Chapter Two Odette #2
I grin at my friend sitting at the bar. She has her arms slung wide for a hug like she hasn’t seen me in years, never mind that I saw her for dinner just last night, when we demolished two bottles of wine and ate chicken Alfredo with breadsticks until we felt like we were going to burst.
I step into her embrace, then pull my jacket off and drape it over the stubby chairback of the stools at the counter before sitting next to her.
“You look like you’re feeling better,” I say.
She lifts her cider to her lips, grinning at me over the edge of her glass. “That’s because I have a wedding venue.”
“That you do.”
All right, so we might have schemed last night over dinner to get Noah on board for hosting weddings here.
Granted, we bet a lot of it on luck, because we had no idea Ezra would agree so easily, but man, am I glad he did.
He was our biggest hurdle, not Noah. He never tells Izzy no, so we sent her in alone.
I had the idea to turn this place into a wedding destination last year, but Noah shot me down.
I’ve been biding my time ever since, waiting for the perfect moment to pounce.
This is it.
Just like this is the perfect venue. It’s unique. Everyone else in Port Harbor gets married at the community center, the pier, or in their backyard. All the photos on my website are evidence.
But this . . . this could be a game changer.
Maybe people will stop seeing me as the wedding planner who messed up and will start taking me seriously.
Not just another victim of the Chambers curse—and certainly not a failure just because a few couples got divorced shortly after I completed their weddings.
I push away those thoughts that keep tickling the back of my mind, focusing on the fact that we finally secured a venue and can officially plan the wedding.
The wedding that will go off without a hitch and lead to a marriage that will last a lifetime.
“I see you wasted no time to swoop in.”
Noah pulls me out of my head, setting a tray of freshly cleaned glasses on the counter. He grabs one, puts it under the spout for Stick Taps’ bestselling cider, Neutral Zone, fills it to the brim, and slides it my way without spilling a drop.
“Thanks,” I mutter, taking a pull from the semisweet apple-and-strawberry mixed cider. I set it down. “How are you, Noah?”
His lips press into a thin line. “You’re not changing anything in here, Odie, so don’t go getting any ideas in that head of yours.”
“I don’t know what you could possibly mean.
” I give him my sweetest smile, even though I want to flip him off for using the nickname I hate.
He’s been calling me that since I was a teen, and try as I might to get him to stop, he won’t.
It reminds me of the dog from Garfield. While it’s annoying on its own, there’s nothing worse than your former crush likening you to a cartoon dog with too-big eyes.
His eyes narrow. “I mean it. You’re not moving anything.”
“Of course I’m not, Noah.” I bat my lashes, my smile widening. I have every intention of ignoring him and moving whatever I want. I have to if I want this wedding to succeed, not just for Izzy but also for my business.
“I’m serious,” he says firmly.
“Sure you are.”
He grunts, then heads back toward the bar, still looking as surly as ever.
I try not to laugh, but it’s impossible not to.
Noah should know by now that I’m going to do whatever I want, despite what he says. It’s just who I am.
“He’s so going to regret saying yes to this,” Izzy comments.
“I think he already does.”
“He does.” I turn to find Ezra sliding onto a stool. I hadn’t even noticed his mess of paperwork and a laptop on the counter when I first came in. “But don’t make me regret it too.”
There’s no playfulness behind his words. Even when Noah’s glaring at me, I still know he’s never truly being mean or serious.
But with Ezra? I can’t read the guy at all, and believe me, I’ve tried. If I thought Noah was grumpy, boy, was I wrong. His business partner has him beat by a mile.
“Roger that,” I tell him seriously, suddenly feeling nervous that this will not turn out as I hope it will.
Izzy grabs my arm and shakes me hard. “I’m . . . gah! I’m so excited! What are your plans? Tell me everything!”
Her excitement is palpable, washing my nerves away as we slip off our stools and walk around the taproom.
“I think we’ll start here,” I say, pointing to the two cozy couches facing each other.
There’s a coffee table between them, the bottom shelf lined with various board and card games.
“We’ll need to clear this area to allow room for mingling during the cocktail hour while you and Craig get your photos done. ”
“You’re not moving anything,” Noah reminds me.
I ignore him, then gesture to the two high-backed pleather chairs surrounding the fireplace and the small table between them. “Those will need to go too.”
“Did you hear me? You’re not moving a damn thing.”
I wave my hand over the hockey memorabilia lining the walls. “And personally, I think this will need to go, but if you want to keep it, we can work around it with some dark lighting.”
“Odie!” Noah snaps his towel against the bar, then rounds it, practically stomping over to where we are.
“Yes, Noah?” I ask innocently as Izzy barely holds it together beside me.
“I said you aren’t moving anything. We have this place just the way we like it. If you want something different, then go somewhere different. I—”
“We can make those changes,” Ezra says, drawing our collective attention. His back is to the bar now, his bulky arms crossed over his chest as he watches us with emotionless eyes.
“What?!” Noah barks out.
Ezra shrugs. “I can see their points. Besides, if we make this part of our business model going forward, we want to show how accommodating we are, no?”
“Business model . . . going forward . . . hmph.” Noah grumbles between each word, annoyed that he’s being ganged up on. He looks at his sister. “Is this what you want, Iz?”
She nods. “It’s what I want. Well, minus removing the hockey stuff on the walls. I like that part.”
“You do?” I ask. I wrinkle my nose as I take it in. If this were my wedding, I wouldn’t want that stuff in the photos. But that’s not something I’ll ever need to worry about.
“Yes. Hockey was as much a part of my life growing up as it was his. Remember when my mother used to take us on a girls’ trip to see him play in Anaheim?
He would always throw the pucks over the glass for us?
Make sure we were spoiled with good seats?
Those are some of my favorite memories, and I want to combine those with the best day of my life. ”
I remember what she’s talking about, but I remember them for far different reasons.
Back then I was captivated by Noah. I distinctly remember sixteen-year-old me pressing my nose against the glass and practically salivating over twenty-eight-year-old Noah.
His broad shoulders and brown eyes that are far too pretty for their own good.
The scruff lining his face was not yet thick enough to cover his dimples.
I thought for sure he’d be the man I married one day.
But thanks to Izzy, I got over the fantasy of marrying a professional hockey player and stopped crushing on my best friend’s older brother.
I still remember the look of absolute horror on her face when I told her I had a crush on Noah.
We were eighteen and just about to graduate from high school, so we snuck wine coolers from her mother’s stash down to the harbor to celebrate.
I apparently got a little too tipsy, because I was suddenly spilling my secrets, including my biggest one about her brother.
She wrinkled her nose and said, “Ew. Please. Stop. Never say that to me again.”
So I didn’t. We never uttered another word on the subject, but I heard her loud and clear—Noah was off-limits, and it was never going to happen with him.
She was right. It never is going to happen.
Yes, it’s true that he’s gotten only better looking with age, but I don’t have those feelings toward Noah anymore. I can’t have feelings for anyone anymore. I refuse to subject myself to the same heartbreak my maternal family has experienced so many times over—the Chambers curse.
I had hoped that I wouldn’t be affected by it, that maybe it would skip a generation, or that my nonna was wrong.
But I was wrong, and my heartbreak from my college boyfriend proved it.
I just wish I had known that wouldn’t be the only heartbreak I’d endure from the curse, and that my future wasn’t on the line because of it either.
Noah’s hardened face softens, and he drops his arms from his chest, settling his hands on his hips. He exhales heavily. “All right. Fine. You can move the furniture. Decorate however you want. Just don’t . . . don’t touch the hockey stuff, all right?”
“Wouldn’t dream of it, Bubs.”
His perpetual scowl deepens at Izzy’s old nickname for him. “And especially don’t touch the puck, all right? That’s the puck I got when I—”
“Scored a hat trick in game seven of the Stanley Cup Final against Detroit to secure the Cup—a five-to-four double-overtime win,” Izzy and I finish simultaneously, having heard this story countless times over the years as if we hadn’t been there to watch it.
We exchange a grin; then I shoo him away.
He throws his hands up as he backs toward the bar. “Fine. I’ll be over here if you need me.”
“I could use another Face Off,” Izzy tells him once he turns around.
He lifts his hand, signaling he heard her request for the green apple cider, then disappears behind the counter.
We plop onto the sofa, and I pull my phone from my pocket, scrolling through the list of ideas I have jotted down as Izzy rattles off her own.
“We don’t have much time to turn this place around,” I say when she finally takes a breath. “I guess it’s a good thing your best friend is a miracle worker, huh?”
“Is that what you’re calling yourself now? What was the last review you got? Set my wedding on fire. Do not recommend. Or something like that.”
Even though he’s right, Noah’s words don’t sting any less. I’m not a miracle worker, and my failed weddings prove that.
But you can be. You can turn it around. You can make it right with Izzy’s wedding.
I tell myself that over and over as Noah sets fresh ciders in front of me and Izzy—a fresh cider I didn’t ask for. He can act like a big grump all he wants, but he did that out of the kindness of his heart.
He pulls my jacket from his shoulder and sets it beside me with my purse. “Keep your shit together. You never know what weirdos are lurking around.”
“But this is Port Harbor.”
“Exactly,” he says with a disbelieving huff before returning to his post behind the counter.
He’s only semi-joking. Or at least I assume so. Port Harbor does have its fair share of weirdos. We might be a small and close-knit community, but a few people here are just . . . odd. They don’t mingle well, to put it nicely.
Like Mr. Garrison, who has been yelling at kids to get off his lawn for the last sixty years even though the place is littered with trash and old cars.
Dale down at the hardware store who used to be a clown and still occasionally shows up to work with his old red nose and makes balloon animals for customers.
And, of course, our strangest of all . . . Peaches.
She’s our resident hippie, and while she’s a hoot half the time, the last thing you can do is trust your bag around her.
Not because she’ll rob you—she would never—but you can expect her to dump a cat in there.
She has a hoard of them and always tries to get residents to adopt one.
She slipped one in my bag six months ago while I was working on the Stewart wedding, which is how I got Beans.
Peaches is lucky I’ve been lonely lately and can use Beans’s company. I can’t imagine my life without her now, even if she drives me up the wall half the time with her need to “make biscuits” on me at two in the morning when I’m dead asleep.
“He’s right. I stopped at the coffee shop this morning and heard that Peaches managed to palm off two more cats just this week,” Izzy says.
“Are we ever going to question this woman about where she’s getting these cats? Because they can’t all come from her.”
“Who knows?” She takes a sip of her cider. “Anyway, what’s on that list of yours?”
“I’m so glad you asked.”
I launch into my ideas to make the property wedding-ready, including rehabbing the barn and creating a space for the wedding party to get set. I also have a contingency plan in case it rains—this is the Pacific Northwest, after all—and my proposal for what to do with the animals.
“While I think Tootsie would make an incredible wedding guest,” I say, “I don’t think the other attendees would agree.”
“I don’t see why not. She’s so cute. I mean, look at her.”
Izzy nods toward the windows, and I turn to find the Houdini-like chicken out of her enclosure and strutting up to the taproom. I can guarantee this isn’t the first time she’s done so this week. She always finds ways to escape, even when she definitely shouldn’t.
“Noah!” Izzy calls. “Toots is loose!”
“Again?!” he yells from the back room.
He comes barreling out, slinging a keg up onto the counter like it weighs nothing, then marches to the double doors that lead out back.
“That fucking chicken. I swear,” he mutters as he pushes outside, waving his arms at her.
And while it’s funny to watch him chase the little escape artist off, I’m too busy focusing on how his forearms looked after he threw that keg up on the counter.
He must have rolled up the sleeves of his black-and-white-checkered flannel while in the back room, because they were certainly on display.
My gosh, were they defined. Not just from all his years of playing hockey—thank you, stick handling exercises—but also from his labor around the farm and cidery.
I look at the coffee table between the couches, admiring the woodwork that Noah put so much time into. It’s going to be a pity storing it away for the wedding.
“I don’t know why he even bothers. She’s just going to escape again.” Izzy shakes her head with a smile. “All right. What’s next on the list, wedding planner?”
And just like that, I’m sucked right back into the planning and most definitely not thinking about how hot Noah looks today.
I grab my phone, turning back to Izzy. “So here’s what I was thinking . . .”