Sweet Heartbreak (Weybridge Academy #1)

Chapter 1

There were two certainties about summer in Rapid Bay: the unbearable heat and the unbearably wealthy.

Neither was particularly pleasant to deal with, but both were an unfortunate necessity for my mom’s small beach café to survive.

This summer was no exception, as the vacationing elite descended on our coastal town and briefly transformed our simple, sleepy home into a bustling hive of activity.

I’d spent most of the break helping my mom by working at the café.

She’d never had the money to hire extra hands for the busy season, so I’d been chipping in since I was old enough to carry a tray of food.

I usually quite enjoyed the madness of a busy day serving customers.

The chaotic, frantic energy made the summer days pass by in a flash, but I couldn’t say the same today.

Today, it seemed nothing was going right.

“Oh, sweet heaven,” Norma groaned. “That penny-pinching plastic panther is back.”

I looked up from the stubborn stain on the counter I was cleaning.

A woman had just entered the café with her husband and teenage son in tow.

I immediately recognized them as they had eaten here several times this week already, and the woman’s face was pumped so full of chemicals it was kind of hard to forget.

The father and son were dressed casually and looked ready for a day out on one of the expensive yachts docked at the marina.

The woman appeared to have missed the memo though.

Her sky-high wedges didn’t look very seaworthy, and her fitted leather dress must have been sweltering in the heat.

She wore a broad-brimmed hat, even though she was indoors, and was holding the same striking panther’s head handbag she’d been toting around all week.

It had only taken one encounter for Norma and me to realize these people were the worst type of vacationers who visited our town.

The father and son ignored us entirely while the woman rarely made eye contact.

She wasn’t much taller than me but seemed to stand a little straighter and tilt her head up so she looked down her nose when she spoke to me.

She slowly dragged out the words as if she thought I wouldn’t understand otherwise.

I might have been waiting tables for the summer, but I was at the top of my class at school and definitely smart enough to know a job didn’t equal someone’s worth.

It didn’t help my opinion of the family that they hadn’t tipped us once.

“I think it’s your turn, Isobel,” Norma said as she hurried out back to the kitchen.

I turned to object, but she was already gone.

“Traitor,” I hissed under my breath. Norma might have been in her sixties, but she sure was quick.

She’d been working for my mom as a waitress for as long as I could remember, and she was as much a part of the café as the mismatched colored chairs or the seagrass lanterns that hung from the ceiling.

She was practically family, which was probably why she felt no guilt fleeing difficult customers and leaving them to me.

“I need three coffees.”

I turned to find the panther had arrived at the counter.

The woman had barely acknowledged me. Instead, her eyes were fixated on the phone her manicured nails were tapping against. Her husband and son weren’t much better.

The man was loitering by the front door on a phone call, and the son was laughing at some video he was watching on his own phone.

I was completely invisible to these people.

Despite the fact she wasn’t looking at me, I gave the woman a warm smile. “If you’d like to take a seat, I can bring those right over to you.”

The woman defied the Botox that froze her forehead to lift one eyebrow as she finally glanced up at me. “We won’t be eating today. It’s a hundred degrees in here. You can make those coffees to go.”

My cheeks flushed under her condescending gaze.

She was looking at me as if it were my fault the air-conditioning was broken.

It had needed replacing for a while, but Mom never had the money for that.

All summer, the old girl had been coughing like she needed a good thump on the back.

Usually, a well-aimed knock to the side of the box did the trick, and her droning mechanical purr would return, but no amount of force seemed to be working this morning.

I really wished she hadn’t chosen the hottest morning of the summer to rasp her last dying breath.

The whole café was stifling, only made worse by the ovens and cooktops blazing in the kitchen.

We had a few portable fans cranked up to their maximum power, but they were fighting a losing battle.

They simply pushed the hot, humid air around the building without providing any relief.

We’d only had a handful of customers all day, and like this woman, most of them had ordered their drinks to go.

“Sorry, yes, it’s a bit unpleasant in here at the moment as our air-conditioning is broken. I’ll grab those coffees for—”

I was interrupted as the teen son started to grumble. “Mom, this is ridiculous. I know this place is closer, but it’s like waiting in a furnace. Let’s just go to the Starbucks down the road.”

The woman gave a short exhale as she considered her son’s complaint.

“Yes, dear, you’re probably right. If I wanted to go to a sauna, I’d book an appointment at the spa.

” She placed a hand on his arm and started to guide him toward the door.

“You can cancel that order,” she called over her shoulder to me, once again not bothering to look my way.

I slouched down on the counter as I watched them leave. They might not have been the nicest people, but at least they were customers. Something we were seriously lacking today.

“What happened?” Norma asked, conveniently returning as soon as the woman and her family were gone.

“Apparently, this panther isn’t a fan of the heat. She decided to go hunt down a coffee at the Starbucks instead.”

“Ah.” Norma nodded. “I don’t really blame them.”

“This heat really is getting ridiculous.” I wiped the back of my hand across my forehead.

Norma shrugged. She must have been struggling just as much as I was, but she gave no hint of being bothered by it. She wasn’t even slightly flushed; meanwhile, I was sweating like I’d just run a marathon. I had to wonder if Norma’s spitfire energy somehow combatted heat waves.

“Well, sugar, be grateful you won’t be here past lunch. Not with that big trip you’re going on—”

“Let’s not talk about the trip.” I rushed to cut her off.

I was determined not to think about where I was headed after work today until I absolutely had to.

I still had a couple of hours of my shift left, and I fully intended to make the most of the blissful remaining moments when I could pretend the trip wasn’t happening.

Norma tutted. “Denial isn’t going to make it go away.”

“I’m not in denial. I’d just rather live in the moment.”

“Sounds like denial to me.”

I chose to ignore her. “Anyway, getting back to this heat,” I said before she could continue to poke holes in the happy illusion I’d created for myself. “Surely, there’s something else we can do to get some cool air in here?”

“I think we’ve tried everything, but I could always head outside and do a rain dance?”

I might have laughed, but Norma looked dead serious. “Uh, maybe we use the rain dance as a last resort. We don’t want to ruin the last few days of everyone’s vacations.”

“Ah, that’s right, summer’s almost over. School starts next week, doesn’t it?”

“Don’t remind me,” I muttered. I normally didn’t mind the start of a new school year, and I’d always thought my senior year was going to be the best year of my life. But everything was different now.

“Perhaps you could take one last look at the air conditioner?” I suggested.

I knew I was probably pushing the friendship, seeing as Norma had already tried to fix it several times this morning, but I wasn’t ready to give up just yet.

If anyone could bring the air conditioner back to life, it was Norma.

Almost everything in the café was a million years old, but she knew the tricks that got even our most stubborn appliances to work.

She shared a doubtful smile with me. “I have a feeling it’s not long for this world, sweetie.

” Norma often had feelings about things and had been proclaiming for years she was a psychic.

She was almost always wrong when it came to her predictions, but she was probably right about this.

“But I suppose I could see if some more Norma love will do the trick.”

“Thank you!” I exclaimed. “Just maybe don’t throw a wrench at it this time.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.” Norma winked before heading out back. She was a firm believer in tough love when it came to getting appliances to work, so I imagined she was off to see if there was a baseball bat or something equally as sturdy she could use to bludgeon the machine.

There were only two customers in the café, so I made sure to cover their tables while Norma was gone.

The place should have been full at this time of day, and I knew the lack of customers was really going to set my mom back.

The café had been struggling ever since the new Starbucks opened down the road.

The familiar chime of the doorbell sounded, and although my ears perked up, I didn’t bother to glance at the door immediately. I expected to hear the chime sound again as the customer quickly realized it was so hot you could barely breathe in here and tried to backtrack as fast as possible.

It was only after several seconds had passed without the sound of a second ding that I looked up from the table I was wiping down. The rag in my hand dropped to the ground, and I drew in a ragged breath when I saw who had entered the café.

What on earth were they doing here?