“I’m serious, Lara,” I rag on. I survey the bar halfway across the room from where Lara and I are seated comfortably in a booth. “Where are those cocktails? I’m so overdue.”
Lara chuckles while she rolls up twice the sleeves of her navy silk blouse. “Calm down. The Slinky Mink can wait. So tell me, why are you trying to run off your last and dependable employee?”
I dramatically drop my forehead into my cupped hands, my elbows resting hard on the tabletop. “Lara, I know it’s behind me, and I’m fine with it.”
“Obviously,” she snickers.
“Hearing about Evelyn’s fabulous love life, though…” I wag my head against my hands.
“You really can’t begrudge someone for having a love life, Sophie.”
“I know. But it also drives me bonkers, because it’s Chad she’s seeing!”
Lara arches high one finely manicured brow. “Your feathers aren’t still ruffled over him dating her, are they? Because you’re going to have to get over that.” Her mouth forms a small O, further giving away her surprise, as if the arched brow didn’t already do the trick.
“What still gets my feathers up in a ruffle,” I say, dropping my hands to my lap, “is that thinking about them together, and how I had no choice but to fire him, and how I’m short a helping hand because of—”
“Your irrationality,” she quips.
I cock my head to the side and glare.
Lara just laughs, and the Slinky Minks, thank god, arrive.
Chad used to help out around the café, like I was saying. Even when he burned a batch of muffins or ate the last chocolate cupcake or failed to fix a broken oven, I appreciated his offer to help wash dishes, make coffees, even paint all of the café’s beautiful chairs. When I found out he and Evelyn hooked up while I was in Paris this summer, I freaked. Girl, Interrupted freaked!
See, Chad has a knack for going through women, or at least breaking or playing around with their hearts. I couldn’t risk him doing the same to Evelyn and have them both working for me. Knowing all too well the fight-and-flight tendencies women have after serious heartbreak (so been there!), I figured a fired Chad was better than a Chad who worked, yet no longer slept, with Evelyn.
When they break up—and inevitably they will; he can’t keep a girl longer than my brother John can—the two would either be hostile when around each other, making for a disaster in the kitchen, or Evelyn could up and quit, unable to work a second longer with her ex, thereby leaving me short my only dependable hire.
So I took charge and was proactive. I nipped that one in the bud right when I found out what had happened in June. Chad’s few hours a week at the café were sacrificed, but in return I have had a very reliable Evelyn and can sleep at night knowing the two aren’t fighting (or screwing) in my kitchen.
“All I can say is you’ll have to forget they’re dating and that you had to fire some help around the café because of it,” Lara says simply as she runs a ruby-red acrylic nail about the base of her glass. “Eventually you’ll find new help—”
“When I can afford it,” I cut in.
“When you can afford it. Until then, just forget about it. Evelyn’s a great employee, right?” she says. I nod. “Then there you go. Nothing to complain or worry about.” She takes a quick pull of her drink. “And certainly nothing to go all bitchy on the poor girl for.”
“I just don’t want to hear about her fabulous love life, that’s all,” I say bitterly, eyes trained on the table.
“There’s an easy solution.” She sounds exasperated. “If it really bothers you that she talks about her love life at work, then kindly ask her to stop.”
“Stop?”
“Yes,” she says, point blank.
I snort. “Okay, that’ll be easy to say, and so not awkward.” I take a sip of my cocktail and tell Lara that’s not going to happen.
“You know,” she says, leaning back against the white faux-leather booth. “You’re not all crabby when I talk about Worth and our love life, or when the rest of the girls talk about their guys.” She abruptly pauses. “Or are you?”
I laugh and tell her no.
“Then why does it matter that Evelyn talks about her and Chad? Love lives are love lives. Women talk about them.”
“Control,” I say with a loud sigh. “It all comes back to control.” I rub at my forehead. “And you know how I crave control, Lara.” I roll my eyes as she gives a short nod.
“God, it’s so pathetic,” I say. “I want Evelyn and Chad working at the café, but completely under my laid-out conditions. Then they had to go out and date and…my hands were tied. I lost control.”
Lara only nods repeatedly, letting me carry on.
“And as annoying as he was, Chad was a reliable and free set of helping hands at the café…when he had the time.” I pause. “Not having him around sucks.”
“God, that was really generous of him.” She wags her head. “Working for free for you?”
Chad, like Emily, comes from money—trust fund babies. Though Emily mostly lives off her fund and travels the globe volunteering and doing freelance photography work, Chad has full-time, salaried employment. He’s in marketing, and in his off time he sells some of his paintings and, well, used to dabble in bakery work. Like I said, I needed help, so friends like Chad and Emily who could afford to lend a free hand did. Now they’re MIA, and it blows.
“Oh, he did it for the free cupcakes,” I say, snarky. “Anyway, I’m just going to have to get over it, that’s all.”
“Good girl!”
“And like you said,” my tone is upbeat, “I don’t have a problem with hearing all about how your love life is, or any of the girls’, so why can’t I be the same with Evelyn?”
“Aside from her not being one of your oldest, bestest friends?” Lara says with a lopsided smile as she tilts her head and holds up her glass. “You are so on point!” She motions for a toast.
“Thanks for tonight, by the way.” I hold up my champagne glass, the raspberry-flavored beverage already half drunk. “Brill idea, and I’m sorry to run on and on about my childish troubles.”
“My pleasure.” She clinks her half-finished glass with mine. “What’s a girl’s night out for if you can’t dish your troubles?”
“So, how are things with Worth going?” I ask after I’ve finished off my cocktail.
“You sure you want to talk about more lovey-dovey stuff?” she says with a sniff.
I wave a hand at her. “Come on, how are things? You’re always so busy I don’t get the scoop. I’m surprised we could pull off tonight.”
A twinge of pink begins to color the balls of Lara’s creamy cheeks. “Fantastic,” she says huskily. “Things are fantastic!”
I bite down on my bottom lip through a large grin and lean into the table. “Spill.”
“We’re talking Christmas plans together already, Sophie.”
“Omigod.” I click my tongue against the roof of my mouth. “You go, girl! So, his family? Yours?”
“Neither.”
“Neither? Wowser. A real romantic Christmas.”
She fiddles with her empty glass. “Christmas is one of the busiest times of year for me at Cooperton. Everyone and their dog wants holiday-hub-bub saturation campaigns.” She waves a few fingers. “Worth and I’ll make it a short trip, and we want to spend as much time together as possible. Just us.” She blushes harder.
“Uh-huh.” I’m liking the sound of this. Lara in love? In real love with a solid guy? It’s an honest to god miracle.
“I have no idea where we’ll go yet,” she says. “Maybe Victoria, maybe somewhere in California. Maybe in state, stay in a cabin in the woods. We’re looking around.”
“Good for you!” I give her hand a tap. “What about Thanksgiving?”
“Oh, I promised my mom a long time ago that I’d be visiting her in Chicago.”
“Worth going, too?”
“Maybe.” She stops mindlessly fiddling with her glass, pushing i
t to the center of the table. “My mom’s extremely busy with Christmas parties all through December, and Thanksgiving is one of the only times she really has a breather during the holidays.”
Lara’s mom has her own event design and planning business in Chicago. She flawlessly coordinated Claire and Conner’s wedding. She did such a fabulous last-minute, save-the-wedding job, flying all the way in for the event after the airhead Claire initially hired made a disaster of things.
Lara’s mom used to live in Seattle but felt the need for a change once Lara went off to college, and now the two are miles upon miles apart. Lara says she wishes her mom could move back to Seattle, but with the way her event company is growing that’s unlikely.
“I think Thanksgiving with your mom will be great,” I say cheerfully.
“How about you?” Lara asks. “You have the holidays already planned out?”
“No clue. But I am considering shutting shop for a few days during Christmas. More than just the usual Christmas Eve and Day.”
“Give yourself some time in Santa Barbara!” she says enthusiastically. “Visit the folks?”
“Yeah, or maybe a spa weekend.”
“Oooh.” She raises her empty glass “Then here’s to real Christmas vacations this year.”
“Cheers to that,” I say, clinking our dry glasses together.
Chapter Seven
Four Years Ago, Christmas Season in Seattle
“I don’t understand what the problem is, Soph!” Brandon hollered from the living room, his voice rising over the bleating talk radio. “I changed my mind. What does it matter? It’s one stinkin’ holiday.”
“You don’t get it!” I cried from the kitchen.
“You want me to go to Santa Barbara and spend a traditional Christmas with the Wharton family. I get it!”
The way he said traditional made me cringe, as if my asking him was putting him out.
“No, you don’t get it!” I abruptly turned off the radio, bringing an end to the noisy episode of NPR’s All Things Considered. “It’s not just about Christmas, about tradition.”
Brandon appeared in the entrance of our narrow kitchen, hands gruffly running through his mane of hair.
“So,” he said, mouth hanging open in bewilderment, “what the hell is it about, then?”
“It’s about us, dammit!” I dropped the heavy, metallic Kitchen Aid mixer bowl into the shallow sink. “It’s about you and me! We’re not—” I moved my hands between myself and the wall above the sink. “We’re not connecting.”
“Oh this again,” he groused. He turned on his heel. “I’m not having another damn discussion about how we need to connect. We have sex regularly; what more do you want?”
I was thunderstruck.
“Excuse me?” I shouted. “If that’s your definition of connection then we have a whole different discussion here.”
“Yeah, yeah.” He slouched back into the living room, but I was hot on his heels.
“Brandon!”
He stopped just before plopping down onto the sofa, one of the few pieces of furniture I’d brought into his cramped apartment when I moved in nearly three years ago.
“Brandon, don’t walk away!” Incensed, I firmly planted my fists on my hips.
He threw his hands up into the air in exasperation and cried, “What more do you want, woman? I have too much work at the office to go off to Cali for a week. I’m sorry you feel we’ve lost a connection. There, we even?”
“Ugh!” I stormed back into the kitchen. “This is what I’m talking about! Even? Even?!” I turned the radio back on, but only a hair above mute.
Brandon then appeared at my side. He laid a cautious hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry, Soph. I don’t want to fight.”
I sniffed back the hint of tears and shrugged his hand away.
“Ah, Soph, come on.”
“It’s fine,” I whispered, reaching for the sponge. “Whatever. It’s always the same fight, so just forget it.”
I gruffly resumed cleaning the bowl, dirtied from one of my several failed batches of peppermint macarons. “I’m blowing it out of proportion, you not wanting to go home with me. I get it. You have work.”
“It’s not that I don’t want to go with you, Soph,” he corrected in a soft voice. He placed a hand on my chin and slowly turned my head towards him. “And you’re not completely blowing things out of proportion.” He kissed the top of my forehead. “Work’s just causing me stress, keeping my head distracted. That’s why I can’t focus on us.”
“It’s not me?” I piped out. “Not us? Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure,” he said, but in a way that did not offer me any reassurance. They were…empty words.
He gave my bottom a light tap and repeated, “Come on, let’s move on.”
“Okay,” I said, reluctant.
It did feel like Brandon and I had been out of sync lately. His stock answer for any time I pressed why he was distant or why I felt there was a void between us was that work was particularly demanding. After I’d get my occasional tantrum out or pry a little further if anything else was bothering him, I’d temporarily feel better, once again. He’d reassure me everything was fine, once again.
All relationships have their hiccups, and Brandon and I were going through ours. He reassured me that once the new year rolled around and old, demanding projects would go in the “completed” pile at the office, he’d be in better spirits.
“That batch not work out well?” he asked, pointing at the white and red pile of macaron batter on the counter.
“If goop is what I was going for, then I think I hit the nail on the head,” I joshed.
He peered at it, poked at it, and took a small taste.
“Don’t waste your time,” I breathed, disappointed.
The pile was evidence of yet another miserable and failed attempt at getting a festive macaron recipe down pat.
Luckily I had already prepared four different kinds of desserts that’d be going in my annual Christmas cookie tins I gave to my family and friends: fig tarts, chocolate meringues, Pfeffernüsse cookies, and cinnamon-chocolate-dipped madeleines. The peppermint macarons would have been the most exotic, challenging, and new holiday recipe, but, alas, I’d failed five times strong.
“Whoa,” Brandon gasped, his face puckering. “Way too much peppermint.”
“I told you not to try them,” I whined. “It’s embarrassing. Maybe the sixth time’s the charm.”
“Six times?” Brandon looked incredulous.
“Yeah,” I said in a small voice. I folded up the goop in the waxed paper it lay on and dumped it into the trashcan.
“Baby,” he said, simpering, “I’d say five times means it’s time to move on. You’re never going to get it right.”
“Hey.” I knit my brow in consternation. “It took like three hundred tries to get the light bulb down.”
Through low chuckles, one hand covering his mouth childishly, he said, “I wouldn’t call cookies life-altering inventions.”
“They’re macarons,” I corrected. “And they can be life-altering if they’re done right.”
“Uh-huh.” Still chuckling, he sauntered out of view.
“You know,” I said, following him a few paces. I watched as he took a seat on the sofa, turning on the TV, never mind the radio we were both listening to earlier. “I’m sure if I just went to Paris and enrolled in a baking class, or even bought a million macarons at Ladurée’s or Hermé’s, I could study the way they’re made and actually do myself a solid.”
“Uh-huh,” he muttered, tuning in completely to ESPN.
“It’d be an investment,” I added, voice high and positive. “For when I open my café-slash-bakery some day!”
With raised brows he turned his attention from the TV and just looked at me.
“What?”
“Baby.” He tossed the remote control on the pillow next to him. “Sophie.” His brows were still high. “You honestly think you’re going
to open your own café some day? In Seattle? With all the competition here?” He laughed low, devilishly. “I think you need to reexamine your priorities.”
I felt like the air had been knocked out of me. I stood there, mouth agape, staring straight ahead. I knew Brandon didn’t talk much with me about my café/bakery dreams, because we both knew they were so far off in the future. But to hear him flat-out say I needed to reexamine my priorities!
With nothing more to say I quietly reentered the kitchen. I picked up the pink index card with the peppermint macaron recipe on it—a vanilla macaron recipe I’d gotten from one of my many French cookbooks and had manipulated especially for this seasonal flavor. The card was covered in chicken scratch and eraser marks, small notes added at various angles in determined efforts to come up with the perfect recipe.
Reexamine my priorities, I thought as I prepared the surface and dishes for my sixth try. What I need to reexamine is my recipe!
I squinted at the note above the first ingredient, wondering if that was a number two or a five.
Well, maybe I’ll have to reexamine this recipe a seventh and eighth time, I thought determinedly, deciding it was a two.
Chapter Eight
“Hello, hello, my lovely!” the unmistakable voice of Jackie Kittredge sings as its owner makes her way from the front of the café, down the short hall, and on to the back in the kitchen.
I quickly exchange one sheet of unbaked thumbprint cookies for the hot-and-ready batch from the top oven. “Hey there!” I call out in return.
“Girlfriend!” Jackie shrieks in her high-pitched voice. “How’s my lovely baking woman this fiiiine day?”
“Can’t complain.” I set down the hot sheet and give her a side hug, potholders still in hand.
She gives me three Euro kisses, making a loud smacking sound with the last one. “Oh, it smells scrumptious in here.”
When Girlfriends Find Love Page 6
