Chapter 15 #2
I knew it was bad the second they walked through the door.
They never came in together on a weekday.
Pete handled the supply orders on Tuesdays.
Linda did the books on Fridays. The two of them showing up unannounced on a random afternoon, wearing matching looks of gentle dread, was the emotional equivalent of seeing your doctor walk in with a second doctor.
"Willow, sweetheart." Linda touched my arm. "Can we sit for a minute?"
We sat in the corner booth—the one with the cracked vinyl I'd been meaning to patch. Pete folded his hands on the table. Linda kept touching her necklace, a nervous tic I'd noticed over three years of watching her.
"We talked to Gary," Pete said. Gary. Their accountant. The man whose name made Pete's left eye twitch. "He went through everything. The equipment costs, the revenue, the projections for the next year."
"And?" I asked, even though I already knew.
"The numbers don't work, honey." Linda's voice was soft in the way people got when they were trying not to break you. "The espresso machine alone is eight thousand to replace. The cooler needs a new compressor. The plumbing in the back—"
"I know the list," I said. I knew every item on it. I'd been the one filing the repair requests, taping the leaks, coaxing the machines through one more day. "What are you saying?"
Pete looked at Linda. Linda looked at Pete. The silent conversation of a couple who'd been married for thirty-five years and could communicate entire paragraphs without opening their mouths.
"We're looking at options," Pete said. "And one of those options is selling."
Selling. It sat on the table between us. Three syllables that meant: this place you built your life around might not be yours to build in anymore.
"We're not doing anything tomorrow," Linda added quickly. "Nothing's decided. We just wanted you to hear it from us. Not from a letter or a—"
"I appreciate that." My voice came out even. Steady. A miracle of composure that had no connection to what was happening inside me. "Do you have a timeline?"
"Gary wants us to make a decision by end of month."
End of month. Three weeks. Four at most.
"Okay." I nodded. "Okay. Thank you for telling me."
Linda reached across the table and took my hand. Her fingers were cool and thin and she held on tight. "This isn't what we wanted, Willow. You know that. This shop—you made it what it is. We know that."
"I know."
"If there was another way—"
"I know, Linda."
They left. The bell above the door chimed behind them, cheerful and oblivious.
I sat in the booth for a long time. The afternoon sun cut through the front windows, making dust particles drift in the air. The espresso machine hissed. The cooler hummed its death song. Every sound in this building was a countdown I'd been ignoring, and now the clock was visible.
Mika found me in the back five minutes later, perched on an overturned milk crate, staring at the wall.
She didn't say anything. Just grabbed another crate, flipped it, and sat down next to me. Our shoulders touched. The cooler rattled behind us.
"They're selling," I said.
"I heard."
"Three weeks."
"I heard that too."
Quiet. The good kind—the kind where a person sits with you in the rubble and doesn't try to clean it up.
"I've been here three years, Mika. I painted the walls. I designed the menu board. I trained every barista who's walked through that door." I stared at my hands. Coffee-stained fingers. A callus on my right thumb from the portafilter. "And I can't afford to save it."
"Not today," Mika said. "But today isn't the deadline."
"Today feels pretty close."
She bumped my shoulder. "Then we deal with it. Not right now. Not on this milk crate. But we deal with it."
I wanted to believe her. I wanted to be the version of myself who heard bad news and sprang into action, who made plans and rallied and found a way. That Willow existed—she'd gotten me through Devon, through dropping out of school, through every moment I'd wanted to quit and didn't.
But right now, on this crate, in this back room, I was just a girl whose dream had an expiration date.
My phone buzzed at four-fifteen. Mr. Henley.
Repairs finished. Unit 3B ready for move-in. Keys at the front desk whenever you want them.
I stared at the screen. Read it twice.
A month ago, this text would've been the best news of my week. My apartment. My space. My shag carpet and avocado tiles and popcorn ceilings that drove Callum insane. The place where I answered to nobody and could eat cereal at midnight without judgment.
Now it felt... complicated.
Mika read the text over my shoulder. She had zero concept of personal phone boundaries, which was one of my favorite things about her.
"You going back?" she asked.
I locked the screen. Shoved the phone in my pocket.
"I don't have an answer for that yet."
"Mm-hm." She gave me a look that communicated roughly fourteen follow-up questions she was choosing not to ask. "Okay."
"Stop making that face."
"I'm not making a face."
"You're making the face you make when you think I'm avoiding a thing."
"Are you avoiding a thing?"
"Goodnight, Mika."
"It's four-thirty."
"Goodnight, Mika."
I drove to Callum's on autopilot that scared me a little.
Red lights, green lights, turns I didn't remember making.
My brain was full—Elena, Pete and Linda, Mr. Henley, the ticking clock on the shop, the apartment sitting empty and waiting—and none of it had organized itself into a thought I could act on.
I let myself in with the key he'd given me last week. His apartment was quiet. Clean. Warm. All the things my life currently wasn't.
I found him in the study.
He was at the drafting table, bent over a set of drawings.
Not the Riverside plans—I'd seen those enough times to recognize the blue grid paper and the neat Ashford annotations in the margins.
These were different. A warmer paper. Pencil, not ink.
Softer lines, more detail. Work that looked personal rather than billable.
He heard me come in and straightened. Rolled the drawings up in one smooth motion and slid them into a cardboard tube propped against the desk.
"Hey," he said. Casual. Normal.
"Hey." I leaned against the doorframe. "What are you working on?"
"Just messing around. Old habit." He capped the tube. "How was Elena?"
He'd changed the subject so fast I almost missed the pivot. But I was running on fumes and didn't have the energy to chase it. Whatever those drawings were, they could wait.
"Elena was great," I said. "She hugged me. A real hug. And she gave me her number."
His face did a complicated thing—surprise and relief and a flash of fear, all cycling through in about two seconds. "She hugged you."
"Full contact. Both arms. Voluntarily." I kicked off my shoes. "I think I passed."
"You more than passed."
I wanted to tell him about Pete and Linda.
Wanted to say the shop might be gone in three weeks and my apartment is ready and everything outside of this room is falling apart.
But he was looking at me with such open, uncomplicated warmth that I couldn't bring myself to introduce the mess.
Not tonight. Tonight I wanted to exist in the version of my life where things were working.
Tomorrow. I'd deal with it tomorrow.
Later that night, I brushed my teeth. Stole one of his t-shirts. Crawled into bed and pressed my face against his chest when he joined me, breathing in the clean cotton and the warmth of him.
"You okay?" he asked. His arm came around me. Automatic. Anchoring.
"Tired."
"Long day?"
"The longest." I closed my eyes. His heartbeat was right there, under my ear, reliable in a way that the rest of my world had stopped being. "Hold me for a while?"
He pulled me closer. Didn't ask questions. Didn't push. Just held me in the dark while the city hummed outside the windows and my life rearranged itself into a shape I didn't recognize.
I was falling in love with a man who hid drawings in cardboard tubes and kissed my hair while I pretended to be fine.
I was losing the place that had made me who I am.
And my apartment was ready. Sitting empty. Waiting for me to decide whether I was going home or whether I was already there.