect,” Ali said. “That’s my security deposit gone.”
“Think of it as motivation,” Teddy said. “Use it to fuel your ambition.”
“That sounds like actor speak,” she muttered.
They waddled the stove the rest of the way to the kitchen, which was currently in a state of complete disarray. Ali had happened across a big industrial sink from a nearby closing down restaurant and—getting a little too caught up in the serendipity of her new life—had lugged it back, decided to switch out the small one for it. Of course she didn’t actually know how, and couldn’t afford someone to do it for her, and so now there was just a big empty space filled with pipes.
“Do you need help with that?” Teddy asked, eyeing it warily. He was still puffing and panting from moving the stove.
Ali thought of the deep scratch on her floor and shook her head. “Nah. I think I’ve got this. Thanks anyway.”
Teddy flopped forward onto the counter. “Thank god. I’m exhausted. I couldn’t lift another thing.”
He closed his eyes, clearly already giving up on his offer to help her fix up the place.
Ali looked at the sink.
I guess it’s just you and me, she thought.
*
Ali wielded a wrench and hit play on the internet tutorial entitled “How to Install a Sink: The Plumber’s Step-by-Step Guide.”
She’d sent Teddy home. He was becoming more of an encumbrance to her DIY day than a help, so she decided to get the work done alone.
She watched the tutorial and tried her best to follow along with the instructions. It was like listening to a foreign language. Pipes this, caulks that, clamps, connectors, and brackets. Ali flapped about, trying her best to keep track of all the steps as she went.
When she was done, she stepped back and admired her handiwork. The industrial-sized sink looked just perfect. Ali felt rather satisfied with herself.
She tried the faucet and a stream of water flowed out.
Ali punched the air. “HAHA!” she exclaimed, dancing on the spot from foot to foot.
Then she frowned. Steam? Why was there steam coming out of the faucet?
Ali realized that hot water was coming out of the cold tap. She quickly shut it off and tried the hot tap. Ice cold.
“Of course,” she muttered aloud to herself. She’d installed it the wrong way around. “Rookie mistake.”
Just then, she heard footsteps and turned to see a suave-looking Italian man entering the store. It was the man from the pizzeria she and Teddy had eaten at on their first trip here. He was holding a wicker basket that appeared to be stuffed with goodies. A welcome basket!
Ali grinned as the man approached the counter, and wiped the grease from the wrench onto her overalls—something she’d seen the sassy heroine in movies do and had always wanted to emulate.
“Marco, isn’t it?” she asked warmly.
In a split second, the man’s smile dropped. “It’s Emilio,” he corrected.
“Emilio?” Ali repeated, confused. “But I was in your pizzeria the other day. You served me a margherita pizza.”
“I did nothing of the sort,” the man said, brusquely. “You must’ve gone to Marco’s pizzeria. He’s my brother.”
Ali’s mouth dropped open. “Wait… Are you twins?”
“Unfortunately,” he said with a grimace. “But Marco’s pizzas are overpriced and his ingredients are poor quality.”
Ali smirked, recalling that Marco had said the same about Emilio’s pizzas when she’d eaten there.
So the bitter rivals on either side of her were twins. And she was going to be right in the middle of two bickering brothers. Two attractive Italian brothers. This was going to be a hoot and a half…
“Anyway, enough about him,” Emilio said in a strong, swoon-inducing accent. “I wanted to bring you a moving in gift.” He placed the basket on the counter. It was full of different-shaped pastas.
“How kind of you,” Ali said.
“It’s nice to have someone in this store again,” Emilio continued. “Pete was a nice man. Popular. I was very fond of him.”
Fond of him, or fond of the buffer? Ali wondered.
Before Ali had a chance to ask more about Pete, a dog came trotting in through the open door. It was a brown and black terrier, semi-longhaired. It came up to Emilio’s shins and halted next to him.
“Your dog is so cute!” Ali squealed. She loved dogs almost as much as she loved cats.
Emilio looked down at the terrier. “Him? No. He’s a stray. Lives on the boardwalk. He’s always sniffing around for scraps. We call him Scruff.”
“Scruff!” Ali exclaimed. It was too cute for words.
She went around the counter, crouched down, and petted him. He gazed at her with his big brown eyes. Ali’s heart melted.
“He’ll never leave you alone now,” Emilio said from above.
Ali looked up at him. “That’s fine by me.”
She’d always dreamed of owning a dog. She couldn’t really have one in her small apartment, so maybe having a doggy visitor stop by her store on occasion would satisfy that urge.
“Hello!” a voice called.
Emilio visibly bristled. “See you,” he said, before hurrying past the new intruder.
It was a woman, hippie-ish, with soft white-blond hair hanging all the way down her back. She was slim and muscular, and dripping with jewelry.
“Bye, Emilio!” she trilled as the Italian man hurried away. Then she looked at Ali and grinned. “Hello, neighbor!”
“Hi,” Ali said, feeling intimidated by the ebullient beauty standing in front of her. Typical that they’d meet when Ali was dressed in dirty overalls.
“I’m Delaney,” the woman continued. “I work up the road. My store is called Little Bits of This and That.” She thrust a flyer at Ali. “Thought I’d come in and say hello. See how you’re settling in.” She spoke very quickly, and her gaze darted all over the place like a hawk.
“Thanks,” Ali said, a little taken aback. “I’m Ali.”
“What’s your plan with this place?” Delaney asked.
“Pastries,” Ali said. “I’m a pâtissier.”
“Oh, how novel,” Delany said. “I simply adore French cuisine. And it’s not the sort of thing you’d find on the boardwalk, so that’s lovely and unique.”
Ali was wary. She couldn’t tell if that was a backhanded compliment or not.
“Do you know what happened to Pete?” Delaney asked.
Ali shrugged. “No idea.”
“It’s a shame,” Delaney replied. “He made the best pitas. Honestly. Such a lovely man. I hope he’s okay. He didn’t have much business acumen. Not to toot my own horn, but there’s an art to this and some people just don’t have it.” She laughed loudly. “Anyway, I just wanted to pop in and say hi, and say I look forward to getting to know you—and take my advice.” She lowered her voice. “Don’t date either of the Italians.” Then she brightened again. “Toodles!” she said, and off she went.
Ali watched her go, feeling like a hurricane had just swept through her store.
*
At the end of a long day of DIY, Ali decided to sit on the beach to watch the sunset. She’d been working hard renovating the store, and deserved a bit of time to soak it all in.
The beach was pretty quiet, with just a few dog walkers and joggers, and a solitary man out surfing in the waves. Ali watched his silhouette as she munched on the ham and pickle sandwich she’d made for dinner.
The surfer started doing tricks in the waves. Ali watched, impressed. But suddenly he mistimed a wave and his board smacked him in the face.
“Oh no!” Ali cried, jumping up and running for the water.
The man bobbed back up. Blood was running from his nose. He spotted her running for him.
“I’m all right,” he called, in a distinctly Australian accent.
“You’re bleeding!” Ali called back, kicking up surf as she ran.
He touched his nose, then inspected his fingers covered in blood.
“You’re right,” he said. “Flippin’ hell!”
Ali reached him, her overalls now soaked up to the thighs, and shoved the napkin from her sandwich at him.
“Take this,” she said.
“Thanks,” he said, dabbing his nose.
He wasn’t much taller than Ali. Up close, she could see he was handsome, in an unsuspecting way. He had a boyishness to his features, with round cheeks, freckles, and a turned up nose. His hair was dark blond, but naturally highlighted by the combination of sea and sunshine, as surfers’ hair often was. It was slightly too long, sticking in tendrils to his tanned face. He was in many ways the opposite of Ali’s usual type—tall, dark (and gay, apparently)—but Ali found herself somewhat inexplicably attracted to him. Maybe it was the fact he was in distress and she was there to rescue him. Or maybe it was the way water was dripping down his golden skin and through the defined muscles on his torso like rivulets. Whatever it was, her stomach was doing back flips.
“I hate the sight of blood,” he said in that strong Aussie accent. “Makes me woozy.”
“I’ll help you,” Ali offered, jumping at the chance.
