Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
SOPHIE
“So we’re going to destroy this asshole, right?” Hannah asks, cracking her knuckles.
Briar rotates her teacup on the tabletop, peering inside hopefully. Dottie and her staff are trained to read people’s fortunes in their tea leaves, although it’s a mystery what that training actually entails.
My aunt isn’t religious but is a true believer in everything involving mysticism. She and Dottie are in a Wise Women Group that Dottie started here at the tea shop, and from what I can tell, they discuss things like energy imbalances and auras and karma. It’s probably ironic for a woman who believes in bad luck and curses to doubt the efficacy of such things, but I do. Mostly because I’ve tried to reverse my luck nearly every way possible and gotten nowhere.
“He was two-timing all of us. We can’t let him get away with that,” Hannah continues, taking our silence for a lack of agreement. Which I suppose it is.
It felt good throwing that ring at Jonah’s face, and I wouldn’t mind throwing other things at him, but revenge seems like a slippery slope. I don’t to find myself back at a police station.
“We didn’t,” Briar says. “I let Sophie into the brewery, and she told him off in front of my boss.” Her expression darkens into a look of dejection. “He’s going to be so pissed.”
“You won’t get fired,” I say, even though I obviously have no control over that. “You don’t have to tell anyone how I got in. I doubt anyone even noticed you were there. And if your boss does give you a hard time, then you can confirm Jonah is a cheating a-hole.”
She sighs and slides the teacup a few inches away from her. “No way. I’m not supposed to date anyone who works with the brewery.”
“Come work at Big Catch,” Hannah says. “I’m the taproom manager. We always need help, and I don’t care who people are sleeping with.”
“Isn’t Big Catch owned by one of those mega-conglomerates?” Briar asks, her face puckering.
“Yes, and that’s why we always need help. No locals want to work with us.” She waves a hand at me. “Or you can go work with your other new best friend, at Buchanan. Or one of the other five hundred breweries in town.”
“Yeah, don’t let that jerk push you around,” I say, getting into the spirit of it.
Briar fiddles with her teacup and then glances up at us. “He’s…well…this is embarrassing to admit, but he’s my dad. This is his latest business venture. He never sticks with them for long, and he’s getting ready to move on. My own business tanked, so I’m supposed to take over the brewery soon. My mom doesn’t want anything to do with any of it. She’s a ‘serious’ writer. That’s what she calls herself, anyway. She thinks the beer thing is demeaning. She’s trying to get him to open a writers’ salon so she can make friends.”
I can feel my bad luck pulling at me, trying to drive me into more verbal missteps. “Oh my God. I’m so sorry, Briar. He seems…uh…he makes really good beer.”
“He doesn’t make any of it,” she says sadly. “That’s all our brewmaster, and he’s always on the verge of quitting. Because my father is an asshole. I’m just hoping he hangs on until Dad leaves.”
“You can hire my brother, Liam, if he quits,” Hannah says offhandedly. “He’s a pain in the ass, and the brass at Big Catch are always threatening to fire him. But he’s also really good at brewing beer.” She pauses. “But are you sure you don’t want to tell your dad you were banging Jonah? He’d probably crush him like a tin can.”
Briar shakes her head as she makes another rotation with the teacup. “No. I mean, maybe he would, but it wouldn’t be worth it. I’d never hear the end of it.”
“If your father gives you any trouble at all,” a sweet but sturdy voice says, “you would be more than welcome to come work here, my dear.” Dottie emerges from behind a couple who were standing next to our table. How long has she been listening?
She slides into the now-empty seat beside me, which doesn’t surprise me in the least.
When my great-aunt went on her big vacation, she asked Dottie to keep an eye on Otis and me, as if we were children in need of tending and not two mostly functional adults in our twenties. Dottie has taken that role seriously. She stops by to check on us a few times a week, sometimes with her life partner, Bear—a sweet man with apple cheeks who runs a bakery and always brings over almond croissants because I mentioned offhandedly that I think they taste like Paris.
“Now, girls,” she says, “did I hear you correctly? The young man who was supposed to marry Sophie was secretly dating all of you?”
“And at least one more. Someone he listed as GingerBeerBabe on his phone,” I say. “But we don’t know who she is yet.”
“We could find out,” Hannah says. “There’s only one ginger beer brewery in town. All we have to do is go inside and put up a dartboard with Jonah’s face on it. See who uses it. Bam, we’ve got our girl.”
“You don’t seem very upset,” Briar says to Hannah, frowning as she weaves a loop of golden hair around her fingers. She looks like she’s trying to strangle them.
“Now, dear,” Dottie says. “I want you to remember we all deal with things differently. You’re going through something awful, but I have to say I agree with this young woman here.”
She nods to Hannah, who introduces herself. If she’s fazed by Dottie joining our table without invitation, it doesn’t show.
“Oh, what a lovely name,” Dottie says, reaching over and patting her hand. “Yes, Hannah made a good point. If you don’t teach this young man a lesson, I’m afraid he’s likely to repeat his mistakes again and again. He’ll never become his best self, and goodness knows where it might lead for everyone else. We already have gonorrhea in the French Broad River.”
I flinch. It occurs to me that I’m going to have to get tested for STDs. For all I know, Jonah’s been fornicating in the French Broad River, double-exposing himself—and thus me, Briar, Hannah, and GingerBeerBabe—to contagion.
Hannah gives me a slight nod as if reading my mind. “We’ll go together. All of us.”
“The young rake must be exposed for what he’s done, of course,” Dottie continues. “But I dare say that won’t be enough. He needs to know his behavior is deeply unacceptable . That punch in the face was well and good, but I suspect it won’t teach him anything beyond a moment of humility in the face of a stronger specimen.”
“What do you suggest?” I ask, grateful for the distraction. After I leave this place, I’m going to start struggling. Shock and anger have carried me this far, but I can feel something dark oozing beneath them, threatening to suck me under.
It helps that I’m not dealing with this alone. I trusted the wrong person, but so did Briar, Hannah, and GingerBeerBabe. We made the same mistake, which means it must have been a reasonable one.
Dottie taps her bottom lip. “Once you get in touch with this fourth woman, you should confront him—in a public place, of course. He needs to face up to what he’s done.”
“Oh, I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” I mutter.
“He’ll never learn if you don’t teach him,” Dottie reminds me, tapping the table with her finger. “And he’ll pull other innocent women into his depravity. They always do, dear. But if you teach him a lesson, you’ll be helping him and those other women. Now, drink up. I’ll read your leaves for you when you’re done.”
She rises from her seat. “That wonderful young man who was here earlier insisted on paying your bill. For every man who needs a lesson, there’s a fine young buck who doesn’t have to be led to water to drink.”
With this, she winks and leaves.
“Do you think she just made an oral sex joke?” Hannah asks, smiling at Dottie’s back. “I like her.”
I give her a half laugh, murmuring, “So do I.”
But my mind is stuck on what Dottie said— Rob arranged to pay our bill?
Surprise bubbles up inside me, chased by regret. I let Jonah shape my opinion about Rob as surely as if my thoughts were clay. He convinced me his brother was a deadbeat loser. And, sure, maybe Rob is a deadbeat—I truly have no idea what he does other than play with the garbage band—but he’s not a loser. He’s interesting , and he cares about other people in a way Jonah is clearly not capable of.
What other horrible ideas has Jonah infected me with?
I clear my throat. “You know, Jonah never wanted to go to any breweries with me. He said it made him think of work, and he wanted to keep his home life and work life separate. He spent so much time traveling, working nights and weekends…I figured it made sense. But now…”
Hannah laughs through her nose. “He didn’t want us comparing notes. Which means that’s exactly what we should be doing. So what’s the worst thing about him? You go first, Sophie.”
My mind whirls, sifting through every little grievance I’ve stowed away like bugs in a spiderweb. “Uh…he’d say he didn’t care about something, like where we went out to eat, or what favors we were going to give away at the wedding, and then he’d let me spin my wheels for hours, only for him to choose something completely different. Oh crap…” I bury my face in my hands, spearing my fingers through my hair. It was in a neat ponytail a couple of hours ago. It’s an unholy mess now, and I honestly don’t care. “I forgot about the wedding. I have so many arrangements to cancel.”
“We’ll help you.”
I look up, surprised, because it was Briar who made the offer, her voice quavering.
“This isn’t your fault, Briar. You don’t owe me anything. He hurt you, too.”
“I know,” she says, still playing with her gorgeous hair. “But I want to help. Jonah never wants to help. He walked past an old woman lugging a stack of boxes into the post office, and he didn’t even offer to hold the door for her. Not until I asked him to. That’s when I should have known, but I made excuses for him. I told myself he mustn’t have noticed.”
A burst of air escapes me, not quite a laugh. “I know what that’s like. I really wanted to believe he was what he seemed to be. So I ignored any evidence that he wasn’t.”
“What he is,” Hannah says, setting down her tea, “is a bad kisser. Like seriously bad. We should all count ourselves lucky for escaping him. GingerBeerBabe too, if she has indeed escaped him.”
I hug myself, worried for this woman I’ve never met. “I hope he didn’t bamboozle her.”
Briar smiles at me. “I haven’t heard that word since I was a little girl. I like the way you talk. You called Jonah an ignoramus earlier.”
“And I like your hair,” I say. “You remind me of Rapunzel.” A sigh seeps out, and because I’m still feeling the influence of one and a half high-gravity beers on a mostly empty stomach, I find myself saying, “You know, you’re both stupidly hot. I don’t understand why Jonah asked me to marry him in the first place. He’s successful. Good looking. I work in a taproom and shop at big-box stores. I’ve never understood makeup…like, I bought a tube of lipstick at this makeup counter because the clerk promised it would change my life, and it was the same color as my lips. What’s the point?”
Hannah, who was sipping her tea again, plunks her cup down so forcefully the bottom clinks on the wood table. Her expression is fierce. “You stop that, right now. We all work in breweries, and there’s nothing wrong with that. I’m sure you have your own hopes and dreams. You’re going to get them someday, but it won’t be by stepping all over other people. Because you’re not an asshole. And you’re also stupidly hot, by the way. He’s just stupid. But if you ever want to learn about makeup, I’ll help you.”
“Really?”
“Absolutely. I studied to be a makeup artist before I fell into the whole customer service thing. You need the perfect red lipstick. Every woman does.” She glances at Briar. “You too, Rapunzel. I’ll hook you both up.”
Briar finally drops the lock of hair she’s been messing with. She smiles at Hannah, then looks at me. “She’s right. You’re beautiful, Sophie. Your aura is too.”
“You can see auras?” I ask, wondering if I believe her.
“I can’t see them.” She pats her hand on her very full chest. “But I can feel them. I felt yours the moment I met you.”
“Not to be a naysayer,” Hannah says, “but if that’s true, why didn’t you pick up on Jonah’s aura?”
“You really know how to ruin a moment,” Briar says, but she’s smiling. Hannah and I both start laughing. It feels good . Maybe it’s a just-for-now good, and later I’ll slide back into that darker, oozier place. But I’m happy right now, and that’s what matters.
“I like you both a lot,” I say. “Isn’t that funny? We all have terrible taste in men, but Jonah has fantastic taste in women. That’s his silver lining.”
“Maybe everything really does happen for a reason,” Briar says, finishing her tea. “What if we were only drawn to him because he was supposed to bring us together?”
“An interesting theory,” Hannah says as I lift my tea to finish it. “But it would have been a lot less traumatizing if we’d met after joining the same book club.”
“But then no one would know the truth about Jonah,” I say, setting my cup down. “What do you think about what Dottie said? I don’t think I’m prepared to plan some sort of grand revenge.”
Briar gives me a sympathetic look. “I’ll bet it was exhausting planning the wedding.”
“Actually, I had to let Jonah and his mother plan the whole thing. They sort of insisted on it.”
Hannah snorts. “New idea. If they insisted on planning it, they can unplan it. We can make much better use of our time than doing their dirty work for them.”
“You’re right,” I say, even though the idea brings on a wave of panic. No one likes it when other people give them work, and Mrs. Price only tolerates me because I let her have her way all the time. But it doesn’t matter anymore. I no longer have anyone to impress. It’s over.
It’s over.
That thought pushes me closer to the sadness ooze, but I’m surprised by a feeling of…relief. I never really believed Jonah was mine forever. It always felt like I was on the verge of doing or saying something that would push him away.
“So are we confronting him?” Hannah asks. “How do we want to do it?”
“I don’t know,” Briar says, fidgeting with her hair again. “I try not to hold onto negativity. Besides, why would he agree to meet with us? If he gets his phone’s data transferred onto a new device, he’ll see the messages we exchanged. He’ll know that his secret is fully out.”
“GingerBeerBabe never responded,” I point out. “Anyway, don’t you think he’s going to try to smooth this over with at least one of us? He obviously doesn’t enjoy being alone if he has four girlfriends.”
“He’ll try to smooth it over with you ,” Briar says, almost sadly. “You’re the one he wanted to marry.”
She likely didn’t say that to spike my anxiety, but my heart starts racing.
“I threw my engagement ring at his face. I shouted at him in front of your dad. You don’t think he’ll take that as a sign?”
Briar glides her hand over mine. “I think he’s a man who’s used to getting what he wants, regardless of what other people think about it. That’s why he’s so good at what he does.”
The alarm on my phone goes off, reminding me I’m supposed to be at work in fifteen minutes. I stare at it in consternation. “I don’t think I can go to work today. I’m a little tipsy.”
“We should all call in sick,” Hannah says.
Briar surprises me by agreeing. “You’re right. My dad can’t yell at me if I’m not there.”
He can still do it later, but I won’t burst her bubble. I understand the need for a silver lining.
I’m going to have to find a new one in this mess.
“Let’s,” I say.
Seconds later, before any of us have the chance to call in sick, Dottie bustles up to the table.
“Oh, delightful,” she says, clapping her hands together. “You’ve finished your tea.”
Without asking, she pushes in next to me again, bringing a scent of fresh lavender. “Who would like to go first?”
Briar glances at me with a glimmer of unease in her eyes, and I smile at her before saying, “Maybe we should push them all into a row.”
We line up our cups, mine first, then Briar’s, then Hannah’s.
Dottie gets to work, rotating the cups, draining the excess liquid and then flipping them back over. Briar watches her as if she’s performing emergency surgery; Hannah looks like she’s rubbernecking. I’m studying them and her.
Finally, Dottie looks back up at us, beaming. “You all have the same symbol in your cups, in the same place. This very rarely happens.”
“What does it look like?” Briar asks, on the hook.
“A dog at the top of your cup is a symbol of friendship.”
I glance into the cups, a little dubious. The blobs just look like clumps of leaves to me. Admittedly, they each have a small clump attached to a larger clump, which could—with liberal imagination—be a dog.
“You are at the beginning of a beautiful friendship.” She glances between each of us. “That’s what you must remember, my dears. This is a beginning, not an end. You may not be marrying that young man, Sophie, but you’re creating a much more important bond. With yourself and these other delightful women. All of you are. This is your time, my dears. Be happy for it. Paint and be young and make beautiful mistakes so you can learn from them. Oh, I’m excited for you. This is your opportunity to do everything you never thought you could. And you’ll have each other for support, just like my Wise Women Group.”
It’s foolish to think she’s professed words that are going to change my life, but that tingle traveling down my spine says otherwise.
“You know…” Dottie says slowly. “I usually don’t read my own leaves, but this morning, I felt the urge to look. What do you think I saw in there?”
“Some damp leaves?” Hannah says with a smile.
“Yes,” Dottie says with enthusiasm. “And they were in the very same shape and alignment as yours. I knew it was going to be a special day. I’m going to help you, my girls. We’re going to forge ahead together. It’s written in the stars.”
“What do we do?” Briar asks, her voice full of the same uncertainty I feel.
“First,” Dottie says, prompting me to lean forward slightly, as if all the mysteries of the world are about to be revealed. “First, and I feel this strongly, we need to get very drunk.”