Sixteen. Coming in Hot （Chocolate）
Sixteen
COMING IN HOT (CHOCOLATE)
Corey suggests the Lotta Love Pub. We walk there, and I pepper him with questions about running the bakery—questions he answers with genuine enthusiasm and reciprocates with his own intently, genuinely curious questions about what kind of writing routine I have and if there are bakeries in LA that are any good.
My answers, and my attention, aren’t as thoughtful or focused as they should be, though.
I keep veering back to the conversation with Grant.
How real it was, and what relief I felt being even partially honest with him about my career.
I’m chafed, though, by the way he spoke of New York like there was no place else to live on the planet, as if he doesn’t wrestle with any of the doubts I do.
And the way we ended our talk, my lips felt bare, like they were waiting for an expected kiss that never came.
But is any of the Sweetville Grant the real Grant?
When Corey holds the door to the pub open for me, and I nod a thank-you at him, I catch his eyes falling to my lips. I tell myself to concentrate on him. Grant is my past, and Corey is my now, if I get this right.
“Wow, this place is hopping,” Corey says. “The Love family has done such an amazing job with it.”
“Yeah, they have,” I say, appreciating the buzzy hum of the space.
There’s no one bent over their phone or loudly monologuing about how bad traffic is—common LA café occurrences.
Instead, there’s real conviviality here.
Millie is still taking orders, but this time, Cute Guy Selling Grandma’s House is beaming at her from a booth.
As Corey and I find our own booth, Millie comes over to ask what we want. When she sees me, her face lights up. She’s glowing. If she was beautiful before, now she’s something beyond beautiful.
“You!” she says.
Corey’s eyebrows rise like he’s surprised by my relationship with Millie. “You know each other?”
“Not by name. Well, you know I’m Millie.” She points to her name tag.
I extend my hand. “Jill,” I say.
Millie doesn’t shake my hand. She pulls me into a hug instead. I’m getting a lot of hugs today. “Jill. You are the best. David loved the idea of getting to visit his grandma’s place each Christmas. Madison is so happy,” she says.
“So, your sister is getting the house and David got you in the deal?” I say.
Millie’s eyes twinkle. “Something like that.” She shrugs her shoulders. “And now I don’t need to find a date for the wedding.” She waves David over to our table and introduces him to us. “This is Jill.”
“Hi,” David says. “Seriously, I think you changed my life.”
I see it then, the Heartfelt happily-ever-after look in his eyes as he steals another peek at Millie. I did that, didn’t I?
“Oh, and this is Corey.” I put a light hand on Corey’s shoulder, not sure how proprietary to be.
“Corey Hartwell.” Corey shakes Millie’s and David’s hands with a warm smile. To Millie he adds, “We’ve never met, but I’ve spoken with your dad a few times at the Sweetville Business Association meetings.”
“Oh, wow! You own SweetHart’s! My sister is going to order her wedding cake from you. But for now, what can I get you? The cocoa of the day is called a Topsy-Turvy. It’s a frosted cocoa, served cold, with the whipped cream on the bottom.”
“Thus the name,” I say. “Actually, that sounds great. We’ve been baking all day, and I don’t know if I can do a hot beverage.”
“I’d love one, too,” Corey says.
“I’m going to go drink mine before it melts,” David says with a small wave as he turns back to his table. As he goes, Millie bites her lower lip as she smiles gleefully. She leans in and whispers, “It’s early yet, but I think he’s the one. Let me go get your cocoas.”
She’s so happy and so clearly crediting me for it that I can’t help but think about what it all means in the real world.
Are there a Millie and a David there? And does it matter?
Even if this love plot between Millie and David doesn’t have a Powell Park counterpart, it feels real now.
And to know I had a hand in it—that I saw a way to bring them together, even if I was basing it on what I’ve seen in Heartfelt movies—is a sweet victory.
Now as I turn my focus back to Corey, I see he’s watching me. “So, in just the short time you’ve been here, you helped me come up with what has to be a first-place cookie and you matchmade Millie and that guy?”
“First place? Wow, don’t jinx us with overconfidence,” I say. “And Millie and David—I think it would have happened anyway. I only made a random comment that Millie ran with.”
“I don’t know. I think things around here have been pretty great since you paid us a visit,” Corey says.
I want to call Zav immediately to obsess over what this comment might mean, but now isn’t the time. “Thanks,” I say. “I’m glad I came to town.”
A few minutes later, after Corey and I have gone over our game plan for the qualifying round, Millie’s sister, Madison, delivers the Topsy-Turvys.
They look amazing. “I wanted to say thank you. My fiancé and I can’t believe we’re going to start our life in our Sweetville dream house, and Millie says it’s all because of you. ”
Corey raises his eyebrows at me as if to say, Look what else you did .
I give him my best modest smile. And who am I?
Back in LA, Sweetville would have sounded like my own personal version of hell.
But now? It’s been so long since I felt like a participant in my life and so connected to everything.
In LA, it’s like I’ve been superimposed onto scenes someone else thought of, never quite sure what to do in them.
“So, what other magic are you going to perform while you’re in town?” Corey says.
“Come on. I’m so not magic. Like, if you saw my life in LA, you would not be impressed.”
“It’s impressive that you went out there at all. Most people never leave Sweetville,” he says.
Is that even an option? I think to myself. “Well, I’m not exactly an in-demand writer,” I say. I told Grant part of the truth, so it seems strange to keep up the ruse of being a big shot with Corey.
“I don’t think you give yourself enough credit,” Corey says. “Like, do you have any idea what a huge crush I had on you in high school?”
I’d be less shocked right now if he threw his hot—or, wait, cold—cocoa in my face, stripped nude, and ran outside into the always freshly fallen Sweetville snow. I point at my chest because words aren’t emerging, and I make a face that asks, Me?
“Jill, of course I did. You were this brilliant girl who talked about things like narrative irony and how every great hero should be his or her own worst antagonist. Plus, you were so nice to me. Not to mention beautiful.”
I scrunch my entire—apparently appealing—face at him. I think I’m more shocked he remembers me talking about narrative irony than that he said I’m beautiful. Finally, I can form words again and say, “What are you talking about? You and Christina were, like, the golden couple!”
He nods. “Christina was great for me. We were great for each other and together. So great,” he says, looking past me with a wistful look in his eye.
When he returns his eyes to mine, his expression is a little shy.
Very adorable. “But it was high school. Everyone has crushes. You were my first big one.”
I’m blown away. Sure, this week I’ve witnessed my surroundings going from the chain store horizons of Powell Park to the winter wonderland of Sweetville, but Corey’s admission is somehow more unbelievable.
“Why did you never say anything?” I think back to when Corey and Christina got together, and how long I camped out on the couch in a funk, rolling cookie dough into obscene shapes before eating it raw.
“Come on—you were my tutor. And you could have tutored anyone in school. Maybe I was good at football, but I couldn’t keep up with your mind. I guess for a second there I thought maybe you’d go on a date with me, but it would have stunk for you to discover I wasn’t worth taking seriously.”
“Did I act snobby?” Guilt grips me as I remember how surprised I was that Corey had books.
“No, not at all. More like you were being kind because you knew I didn’t have all the gifts you did. But not in a mean way. Kind of like you were there but maybe already had a foot out of Sweetville and were thinking of your big life after high school.”
That had been a strategy. Corey, just like now, was so cute then I often tried to keep things all business so that I wouldn’t be too obvious about liking him. Because I figured he’d never like me.
What if I had flirted more? Or, even better, just asked him out?
I don’t know how to answer him now, though. Not exactly. “You should have asked me out,” I say, freighting the words with meaning.
“I should have,” he agrees.
We each take silent sips of our drinks.
Was it wrong to say what I did? Obviously, Christina meant—means—everything to him, and I’m blithely throwing over her memory to say that Corey should have been with me instead.
“I mean obviously things worked out how they were supposed to.” Oh God, does that sound like I’m saying his wife was supposed to die? “I mean Bryce and Lindy. I didn’t mean…”
Corey places a gentle hand on my arm. “Jill, don’t worry; I know what you meant,” he tells me.
A tide of thoughts unfurls in my mind.
What if it had been me instead of Christina?
Not the dying part—as awful as that is to think about—but the one who became Corey’s girlfriend?
Would I have married Corey? Maybe we wouldn’t have stayed together, but everything would have been different for me, for sure.
Dating Corey might have set off an entirely new chain of events for me.
A chain where I never met Grant. If I’d never met him, I’d never have had my heart crushed by him.
I very likely would not be in this Sweetville version of my life, either, finding out that Corey Hartwell liked me in high school.
I could tell him right now. How I liked him in high school, too. Liked him so much, in fact, that when he ended up dating Christina, I spent many a night watching Heartfelt movies and wondering if I’d ever get a happily ever after of my own.
No.
“So, are you happy with your choice?” Corey asks.
What choice? I think. The trainwreck that is my real life seems to have been foisted on me by circumstance, a gift I can’t return. I tried to choose Grant, and he didn’t want me, or not enough. And did I really choose to make a go of it in LA, or was I running away?
Corey nods at the Topsy-Turvy in front of me.
Oh. He means the hot cocoa. Or the cool cocoa, more like.
Corey waits for my answer with anticipation, and the noise of the restaurant seems to fade to a low hum. His handsome face is etched into such sharp focus against the commotion of the pub behind him, and I see him as a beacon. In this world, I’ve chosen well. I can get it right.
“This?” I say. “It’s exactly what I needed.”
And so is Corey Hartwell.