Chapter 7
7
I creep into Mimi’s coffee shop the next morning, not knowing quite what to expect. Will she be mad at me for totally screwing up career number two? Do I actually care if she is? Is she going to pull the not-mad-just-disappointed card my grandmother is so fond of? Because I can handle a lot, but that’s the one thing that kills me every time.
Of course, I needn’t have worried. Mimi greets me with a smile and immediately pulls me a shot of espresso, not even trying to force a flavored latte with foamy flowers on me.
I accept the tiny cup gratefully. “To be fair, I did warn you that none of your proffered careers were going to work for me.”
Mimi tilts her head and smiles at me like I’m a petulant child she’s choosing to indulge. “Part of the goal is for you to try something new, dear. For you to push outside of your norm.”
“But why should I do that?” I swig my espresso and hand back the mug in a silent plea for another. “My life back home is perfectly fine. I’m good at my job. I’m successful and fulfilled. Maybe my life doesn’t look exactly like everyone else’s, but who wants that?”
Mimi putters around behind the counter for a minute before handing me a second shot. “But are you happy?”
“Is anyone really happy these days?”
She plates a muffin and slides it across the counter. “I am.”
“No offense, Meem, but you live in literal fantasy world. Of course you’re happy.” I consider leaving the muffin behind, but it smells too damn good to let it go to waste. Taking the plate, I head over to what’s become my table and wait for Mimi to join me as she always does.
For the first time I notice I seem to always be Mimi’s only customer. Despite now knowing at least a hundred people live in the town of Heart Springs—based on the guest count of the wedding that almost wasn’t—I still seem to only regularly encounter Mimi and Ben. Which is odd.
But my attention quickly slides back to Mimi herself, when she slips into the seat across from me and gives me a leveling look. I shove a bite of blueberry muffin in my mouth to avoid her gaze. The top is all crumbly and crusted with sugar and it’s fucking perfect.
“Look, Cam. There’s a lot of things you’re going to have to figure out for yourself.”
“What does that even mean?” I ask around a mouthful of delicious pastry. “What kind of things? Like what’s the meaning of life? Why are we here? Is anything even real?”
“Perhaps we should start with some questions that are a little more grounded.”
“It’s all bullshit if you ask me.” I take a tiny sip of espresso, figuring I should probably pace myself with this one.
“What I will tell you is this.” Mimi reaches across the table and gently pats my arm. It’s such a foreign move of pure comfort that it makes my breath stick in my chest. “If you’re here, it’s for a reason.”
“Yeah, I already knew that. I just need to know the reason so I can figure out how to be not here.” I wave my hand, gesturing to the cheery colors of the café.
Mimi shakes her head with a sad smile. “That’s not what I mean, Cam. I mean, you wouldn’t have ended up here if you were truly happy back at home, if there wasn’t something missing from your life. I’ve never had anyone blow through two careers in two days and not make any sort of progress.”
“I think that says more about the careers than it does about me,” I mumble, shoveling in more bites of muffin.
“Does it though?” She raises her eyebrows in a way that is somehow not judgmental, which is really quite impressive.
“Well, I’ll have you know I’m going to switch gears for a bit. Put the career thing on hold and focus on the other tasks.”
Her eyes light up. “Does that mean you’re ready to move on to the love portion of the program? Because I have your suitors all ready.” She claps her hands in excitement.
“I’m going to be volunteering for the dumb kids’ hospital carnival thing.” I rush the words out and it takes a second for Mimi’s declaration to process. “Wait a minute. Did you say you have my suitors ready? Is this going to be like the job thing? I have a set number of dudes to pick from?” The muffin turns sour in my stomach.
“Well, yes, that’s how it works. I pick the men for you—your file said men, that’s what you prefer, yes?”
I nod, too stunned to do much else.
“Great. I set you up on dates and you figure out which one is going to be the one for you.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose between my thumb and forefinger. “Let me get this straight, I couldn’t even manage a day at the jobs you picked for me and now I’m supposed to fall in love with one of the men you’ve picked for me? Why do I not feel great about my chances?”
“Probably because you have a terrible attitude.”
“Wow. That was harsh, Meem.” I throw back the rest of my espresso, which has gone as cold as my shriveled heart.
She sighs. “Believe it or not, I have your best interests at heart, Campbell Marie.” Ouch. And of course she knows my middle name. “You’ll just have to trust in the process.”
“Yeah, see, if there’s a real process, I’d like to see it laid out for me, step by step. Seeing is believing and all that.”
“Would I lie to you?”
I laugh, and despite the total unfunnyness of the situation, it’s a real one. “Would you lie to me? I barely know you. Why wouldn’t you lie to me?”
“Because I only want the best for you.”
“Yeah, well in my experience, people really only want the best for themselves.” I push back my chair deliberately hard, so it creates that awful scraping sound. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go pretend to care about some kids I’ve never met to try to suck up to a community I’m trying desperately to escape.”
She mumbles something under her breath, but I’ve already shoved open the door, knocking into Ben as I come barreling out of the shop.
“Howdy, neighbor!”
I close my eyes and take in a steadying breath. “You did not actually just say that.”
Ben grins and it lights up his eyes. “Rough morning?”
“As rough as any of the rest of them, I suppose.” I fidget with the hem of my skirt, realizing how rare it is for me to not constantly have my phone in my hands. And yet in just a few days here, I’ve gotten used to not checking it every five seconds.
“Excited for your first day of volunteering?” That damn smile of his is all too knowing.
“Oh boy, am I!” I exclaim with completely false enthusiasm.
He chuckles and gestures to the café. “I’m just picking up my morning coffee and then we can walk over to the school. We’re using the gym as the staging grounds for the carnival.” Pulling open the door to the damned tinkle of the damned bell, he glances over his shoulder. “Want anything?”
I’ve already had two shots of espresso, but what’s a few more. “I’ll take a latte. Hold the flower foam art.”
“I don’t think that’s how it works.” He lets the door shut behind him, and I plop down at one of the outdoor tables to wait.
The main street of shops circles a large grassy expanse, the site of the upcoming carnival and this past weekend’s Apricot Faire, which I luckily arrived just in time to miss. Today the pristine lawn is dotted with people, picnicking and enjoying the absolutely picture-perfect weather. The sky is a shade of blue rarely seen in the city, with cotton ball clouds scattered artfully. The sun shines brightly, but there’s never even a drop of humidity. The breeze does amazing things for my hair, but doesn’t ever turn into a true wind. It’s perfect, if you’re into that sort of a thing.
In these few minutes of silence, my brain starts to wander, which honestly, has never been a good thing. I wonder how much time has passed back home. How many meetings I’ve missed. I shudder as I consider how many unread emails I’m going to come back to. Assuming I have a job to come back to. My grandmother might have been grooming me to take over the firm since I was nine, but that doesn’t mean she gives me any real leeway. Not showing up for work for days on end and missing the biggest meeting of my career so far is surely grounds for both firing and removal from her will.
I might turn out just like my mother after all.
Ben emerges from the café, handing me a reusable to-go cup. “There’s no waste here, so you can just bring this back to Mimi on your way home.”
“Of course. Wouldn’t want to create fake waste in this fake town that’s not real.”
Ben takes my grumbling in stride, starting to walk down the absurdly clean sidewalk, away from the café and our houses. We pass by a number of shops, including the bookstore and Kate’s wedding planning office, both of which I studiously avoid, lest anyone catch a glimpse of me and my shame.
We come to a stop in front of an old-timey bright red schoolhouse. I don’t know why I was expecting a modern concrete monstrosity, because of course the kids of Heart Springs go to school in a building that looks like it’s straight out of Little House on the Prairie .
Ben leads me around to the back, where there’s a gymnasium that looks somewhat closer to what I’d expected, with a basketball court and bleachers, and right now, tons and tons of carnival stuff. Games and prizes and all the wooden pieces that will come together to form booths, signs and tickets and costumes and so many boxes. The floor of the gym is entirely covered.
I stop shortly inside the door. “Exactly how long have you been working on putting this carnival together?”
We’ve only been in Heart Springs for a few days; there’s no way all of this came together since then.
“A lot of the plans were already in motion, I just sort of stepped in and took control.”
“Why?”
“Because I enjoy helping people?” He doesn’t include dumbass at the end of his statement, but it’s implied. “And since everyone here is absurdly healthy, I need something to do with my days.”
“Like work on tasks you don’t seem to have been assigned?” My unoccupied hand flies to my hip as I survey the massive amount of stuff. “Please tell me you have some kind of advanced organizational system at work here.”
Ben rolls his eyes, tossing his bag onto one of the bleacher seats. “Of course I do.”
I take a long swig of my coffee. “And what exactly is the plan for today?”
“Tomorrow we’re going to start setting up out in the town square, so today is all about making sure everything is ready to go. We’ve got boxes to unpack and a lot of stuff to organize and sort so it’s ready to be moved.”
“Sounds like there is going to be manual labor involved in this job.” I started paying people for manual labor a long time ago and have never had any intentions of going back.
Ben crosses his arms over his chest, the movement making the fabric of his gray T-shirt pull tightly across his biceps. “Mimi mentioned she had your suitors all picked out and ready to go. You’re welcome to head back to the café and arrange some dates instead.”
I clap my hands together and force a smile across my face. “Who doesn’t love a little manual labor?”
Ben leads me over to one of the huge stacks of boxes and leaves me with instructions to unpack stuffed animals and sort them into various bags for the game booths. It’s boring, menial work, but at least the stuffed animals aren’t heavy. After watching me for a few minutes to make sure I don’t screw up this very simple task, Ben heads to the opposite side of the gym, leaving me with quiet that doesn’t feel all that peaceful.
Mimi’s earlier comments start to play over in my mind even though I know nothing good can come from dwelling on them. Who cares if I wasn’t happy in my real life? I can’t think of a single person I know back in the real world who I would consider to be truly happy. I think that’s just how it’s supposed to work. You’re born, your parents screw you up to varying degrees, you find a job that pays the bills and start living to work, and then you die.
Sure, there are probably a few people out there who actually like their spouse and enjoy spending time with their kids, but I haven’t met anyone who could truthfully claim so; certainly no one in my family could pretend to enjoy one another’s company.
So yeah, despite Mimi’s good intentions, her little come-to-Jesus moment isn’t going to lead me toward any sort of radical my life is changed, I’m going to quit my job and live for the people bullshit.
Though maybe if I pretend to go along with her little plan now that I’ve had some time here in Heart Springs, it might put me one step closer to getting the fuck out of here. Will Mimi buy that I’ve changed in such a short amount of time? Hmm. The next time I see her, I’ll have to try it out.
“How’s it going over here?” Ben interrupts my musings, and I realize I haven’t exactly been moving at top pace while I’ve been contemplating the best way to fake enlightenment.
“Great!” I gesture to the still mostly full boxes around me. “Should be done in no time.”
“Right.” Ben sets down his clipboard and opens the next box in my pile.
Back to the quiet of it all, only this time it somehow manages to actually feel peaceful.
When the peace becomes a little too comfortable, I clear my throat. “So Mimi told you she wants me to start working on the whole falling in love bit?”
“She told me she had your suitors lined up and ready to go.” His brow furrows as if he is contemplating some serious question, which seems incongruous with the stuffed panda he holds in one hand and the stuffed penguin he holds in the other. It shouldn’t be cute, and yet…
“Did she give you any details about these so-called suitors?” I toss a pink unicorn into a bag and turn to open the next box, hoping to get some info on the men in question before I have to come face-to-face with them.
“She did.”
I wait a few beats. “Are you going to fill me in?”
“No.” He shoots me one of his playful grins. “Sorry, sweetheart, but I can’t break the code.”
I blow a stray strand of hair out of my eyes. “Well, what can you tell me? Are they all terrible? Are they going to expect me to fall all over myself trying to be the perfect little wife? Am I going to have to give up my career?”
He stares at me like he’s never seen a human woman before, the force of his brown eyes seeing so much more than I want them to. “Is that what you think relationships look like? You giving up yourself to make someone else happy?”
I shrug, turning my attention back to the boxes at my feet because it’s easier than getting lost in the depths of his gaze. “I’ve never seen any evidence to support the contrary.”
“Is that why you would barely even look at me on our date?”
I sigh loudly and dramatically as if that might deter this line of questioning. “I don’t want a relationship, so I didn’t see any point in delaying the inevitable.” The inevitable being a total crash and burn, which is exactly what happened when my mother fell in love with my father. “I still don’t think it’s fair that I have to go on a bunch of dumb dates and you don’t. How come someone out in the real world hasn’t snatched you up already, anyway? You seem to buy into this love bullshit. What’s the deal?”
“I’ve asked myself that a lot actually.” Ben’s voice is quiet, and if I didn’t know any better, I might think there was a trace of pain in his words. “Even though I’ve managed to strike a better work-life balance than some people in this room, I think my job still makes it hard to get close to people.”
I try to put myself in Ben’s shoes for a minute, something I don’t usually make the effort to do. “I imagine you see a lot of loss.”
He goes still, his eyes finding a random spot on the floor and locking in. “Loss doesn’t even begin to cover it.”
I want to reach out and offer him some kind of comfort, but I don’t really know how to do that, so instead my hands hang uselessly at my sides. “I’m sorry, Ben.”
He shakes off the funk like a dog jumping out of a swimming pool, running a hand through his hair and flashing me a sheepish smile. “Anyway, I can understand why women aren’t exactly lining up to be with me.”
I take that smile as a signal that it’s time to leave the emotions behind. “I find that hard to believe. I mean, your sense of humor leaves a lot to be desired, sweetheart , but you’re cute and nice. You cure sick kids, for fuck’s sake.”
Ben shrugs again. “I go out on dates, but so far I haven’t met someone I felt like I could truly open up to, you know?”
I don’t know, because I have no desire to open up to anyone, but I nod anyway, as if I understand his frustration. “Have you gone out on a lot of blind dates?”
“A few.”
For some reason, that thought sends a burst of some foreign feeling through my chest. I cover the lapse with a smile. “Bet none of them have been as awesome as me.”
“None of them have been as something as you.” There’s a tad less sarcasm contained in his voice this time.
“Who set you up with me, anyway?” Normally Grandmother picks her candidates for me from a select pool of associates and I don’t see how Ben could possibly have been on her list.
“My cousin, Sophie.”
“Does she hate you or something?” I rack my brain, trying to think of anyone I might know named Sophie.
Ben doesn’t laugh at my not-joke. Instead he meets my gaze, waiting for me to make full eye contact before continuing. “She worked at your firm as a summer intern a couple of years ago. Told me that you were one of the smartest, fiercest women she’d ever seen. Said if there was anyone in New York who could handle me and my life, it would be you.”
The words catch me so completely off guard, I almost fall over. Sophie, the summer intern. I vaguely remember telling her she would never make it in mergers and acquisitions if she allowed her emotions to run away with her. I thought she hated me. I assume most of our interns hate me.
“Oh,” I finally manage to say when the silence becomes unbearable. “Is she doing well?” It’s deflection, but I find myself really wanting to know.
Ben smiles one of his genuine smiles. “She’s doing great. Decided to go into immigration law. It’s tough on her, but she loves it.”
I nod. It’s the perfect job for someone like her. “Tell her I said hello.”
“I will.” Neither of us acknowledges what has to happen before he can follow through with that.
I toy with the mane on a stuffed pony. “Do you think I can actually do this, Ben? Can I find a way to get out of here?”
He takes the pony, and our hands brush the slightest bit. “I think there probably hasn’t been much in your life that you’ve set out to accomplish and haven’t. So if you really want to get out of here, I think you’ll find a way.”
It’s the kindest thing anyone has said to me in a really long time and it stops the breath in my lungs for just a second. I choke a little when the air starts flowing again and I busy myself with opening another box in the hopes he hasn’t noticed. “Thank you, Ben. That means a lot.”
Ben clears his throat, already shuffling away from me. “I’m just going to go finish up what I was working on. Let’s say we’ll head out in about an hour?”
He doesn’t wait for me to respond before he turns and scurries off to the other side of the gym. I should have known better than to do something as foolish as show even a hint of emotion. Ben doesn’t care about me or my feelings, he’s just like everyone else in my life. Here to push me to get the job done by whatever means necessary. My feelings haven’t ever mattered before, and they certainly don’t matter here.
I turn my attention back to the job at hand and sort the remaining stuffed animals like my life depends on it. This, at least, is something I know I won’t fail.