Chapter 7
Adam
Hi, Lucy. This is Adam. I wanted to see if you’d be willing to meet sometime today to discuss our conversation from last night per you volunteering?
Me
I’m free around lunch?
Adam
Meet at Coffees and Commas at 12?
Me
See you then.
Adam, quite annoyingly, was proving me wrong when I said he was trying to push me out of the festival.
No, instead, he truly was set on doing things the way the rulebook laid out, with him in charge of the creativity and decision-making and me volunteering for him, probably a couple of times here and there.
My cheeks blazed with shame at the idea of explaining to all the usual vendors and volunteers why I was no longer running the show, having to admit to these people I’d known for years that I was, gulp, demoted.
Yeah, the city realized I was running the festival into the ground and put this Adam guy in charge instead, I would say to their pitying eyes.
What if, I thought grimly, they all secretly nodded to each other that they’d seen it coming? What if everyone had known I was making a mess of things, except me?
I had told Victor I was certainly interested in volunteering because I certainly wanted to be the type of person who was humble enough to help in any capacity no matter her history with the festival. Someone who would rise above conflict with Adam Stevens with peace and flowers, or whatever people who didn’t cling to their pride did in these situations.
Now, while I helped Olivia tear open boxes and organize her new cabinets, I was feeling less and less certain. My mind kept revolving around how quickly Adam was to tape a volunteer sticker on my chest and send me on my merry way.
“He wants to just wrap this problem up with a little bow and be done with it,” I said as I threw a crumple of packing tape to the side. “Me. I’m the problem he’s wanting to wrap up.”
“Of course, he’s wanting to wrap up this issue. That’s his job, Luce.” Olivia grinned at me, ever the level-headed big sister. “It’s not personal.”
“But it is personal. The festival is personal to me.” I pulled the stack of white melamine plates out of the box. “He knows it is, too. I told him very clearly. He just wants me and all my drama to go away. He wants to meet up with me and have me choose my volunteer position, time slot, and then close the book on the Rhodes women chapter of the festival.”
“Or is he trying to find a way to keep the Rhodes women involved with the festival, but in a way that works with his new vision?”
“That’s my problem,” I sighed. “The vision used to be such a personal thing to me. It was Grandma’s vision living on through me. Now, it’ll be the vision of some guy who has only lived in Sweet River for a couple of weeks.”
Olivia scooted the boxes between us away and wrapped her arm around me. “Lucy, if this is too hard for you, you don’t have to meet up with this guy. You don’t have to be a volunteer. This festival holds a lot of memories for you and is all wrapped up with grief and Grandma’s loss. You could just wash your hands of it.”
But it was all those strings of grief and nostalgia wrapped up in it that made it impossible for me to untie myself from the festival.
I would show up to this thing no matter what and however they’d take me because for me, it was showing up for Grandma.
It was a short walk from Olivia’s house to the coffee shop, so I soaked in the early summer sunshine on my shoulders while strolling down the sidewalk. I passed the red brick antique store, the tiny Episcopal Church, and my favorite record store. I had on a long green skirt that the balmy breeze kept floating around my calves.
I arrived in front of the coffee shop and came to a sudden halt. My heart skipped in hesitation. I could see Adam through the windows. He was at a table already with an iced coffee sitting on the table before him.
My heart felt like it was climbing up my throat. I took in a nervous, jagged breath. This guy got me all twisted up. I wasn’t sure what it was about him that made me so nervous. The feelings were blurry. Was I fed up with this guy or feeling leftover butterflies from our first messages?
Fed up, definitely fed up.
Then his eyes found me through the window. I audibly gasped when he smiled at me through the glass.
I forced a smile and walked through the door, the bell chiming overhead, the scent of ground coffee and lemon loaf hitting my senses.
“Lucy!” Katie cheered my name as I walked toward the counter. She knew my order and started making it when she saw me. Katie whose last name used to be Hernandez, I remind myself. Victor Hernandez’s older sister. Did she know about our setup the other night?
We chit-chatted as she made my order. I tried to steady my heartbeat and prayed I wasn’t sweating.
“That looks great,” Adam said as I sat down with my iced latte moments later. “What is it?”
“It’s an oat milk lavender latte,” I said, accepting his attempt at small talk. “What’d you get?”
“A peppermint iced latte,” he said, shaking the ice in the cup.
“A Christmas drink in May?” My eyes squinted in judgment.
“Peppermint is not a Christmas flavor. It’s an anytime flavor and also happens to be my favorite. Now, peppermint mocha, on the other hand, that is a Christmas drink.” This guy really thinks he has everything figured out.
“What about a gingerbread latte? Is that a holiday drink?” I countered.
He thought for a moment then said, “Gingerbread, yes. Ginger, no.”
I took a sip of my sweet drink. “So, you do this know-it-all thing with everything, including beverage flavors?”
“So, you do this snippy comment thing on everything, including my drink preferences?” he said back, fast as lightning.
I laughed before I could stop myself. His eyes were warm on me like standing near a bonfire. I fidgeted nervously with the little vase of daisies on the table. “Daisies are my favorite flower. They make me so happy.” I was rambling now.
“They make you happy, huh,” he said, clearing his throat and getting back to business. “Well, we met here for a reason, didn’t we?”
“We did.”
He slid a folder out of his briefcase and set it on the table between us.
“I have to start by apologizing.” He looked down at the folder in his hands. “I was a complete jerk on the phone with you and then handled our following conversation poorly, too. I’m really sorry. I guess I was in work mode and hoping I could blow past any…extra baggage.”
“Extra baggage?” I said trying to keep any emotion out of my tone. I took another sip.
“Poor word choice. I think I’m nervous.” He looked up at me, his glasses sliding down his nose. His eyes were big, blue, and apologetic.
“Apologies make you nervous?”
“You make me nervous,” he said quickly yet quietly. His eyes flickered to mine.
I’m the angry woman who stormed into his office. Of course, he’d be nervous. Still, him stating it so openly brought back those mistaken, leftover butterflies.
“I’m sorry, too, for the record,” I said, feeling myself let my guard down an inch or two as he dropped his. “I was angry and stubborn.”
“I was stubborn, too,” he admitted. “I had my vision for how things were supposed to go, you know?”
“And I had mine,” I said, not breaking our eye contact.
“See, I have a problem with veering from the established route.”
“And I much prefer to come up with my own routes.” I brushed a lock of my hair behind my ear. His eyes followed it.
He smiled tentatively. “So, a rigid route follower meets a dynamic trailblazer.”
And it was explosive, I thought to myself.
“We’re both control freaks, but here we sit with a mysterious folder between us.” I tapped the folder.
“Yes, the folder.” He cleared his throat. “I think the festival needs you.”
I was so taken aback that I literally leaned against the back of my chair.
“You were right. The vendors, volunteers, everyone expects to hear from you. They want you.” I guess the man was listening to more than reports now.
The doorbell chimed. The espresso machine buzzed. I didn’t say anything.
He lifted his hands as if in surrender. “I do need to make some changes, that much is still true. This festival needs the city manager to oversee it in a big way. But it also needs you. I was trying to come in and strong-arm things to go the right way, to look at it logically, but I think I forgot about?—”
“The city itself?”
“The heart,” he said earnestly. “You, your grandmother. You were the heart in all of it.”
“My grandmother was the heart,” I said softly in agreement. “I appreciate you seeing that.”
A moment, almost tender, passed between us.
I looked down at my hands resting in my lap. “So, you realized you need me. What are you going to do about it?” I glanced back up at him.
His eyes flashed for a moment at my words. “I want to do things my way still because the logistics matter, but I also want to do things your way, too.”
“You want to do things our way.” When I said this, he grinned at me.
“Yeah, our way.” He was still smiling, pushing the folder toward me.
I opened it to find a contract.
“I drew up an agreement. Let’s do this fifty-fifty.” He pointed to the line that stated we would not make any decisions until we could reach a satisfactory agreement. We would divvy up the role fifty-fifty. “Plus, I’d like to officially hire you as a part-time consultant for the duration of the festival planning.”
We started hashing it out, dividing up duties. I got most of my favorite jobs back and secretly felt immense relief when he took over the ones that had always felt out of my league.
When we reached the end of the contract having marked it up, it was time for me to sign. He already had.
“Lucy,” he said, putting his hand on the page, stopping me before I put pen to paper. “Can you do this? Can you be flexible with your grandmother’s legacy like this?”
This question gave me pause. I thought of my feisty, small, five-foot-two Grandma Rhodes, with her passion, commitment, and humor. I could hear the way she’d laugh at how seriously Adam and I have taken all of this. She’d snicker at us if she heard us arguing over this contract, but she’d also get it. She always got me. And she also always got what she wanted. Which, in this case, would be whatever is best for the festival.
“I think I can be flexible for her legacy.” I signed my name. My loopy L and R next to his smooth A and S.
A moment of silence passed between the two of us like we were sharing it. That timid tenderness again. A hint of a smile on his lips.
When the shop bell chimed and a second later, Olivia called my name.
She acted surprised to see me, but she knew this meeting was happening. She waved at Katie at the front, but walked straight over to my table.
“Who’s this?” she asked coyly, tossing her head toward Adam.
“This is Adam, he’s our new city manager. We’re working on the summer festival together.” I said this as if it was new information, playing along as if we hadn’t spied on him in a grocery store and stalked his Instagram days ago.
“Oh, are you now?” She raised an eyebrow. “Working with the enemy?”
Adam laughed nervously. What must he think of us Rhodes women? All bright hair and fighting words.
“How’d you win her over?” she asked him, her hand on the back of my chair.
“We signed a truce,” he said. “We are going at this fifty-fifty.”
“He also hired me officially,” I said with a tone of awe in my voice.
“I see you put it in writing.” She glanced down at the contract lying between us. “And, wow, you got very specific.”
“All the mark outs and scribbling is Lucy’s work,” Adam chuckled. “I came in with the proposal, she came in with the demands.”
“Negotiations,” I corrected, my chair scraping against the floor as I turned toward Olivia.
“With men any negotiations from women are viewed as demands.” Olivia rolled her eyes. The scent of freshly baked strawberry scones waft from the café kitchen.
“I’m lucky she’s negotiating with me, honestly,” Adam said, slipping the paperwork back into the folder. “I’m happy she’d even look at this proposal.”
“It’s hilarious to see the festival getting so bureaucratic. It’s always been so small-town with handshake deals and basically running out of Grandma’s kitchen,” Olivia said more to me than to Adam.
His cheeks blazed red. “I don’t want to lose all that small-town heart. I promise,” he said seriously.
“He only wants to lose it by fifty-fifty,” I joked. He didn’t laugh at the joke, instead the muscle in his jaw working overtime as he looked away from me.
Olivia took a sip of my lavender latte as my date from the other night strolled into the shop. Adam waved Victor over and he weaved through the bookshelves to our table.
Victor’s easy demeanor shifted as his eyes met Olivia’s. She was wearing her working Levis and a white tank top. I think she even had a smear of paint across her cheek. But the confident Victor from last night was jittery and quiet by Adam’s side as I introduced the two.
Olivia announced she was going to go order a drink and Victor seemed to muster up a little courage, joining her at the counter.
When it was just Adam and me again, the silence turned tense, all the mysterious tenderness from earlier gone by now. Like it was drained away with our coffees. Now we were left with empty cups and awkwardness.
We might’ve reached an agreement, but we were both still feeling a little prickly. Overwhelmed by all this new paperwork, or bureaucracy, as Olivia said.
I watched him as he stared thoughtfully down at his phone, serious with his dark hair falling over his eyes. As if reading my thoughts, he looked up at me and said, “You know, sometimes the bureaucracy can help something like this festival.”
“If a part of me didn’t agree, I wouldn’t have signed the contract,” I said honestly, my guard still down a couple of inches from earlier.
He looked over at Victor and Olivia as they chatted with Katie, then leaned in toward the table and whispered, “Are you and Victor…you know…”
“Dating?” I couldn’t stop myself from grinning.
He put up his hands. “I shouldn’t ha?—”
“We’re not dating. The setup was a flop. No fireworks,” I said simply.
“No fireworks,” he echoed, repeating the solution to a math equation.