Chapter 45 KELSEY’S TRIPLE MEET-CUTE
Chapter 45
K ELSEY ’ S T RIPLE M EET -C UTE
Cara’s Caramel Coffee Shop is adorable from the outside.
It’s painted white with light-blue trim, a pink door, and yellow shutters. It makes me think of Jester. I see why he loves it.
It sits in the middle of a huge lot shared with a strip mall that lines up behind it. There’s a drive-through, and I consider using it to make better time.
But my legs need stretching. Despite Jester’s insistence that I go for more meet-cutes on the way to Alabama, I haven’t.
I’ve taken my time, that’s for sure, driving only a few hours a day. I’m in no hurry to return to life on the farm.
It’s been a quiet, solitary week on the road. I haven’t tried to make any connections. It’s been lonely and pensive, nothing like the ride to Wyoming with Zachery in his Jaguar behind me. I may no longer believe in meet-cutes.
I came very close to taking the northern route and staying in Livia’s bed-and-breakfast for the memories. But I’m not sure I could have recovered from seeing that bed, the wallpapered wall. I’ve never felt anything like I did with Zachery.
I’m scared I never will again. And I never even told him.
He knows everything important. All my secrets. The emails to my mother. The way my father treated us.
Zachery would be so angry to know I’m going back there, even if we’re nothing to each other now, not even coworkers. But I don’t know what else to do. I have to regroup.
And, it seems, I’m going to have to get over him. I never thought I’d lose everything. Even our friendship.
I let myself imagine for a moment that when I get to the farm, he’s there. He’ll tell my father off, scoop me up, and carry me off into the sunset. Cue the closing theme music.
I laugh, pulling off my sunglasses and shoving them in the center console. I’ve got to get my head out of Hollywood. Time for the best coffee I’ve ever had, if Jester is right.
I lock the car. I’m a sweaty mess. Texas is stupidly hot midsummer. The back of my T-shirt sticks to my skin, and I pull it away as I open the door.
The air is thick with the smell of roasting beans and sugar. It’s heaven.
I’ve been worried about money, so I haven’t bought much fancy coffee on this trip, but today I’m going to splurge. Then I’ll take a photo of my treat and send it to Jester.
He wrote me last week, asking if I’d left yet. I’ve more or less kept him updated on my packing, selling as much of my stuff as I could, storing the rest, and finally getting on the road.
He doesn’t know I’ve made it to his favorite shop, or Texas, even. I last updated him somewhere in Arizona. He’ll be excited, I bet.
There’s a mom with a little girl ahead of me, ordering hot chocolate with caramel, even though it’s over a hundred degrees out. They have an entire collection of fancy decorated sugar cookies in coffee-cup shapes. One of them says “Bad to the bean.” That’ll be nice in the picture with the coffee.
The woman in her pink apron couldn’t be any more different from the one I encountered in that tumbleweed town on my last journey. “We do caramel every way you can think of, and a lot more you’ve never dreamed! What can I get you?”
“I have a favorite drink, but I don’t want to waste an opportunity to get one of your specialties.”
“What’s your usual?”
“Iced espresso with almond milk and a drizzle of caramel, shaken rather than stirred.”
“Hey! That’s our double-oh-seven drizzle, just with a different milk. It’s a featured drink.” She gestures to a small sign by the register.
She’s right! “I better get it, then!”
“What size?”
I’m about to say “grande” when I spot their cup sizes. Here, the choices are “modest,” “bold,” and “outrageous.”
“Let’s go with bold.”
“You got it.”
“Oh, and a ‘Bad to the bean’ cookie. The pink one.”
“Absolutely. Anything else?”
“That’s it.”
I tap my credit card and take the cookie from her, tucking it in my bag. Now that I’ve been standing a few minutes, my bladder is screaming.
I hurry to the bathroom. When I wash my hands in front of the mirror, I realize that I’m a seriously hot mess. No makeup. My blond hair is falling out of its messy updo. Nobody would call me Hollywood.
“You’re plain ol’ Kelsey,” I tell my reflection.
It’s fine. It’ll be fine.
I haven’t told anyone in my family I’m coming. I’m not sure I’m staying. That’ll depend on how bad things are when I get there. I put most of my stuff in storage so I don’t have to show up with my entire life in a U-Haul. Not yet.
I spoke to my dad two nights ago, planning to tell him I was headed his way. He said he only had a second because he had to finish the evening chores.
Always the chores. Always more to do.
“I wanted to see how you were,” I told him.
“Be a mite better if my kids hadn’t run off all over creation and bailed on the family farm.”
“Cal’s still there, right?”
“I got left with the laziest of the lot.”
Oh. Gosh. “Well,” I said, “those chores aren’t going to do themselves!”
And that was a long conversation compared to our usual.
When I get to the farm, I’ll reserve the right to escape right on out of there if it’s too awful. I have little hope I won’t eventually be labeled the lazy one as well. Nobody works at the level Dad expects. He should team up with Desdemona. They could be angry and miserable together.
As I head back into the main room of the shop, the barista calls out, “Bold double-oh-seven drizzle with almond milk!” She sets it on the end of the counter.
I head for it right as someone else stands from a chair, slightly behind me. Did we order the same thing?
I walk up, about to ask if this one is mine, when the person behind me trips, bumping into me. I lurch to the side with a grunt. Geez.
A muscled arm reaches for my latte, or maybe it’s his, then whips around so quick that the lid pops off, spilling iced espresso all across my shirt.
“Hey!” I cry, finally turning to look at the guy. “What’s your ...”
The words die on my lips.
It’s Zachery. Zachery Carter, actor of gross-out comedies from the last decade, walker of red carpets, wearing a gorgeous silk T-shirt (Loro Piana, $575) and mohair shorts (Prada, $1,700).
He’s here in Cara’s Caramel Coffee Shop in a coincidence every editor would strike from the script as not believable.
He sets the cup on a nearby table, his hand dripping. “Sorry, miss. I’m pretty clumsy.” He pulls a handful of napkins from the metal container on the table and starts wiping my shirt. “I thought that was my order.”
The room has gone quiet. We’re the most interesting thing happening in the shop.
“I’ll make another,” the barista says, but she doesn’t move.
“What are you doing here?” I ask.
His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows, but he doesn’t seem to have words. And that’s odd. Zachery is never short on things to say. His brown eyes lock on mine.
“Jester told you where I’d be?” I ask.
Now the barista jumps in. “He’s been waiting to do that for three days.” She calls out over her shoulder, “He finally got her, y’all!”
The other employees let out a cheer.
I turn back to him. “You planned this?”
His hand drips onto the floor. “I figured all those meet-cutes can’t be wrong.”
“So you did them all at once?”
“I didn’t switch our luggage.” He glances around. “No elevator.”
“He tried to convince us to get in an argument with him, but we weren’t Oscar contenders,” the barista says. “We’ve been dealing with him since Sunday. Are you going to get him out of our hair? He already signed his autograph on everything we own.”
I watch Zachery as I say, “I don’t know. I’m not sure why he’s here.”
“For you, double-oh-seven with almond milk.” She shakes her head. “He made us change our featured drink.”
This makes me laugh. “You went to a lot of trouble.”
He doesn’t meet my gaze, busy wiping his hand over and over.
“Hey,” I say. “Since when is Zachery Montgomery Carter anything short of a charmer, tamer of women, slayer of hearts?”
He finally looks up, his expression pained. “Since I wasn’t there when you needed me. Since I left you with that tree farmer. Since you got fired and I didn’t even know it until it was long over.”
The rapt audience lets out a long “Oooo.”
Heads swivel to me for my response.
“Are you here to apologize? To say goodbye?”
They all look back to Zachery.
“No. I don’t want to say goodbye.”
He doesn’t? Something can be salvaged after all? A gentle glow starts to warm my belly. “I had to leave LA. There was nothing left for me there.”
The crowd shifts, on the edge of their seats.
“I’m there. But I don’t have to be there. I can be anywhere.” He swallows again, and this time, I see that spark of the Zachery I know. He’s waited three days to say these things to me.
“Anywhere?” I ask. “I’m headed to a dairy farm in Alabama.”
He steps closer. “Then maybe I want to be on a dairy farm in Alabama, too.”
The room murmurs and sighs.
“But what about your red-carpet women? And the others? Livia. Catalina. The ones Desdemona will set you up with?”
He nods, his brows furrowed. “I know it looked like I was with those two. But I wasn’t. Not once, not anyone, not since you. I don’t want anyone else but you. And I quit Desdemona. I don’t work for her, either.”
“You did?”
“That office is pointless without you. LA is nothing.” He glances around. “Does this count as a small town?”
“We got twenty Starbucks,” someone calls.
“Don’t say that name in here!” the barista hisses.
“Sorry.”
I shake my head. “Doesn’t sound like a small town to me. Not with twenty—” I almost said it. “You-know-whats.”
“It’s not exactly a small-town romance,” the barista calls. “But everyone can see y’all’s starry eyes. Kiss her already!” She motions to the barista behind her, who hurriedly pulls two cups to make coffees.
“Kiss her!” someone else cries. It becomes a chorus.
Zachery steps in close. “It’s got the good tropes. Friends to lovers. Country to city. Reformed playboy.” He leans in next to my ear. “All the good sex scenes.”
“Shhh.” I grip his arm, but I’m laughing. “So, I have to settle for a big-city movie star instead?”
“It’s a step down, I know.” He lifts my chin.
Zachery. Everything in me says he’s right.
It’s him. It was always him.
From the champagne to the Charlie Brown mug, across the country, in my noisy apartment. From movie premieres to pizza at home, it’s always been Zachery.
“I love you,” he says.
“I think I might love you, too,” I say.
“We’ve got all the time we want to figure it out.”
I don’t need to see the script or read the words to know what will happen.
Because the moment is here.
Zachery Carter kisses me in a colorful coffee shop in Fort Worth, Texas.
And it’s way more than a meet-cute.
It’s a genuine happily ever after .