The Fortune Cafe (A Tangerine Street Romance)

by Wright, Julie

  Lucy sighed but nodded.

  “Good. Now. The plan. I’m going to get you jump-started.” With that she pulled her cell phone out and made a call. “Carter? It’s Beth Dalton. We’re on.”

  Her mom wouldn’t give up any details on the way home. All Lucy could get out of her was her mom’s opinion that Carter was a really nice guy.

  When they reached the front stoop, he was sitting there waiting for them. He smiled at her like it was a normal run-in and not like he’d slept a whole night on her couch because she was a crazy person. “Hi. You probably don’t know this about me, but the whole reason I moved here last year was because I was getting away from a bad breakup. So I’ve got ideas for your plan.”

  “I have no plan,” she said. What was going on? It felt like being on a moving carousel without anything to hold on to. She was keeping her feet, but barely.

  “Not yet, but your mom says you plan like a boss, so I’m sure one will kick in. I’ll just give you something to start with.”

  Her mom squeezed her arm. “I know you love a good plan, and Carter’s is great.”

  Lucy rubbed her temples. “It’s okay. I can think of my own. It’ll just take me a day or two. And I don’t want you sticking around until then. I’m so thankful you came up here, but I want you to go back to work, Mom. You can go home tonight if you want to because I’m absolutely going to be fine. Here’s what I know so far: in a disaster, I’m not a pouter or a whiner. I’m going to be a doer. So I’m going to work tomorrow, and you should too.”

  Her mom smiled. “Love the can-do attitude, daughter. Carter, you ready to take over on Friday?”

  Lucy shook her head. “That’s another thing. Carter, you don’t have to babysit me. I can do this.”

  “I’m not babysitting you. You’re more like a mentoring project.”

  “You’re going to train me to be an expert in bad luck?”

  He grinned. “No, even better. I seriously have the perfect strategy for getting over a gnarly breakup.”

  She rolled her eyes. “You going to write me an app or something?”

  His expression grew thoughtful. “Now that you mention it…”

  “Mom, make him stop.”

  “Sorry, honey. I approve his plan.”

  “No one’s telling me what it is.”

  Carter smiled. “You’ll find out when you get back from work tomorrow. In the meantime, enjoy your day with your mom.” He waved and headed up the stairs.

  Lucy gave up. “Can you at least tell me the plan for the rest of the night?”

  “Lots of chocolate, watch Just My Luck for the billionth time, and then more chocolate. Or maybe ice cream. No, both.”

  “Make all Carter’s plans be about chocolate too,” Lucy said, already heading in to dig up her copy of the old Lindsay Lohan movie she’d loved since college. Her real life had no resemblance to anything Lohan, but she’d always seen a ton of parallels between herself and Ashley Albright, the movie’s main character who lives a charmed life until all her luck goes bad. She’d just never shared the full experience with Ashley until her jade necklace broke. And if given the choice, that’s definitely where she’d have drawn the line at life imitating art.

  The next day at work was hard, but Lucy survived it with a pasted-on smile and vague excuses about food allergies to explain her slightly puffy eyes. Nothing bad had happened at the Duchess, and given the last few days, she’d count it as a victory.

  When she got home, she found Carter sitting out on the steps. “I’m going up to bed,” she said.

  He caught her wrist in a grip light enough to break with a tiny tug. “You can’t. It’s time for my plan. Sit.”

  She sat. “You’re absolved, Carter. I hereby emancipate you.”

  “Sorry, you don’t have the authority. Only your mom can fire me or otherwise remove me from duty.”

  “She stuck you with a bad job. Why would you even say yes?”

  “It’s at least six weeks until the funding comes through for my math app, so I need a fill-in project.” He rested a hand on her shoulder and gazed deep into her eyes. “Thank you for saving me from boredom, Lucy.”

  “Knock it off,” she said, as she pushed his hand aside, but she barely smothered a laugh. “Do I get any details today?”

  “Yes. Today is the first day of the Take Your Mind Off Of It Rampage.”

  “Do I get a T-shirt for playing?”

  “No.”

  “Then I don’t want to do it.”

  “Sure you do. You get something way better than a T-shirt. Revenge.”

  Lucy’s eyebrow went up at that. “Tell me more.”

  “You ever hear that expression that the best revenge is living well? That’s what you’re going to do. Flake is going to wonder if you even miss him.”

  “Blake,” she corrected him.

  “That’s what I said. Flake.”

  That made her grin. “What’s step one?”

  “Food. It makes everything better, and that goes double for good food. We’re going to the corner market and picking out at least five things you’ve never tried, and we’re making them for dinner.”

  “If I haven’t tried it, how do I know if it’s good food?”

  “I’m a good cook. We’ll make it work.”

  “I’d rather just grab Italian. Then I know I’ll like it.”

  Carter nodded, like he was considering that option. “You want to know something about you? You come off as carefree but careful, like you’re happy as long as everything is going according to plan.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with that,” she said, surprised that he’d noticed that about her. “People say I’m lucky, but they don’t realize how much of that comes from hard work and careful planning. You get extremely lucky when you live like that.”

  “Yeah, like that Edison quote? ‘The harder I work, the luckier I get’?”

  “Exactly, smarty pants.”

  “I’m not that smart. Statistically it was going to be Edison, Einstein, Lincoln, or Twain. Try this quote: the secret to happiness is goofing off in your kitchen with stuff from the corner market and no real plan.”

  “Abraham Lincoln?” she guessed.

  “Eleanor Roosevelt. Can I trust you to go in and change into something that is not flannel, or do we need to go straight to the store?”

  She looked down at her wrap dress and heels. Not exactly slumming-at-the-market clothes. “I’ll change.”

  “See you in fifteen?”

  She nodded and climbed to her feet, unsure how he’d convinced her to go along with his plan. Two flights of stairs later, she walked into her apartment to hear a Skype alert from her mom. She answered and smiled at the sight of a David McCullough book thick enough to brain a yeti sitting beside her mom. “Truman again?” she asked, squinting at the spine.

  “It won’t be the last time, either,” her mom said. “How are you doing?”

  “Hard day, but I survived. And if I get through tonight with Carter, I’ll do it again tomorrow.”

  “That’s my girl. What are you doing with Carter?”

  “Going on some sort of fun-having rampage that will fix all my problems. But I’m overdressed,” she said, glancing down at her dress. “I have to change.” She signed off with a promise to call if she got too sad and went to her room. She eyed the bed, wishing she could collapse on it and stay there until approximately December, but she didn’t figure either her mom or Carter would let her get away with that.

  She stared at the closet for a minute, trying to figure out exactly what one wore on a rampage. She’d spent a lot of time and money investing in high quality wardrobe pieces that would translate well from working with corporate event planners to evenings out with Blake at his cocktail parties. He liked when she played up her femininity, calling her his pocket girlfriend and his doll.

  Why had she ever thought that was cute?

  She must have let it slide because he also seemed to have a healthy respect for her intellec
t, but... doll?

  She shuddered and pulled out something far more casual than Blake would have liked. His idea of dressing down was a collared shirt with a tasteful Tommy Bahama print. Deborah had probably never taught him to even dress himself in the kind of shirt he could pull over his head.

  Carter always dressed for comfort, and as she slipped into a tank top she normally wore for yoga, a pair of shorts that were the veterans of countless washings, and flip flops, she decided Carter was onto something, and Blake, with his stupid button downs, was an idiot.

  A knock sounded on the front door, and she opened it to Carter.

  “You ready?” he asked.

  She took a deep breath. Yeah, she wanted to be done with his self-pity more than Truman had wanted to be done with Stalin. “Let’s go shop for our dinner abomination.”

  Fruits in sizes and colors she’d never imagined filled produce tables in lush pyramids. She picked up something that looked like a spiny lemon crossed with an anemone and sniffed it. “How can this even occur in nature?” she asked, turning it over.

  “That’s a dragon fruit,” Carter said, taking it from her hand. “Maybe it didn’t occur in nature. Maybe it’s actually laid by a dragon.”

  “You’re a dork.”

  “Hardcore, and I don’t deny it. Check this out,” he said, setting the dragon fruit down to pick up a squash, a green one with a neck that curved over on itself. It looked like the offspring of a swan and a hand grenade.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “I have no idea,” he said. “We’re definitely getting it.”

  “I guess we can always Google how to cook it. You know, right after we Google what it is.”

  “As long as it’s a squash, we can work magic on it with enough butter and brown sugar.”

  “And if it’s not a squash?”

  “Then I still don’t see a problem. Butter and brown sugar. What else do we need to know, really?”

  The rest of the time in the store went like that. By the time they reached her apartment, they had gone way over the five unknown foods goal, but she was far more worried by the partially open front door that greeted her. Carter stepped in front of her and handed her the grocery sacks. “You locked up?”

  She nodded, her heart pounding.

  He pushed the door wider and called, “Hello?”

  Someone answered from inside, which in a weird way made her feel better. A robber wouldn’t answer back, would he?

  Carter stepped in and poked his head back out a minute later to gesture her in too.

  She walked in to get an eyeful of the building manager’s plumber’s crack. She squeaked. The manager, John, grunted but didn’t look up from where he was prying away drywall near her baseboard.

  “We had an incident while you were out. Got a call from 2B below you that they had some water leaking from the ceiling.”

  “I’ve only been gone an hour,” Lucy said.

  “Pipe leak,” Carter said. “It’s probably been going on for a while.”

  “How do you know that?” Lucy asked. “He hasn’t said what’s going on yet.”

  “Had one last year. Even in a well-maintained building like this, sometimes the old pipes will do their thing.”

  John heaved himself to his feet. “Yeah, looks like this one’s been going for a couple days at least. The only reason it’s not worse is because the unit above you has been empty for two weeks. Lucky for you they weren’t up there running water every day or your place would be the new third floor pool.”

  Lucy looked down at the pieces of drywall littering the floor. “Yeah, lucky,” she echoed, wondering when that word had come to mean something so different in her life. “I guess if that’s the worst of the damage then you’re right.”

  John snorted. “Nah, that’s just the start. We’ve got to tear out the drywall all the way up to the ceiling so they can replace the pipes. Then they’ll have to repair it. And I’ll have to shut off the water to the unit while they do the repairs, but that won’t be before tomorrow. But it could’ve been worse.” He knelt back down and resumed whacking at the wall.

  Lucy’s grip on the grocery sacks loosened, and an ostrich egg nearly paid the price, but Carter snagged it before it hit the floor.

  “Lucky catch,” he said, straightening and lofting the bag to show her it was safe.

  “Yeah, lucky,” she echoed for the second time in minutes.

  “We’re not going to be able to cook in here tonight,” he said, flinching when an extra hard whack sent a piece of wall flying. “Better cook at my place.”

  “What are we making again?” They had a scaly green thing, persimmons, red bean paste, and a lettuce she never heard of. “Mishmash Surprise?”

  “Let’s just call it the chef’s special.”

  He took the bags back, and Lucy followed him next door. “I’ve never been here before,” she said, stepping in to check it out.

  Blake’s place looked like Deborah had copied it straight from a GQ article on “Contemporary Furnishings for the Modern Man,” because she had. Dark leathers, square angles, perfectly on trend gray walls hung with expertly spaced photographs of vintage cars shot from artsy angles.

  She didn’t figure Carter’s place would be anything like that, but neither did she expect to step into his living room and feel like she’d been swallowed up by the world’s most comfortable library. She’d thought she might find his bike hanging on the wall and an IKEA desk full of computers, cables, and papers, but instead she met two walls full of bookshelves. A big corduroy sofa sprawled in the middle of the room. He even had potted plants— herbs, it turned out, when she wandered over to investigate.

  “I like your place,” she said. A muffled thump sounded from her apartment, and she winced. “I can’t believe they have to tear my wall out. The streak continues.”

  “You thought that was bad luck? Nope, it was good luck. Now you get to repaint it any color you want.”

  “I could have done that before.”

  “Yeah, you could have. But now you can make John do it. See? Good luck. Now let’s cook.”

  An hour later, her side hurt from laughing over Carter’s beyond stupid narration of their food prep, Iron Chef style. “He rips the guts from the green thing like he’s taking its smell personally.”

  “That squash is never going to mess with you again.” She stared down at its stringy guts spread over the counter. “Actually, I’m totally creeped out now. I’m going home.” Another loud bang sounded next door. “Never mind.”

  “Remember, your mom said you have to go along with my plan,” Carter said, as if that were totally normal.

  “Carter? I can’t even believe I have to say this, but it’s possible she’s trying to set us up.”

  Carter’s brow wrinkled. “That’s too bad. I want your mom to like me, and I already have to disappoint her.”

  “Good. I mean, not that I want you to disappoint her. Good that we’re on the same page about not dating.”

  “I definitely don’t want to date you, Lucy-Lou,” Carter said, a statement that managed to reassure and peeve her at the same time.

  “Why not? Am I suddenly un-dateable now too?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Do you want me to want you or to not want you?”

  “Us dating is a terrible idea. I’d just like to think at some point when I’m not a mess that I may be considered worth asking on a date again.”

  “You’re dateable. In fact, I was getting up my nerve to ask you out last fall when you showed up at the mailboxes with an engagement ring on your finger.”

  The tips of his ears turned red. He got busy chopping vegetables, his knife flying so fast it was almost a blur. Lucy had to duck a piece of squash, but Carter didn’t notice. He’d wanted to ask her out? She did an accelerated slide show of the times she remembered interacting with him. She’d never gotten a vibe that he was interested. He’d always been friendly and talkative but not in a flirty way.

  She didn’t
know whether to comment on his admission or move on to something else, and just as she was about to open her mouth to find out what would come out, he spoke again. “Did you ever notice how much time I spent out on my balcony?”

  “Not really?” she said, not sure what answer he hoped to hear.

  “Good,” he said.

  “I mean, it seemed like I was always running into you out there, but I thought you were digging the view. I was out there a lot the first year after I moved in too.”

  “Hi, my name is Carter, and I’m an underachieving stalker.”

  “I guess if waiting for me to wander out on my balcony was the worst you did, that’s not so bad.” The tips of his ears were still red. “In all honesty, if I wasn’t already dating Blake, I’d have probably wandered out on my balcony to see if my cute new neighbor was on his.” She bumped him with her hip. He smiled.

  “Dating who?”

  “Blake.”

  “Who?”

  “Blake,” she repeated, a little louder.

  “Who?”

  She grinned. “Right. No one.”

  “Now you’re understanding how the Rampage to Take Your Mind Off It works,” Carter said. “I need all your attention on the recipe and none on Flake. Deal?”

  “I live to cook.”

  “Good. Let’s throw this together and see what happens when we add a little heat.”

  Blake would have made that sound flirtatious, and she wondered how she’d never noticed how rehearsed his lines were before. Blake was an A + B = C kind of guy. Flirt this way, girl reacts that way, the result is a hook up or a date or whatever Blake was angling for. He was like that about everything; he approached every situation with an outcome in mind and a plan for achieving it. It had made him excel in business. In a lot of ways it had made them a good fit. She was a big believer in planning like crazy and getting a predictable result. Predictability got a bad rap, and it shouldn’t. It’s why she’d been so successful too.