Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Willa
As though someone has pressed a giant red button, my brain devolves into panic mode over the next few days. Mostly because I can’t stop thinking about Archer.
One part of my brain keeps circling back to his interest in my arrangement with Galentine regarding the commercial kitchen. I know she should have charged me to use the space. The person I hired to do my taxes last year was shocked I didn’t have more overhead costs, especially in terms of my baking space. But here’s the thing: my profit margins are so close (read: nonexistent) that if I did have to pay for the kitchen, it would be the thing that puts me out of business.
I’ve been lucky. And I think Archer Gaines is the physical embodiment of my luck running out.
Then there’s the other part of my brain. It’s not worried about kitchens or rent or businesses. That part of my three-pound thinking organ is consumed with things like the way Archer smells and his response to me bossing him around. How good it felt to stand with my cheek pressed to his chest as I tied apron strings behind his back.
What possessed me to do that?!?
No idea. But I started to see another side to the man I’d written off as stuffy and grumpy and too old—even if very attractive.
Now, I am a little girl plucking daisies and getting a different answer with each petal that flutters to the ground. Only instead of he loves me, he loves me not , I’m vacillating between I despise him and I’d like to tie his apron strings once more .
When I need my feet to come back to earth, I remind myself that he wouldn’t try my cookies.
And can you really trust a man who refuses a cookie? No. You can’t.
I’m so distracted that I walk into the wrong office building to deliver a cookie order and have to backtrack a whole block.
Then I almost drop the box as I hand it off to the woman who placed the order. She’s wearing a pale blue sundress, an odd choice considering the crisp weather outside. But then, my wardrobe has been a revolving door of yoga pants and pajamas for what feels like months, so I have no room to judge.
She must see me eyeing her bare shoulders because she smiles. “I dress for the weather I want,” she says with a shrug. “And I’m ready for spring.”
“Good philosophy. Another few weeks and hopefully we’ll start to see it.”
When she finally glances down at the box, her mouth falls open as she sees the cookies through the viewing window. “These are beautiful. Better than the pictures on your website. Wow .”
A surge of pride fills me—mixed with something a whole lot uglier.
These aren’t the zoo cookies Archer and Bellamy saw. This order is to celebrate a coworker’s newborn baby boy, and they were maybe the hardest ones I’ve ever had to decorate. Not as far as skill goes—they were pretty standard, with blue and white bottles, onesies, and rattles. Very little detail work needed, aside from writing monogrammed initials and the name Bronson.
The hard part was thinking about babies for the hours it took me to finish. I always wanted to be a young mom. I thought I would be. Until those hopes came smash-crashing down—along with the relationship I thought would be it for me.
The cookies were a very tactile reminder of the hopes I lost and how quickly time is zipping by me. I swear, I could practically feel my ovaries turning to dust while I piped the name Bronson in white. It didn’t help that Bronson is one of my favorite baby names.
With no relationship—or even potential relationship—on the horizon, motherhood seems to grow farther and farther out of my reach. It makes me angry with Trey all over again. Not because I want to be having his babies, but because I invested almost four years in our relationship. Our breakup was like hitting reset on my whole timeline. My whole life, really.
I’m right back at the starting line. If I met someone today—Archer comes to mind, and I briefly wonder if a lobotomy would effectively remove him—and we dated, got engaged, then married in a normal amount of time, I’d be pushing thirty by the time we had kids.
Which isn’t old! It’s fine! My ovaries and my eggs will still be fine! Women have children into their forties now. I know this. I’ve googled.
I just thought my life would be different by now.
I almost had it all. Until I didn’t.
And as I decorated each sweet onesie cookie with Bronson’s monogrammed initials, my loss was all I could think about.
I’d almost prefer making naughty adult cookies for a bachelorette party. Almost .
“Honestly,” says the woman in the sundress, shaking her head, “I’m not sure you’re charging enough for these.”
She’s right—I’m not charging enough, despite Archer’s shock about my prices. Definitely not enough. But with a fledgling business, I need any sales I can get, hoping they’ll bring reviews and word-of-mouth recommendations.
Speaking of …
I force a smile. “There’s a card inside the box with information on how to leave a review—those really help—and a few flyers with coupon codes for you and your friends.”
I try to say this cheerfully, not allowing the edge of desperation I feel to creep into my voice.
I hate selling. The word—along with the marketing and promotion —triggers my gag reflex. When I quit my office job to do this full-time, I was floating on the compliments of people who had raved about my cookies for years, not thinking about taxes and LLCs vs S-corps and things like brand awareness.
Or having to be the one to actually sell my cookies to people. Shouldn’t they just sell themselves by virtue of how pretty they are?
Apparently not.
Some people , I think to myself, a certain suit-wearing billionaire coming to mind, won’t even try them .
“There’s my little baker!” Mom says, beaming as she opens the door and envelops me into a hug.
My relief is instant, a full-body sigh as I press into her warm embrace. The familiar scent of home, today mixed with something deliciously savory that Mom must be cooking, adds to the comforting effect.
“Hi, Mom.”
At least once a week I make the twenty-minute drive to my parents’ house for dinner or to say hello. Just walking through the front door makes my day better.
Unless I think about moving back here if things don’t pick up with my business. Or if Archer Gaines decides to make me pay to use the kitchen space. Then, this house would stop feeling like a comfort and start feeling like a real-life metaphor symbolizing my failure to adult .
“What’s wrong?” Mom asks. “You just tensed up.”
She pulls back to examine me, her silver-threaded blond hair falling into her eyes.
I brush it away and offer her the best smile I can muster. “Just the same old. Nothing new.” Which is mostly true.
Mom and Dad are very aware of my struggle to get Serendipitous Sweets off the ground. They’ve been supportive in every way they can be, including financially. Mostly, their support comes by way of cheerleading and telling everyone they know about my cookies.
As far as business advice, they’re both lifelong teachers and know more about their respective subjects—history for Dad and English for Mom—than they do about business and finance.
In fact, just last year Dad got taken by some kind of random phone scam. Maybe a Ponzi scheme? I don’t know what that is, exactly, or how he got tricked. All I know is that he lost a chunk of their retirement. Now, when telemarketers or scammers call the home phone my parents insist on keeping, he finds creative ways to mess with them.
So, yeah—our family is all in the same boat when it comes to the ins and outs of money and business stuff.
“What’s wrong with my Willa?” Dad bellows, lumbering into the hall.
While I’m average height like my mom, Dad is a staggering six-foot-four and built like a one-man wrecking crew. He looks like some kind of retired sports hero, or maybe even a lumberjack, what with his propensity for flannel.
People are surprised whenever they find out that he never played a sport in his life. He spends most of his time on the model train set in the basement, wearing an Optivisor to help him see the tiny pieces. I like to take pictures of him wearing it, especially when I catch him looking up, his eyes distorted through the magnifying glasses. He’s an adorable nerd trapped in the body of a linebacker.
Now, Dad lifts me off my feet in a hug so tight, I can feel my back snapping into alignment. His beard scrapes pleasantly against my forehead.
“Who do I need to pummel?” he growls.
I giggle. “No one, Daddy.”
“Oh, George. What have we said about you fighting people?”
“That I should leave it to the experts,” he says, setting me back down and giving me a wink. “Like you.”
Mom swats at him, and he bends down to plant a kiss right on her lips. The two of them are disgustingly adorable. I love it, even if it makes my heart ache with longing for the same thing.
“You’re just in time for dinner,” Mom says. “Your favorite—chicken and dumplings.”
“It’s like she magically knew you were coming and made dinner just for you,” Dad says.
I roll my eyes. “Or, like you have it at least once a week, so my chances are one in seven.”
“I prefer my explanation.” Dad chuckles and wraps an arm around my shoulders, guiding me downstairs before dinner to show me the latest updates to the whole little world of model trains he’s created.
The tracks are just part of what he’s built over the years. There are buildings and people and roads with cars that drive. Tiny houses with lampposts and sidewalks, bushes and trees. Most recently, he added a lake with sunbathers and a power boat. One year for Christmas, I got him a tiny dog with his leg lifted. I didn’t think he’d really put it up, but he likes to move it around to “water” different shrubs.
“Do you want to blow the whistle?” he asks with a grin. Dad has the tiniest gap between his front teeth, and it makes his smile all the more endearing. “You can make a wish when the train goes through the tunnel, just like old times.”
“Sure, Daddy.” The sound of the engine humming and clacking over the tracks is familiar, reminding me of being so little I’d have to stand on a chair to see. Back then, his display was a tiny fraction of its current size, but it brought him every bit as much joy.
I press the button to make the little whistle blow, a sound that leaves me feeling both nostalgic and sad, even though Dad winks at me when the train enters the tunnel, its tiny engine light cutting through the dark.
Not unlike Sophie, Dad is always looking for signs and magic in average daily events. I have no doubts that if I told him about my closet experience, he would light up and insist on driving to my place right now so he could test it out.
Which is exactly why I don’t tell him.
It’s been a few days, and I’ve already started convincing myself that I somehow wandered up into Archer’s closet in some kind of stupor.
Or something.
Maybe a stress-induced waking sleepwalking kind of thing?
I’ve never heard of that, but people come up with new ailments and disorders daily, it seems.
Whatever actually happened, I’d prefer not to think of it again. Time can soften the edges of the memory until it’s more a foggy Did that even happen? and less a solid reality.
That’s my plan. That—and to avoid my closet.
And to stop all my thoughts that keep boomeranging back to Archer.
Which is even harder after the run-in we just had. On my way to the parking garage, I saw Archer jogging toward me on the sidewalk. I didn’t recognize him at first because he was in running clothes. Correction: running shorts.
And that is all.
Yes, he had on shoes and socks, but I wasn’t paying attention to those. Totally irrelevant. No—my full focus was on Archer’s bare, muscly, sweaty chest.
So, that’s what he’s hiding under those suits.
I had my cheek pressed right … there.
That’s not a body built by cookies.
As he saw me, he slowed to a stop, and then all my focus shifted to not tripping or falling over or saying something stupid.
The good news: I did not trip or fall or say something stupid.
The bad news: I couldn’t locate words at all.
And when Archer stopped right in front of me and ran a hand through his dark, sweaty hair, making his biceps pop, it only got worse. I stood there, staring stupidly. I think I was even smiling a dreamy, goofy smile, but I’m not certain what my face was doing. At that point, my entire body was running on a backup generator.
“Hello, Willa the Person,” Archer said in that low, rough voice of his, the tiniest of smiles lifting one corner of his lips.
At which point I lifted a hand and waved. Not a full wave either. One of those little finger waves, the kind you’d expect from some vapid socialite with a purse dog and a spray tan.
Archer frowned, perhaps wondering if I was sleepwalking again, and before he could ask, I walked right around him and hoofed it to my car like I was being chased by the boogeyman. An over six-foot, very well-built boogeyman who doesn’t like cookies but also is now into calling me by a cute nickname.
I’m startled when Dad’s hand drops over mine. “What?” I ask.
Gently, he lifts my hand away. “You’ve been jamming your finger into the button forever. I think the whistle’s about to give out.”
“Oh … sorry.”
“Everything okay?” he asks, even as he’s directing the train back to its resting spot at the station with the controls. He could probably do this in his sleep.
“Totally!” I respond a little too brightly.
But he seems to buy it, and Mom calls us up for dinner before I have to flat-out lie about catching feelings for a man I really shouldn’t. Or about the still lingering melancholy brought on by the baby cookies.
Over dinner, the ache in my chest grows as I sit across the table from my parents. Mom and Dad weren’t just high school sweethearts; they’ve been dating since junior high. Or, going out , which is what they tell me people called it back then.
That’s their favorite running joke: “Where were we even going?” Mom likes to ask.
“Eventually, to the altar,” Dad will answer, and then it devolves into laughter and, inevitably, kissing.
Again, they are adorably gross.
A weird kind of silence falls when I’m taking the last bite of dumpling, the one I’d been saving to the very end. I’ve tried this dish in a number of restaurants before, but nothing beats Mom’s dumplings, even if they’re made from a box of Bisquick.
I look up, the pillowy softness melting on my tongue, and both Mom and Dad have pinched expressions.
“What?” When neither one answers and, instead, they exchange a heavy glance, the last bite of dumpling suddenly feels stuck in my mouth. I swallow and take a sip of water. “Whatever it is, just tell me. Are you retiring and moving to Miami? Did you get scammed by a telemarketer again? Did they discontinue your favorite kind of train track?”
“Trey is moving back,” Mom blurts.
I am immensely glad I already swallowed my bite of dumpling because I think I would have choked.
Though we both grew up in Serendipity Springs, Trey and I didn’t meet until freshman year of college. We both went to Boston and met when a friend of a friend mentioned they had another friend driving back to Serendipity Springs for fall break. Mom and Dad didn’t let me take a car my freshman year because parking was such a nightmare, but they hated coming to get me because driving in Boston is also a nightmare. Mom and Dad suggested I take the train to Worcester, but I’m a little bit of a baby and don’t love doing public transportation alone.
I jumped on the chance to ride back home with Trey, sight unseen. If I had seen him ahead of time, I would have jumped even faster.
The instant I saw him, I got that fluttery crush feeling. It wasn’t just his perfectly tousled dirty blond hair and deep brown eyes but the warmth in his smile and the way he immediately took my bags and loaded them in the back before opening my car door. When he told me I got to choose the music, I was already half-smitten.
After an hour and a half that felt like ten minutes, he was pulling up in front of my house, and I was fighting off disappointment. I didn’t want to get out of the car. Or say goodbye. But Trey felt the same way and asked if he could take me to dinner rather than dropping me off.
I ended up getting home—finally—after midnight and after we’d made plans to hang out the next day.
Both of my parents waited up. Not because they were worried, but because my dad said once they got my texts that I was going to hang out with the boy who drove me home, they just knew.
Like magic , Dad said.
So, yeah. I’ve got some real-world reasons not to like the idea of magic. Because our ending was not so magical.
“He’s moving back from Paris? To Serendipity Springs?”
“Yes,” Dad says, looking warily at me, as though he expects me to spring out of my seat and run away. Or perhaps he’s thinking I might spontaneously combust.
I will not burst into flames. Or bolt from the table.
Mostly because I hate few things more than I hate running.
Which brings unwelcome thoughts of shirtless, sweaty Archer to mind.
Ugh—not now! I can’t manage thoughts about Trey and Archer at the same time.
“Trey, as in, the Trey?”
What I mean, of course, is my Trey.
Only, he isn’t that now. Hasn’t been for close to five years. Not since he got a job offer right out of college and moved to France without me.
Let me rephrase that: Not since he accepted a job offer overseas without telling me, proposed, and made my acceptance contingent on moving to Paris with him. Then he moved to France without me.
I said no. For … reasons. Multiple.
The main reason, though, at least in the moment, was that I couldn’t go to France. Trey knew it. And he knew why. But he took the job and asked me to come anyway, like my reasons would just disappear.
Or like they weren’t valid in the first place. It’s a really sad feeling when you realize a person you love doesn’t believe things you tell them.
“Actually, he’s already here,” Mom says, and I swallow down the urge to vomit.
“So, Trey is back in Serendipity Springs,” I say, testing out the idea and nodding like it’s the kind of thing I can handle. Like I’m talking about a new tire shop opening around the corner.
Like my favorite meal wasn’t just ruined—possibly forever—by the thought of Trey somewhere nearby, like a ticking timebomb I could run into at any given time.
Serendipity Springs isn’t a tiny town. It’s a small city. Even so, it’s inevitable that you see people you know almost everywhere. Especially when you don’t want to.
And because I’d rather not have to face Trey again, like, ever , it probably means he’ll start working in an office building on the street where I live.
Or, worse—he’ll move into The Serendipity.
Another fun fact: while we were dating, our moms became best friends. They stayed best friends, despite the circumstances. I think they secretly hoped we’d get back together. That I’d change my mind and, in grand gesture fashion, hop on a plane to Paris and tell Trey I made a huge mistake, the Eiffel Tower a glittering backdrop to my apology.
Though I sometimes regretted my decision early on, I did not change my mind. I did not get on a plane.
Did I hope Trey would give up the job and come back for me? At first, yes. Yes, I did.
But the longer time went on, the more I realized that our breakup was a gift. Because the way Trey handled not only the decision about his job but the proposal showed me something I had missed about his character.
I wouldn’t want to marry a man who would make a choice to take a job halfway across the world without consulting me. Where’s the partnership in that? My dad consults my mom before downloading a new app on his phone. Which might be a little too much togetherness, but it works for them.
And though Trey was, according to his mother, who told my mother, crushed, he’s the one who put me in an impossible position. Leave home for Paris to be together. Or … lose everything.
I wouldn’t want to marry a man who turns proposals into ultimatums.
His love had limits. Even if most people—particularly his parents and our mutual friends—didn’t understand it.
My parents mostly did, once I finally admitted my reasons for saying no.
But I think they were still deeply saddened and, at first, held me responsible rather than seeing Trey’s proposal as what it was: a test.
I wasn’t the one who failed. He did—by giving me a test in the first place.
Still. Knowing that Trey was in the wrong didn’t stop it from breaking my heart. Maybe it broke it even more . The betrayal ran deeper than I could ever express in words.
I think only Sophie truly understands. I hope I have enough leftover icing for this discussion when I get back to The Serendipity.
“I’ll be fine. I am fine,” I say loudly, as though volume will give my words more weight. “It’s been almost five years. I’ve moved on.”
In theory, anyway. Because I haven’t moved on in terms of a relationship.
Before boring Paul, my most recent attempt at dating, I went out with a handful of guys whose faces and names are largely forgettable or, at the least, interchangeable.
Not memorable, not serious.
Not Trey.
Which, I remind myself now, is a good thing. I’ve had years to perform an extensive post-mortem on our relationship and finally saw the proposal as a pattern. Trey didn’t just make that one choice without me.
We somehow slipped into a dynamic where he made all the choices, all the time, and I went along with them, all the time. I think I told myself in those moments I was being easy-going and low-conflict, when really I was stifling things I wanted and letting Trey’s opinions eclipse mine. Until I had none of my own.
Again, our breakup was a good thing.
“And he’s engaged,” Mom says.
I can’t help it. I gasp.
I know her intention was to rip the Band-Aid off, but Band-Aids shouldn’t always be ripped off. Sometimes, they should be left until all the painful sticky residue disappears and it slips off on its own, revealing a perfectly healed wound underneath.
“I told you not to do it that way,” Dad says. “You can’t just blurt out something like that about the love of her life being engaged.”
Mom reaches over to pat my hand while directing her words at Dad. “And you can’t still call him the love of her life!”
He throws up his hands. “I’m just speaking the truth!”
“So am I!”
The thing about my parents being ridiculously in love is that the same passion carries over into their fights. Mom and Dad both have a lot of feelings. Good and bad. Ones they like to express at full volume.
“He’s not the love of my life,” I whisper, but they’re yelling too loudly at each other to hear me. “He never was.”
This argument might continue, but the home phone attached to the kitchen wall rings. All three of us sigh in relief.
My dad leaps out of his chair, almost knocking it over in the process, and answers the phone with an excited, “Hello?”
Mom watches with hearts in her eyes and a smile on her face.
Me? I’m still frozen in my chair, iced over by the knowledge that Trey is engaged. To someone else.
He (presumably) bought another ring and (in all likelihood) got down on one knee for someone else.
It’s okay. You didn’t want him. You made the right call , I tell myself.
And while this might very well be true, the thought of Trey proposing to someone else and—this is the real kicker—is moving here with her leaves me feeling bruised and vulnerable.
Yeah, my very favorite home-cooked meal is definitely ruined.
Goodbye, chicken and dumplings. You have been spoiled because I got blindsided with news about an ex I don’t even have feelings for. It’s not you, it’s me—and it’s complicated.
“Oh, is that right?” Dad’s saying into the phone. “You’re selling solar panels? That’s great. I’m definitely interested. And I have questions. A lot of them.” Dad drags his chair closer to the wall and sits down, wrapping the curly phone cord around his arm. He almost looks like he’s deep-sea fishing, settling in to battle some big catch on the end of his line.
Which isn’t all that far off from what he’s actually doing.
“His latest thing is timing how long he can keep them on the line,” Mom says, giving my hand a squeeze. I’d forgotten she was holding it, and my hand has lost all feeling. “His current record is forty-seven minutes. I think he’s going for an hour.”
“Tell me about your silicon production in the panels,” Dad says. “Is it ethically sourced?”
I pull my hand away from Mom’s and start clearing the table. I need to move, and I don’t particularly want to be touched right now.
Dad’s really picking up steam now. “Do you only install them on human houses? What about henhouses?” A pause. “I see. Outhouses? Doghouses?”
I hold back a snort. He’s referencing a Tommy Lee Jones quote from one of Dad’s favorite movies, The Fugitive . I’ve watched it enough times with him that I think I could quote most of it at this point.
Mom joins me, taking Dad’s empty bowl and stacking it on top of hers. “At least he’s creative. And never rude.”
“The argument could be made that wasting someone’s time is rude,” I say, placing my bowl in the sink and taking the dishes from her hands.
“But if these are scammers, not just salespeople, he’s saving someone else from making his mistake,” Mom points out. It doesn’t make me feel any better, though, because it reminds me that I also took my parents’ money. And if Serendipitous Sweets fails, they may never see it again.
I know they’d tell me it’s fine and not to worry, but I also know how hard they’ve worked year after year for teachers’ salaries. It’s why Dad’s train set took literal decades to build—he has to scrimp and save for every piece.
Now I’m almost as bad as a scammer. I had such high hopes for my business, promising to pay them back with interest. Then, promising to pay them back in full.
Now, I make no more promises. The money is a subject we don’t talk about, I think because they know it’s been slow, even if I try to avoid the subject.
“I’ve got this,” I tell Mom, shooing her away. “Go watch Wheel of Fortune .”
She kisses me on the cheek before darting in to watch her favorite show. I never thought she’d survive Pat Sajak leaving the show, but as much as she moaned and groaned about his replacement, I think she has a burgeoning crush on Ryan Seacrest.
With the wheel spinning in the other room and my dad asking ten million questions about solar panels he won’t buy, I get to work on the dishes. There’s always been something therapeutic to me about washing up after a meal or after making a big batch of cookies. The warm water and the smell of dish soap make me happy.
Good thing considering the sheer number of dishes and utensils I have to wash almost daily.
“I’m sorry for surprising you about Trey. Are you okay?” Mom asks, coming into the kitchen as I’m starting in on the pots and pans. Ryan Seacrest must be on commercial break.
“I mean, I’m not sure how you can ever prepare for that kind of news. It shocked me. But I’m fine. It’s not like I’m still in love with him.”
“Mm-hm,” Mom says.
I really need to find a guy I like enough to bring home so maybe she’ll finally start to believe me.
“I dodged a bullet,” I tell her, scrubbing a bowl a little harder than necessary. “Trust me. More like dodging a cannonball.”
“What about bird poop?” Dad is asking, and Mom and I both chuckle.
I wonder if Dad is coming up with these on the fly or if he has some kind of script memorized. Either way, he’s pretty amazing. Too bad this isn’t a skill he could monetize.
“We have a lot of crows around here. If there’s a buildup of bird poop, how does that impact the functionality, the ability of the panels to gather solar rays?”
“Should we stop him at some point?” I ask.
“Oh, Willa. Let him have his fun. We all need something to spark joy in life, even if it’s being a complete and utter pest to telemarketers.”
Honestly, I don’t disagree with her there.
But the sad thing, I realize as I rinse out bowls and spoons, is that I don’t even know if I have something as silly as messing with telemarketers to spark joy in my own life.