Coffee Shop Girl

by Katie Cross

I struggled to remember everything we had spoken about that day, but I only remembered talking about Mama. My jealousy of Lizbeth and Ellie.

  She frowned slightly, and my heart sank. She’d heard.

  “We were always jealous of you, you know,” she said quietly.

  “Me?”

  “We physically had Mama, but you had the rest of her. She was happy when you were there. Present. She spoke to us a lot, and we all played games and did things. But it wasn’t like that when you were gone. After you left, there were a lot of sullen silences. Canned dinners. We rarely played games unless you were there.”

  My hands relaxed, and the canoe slowed. Ellie, Devin, and Maverick were specks in the distance now. We were the only people here, in a world surrounded by water.

  “Really?”

  Lizbeth swallowed hard. “It’s like there were two of her. Mama when Bethany was around, and Mama without Bethany. She loved us, and she never neglected us, but she was never really there when you weren’t. I think that’s why Ellie loved her so desperately. We got so little of her. Ellie scrambled for any sign of affection from Mama since Dad is so . . .” She trailed off with a sigh. “Mama gave me books and gave Ellie the woods.”

  Stunned, I simply stared at her. What a tapestry this whole mess had become. All of it pointed back to Mama and whatever demons had pushed her to the horrible decisions that had harmed the rest of us. The flares of anger I felt toward her, however, always faded into resignation. This was Mama’s legacy.

  But it didn’t have to be ours.

  “Lizbeth, I had no idea. I’m sorry. I wasn’t the best big sister in the world.”

  “What was . . . what was she like before we came along?”

  My forehead scrunched, trying to remember. “She was shadow and light. Maybe that sounds dumb. I just remember moments of deep joy and moments of total despair. There was either goodness or terror. I was only with her until I was six or seven. That’s when Dad took me back, and she let me go.”

  “She told me about that time. That you lived out of the car. She burned through your Dad’s money at first, then worked as a prostitute to get gas money for the next place. On good nights, she said, she’d be able to get dinner and a motel room.”

  My back stiffened. I’d always suspected, but Mama had never betrayed herself. I couldn’t help but wonder why she’d told Lizbeth, of all people.

  Hopefully to keep her out of that life.

  “Yes,” I whispered. “I remember sitting in the car, waiting for her to come back. Being confused as to why she had to go at all, and why Dad wasn’t good enough. Then he showed up, and everything changed.”

  “He did you a favor,” Lizbeth muttered darkly.

  The truth swept through me in a long, cold rush.

  “I know.”

  “Things are progressing nicely.” Maverick tutted under his breath as he studied one of his favorite spreadsheets. “We’re already seeing signs of progress, even with the minor improvements to your ordering process. You had a $23 profit yesterday.”

  His jaw flexed as he thought, a funny little tic I liked to watch for. I straightened from where I stood behind the counter, the greatest vantage point from which to see him. Lizbeth watched me with a smug expression every time she caught me staring his direction.

  Which was a lot.

  “My bank account will hopefully notice.”

  Maverick stood from the table and stretched with a smile. His torso and shoulders elongated, and it took all my considerable mental energy not to stare at the gap between his belt and shirt that revealed his abs. I tossed a rag toward the sink to distract myself, and it landed on the spigot.

  “Did you already fill out your spreadsheet today?”

  “Yes, Mom,” I drawled.

  In truth, the spreadsheet he’d made me was kind of nice. I liked a centralized place to look at my business numbers. Something similar might come in handy with real estate. I’d been pondering ways to adapt the system. In truth, however, I had no idea what would translate to real estate. All those dreams were just that . . . dreams. Until I could get my license, it was just a hope.

  Although his organization of ideas had been imperfect, Maverick had proven correct so far. Things at the shop didn’t seem quite so bleak. The operations manual had exposed a lot of issues and forced me to find solutions. A lot of those solutions meant losing less money. While things were more organized and I had some semblance of cash flow, there was a lot of room for improvement.

  Relentless as usual, and far too handsome in a pair of glasses he only occasionally wore, Maverick folded his arms. Despite our snuggle session Friday night and lake day on Saturday, he was all business now that it was Monday again. He stood in the middle of the coffee shop, legs braced slightly apart. The power pose did funny things to my stomach.

  Why did Lizbeth have to be reading in the corner?

  I couldn’t help but wonder if she was why he was acting so professional. So far today, he’d given no indication that we had any nonwork connection. I’d noticed that about him. Work time was focus time.

  An array of marketing ideas lay sprawled in front of me on the counter. Each idea was written on an index card, and I kept moving the cards around to re-prioritize them. Lizbeth and I had been debating back and forth about how to get more people into the shop.

  Book club said one card near the top. Birthday parties. Better pastries. BOGO sales. Wedding catering, which didn’t make any sense, but she’d insisted I keep it. “Don’t dismiss ideas, Bethie,” she’d muttered. “There’s brilliance on each card.”

  “Think deeper,” Maverick said now as he watched me regard each one for the fifteenth time. “What do people want when they come in, Bethany?”

  The sound of my name on his voice purled like hot tea inside me. I blinked in a poor attempt to focus.

  “And what do they need?” He tapped a finger on the counter. “This is Sales 101.”

  I frowned. “They want coffee.”

  Pretty simple.

  Or was it? It must not be, or he wouldn’t challenge me this way.

  Credit card day loomed, and even though I spent time in my numbers every day at his insistence, I still felt sick to my stomach. My body had learned to be stressed the moment I thought about money.

  “It certainly isn’t fish,” he said.

  “Hey!”

  Maverick held up two hands. “Listen, there comes a point where you have to look at your current assets and optimize those. That’s the next stage in my process, and that’s where we’re at now. All the markers are present to indicate you’re here.”

  He scribbled something on a notepad next to his laptop. He kept more notes than me.

  “English, please?” I asked.

  A hint of a smile ghosted his lip. “We’re going to make your shop . . . better.”

  “And how will we do that?”

  “Your decorations and . . . ambiance. I think we can improve the way things look around here and get more customers. More loyal customers, anyway. This ties into your marketing efforts and asks the same question: what do people want?”

  Yikes. He’d gone right to my weak spot.

  My few half-hearted attempts to move around what Dad had originally created in his manly, fishing-themed coffee shop had been minimal. Most of my time went into trying to keep this place floating. I literally hadn’t once thought of revamping the inside.

  “How do you optimize decorations?” I asked. Already, I felt my hackles rise.

  “Improve them. But first, we need to step back. I’m getting ahead of myself again.” Scribble, scribble on his little pad. “Let’s figure out who your ideal client is, and what kind of ambiance they want. That’s the goal today. Figuring out the answer to the question who do you serve?”

  “That’s easy! Everyone.”

  “Wrong.”

  I blinked. “What?”

  He motioned to me with a wave. “If you didn’t own this place, would you ever come here? You don’t lik
e sweet flavors, and you hate the smell of coffee.”

  “No,” I said slowly.

  “See? You don’t serve everyone. In fact, your business doesn’t even serve you. Which, let’s not get into that right now.”

  “Okay,” I drawled. “So, we don’t serve everyone. What does that mean?”

  Lizbeth peered out over the top of her book. “Please,” she said to Maverick, “tell me you’re going to encourage her to get rid of the fish.” Her eyes darted to two plastic fish above the door. “I beg of you.”

  He winked at her.

  My mouth dropped open. “The fish?” I cried. “Those are Dad’s favorite!”

  “They’re hideous,” Lizbeth said.

  “They’re . . .”

  While I searched for adequate words to encompass the plastic replicas of leaping rainbow trout, Maverick nudged a nearby coat rack that Dad had bought at a secondhand antiques shop.

  “This, for example?” he said. “Terrifying. Gaping fish mouths are holding the coats. They all need to go.”

  “No, please,” I said, folding my arms. “Soften it for me, why don’t you?”

  “They’re hideous.”

  “I was being sarcastic,” I snapped.

  Lizbeth tilted her head to the left. “Can that go too? All of them are ancient.”

  Dad had always loved board games, so a haphazard offering of them sat tucked under one of the tables. Every now and then, kids would stop in after school to caffeinate up for the rest of the day, playing Monopoly with ruthless vigor. Then they’d disappear to their gaming consoles at home.

  By every once in a while, I meant once a year.

  “Those are games!”

  “They’re for grandpas.” She grimaced, then mouthed, Sorry.

  “The rest of it isn’t bad. Luckily, this isn’t a structural problem. It’s not like you need to re-carpet, or anything,” Maverick said with a wary gaze. He didn’t sound so convinced.

  The wooden floor was scuffed but in decent shape. I moved to clean up two abandoned coffee cups off a cracked table.

  Dad had always brought home coffee mugs as souvenirs from his deployments. When he opened the Frolicking Moose, he had over a hundred mugs that he put onto a cupboard in the corner. Time had whittled them down to about seventy-five.

  I take the world with me whenever I drink coffee, he always said. It was definitely fun to pick your own mug. Those weren’t going anywhere.

  “Yeah,” Lizbeth drawled, “it’s all pretty gauche here, although I could live with the coffee mugs. You could potentially pass off all the decor and theme as a joke, but you’d need a few other things that are equally ridiculous—like a stuffed Sasquatch, or something.”

  My brain couldn’t even process that.

  “And that?” Mav pointed to a bulletin board covered with pictures of different types of fish, along with some lures. “What is that, anyway?”

  “A lure exchange.” I regarded it with a tilted head, my nose wrinkled. “The idea was fish and coffee.”

  “Fish and coffee?” Lizbeth whispered, horrified.

  “It’s not so bad! If fishermen wanted to try out different lures, they could come in and swap . . . and hopefully buy coffee. With the lake right there, he was convinced it’d work.”

  “Did it?”

  “Ah . . . no.”

  I had completely forgotten it was there. Dad had been so excited when he called me with the idea. Taking it in from an outsider’s perspective, however, I could see why it seemed . . . odd.

  “Who is a customer that comes in here all the time?” Maverick asked.

  “All the time?”

  “Someone who genuinely loves coffee, pastries, and being with other people, even if they don’t interact.”

  Well, no one who didn’t feel some obligation to help me, like Jada and Millie. They were regulars, but I suspected more for my sake than their own.

  Except . . .

  “Someone who loves to read, perhaps?”

  He shrugged. “Sure. Maybe they need the internet, like to be out of their house, want to be around other people. Who would use this coffee shop as a place to be social? A place to be seen, known, and heard. Somewhere to be safe. To belong. Somewhere to go.”

  With a quick twist of my lips, my gaze settled on Lizbeth.

  Her eyes widened dramatically. “Uh, yeah!” she cried. “Finally, someone sees me as I really am! I freaking love coffee, and I’d never leave my armchair if you didn’t force me. Millie gave me all the dish on the latest gossip this morning.” She pointed saucily at us. “Give me a year, and I will run this town.”

  The expression on Maverick’s face suggested he didn’t doubt it for a second.

  I spread my hands. “So, what do you want in a coffee shop? How would you decorate this place? What would you change? Feel free to take your ti—”

  “Cozy. You need to cozy the crap out of this place.”

  The words flew out of her in a second, as if she’d already been thinking about this. Knowing how much time she spent in Dad’s mustard-colored recliner in the corner nook, I wouldn’t have been surprised. Lizbeth rose from the chair like a wood nymph.

  She warmed to this at an alarming rate.

  I unsuccessfully strove to quell a rush of panic as everything in the coffee shop met her scrutiny. Maverick watched with unbridled amusement.

  “Cozy?” I repeated.

  “Needs to be cozy. This is too . . .”

  “Fishy?” Maverick offered. I glared at him. His lips twitched, but he offered no apology.

  “Masculine,” Lizbeth countered. “But yes, all the fish have to go. I have a Pinterest board on this already. Do you want to see it?”

  “What?”

  Maverick tilted his head back and laughed. Lizbeth sent him a coquettish smile as she passed me her phone. She did have a Pinterest board, filled with images of arguably cozy shops. This was spiraling from bad to worse.

  “I’m a dreamer,” she said easily. “I like books, and I like pretty places. Since this is all I have to work with”—she waved a hand around—“I imagine myself in one of these other places. Anyway, more warm tones. The floor is beautiful, but needs a polish. I’d paint the walls, probably change from white to plum. Bookshelves on that wall, for starters. Keep the moose head, I actually think it works. We’ll go with rustic cozy, and it’s going to change this mountain forever.”

  She pointed to the fishy wall while I scrolled through the pins on her board.

  Indeed, she’d thought this out.

  The pictures showed warm lamps that cast buttery light. People milling around high and low tables. Chalkboards with fun writing and colors, instead of hastily scratched options. High class. In comparison, this place seemed . . . desperate.

  “Wow,” I murmured.

  Lizbeth slipped over to one corner. “A lamp here. Maybe one with a silhouetted moose. You need to play more on your theme. And I think we amp up the mountain feel more. It’s a bit lacking right now, but gives people the outdoor theme they come here for. That antiques store in Jackson City? We could refurbish from that with less than two hundred dollars. I’d bet my position as romance queen on it.”

  Maverick pointed at her as if to say, Check her out?

  “She’ll be unbearable after this,” I muttered as Lizbeth studied the glass windows peering out on a hideous parking lot.

  “We can do all that,” Maverick said.

  “With what money?” I cried.

  He ignored me.

  “Will you help, Lizbeth?” he asked.

  She tossed a lock of hair over her shoulder. “You can’t afford me, Mav.”

  Maverick laughed again.

  Lizbeth rolled her eyes. “Um, yes, I will help you! This could be my big break into the interior-design space. Plus, then I can show all my Pinterest followers. They have ads there, you know. I could haul in some cash.” She gazed at me from under thick, pale eyelashes. “Besides, we owe you, don’t we?”

  Before I coul
d counter, she started prattling again, bouncing around the room. I let her live in it while I staved off the utter panic scalding my throat. It wasn’t just the money—although that was part of it. It was the change. The shift. The loss of control as this all moved forward.

  The total erasure of Dad.

  We were getting rid of everything that made this place Dad’s. The fish. The colors. The not-so-organized feel of clutter and coffee. It certainly wasn’t impressive, but it wasn’t a hole, either. Besides, I made great coffee, and that’s all anyone cared about.

  Right?

  Maverick watched me carefully. I forced the thoughts back. I’d sort through them later, on the motorcycle.

  No, I wouldn’t do that, either, would I?

  Panic squeezed my chest like a vise. I fumbled for my purse. Was it time to touch up my lipstick? Take a break?

  Run away?

  “Well,” I said, my voice a little too bright, “let me think about this for a day or forty.”

  “You okay?” Lizbeth asked, studying me.

  “Fine. I’m fine.”

  “That means—”

  “I’m fine!” I snapped.

  “Ookaaay,” Lizbeth said, “while you have a mild panic attack, I’ll get to work. But we’re going to do two lists.” She reached for my laptop. “One of things we can do right now, and one that will take some time and money to build out. I might be able to draw up a budget for draperies and—”

  “Are you all right with this?” Maverick asked, moving to stand next to me. He propped his hands on the counter behind him, though he didn’t take his eyes off Lizbeth as she honed in on the computer. Clearly, she didn’t expect a response.

  Lizbeth was a verbal processor. Instead of the quiet, she needed the chaos. Right then, I could have made do with a long stretch of highway and the rumble of the bike beneath me.

  “Fine,” I said.

  “You’re pale.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “And your knuckles are white.”

  A glance downward confirmed I was clutching the counter with a white-knuckled grip. Every muscle in my body felt like it was ready to spring. “It’s . . . a lot.”

  “A lot of what?”

  “Of . . . unexpectedness.”