Always a Bridesmaid

by Lizzie Shane

  “Hey, Sid—” Parv broke off, suddenly unsure what to say. If Sidney had answered, she could have vented. She could have babbled. But somehow everything she wanted to complain about didn’t seem important enough for a voicemail message. It wasn’t urgent—it was just the slow crumbling of her life. It would still be crumbling tomorrow. “Just headed back from my parents’ thing,” she said, hearing the slight waver in her own voice and replacing it with an upbeat note. “I’ll be driving for a while so give me a call if you have a chance to talk. ‘Kay. Bye.”

  She considered calling Victoria, but it was Saturday and she would be with her family—and Parv had never been as close to Tori in their little friendship triumvirate as she had been to Sidney. Sidney was the glue that had made them the Three Musketeers. Back when they were all single.

  Back before Sidney fell in love with Josh and the two of them started filming a reality television show about dream weddings for deserving couples that took up all of their time.

  Back before Tori reunited with her daughter’s father and the three of them became an instant family, wholly focused on making up for the time they’d lost.

  Back when there had been Tuesday Girls’ Nights and she’d never felt like a leper because she hadn’t been The Single One, she’d just been one of the girls.

  Now she didn’t even have anyone she could talk to about how things were changing because Sid and Tori were the ones she would normally talk to and if she let on that she was anything other than blindingly happy for them, then she would be the awful, selfish friend who couldn’t be happy for her friends’ happiness because she missed who the three of them had been before.

  She’d always been single, but she hadn’t felt alone. They’d always been there for her. But things changed—and she was the one who hadn’t changed with them.

  It was almost nine when she arrived home—and remembered that she was going to have to do something about the Blue Mountain shipment. The day already felt like a never-ending shit-storm, but as exhausted as she was she knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep yet anyway, so she slipped inside just long enough to exchange the Torture Heels for a pair of flip flops and began the walk down the hill of her neighborhood toward the Main Street area of town and Common Grounds.

  It was full dark, but she knew every pebble along the way, having walked this path nearly every day for the last five years—most days in the dark, since she was often baking before dawn and doing orders and payroll long after the shop closed.

  It was a long-ish walk—thirty minutes downhill and longer going up at the end of the day when she was exhausted, but it was worth it to spare an extra parking space for a customer in their tiny lot. And in daylight, the view was spectacular—vineyards in the hills behind her, the glittering blue sprawl of the Pacific Ocean in front. There was a reason Eden, California was so popular with the ridiculously wealthy who wanted more of a small town, community feel in the stretch of land between Malibu and Santa Barbara.

  The adorable little Main Street area was a tourist attraction, but also a draw for the locals who were rabid about preserving the character of the town.

  The character of the town was the excuse the council had given her for the city ordinances that dictated the business hours of any shop along the Main Street stretch—making it impossible for Parvati to stay open long enough to compete with the Big Green Mermaid of Doom just outside the city limits.

  The character of the town was why they raised property taxes to pay for the new lamp posts lining the street—and Parv’s landlord had responded by raising her rent.

  She loved Main Street. The character of it. The atmosphere was a large part of her decision to open her shop there. She just hadn’t realized how much that feel was going to cost her.

  She’d always known the first couple years were going to be hard. She’d gone to business school. She knew all about start-up costs and operating losses.

  Don’t worry. Things are always rough at first. That was her mantra for the first two years. Then the mantra had changed. Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it. Everything’s great. As if by saying it over and over again she could make it true.

  Parv unlocked the door, stepping inside and breathing in the smell that always soothed her nerves—coffee beans, polished wood, and pastry crust. She loved this place.

  She flipped on the light to see it all. The comfy sitting area, the high top tables, the gorgeous pastry display case. She’d made this.

  And now it was going away.

  Parv sniffled, indulging in a maudlin moment as she made her way through the gorgeous gleaming stainless steel of her kitchen to the tiny box of an office, cluttered with everything she’d just as soon ignore. The detritus of running a business.

  The records were here. Payroll. Suppliers. Rent. Utilities—

  She should probably turn off the light she’d left on out front. She couldn’t afford the electricity.

  She opened the five-year-old laptop and fired up the bookkeeping program, listening to it whirr softly as it chugged through the software’s start-up process. And then there they were. A neat little march of red numbers across the page.

  She’d already known. She didn’t know why she’d felt the need to come here and stare at the numbers as if that would change something. There wasn’t any money to pay the suppliers. Common Grounds was done.

  “Parvati?”

  Her chair legs scraped loudly in the silence as she came to her feet at the voice calling from the front of house. She sniffled and scrubbed away the wetness on her face, rushing out of the office, through her gorgeous kitchen. “I’m sorry—we’re closed,” she called before she even reached the swinging door that opened behind the counter—though whoever was out there had to know that. They had called for her specifically.

  Then she stepped out into the warm light of the front and saw the man standing with one hand resting on her display case—like the physical embodiment of everything she’d ever wanted but couldn’t have.

  Max.

  “Of course it would be you.” Of course he would be the one to see her when she was having a little private breakdown.

  “Your door was unlocked.” Max nodded toward the door in question and Parv followed his gaze. “What do you mean of course?”

  That brought her gaze back to his—and to the wrinkle of concern between his brows.

  “Parv? You okay?”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I was driving by on my way home and saw the lights on. Wanted to make sure everything was okay—and to apologize again for my coffee betrayal this morning. Thought maybe you’d let me buy a make-up latte.”

  * * * * *

  As lies went, it was a small one. He had been driving by. And he had wanted to make up for that morning—but Eden’s Main Street wasn’t on his drive home. He’d just wanted to see her.

  Max had worked later than he expected—pacifying clients, adjusting schedules, and considering various marketing proposals for the new celebrity self-defense classes Elite Protection was going to begin offering in the spring. The hours had slipped away from him, as they always seemed to, and it was after nine before he got to the turn-off for his house—and kept driving.

  It was impulse to zip up to Eden. He’d kept thinking about Parv throughout the day and the excuse of an apology latte had seemed a good one—until he pulled off the PCH into the Main Street district and saw a row of darkened windows. He’d forgotten everything would be closed.

  Then he’d turned the corner onto Main Street itself and seen her shop, a beacon of golden light spilling out the windows, inviting him in.

  When he’d seen the deserted interior and found the door unlocked, it had roused his security-focused instincts. His relief when she’d appeared out of the back room had been acute—because she was Sidney’s best friend and his sister would be destroyed if anything happened to her—but then he’d noticed her red nose. Her pale face. Her damp eyes.

  There was something unnatural about
seeing Parv upset. She was Sidney’s sunny friend. Always smiling. Wise-cracking with him over his morning latte. She was the exuberant, vivacious one. When Sidney would freak out, it was Parv’s voice he would hear—encouraging her, cheerleading, saying everything was going to be great.

  But who cheered up Parv?

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, coming around the counter.

  “You’re not allowed back here,” she said, but the words were defeated and completely lacked the authority to shoo him back around the barrier.

  “Don’t worry. I know the owner.”

  She gave a half-hearted little sniff-laugh and a tear slipped from her eye, rolling down her cheek.

  “Hey.” He closed the last of the distance between them, tugging her into his arms. Her resistance was token at best and she let him tuck her against his chest. It wasn’t until his arms settled around her that he realized he’d never hugged Parvati before.

  They were friendly—he’d slung his arm over her shoulder when they posed for group photos over the years—but now with her tucked against his chest, he realized how much smaller than him she was. The top of her head came to his collarbone, her cheek resting against his pecs. She smelled of sugar—doubtless from all the baking magic she performed in the kitchen of Common Grounds—and was soft and curved in his arms. Parv had never been waiflike, but he’d always preferred a figure with a little lushness to it—

  Not that it mattered what he preferred. This was Parvati. Sidney’s best friend. The word lush should never be in the same sentence with her.

  She hadn’t fallen apart in his arms, he realized. There were no sobs, just the occasional sniffle, but she held onto him tightly, like he was her anchor.

  Too tightly. He could feel every inch of her, pressed against every inch of him. And any second now she was going to notice that his body was very happy with their current situation.

  Max gently set her away from him. “How about some tea?” he asked, scrambling for something neutral and comforting. People drank tea when they were upset, didn’t they?

  Parv sniffled, her dark eyes seeming larger and more compelling with moisture clumping her eyelashes. “Did you just offer me my own tea?”

  He glanced at the tea display next to him. “I did. But at least you know it’s the good stuff.”

  She snorted, grabbing two mugs. Max had never been a tea drinker—triple shot lattes were his drink of choice—but he didn’t stop her as she measured loose grounds into some kind of sieve ball, something about the action seeming to calm her as much as his hug had.

  He watched silently as she filled a small teapot with hot water, bent to retrieve a bottle of Sweet Tea Vodka from a hidden cupboard, and put the entire collection on a tray, carrying it over to the sitting area by the gas fireplace. The fireplace was dark now, but somehow that added to the after-hours feel of the shop, making the setting even more intimate.

  Not intimate intimate. She was his sister’s best friend.

  But as he settled down opposite her in one of the comfy armchairs, something felt different. He’d always been comfortable around Parvati—they’d known one another forever—but it was the distant comfort of easy banter and surface chatter. Tonight was something else entirely.

  “You wanna tell me what’s going on?” he asked, keeping his tone light, as if there was a chance in hell he was leaving here without finding out exactly what was bothering Parvati.

  “What isn’t going on?” she countered, filling the mugs and handing him one as she lifted her own to inhale the steam. Max mirrored her action and was surprised how much he enjoyed the sweet scent. Parv lifted her mug in a mocking toast. “Here’s to me. I’m officially failing in every aspect of my life.”

  “I’m not drinking to that. I’m sure it isn’t true.”

  “You’re sure?” Irritation snapped in her eyes. “You’re an expert on my life, are you?”

  Max bit his tongue. He didn’t know this unfamiliar Parvati, vibrating with anger at his attempt to comfort her. Sidney liked to tell him he was useless at women, but he’d always thought he was rather good with them—he’d certainly never had any complaints—but now he was starting to realize his little sister may have had a point. He had no idea what to say to Parv.

  Luckily, she seemed perfectly willing to fill the silence.

  “My eighteen-year-old niece got engaged today, but I can’t even find someone I want to go on a second date with. My sisters are worried about me because I couldn’t land the love of my life when I was sixteen, but the only person I wanted then was you and we all know how well that turned out—”

  Max choked on the sip of tea in his throat. “Wait. What?”

  “Don’t pretend you didn’t know I had a crush on you.”

  She kept speaking, but Max's ears shut off.

  He remembered her at sixteen. Mostly he remembered the string of inappropriate teenage fantasies he’d had about her mouth before he’d grown up enough to get his hormones under control. Or somewhat under control. She still had the same mouth. But he hadn’t thought about it that way in years. She was Parv. She was Sidney’s best friend. She was entirely off limits. He hadn’t even considered thinking of her that way.

  And he sure as hell hadn’t known she’d had a crush on him.

  Had. Past tense.

  She’d obviously grown out of it. She’d talked about it like it was nothing. A harmless little teenage crush. Totally natural. He was two years older. Her friendship with Sidney made him close enough to her and off-limits enough to be the perfect mix of attainable and unattainable. He was the natural choice for a crush. It was nothing personal.

  But something felt like it had shifted. Something subtle and small. Inconsequential.

  He tuned back into her diatribe, hoping she hadn’t noticed his distraction.

  “—and I just hate it. I hate that nothing in my life is going the way I thought it would. I hate that I spent five years trying to make this place fly and now I’m going to have nothing to show for it. I hate that everyone is going to know that I failed as soon as I announce we’re closing. And I hate lying to my parents about how bad things are.”

  “How bad are they?”

  She sank into the depths of her chair, cradling her mug between both hands. “I need to tell my employees, but that will make it real. So I keep putting it off. I thought summer would be better—and I’m discovering I have a heretofore unexplored gift for denial.” Her gaze moved around the shop, taking it all in. “I talked to a small business advisor about selling the business as a whole, but apparently it’s worth more piecemeal. If I sell off all the assets, that should be almost enough to pay everyone off. A premium espresso machine is worth something—even used. The display cases, the dishes, the furniture…” She traced a finger along the arm of her chair. “Everything will have to go. The kitchen will be the hardest. My parents gave me the oven as a present when I first opened. It’s so gorgeous—and even if I get what it’s worth, I’ll just barely get enough to walk away with nothing.” She lifted her mug again in a toast. “So here’s to me. Turning thirty with nothing but failure to show for the last decade.”

  “I’m still not drinking to that. You’ll bounce back. This doesn’t have to be the end of the world.”

  “Everything will be great?” She snorted, but he didn’t get the joke. “I’m good at saying that. Everything will be great. I’ll take care of it. Don’t worry.” She breathed out a soft, huffing laugh. “No one else has to worry because I do enough of that for everyone.” She shook her head. “I don’t know how you do it.”

  “Do what?”

  “Run a business. Five years of constant stress and I’m falling apart, but you make it look so easy.”

  “It isn’t easy, but I don’t get stressed out.” He shrugged. He just wasn’t built that way. He was a Dewitt. And Dewitts created businesses. It was who he was. “Sidney tells me I need to stop and smell the roses sometimes, but I think the fact that I never stop working is why I never
have time to stop and feel the stress.”

  He’d never been able to slow down. To stop pushing for even a second. Max was always working. Which was why he’d been able to take an idea, turn it into a successful business and sell it off by the time he was twenty-three.

  “You smell the roses,” Parv insisted. “You took three years off to travel the world after you sold your first business.” There was envy in her tone.

  He didn’t want to dissuade her from her idea of him as someone who actually knew how to enjoy life, though he couldn’t say why.

  He hadn’t smelled the roses on his trip. Backpacking across Thailand. Doing charity work in the Sahara. Climbing Mount Fuji. Getting his third black-belt in China. He’d always been moving. Always working. Competitive tourism.

  But he liked Parvati’s idea of him. He would have liked to be that guy. The one who could slow down.

  Parv slumped down in her chair and Max realized how late it had gotten—and she’d driven to Monterey and back today. He rose, setting aside his cup and taking hers out of her hands. “Come on. Let’s get you home.”

  Chapter Five

  There was something surreal about walking into her kitchen and finding Max Dewitt standing at her sink with his shirtsleeves rolled up doing dishes. Parvati paused on the threshold, watching him. He’d taken his jacket off and left it neatly folded on the pristine counter behind him as he scrubbed clean the mugs and teapot they’d used.

  She’d slipped away to shut off the computer in the back office—reminded again that she had no idea what she was going to do about the Blue Mountain shipment because there was simply no money left—and when she returned he was making himself useful, erasing any work she might have had to do. Taking care of her.

  The sight tugged at something inside her and she had to remind herself that this was just Max. He was protective. He took care of people. It was in his DNA. But he didn’t get attached. Not to things and certainly not to people.