Chapter 3
CHAPTER 3
W hat in the ever-living hell was that?
It wasn’t coffee. It couldn’t be. More like warmed-up dirt water. Heck, it was worse than dirt water.
Maybe she hadn’t tasted enough. It surely couldn’t be that bad?
Aspen took another sip.
Worse…so much worse.
“Everything okay, dear?”
She choked on the hot liquid before looking up at the older woman with an English accent standing beside the booth. Hot liquid sloshed over the sides of the mug, barely missing her fingers. “Is this the latte with almond milk?”
“Yes. Is something wrong with it?”
It wasn’t a mistake. The older woman had intentionally made it to taste like this.
It was terrible.
But how on earth could she express that to this kind elderly woman who seemed to have no business in her little café? And really, this was probably her own fault for ordering coffee in a tea house.
She set the mug onto the table. “You know what? I was just looking at your tea list. I’m not much of a tea drinker, but they have me intrigued.”
Excitement lit the older woman’s eyes. “Oh, all the teas here are marvelous. They’re loose leaf and mostly organic. Unfortunately, when I opened this store a few years ago, I found there aren’t many tea drinkers around. I’m not sure if it’s a Montana thing or a—”
“It’s an American thing. Not big tea drinkers. But I’d love to try some.” Kind of. It had to be better than the coffee.
“What kind would you like?”
“What do you recommend?”
“Earl Grey is a favorite of mine.”
“Earl Grey sounds wonderful.”
If it was terrible, she’d ask about sweet tea. It didn’t seem to be on the menu, but maybe… “I’m Aspen, by the way.”
“Mrs. Gerald. I’ll go get your tea.”
When Mrs. Gerald walked away, Aspen cast her gaze around the empty store. There wasn’t another soul in sight. Was it always like this? The place was big, with stairs to a mezzanine level upstairs. It wasn’t styled in an overly tea-house kind of way. In fact, it looked kind of like a normal coffee shop.
She eyed baked goods in the display case. Now they looked good. Pies, scones…even the mini chocolate cakes.
She looked back at the screen of her laptop and tapped her nails against the wooden tabletop. She was procrastinating. Procrastinating when she should be working. But the blank page was a great example of the fact that not a lot of work was happening.
She wanted to blame the quiet tea house because she tended to like noise and movement around her when she worked. But that wasn’t fair. Lately, it didn’t seem to matter where she was, there were no ideas to be typed. None. Squat. Her head was empty. Completely and utterly empty.
Okay, Aspen, if there was any time to be inspired, it’d be now.
She put her fingers on the keyboard, trying not to let the blank page intimidate her.
She wrote a sentence. Then deleted it. She wrote another sentence…and deleted it again.
Dammit, Aspen, come on. This is your job.
Maybe she needed to read the previous chapter she’d written…that sometimes helped.
She scrolled up and started reading.
Five sentences in and she hated it. Not just a little bit. Huge, gigantic belly punches of hate. Her hero sounded like a pompous prick, and her heroine did nothing but complain. They weren’t likeable characters, not even a little bit. She didn’t even like them, and she’d written them.
Her finger hovered over the delete key, but she hesitated. What if she wrote negative words again? And what if every day she deleted a bit more until she had nothing? No book. No new release. But was no book better than a bad book?
If she couldn’t write anymore, she’d have to get another job. But she wasn’t good at anything else.
Maybe if she just stared at a blank page long enough, the words would come to her.
Ha. She’d tried that yesterday…didn’t work.
“Here you go.” Mrs. Gerald set a pot of tea onto the table with a teacup, saucer, and a little pot of milk beside it. “Let me know what you think.”
“Thank you.”
Instead of walking away, the old woman watched.
Oh, she wanted her to try it right now. That was a bit of pressure.
She poured some tea into the cup and added a dash of milk before taking a sip. She flinched when the burning liquid touched the tip of her tongue. Holy crack on a cracker, it was hot.
“Not good?” Mrs. Gerald asked.
“Oh no, it is good.” Not really true. Well, not for her. She was a coffee person. But no part of her wanted to break this little old lady’s heart. “Just hot.”
Her smile returned. “I’m so pleased you like it. Sing out if you need anything else.”
Aspen smiled at the woman, but the smile immediately dropped when she looked back to her page. Still empty. No magical writing fairies wrote the chapter in the few seconds she’d been turned away.
All right, time to type. She was not going to accept another no-word day. She was going to get words down, dammit.
She pulled out her AirPods, pushed them into her ears, and played her favorite instrumental playlist. It was her go-to when she had to get writing done.
She scrolled back and deleted her last five sentences then rewrote them, forcing more words out.
It was an hour and one thousand rewritten words later when she sat back and decided to read what she had.
It was crap. A full thousand words of crap that no one would want to read.
She wanted to drop her forehead to the table and ask whatever higher power was watching her—why? Why was writing something good suddenly impossible?
Her phone rang. When she saw her mother’s name flashing on the screen, she cringed. If there was anyone who could make a bad day worse, it was her mentally unstable mother. She was pretty sure her mom had undiagnosed borderline personality disorder…and maybe bipolar disorder.
She answered the call, knowing if she didn’t, her mother might spiral. “Hi, Mom.”
“When are you coming home?”
Well, hello to you too. I missed you as well. Thank you so much for checking in.
All words that would likely not enter the conversation.
“I told you, I’m not sure.”
“You’ve deserted me. Did you think of me at all during this move? Or Dylan?”
Her fingers tightened around her phone, her stomach doing a nauseous roll at his name. Aspen hadn’t told her why they’d separated—she hadn’t told anyone. But her mother certainly knew Aspen wanted nothing to do with him.
“Dylan and I broke up.”
“I know. But if you’d stayed, he might have taken you back.”
Taken her back? “I left him, Mom.”
“I know. You said that.”
Said that? Did her mother not believe her?
She sighed. “I need to go, Mom. I’m working.”
“Wait. I need your address so I can send you some of your things.”
“What things?”
“A ring you left here. A T-shirt. A—”
“Keep them.”
“I don’t want them. What the hell am I supposed to do with things that aren’t mine?”
She scrubbed her face. Her mother had always hated clutter. She had the most clutter-free house Aspen had ever seen. “Then throw them out.”
“No. I don’t want to be blamed later if you decide you actually want them.”
“I won’t change my mind.”
Her mother huffed. “Honestly, Aspen, I don’t know why you’re so difficult. Do you know what I sacrificed to have you and raise you? A lot. And now you’re forcing me to keep clutter that isn’t mine.”
She massaged her temple. She’d heard similar spiels before. Heck, she could just about recite it word for word.
The funny thing was, this was her mother being nice . When she wasn’t nice, Aspen often needed to block her number for a few days just to get a break from the threats and curses.
She looked back at her laptop. Everything was annoying today…and it had all started with those damn flowers.
“Fine,” Aspen finally cut in. “I’ll text you my address now.”
“Good.”
Then her mother hung up. She just freaking hung up. No “goodbye.” No “have a good day.” Nothing.
Un-freaking-believable.