by Nancy Warren
Iris in Bloom
Take a Chance: Book Two
by
Nancy Warren
Iris in Bloom
Take a Chance: Book Two
Copyright © 2014 Nancy Weatherley Warren
All rights reserved
Discover other titles by Nancy Warren at
http://www.NancyWarren.net
These stories are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Cover Design by Kim Killion
Iris in Bloom
Take a Chance: Book Two
Chapter One
Iris Chance usually had a smile and a cheerful word for every patron of Sunflower Coffee and Tea Company, the café and bakery she owned in Hidden Falls, Oregon. But not this morning.
Dragging up a smile was tougher than dredging hair out of her clogged sink, making small talk even tougher. When she futzed her latte art so her heart looked like a cancer growth, she pushed the mug to her customer anyway.
“What’s wrong with you?” Dosana, her helper, asked when they had a lull.
“I found a gray hair this morning, that’s what.”
“One gray hair? You’re acting like the Zombie Apocalypse is upon us for one gray hair?”
She picked up a cloth and wiped down the espresso machine. “And it’s my birthday coming up. Thirty-three. It seems so old.”
“Thirty-three is not old.” Dosana was all of twenty-two so Iris was not inclined to believe she knew what she was talking about.
“Jesus was thirty three when he died.”
“But not of old age.”
“I know. But look at everything he accomplished.” She used her fingernail to scrape a stubborn spot. “I feel like I’m treading water, you know? I think of all the dreams I had when I was your age. And what have I done with my life?”
“Iris, look around you. You own this place. You’ve built a business. Everyone in town comes in here for coffee and your famous desserts and so do most of the tourists who roll through town. You could totally franchise if you wanted to. Plus, you’re a published author.”
“A couple of short stories. Big deal.” Her mouth twisted. “Okay, I’m being a total bitch. I think my mom had about six kids by the time she was my age. Most of my friends are married now. I thought I would be, too.”
“Oh, ho. Is that what this is about? A biological ticking clock thing that you old people get?”
She shoved her employee with her elbow. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Hottie incoming, that should cheer you up.”
She glanced up and saw that Scott Beatty was peering through the glass door before coming in. Checking to see that she was behind the counter and not too busy. She was not particularly cheered. “He only wants to cry on my shoulder about his breakup with Serena and tell me how much he misses her.”
“That’s sweet.”
“Maybe. But I don’t want to hear any more about their sex life.”
“Their sex life? Why? Was it—”
“Kinky. Very kinky.”
There wasn’t time for more as the door opened, the sunflower chimes tinkling merrily, and Scott walked in. “Hi Iris, hey Dosana.”
He strolled toward them in worn jeans with a rip in the knee, a plaid flannel shirt with a gray T showing beneath and sturdy boots on his feet. “Hi Scott, what can I get you?”
He looked at her in surprise as he did every morning. As though he might have wandered in looking for motor oil or a new tractor blade. “Uh, coffee I guess.”
“Dark roast, medium roast, latte, mochachino, espresso?” She really needed to get a grip. Poor guy looked ready to turn tail and run.
He blinked. “Could I get a small medium roast?”
After she’d poured his coffee and he’d paid and thrown a dime in the tip jar, he said, “Can I talk to you for a second? If you’re not too busy?”
And because she wasn’t that busy and she felt sorry for him in all his pain she said, “I can take a few minutes,” and sat with him at one of the tables by the window while he poured out his heart to her about another woman. “The thing that really hurts is she lied.”
“Yes, she did.” Since she’d heard the entire story of the cheating and the lying and the breakup more than once, this was not news.
He frowned down at the coffee as though it were to blame. “I never thought she’d cheat on me.”
“I know.”
“Not after what we had together. I mean, it was so hot, hotter than anything I’d ever done before.”
Oh, not going down that path again. She stood. “I’ve got to get back to work. But you enjoy that coffee and maybe you should think about getting out there and dating again.”
“I guess.” He sounded totally dejected.
“Why aren’t you going after him?” Dosana asked when she got back behind the counter, bringing some dirty mugs with her. “He’s totally hot and he’s recently single. Snap him up before some other girl does.”
“Because he treats me like a cross between his mother and his therapist, that’s why.” Plus the kinky sex thing.
“It’s because that’s how you act. You know that right? Half the people who come in here want to tell you their problems and get you to fix them.”
Iris blew out a breath. “I’m the oldest girl in a family of eleven. I can’t help it. My whole life I’ve been the stand-in mom.”
“Well, stop it. Start acting like a hot woman who deserves to be wooed and not like their mother.”
“You’re right.”
“I know. Next hot guy who walks in here you are going to flirt.”
“The only hot guys in town are already taken.” She thought of her gorgeous brother. “Or gay.”
“So flirt anyway. Believe me, you need the practice.”
Flirting. As if. She hated everything about it: the fake gestures, the smile like every stupid thing a man said was fascinating, the pretending to be someone she wasn’t. Any man who wanted to get to know Iris was going to have to take her as she was. Or not at all.
She began to tidy the muffins in the case. They’d done a brisk morning business and now it was almost eleven. She had to decide whether to bake more muffins and run the risk of having too many left over or of not baking more muffins and risk losing a lot of muffin sales.
While she debated, the jingle of the hippy bells her mother had given her as a store-warming gift jangled. She rose and glanced to the doorway.
A man entered with that slightly unsure look of someone entering a place for the first time. He darted a glance around, and then seeing the big chalk board and the case of bakery goods, stepped forward.
He had a slightly rumpled look to him. A nice face, kind of Greg Kinnear looking with brown curly hair that needed a trim, candid blue eyes and a killer smile, which he flashed her when he caught her looking his way.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hi.” She gave him a moment with the board. “What can I get you?”
“An Americano, two lattes, one latte with soy milk, a jasmine tea and a regular dark roast.”
Dosana came out of the back at the sound of voices. “I’ll get the tea going,” she said. As she walked behind Iris she murmured, “Flirt.”
“Are those muffins as good as they look?” He had a good voice, she thought. Easy to listen to.
“They’d better be. I made them myself.” Oh, blech. What was she doing? That’s why she never flirted. She was no good at it. She sounded like a smarmy tout on the shopping channel.
“Great, I’
ll take half a dozen.”
While she got started on the lattes, Dosana brought over the tea and rang up his order.
Then her assistant grabbed a cloth and went out front to wipe tables leaving Iris alone with her customer.
“Passing through?” she asked. Probably with a wife waiting out in the van with the four kids.
“No. I’m starting a new job. At the high school. I’ll be the new English teacher.”
“Oh.” Because the last one nearly died and she thought it might be best not to bring that up.
“The drinks and muffins are bribes for my new colleagues.”
“I hope it works.”
“Me, too. If your coffee is as good as everyone tells me it is, you’ll be seeing a lot of me.”
“We’ll look forward to it.” She pulled out a cardboard tray and began lidding and fitting the drinks into it. As she bagged muffins, she noticed Dosana and Scott head outside. Dosana had quit smoking. She really hoped she hadn’t started up again.
“Geoff McLeod,” the new English teacher said. He held out a hand.
“Iris Chance. Nice to meet you.” His hand was warm, his grasp firm.
“Well, wish me luck.”
“I do. What grade are you teaching?”
“Eleven and twelve and creative writing. I’ve got my elevens this afternoon.”
She nodded, thought of her younger siblings who’d most recently attended Jefferson High. “They’ll hate you for King Lear.”
“Thanks for the pep talk.”
She grinned. “Anytime.”
As he balanced his laden tray and the muffins and headed toward the door she ran forward. “Let me get that door for you.”
She could hear Scott and Dosana talking. They must be right outside.
“What’s wrong with Iris?” She heard Scott ask Dosana.
Before she could open the door that would ring the bell announcing their presence, Dosana answered loud and clear.
“She’s feeling old with her birthday coming and all. You ask me, she needs to get laid.”
Chapter Two
Geoff was still chuckling when he pulled into the staff parking lot at Jefferson High. It wasn’t every day you got to see a very pretty woman blush the color of a ripe tomato.
She had the redhead’s easy blushing skin. Not that she was a redhead, exactly. Her hair, which she’d worn tied back, was more strawberry blond than red. She had blue green eyes that shone with kindness and a sweet smile.
He wondered why she wasn’t getting any.
Not that he had any interest in women or sex right now. Not after what he’d been through. She seemed like a nice woman though. Comfortable, the sort of person you could talk to.
Something had stirred within him when he’d caught her eye after they’d both heard the ‘she needs to get laid’ comment. An awareness, he supposed, that she was an attractive woman. If he was noticing at least that had to be good. Meant he was getting ready to move on.
He balanced the cardboard tray of drinks and the paper sack of muffins with his battered leather briefcase and backed his way through the double doors that led into his new school.
Some days he still felt like he was attending high school. He was the student who never really left. Just kept coming back year after year. The kids were always teenagers; only he sported thicker facial hair, a thicker chest, and a stodgier wardrobe.
“Hey, Mr. McLeod,” three girls chorused as he walked by. Pretty, cheerleader types. All were in his eleventh-grade English class. He remembered one name. Not bad for three days here. By the end of next week he’d know every name of every kid in his classes. “Hi girls,” he answered.
“See you in class,” Rosalind said as she sashayed by.
“Uh, huh.” That’s why he remembered her name. She was the mouthy one. He’d bet money that she’d be the first student who whined about how studying Shakespeare had nothing to do with real life and was a waste of her time. He bet she didn’t even know that her name came from Shakespeare.
He walked into the meeting room and handed out the coffees and, since there didn’t seem to be a plate, ripped open the bag and left the muffins sitting on the brown paper.
“Oh, yum,” Ellen Hampton said. She was the English teacher for the freshmen and sophomores. A comfortable woman who’d been here so long all her three kids had gone through Jefferson high and graduated. “You went to Sunflower like I told you.”
“Yes, I did.” He knew already that he was probably going to do most things that Ellen thought were a good idea. She had the experience and no desire to move up. She liked her job and had no problem that Geoff had been brought in to head the English department.
There were six of them in the department and, according to the principal who’d hired him, they were a solid bunch. He hoped so. He didn’t have room for more drama in his life. He wanted a quiet place where he could lick his wounds. He’d liked that this was a big outdoor recreation area. He needed fresh air, low stress and to be very far from his past life in LA.
He was lucky that a teaching job had come available in mid year. The last person in this position had suffered a sudden heart attack, fortunately not fatal, and decided to retire on the spot.
He hoped the kids weren’t responsible for the heart attack.
He’d agreed to a two year contract which he thought would give himself time to get his bearings again since his marriage had so suddenly and unexpectedly imploded. Figure out who he was and what he was going to do with the rest of his life.
He was thankful to get a job mid school year, thankful for the rhythm of teaching. Didn’t matter the school, not really, kids were kids and there was an essential rhythm to a high school year that was strangely comforting.
The classroom might be a little more beaten up than in his last school, the technology older, but he’d figure it out.
He brought his poster board quotations from famous authors, his collection of literary action figures. Like a new kid trying to turn a dorm room into his temporary home, he personalized his classroom.
He had his elevens after lunch and he recalled Iris Chance’s words, “They’ll hate you for King Lear.” That was coming up soon, but not, thank God, today. They were currently studying poetry, talking about Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman.
His next block was creative writing. This was his second session now with these kids and he was almost as bored as they were. How was it possible that an entire class of creative writing students didn’t seem to have a single creative idea among them?
After he listened to three students in a row read aloud stilted stories that were as lacking in drama as they were in originality, he gazed around at his action figures and his posters as though the plastic figurines of Jane Austen (weapon, her lethal wit) or Edgar Allan Poe with the removable raven on his shoulder waiting to swoop on the unwary might use their powers on these kids.
The silence of thirty kids shuffling and wondering why the teacher’s standing in a trance slowly broke in on him.
He chose a kid at random. Because he remembered his name. “Mitch, would you read the words on that poster right behind you on the wall, nice and loud for us?”
The kid was so startled he sat up straight. Turned and looked behind him. “That one?”
“Yes.”
“Uh, ‘Don't be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.’ Ralph Waldo Emerson.”
“Thank you, Mitch. What do you think Emerson means there?”
Mitch shrugged his shoulders.
“Anyone?”
“That you should try new things?” a girl said, her voice a question.
He beamed at her. “Exactly. So I have to ask you why you aren’t taking any chances at all in your own stories? This is creative writing. Part of our job here is to express ourselves in new and creative ways. To create new worlds or tell a story in a way that evokes an emotion in the reader.”
The same girl put
up her hand. “Yes. Was it Sarah?”
“Uh huh. Um, Mr. Bennett told us we had to follow the rules of composition. He gave us a text book.”
He’d found a copy of that text in the locker where his supplies were kept and assumed it was a piece of school history, not that anyone was actually teaching that crap.
“Okay. I know it’s always hard to have a teacher who comes in with new ideas when you’re used to the old one, but suck it up. From now on, we do things differently.”
A flicker of interest stirred like a breeze over dry leaves.
“First, has everybody seen The Dead Poets’ Society?”
Not a single soul had even heard of it.
He made a note. “Next class, we’re viewing the movie. In the mean time, you can bring in your copies of the composition book. We won’t be needing them again. Instead, I want you to take your stories, every single one of them. Go home and rewrite them.”
A collective groan rolled over him like an ocean wave trying to suck him under. These kids had attitude.
“How does that make you feel? Me making you redo an assignment?”
“Pissed,” Some boy yelled. Snickers erupted.
“Okay. Anger’s an emotion. Work with that. Write about how stupid it is to have to redo an assignment, turn it into a horror story about how the new teacher gets tortured by aliens. I don’t know. Even if you read your story over and love it, that’s okay. But –“ He pointed at the Emerson quote, the old gray haired dude seeming to approve of him as he glanced timelessly back. “Take a chance, like Emerson says. Experiment. In my creative writing class I am more interested in the creative than the rules. Got it?”
“Yes, Mr. McLeod.”
“Okay, next class, bring me those stories. Rewrite the story you’ve got, write something completely new, but go to the edge. Jump over the edge if you like.”
“And then we get to watch a movie?”
“And then we get to watch a movie,” he promised.
Of course, in that movie, one of the creative kids died and the teacher got fired.
Experiments, he reminded himself, involved risk.
