Meant to Be Mine

by Lisa Marie Perry

  “How screwed?” Joss replied, lugging a ladder carefully around the tarp-draped armoire as Sofia followed with two five-gallon containers of paint—Communion White and Tears of Midas Gold—and stir sticks from the paint store. “Soft bed or hard floor?”

  “Hard floor”—Paget paused, and cutting through the street noise was the grumble of an engine idling and then the foreboding whoosh of air brakes—“with no lubrication.”

  The oh, shit alarm clanging inside Sofia depleted her energy and she let gravity claim the paint containers. They hit the paper-covered floor with identical thuds and she wormed her way to the door.

  Square in front of the shop and dominating the street was a shipping truck. One man approached with a clipboard in tow; his partner raised the rear door of the twentysomething-foot roadblock. He pointed the clipboard at Sofia. “You Joss Vail?”

  “I am,” Joss called from inside. She propped the ladder and it proceeded to slide and clatter to the floor, yet another obstruction, but she didn’t stop to clear the path. Climbing over Sofia’s dresser and bouncing across to where Paget leaned against the open door, she grabbed the clipboard. “I want to check the fragiles before I sign this,” she said. “And I want to inspect the sofas and chairs and the mattress for rips.”

  “Ma’am, we’re on a tight schedule and it’s hotter than the devil’s armpits out here,” the man griped, but Paget’s snicker seemed to diminish his bluster. “Check the glass for shatters, but anything else you’ll need to look over later and file a report with the company. Everything’s here—hold the door open and we’ll bring it in.”

  “And put it where?” Sofia cried. Blush was beyond capacity with product shipments and what she and Joss had already carried over from New York—and not even all of that fit in the boutique. Caro Jayne and her assistant had stored some of the overflow in the back rooms of Au Naturel, but generosity, and pity, had their limits. Sofia beckoned her friend back into the store. “Joss, I thought you were selling off this stuff.”

  “The consignment places want over fifty percent of the sale, so that wasn’t going to happen. Flea market shoppers mind-game too much and care more about winning than bargain-hunting. I’d rather hoard all of this than accept pennies for it.” She’d worked hard for years to afford her necessities and luxuries alike. “The piano sold. Cool two hundred.” Her smile was anything but joyful.

  “I’m sorry.” Neither of them played the instrument—it’d belonged to Joss’s grandmother, and was worth much more to Joss than even its multithousand-dollar appraised value. That was the one possession Sofia had expected Joss to keep. “Can you buy it back?”

  “No. My cousin has it, and it’s a no-take-backsies situation. He’s always wanted it, was pissed when Granny left it to me.”

  “He sounds like a prick.”

  “Oh, he is. But you can’t choose your family.”

  “You can pick your friends, though, and as your best friend I have to tell you that Paget’s right. We really are screwed. There’s nowhere to cram yet another truckload of furniture in this store.” Especially not if they planned to reopen the boutique next month. Blush needed to function as a “knickers and kink shop, not a storage unit,” as Caro had said. “Let’s see if the deliverymen will haul some of it up to the apartment.”

  No walk-ups. Fifteen minutes later, Joss, Sofia, and Paget stood on the sidewalk assessing the collection of furniture and boxes purged from the truck. It rumbled down the street, and if Sofia had hopped on her bicycle she might have been able to catch the deliverymen at a traffic light and beg them to reconsider, but pride glued her flip-flops to the brick.

  “We’re three intelligent, strong women,” she said to the others. “We can figure this out.”

  “Make that four.” Caro trotted to them. “I just drove in from a location shoot in Nantucket and can use a good stretch after sitting on my arse in the car for three hours. I’m intelligent and strong, if I do say so myself.” Flexing her biceps caused her stacks of beaded bracelets to slide down, exposing both wrists. The breathe tattoo Sofia had seen before. She’d never noticed the pattern inked into the other wrist.

  “That’s an electrocardiogram,” she said. She was far too intimately familiar with ECGs.

  “Evan’s first heartbeat. Guess I’m a sentimental mum.” The others attempted to lean in for closer inspection, but her arms dropped so fast it was as if she’d zapped them to her sides. “Let’s clear this area before one of those brown-nosing committee bastards tattles to town hall that you’re posing a safety hazard. Fines are hell.”

  “Wouldn’t it be less aggravation to hire a crew specifically for this?” Paget eyed the memory foam mattress that was roughly quadruple her size and leaning against the shop front.

  “Called up a few local companies,” Sofia reported. “No one’s excited about the walk-ups. There are plenty of commercial-building apartments around here, and somehow people move in and out, but no one wants to bite this time.”

  “Did you offer them extra money?” Joss asked. “I know you’re used to holding tight to the purse strings, but I’d say this is an emergency. Let me pay the extra.”

  “Nope. Aunt Luz collected her assets by being financially prudent. I’m doing the same thing. That’s why I’m not hiring an interior designer or outsourcing anything I can’t do myself.”

  “What if we can’t do this ourselves?” Paget queried, worrying the ends of her hair. Today it hung in a white waterfall down her back. “I’ll give it my damnedest, but just saying.”

  “Don’t think about defeat.” Sofia went to the leather chair where she had sometimes slept while watching TV back in New York. She latched onto it first because she’d secretly missed it like crazy. “Caro and I can carry this piece. Paget and Joss, you ladies can team up.”

  Working in pairs, they brought up the chair and some lamps but hit a snag with the overstuffed sofa. Literally.

  “It’s torn,” Paget called down to Caro and Sofia as they muscled a vanity across the rear lot.

  “I can fix it,” Sofia assured. She’d just need to dig out her sewing materials, wherever the hell they were boxed away inside Blush. Signaling for Caro to set down her end of the vanity, she announced, “Yeah, we can’t do this.”

  “No crap,” Joss said, her arms quivering under the sofa’s weight. Halfway up the staircase, Paget tsked at the damage.

  Caro’s ass began to ring. She pried her phone from a back pocket and paced circles around the lot. “Girls, I’m sorry, but my sitter has to take off and Evan hasn’t had lunch yet. I’ve got to get home and feed him.”

  “Take me with you!” Paget screeched, but she laughed as she and Joss brought the sofa down the stairs. “I’m kidding. But I am hungry. Someone at the Seasons called off so Anne Oakley put me on housekeeping. I changed and drove straight here.” That explained the makeup on her arms and the simple pearl dots in each earlobe.

  “Go feed the kiddo, Caro,” Sofia said. When Caro wished them all good luck and scurried off, Sofia turned to Paget next as she fished her keys from her jeans. The woman had proven trustworthy in the brief time they’d known each other. Before Joss had moved in, Paget had pet-sat Tish while Sofia visited New York to tie up loose ends. “You go raid the fridge.”

  “And you and I are going out for groceries,” Joss said brightly.

  Paget frowned. “I wasn’t planning on scarfing down the entire kitchen.”

  “What I mean is, I have an idea to get us some manual labor for cheap. That involves a bit of shopping. Are you fine with patrolling our stuff for a little while, Paget?”

  “Sure. Bring back some Fritos, though.”

  Joss raised her tapered brows at Sofia. “Oh, Paget and I are definitely going to get along. We’ll bond over our weakness for chips.”

  They took Joss’s car to the supermarket. Though Joss had a specific checklist in mind, they found a distraction in every aisle. “Oh, there’re the chips. Grab the Fritos.” “Aren’t we low on ginger ale? Le
t’s get a bottle.” “There’s a sale on cereal. I’m getting Kashi—what do you want?”

  When the shopping cart was half-full and they stood waffling between carb-smart frozen yogurt and Ben & Jerry’s everything, Sofia asked, “What, exactly, is this plan of yours?”

  Joss opened the freezer door and reached in for a third contender: a gallon of cookie dough and vanilla. “Immediate plan for solving our furniture-moving crisis? I’m going to bake cupcakes and we’re going to take them to the laundromat.”

  The Dirty Bastards? “Not following.”

  Joss tossed her blond hair. The bruise had taken on a grayish-yellow hue and the tiny scratch had scabbed. “It’s one of the prime spots to find a gathering of able-bodied men. From what I’ve seen it can be feast or famine, but we’re heading into the afternoon and business picks up in the afternoons. The owner seems easygoing, and his brother’s good for my eyes, but he puts my womanly needs in a tizzy.” She tossed the cookie dough ice cream into the cart. “Ice cream, cold showers, they help neutralize the pent-up horniness.”

  “You’ve been staring at the neighbors?”

  “I rode the subway for a decade—I’m observant.”

  “There’s observant, Joss, and then there’s on-the-prowl.” Pinpricks of apprehension spread through Sofia. Joss’s face hadn’t yet healed and she was already scoping out men. Now she intended to bake cupcakes for them? “Where do the sweets come in?”

  “We’re going to take cupcakes over and ask to borrow some muscle.”

  “And that’s it?” Sofia opted for the frozen yogurt but stared longingly at the ice cream selection. Slow-churn, flavors with candy bar bits added, gallons and quarts and itty-bitty pints. So many options, so much temptation, but giving in could be only a rare indulgence. “I just want you to be careful.”

  “That’s it.” Joss winked her bruise-framed eye, then opened the freezer to trade the cookie dough for fudge brownie. “This is a furniture-moving mission. And, all right, maybe someone will be so wowed by my baking that they’ll remember where to get a tasty treat. People on Cape Cod have birthdays and weddings and get-togethers, don’t they?”

  Sofia discreetly looked around them for eavesdropping shoppers and wanted to whisper but doubted her friend would be able to hear her over Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ “American Girl” blaring through the supermarket PA system. “That was the plan, for people to come to you for treats. It’s why I went to the marina that morning.”

  The freezer door whined shut. “I don’t understand.”

  “The empty building next door. I thought it’d make a great brick-and-mortar space for an erotic bakery—your bakery.”

  Joss dashed over to hug her. “Oh, God, that’s genius! Yes, yes, let’s get on that. I’m in.” She leaned back. “How come you look like you’re about to cry?”

  “It’s not going to happen. I went to Burke, then his penis distracted me and we went back and forth about the property but he won’t budge.”

  “Wait. You had sex with Burke?”

  “Variations of it. We didn’t do everything…but we did enough.”

  Joss appeared ready to fire off questions, but an elderly woman across the aisle had bumped her cart into a shelf and knocked over boxes of ice cream cones. They went to her, Sofia plucking the boxes off the floor and Joss reaching up high to grab the caramel shell topping the woman was after.

  “Thank you, girls,” the elderly shopper enthused, straightening the cart. “Y’all just as sweet as y’all want to be. Bless you.”

  She rounded the corner, her flat shoes squeaking on the floor, and when the squeaking faded, Joss folded her hands over Sofia’s shoulders. “About the fucking. Details, please.”

  “I’m really glad you waited for that cute old lady to leave first. She thinks we’re sweet. Not many have that opinion.”

  “Notoriety’s an occupational hazard when you take over a sex shop.” Joss sounded proud. “Part of the territory. Speaking of, did Burke mark his? I don’t see any whisker burn or hickeys.”

  Sofia stepped back. “I’m mixed up when it comes to him. Of course the heat is real and I want to be with him like that, but he’s not for me.”

  “Because of the building? Sof, don’t let that bust up a relationship.”

  “It’s that he shut down when I brought up the subject. He’s standing in the way of a career plan, and it’s like Luz taught me—never let a man crush your dream.” She began needlessly organizing the contents of their cart, grouping like items together. As she sorted, she briefly explained Caro’s business invitation and their idea to reimagine the bar. “Society Street is my life, mine to protect, and Burke’s working against that. Am I attracted to him and do I care about him? Completely.”

  “But not at the expense of a dream.”

  Sofia nodded. “Luz prioritized. She was smart.”

  “She agreed to marry a man but took off her ring behind his back,” Joss reasoned. “Isn’t that what you told me?”

  “Yes, but he’s a biker. He leaves. He’s going to leave again—that’s why he wants the bar off his hands. Burke doesn’t have a motorcycle, but he’s got a boat and he’ll leave,” Sofia said. She hadn’t rationally thought any of this through before acting on lust and emotion. Intuition led her to Burke’s arms every damn time they were together. Their hands wouldn’t behave; their logic abandoned them. “So to protect myself, I need to put everything I’ll still have when he sails away first.”

  “What if the stars line up or something crazy like that, and you two end up in love? Would he leave if he loved you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Are you afraid to find out?” Joss eventually sighed sympathetically, because Sofia’s silence was a clear answer. “Oh…Sof, it’s okay. Let’s just keep shopping. But tell me—what’s his D situation?”

  Sofia might not have as many notches on her bedpost as a tree had rings—okay, she had zero notches, or maybe a half notch if lavishing Burke with oral attention counted—but she’d seen lots of naked men. “Damn spectacular.”

  Joss was the first to snort a giggle. Then they looked at each other and broke out in loud, free laughter. The sound magnetized customers who peered at them, recognized Luz Azcárraga’s great-niece, and exchanged long-suffering glances as they moved along.

  *

  Joss baked two dozen cupcakes. Paget was more than happy to assist, and their chatter, blended with rock music, pulsed from the kitchen as Sofia inventoried the apartment, listing furniture to donate to charity. Tish shadowed her, observing her methodically describing the pieces in a spiral-bound notebook and following up with neon-pink sticky notes on each item. Some things she wouldn’t part with, such as the antique writing desk Luz’s grandfather had built, but others were so personal and intimately Luz—her bed, for one—that Sofia didn’t want to continue to cling to them.

  Gradually, in cautious tiptoeing steps, she would make this apartment her own. She’d do nothing drastic like change the wall colors, as she and her friends were doing with Blush. Sofia and Joss had discussed converting the bedroom-turned-office back into a bedroom so Joss wouldn’t be a perpetual couch-crasher. The aromatherapy paraphernalia would be moved to the kitchen, and they would turn one of Blush’s back rooms into a legitimate office.

  Electronics would be donated; so would most of the living room furniture.

  “You didn’t put a Post-it on the table and chairs, Sof,” Joss said from the kitchen entryway. Ganache smeared her apron. “I’ll clean them and shine them up, but don’t forget to tag them.”

  “I’m keeping them,” Sofia said, pressing a pink sticky note to a floor lamp.

  “But…they’re white,” her friend sputtered. “You dragged me to Buffalo to purchase the set we had in our old apartment. What are we supposed to do with that?”

  “We can keep it, too. We’ll put it in basement storage.”

  “Heat exhaustion, that must be why you’re taking a vacay from sanity right now. But fine, k
eep the old set.” She disappeared into the kitchen.

  The chairs were chipped and could make your ass go numb if you sat too long, but the table was white-painted pine. Why let a perfectly sturdy piece of handcrafted furniture go unnecessarily?

  Sofia drifted to the entryway and gazed at the table. A memory kissed her, begged her to remember a sad day and a coarse man who’d lobbed a condom onto that very table. She wanted to hold on to that heartbeat in time, a sexually charged moment between two messed-up people who lashed out because it was easier to do that than forgive and trust again.

  She’d called him a coward. One coward could always spot another, though. Even if he wanted her, Burke would be no part of her future. He knew too much about her family and too many of her secrets. Someday, when she was ready, she’d love someone else—someone who hadn’t known her when she was broken, someone who hadn’t been burdened with her complications. She would invest her love in someone who wouldn’t leave her to start a new life far away, as each of her parents had. She wouldn’t exploit a man’s weaknesses until she absorbed his dependency, as she had with Burke.

  And if there was no way to love without hurting at the same time, then she could do without. She had a business, a pet, friends…a gift inside her chest that didn’t need the agony.

  “I changed my mind about the white set,” she said, and the other women looked at her. Tish pressed her snout into Sofia’s thigh and whimpered. Was that sorrow, or had Sofia let herself imagine it? “It can go.”

  But she’d cry when it did.

  When the cupcakes—half red velvet topped with ganache and the other half lemon—were cooled and decorated, Joss explained, “We’re taking only a dozen across the street. As you can see, three lemon and three red velvet have the word NO on them. The other six have YES on them. Once we ask for the favor, all the guys have to do is pick up a cupcake. Even if they grab a ‘no,’ once they eat it they’ll come on over. Trust me.”

  Downstairs, Paget waited in front of Blush to watch the spectacle, leaving the others to screw up the nerve to try to cupcake-bribe a laundromat full of men.