Chapter 29
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Owen
“What do you mean you invited her?” I ask Jason, stunned as he sits behind his desk, rifling through contracts.
“I saw her outside the new shop,” he says with a grin.
I have to sit down. My head is spinning and my legs suddenly feel very weak.
“She won’t come,” I say, more to myself than to my brother.
He shrugs with a grin on his face. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that. She seemed pretty into you.”
A burst of happiness surges through me, but it quickly dissipates when I remember seeing her crushed face at the dock.
Do you still see yourself with a cottage, a dog, and a wife?
That’s not the life for me, Faye.
She tried to keep that door open and I slammed it in her face. I’m still trying to figure out why I did that. Why I pushed her away.
Maybe that’s not entirely true. I think I know why.
For one horrible moment, I thought she had lied to me. I saw that engagement video, discovered a fiancé she’d never mentioned, and every warning I’d been given came rushing back. I thought I’d been fooled.
And instead of giving Faye an opportunity to explain, I shut down.
For a man who prides himself on logic, I behaved remarkably irrationally.
In other words, I blew it.
“Maybe she was into me once,” I say as I stare at the floor. “But I ruined it.”
“People make mistakes,” Jason says softly. “Everyone does eventually. If you love someone, you choose to forgive and look past it.”
“Do you think she’d give me another chance?”
“I’m not sure, Owen,” he says. “But if you like her, it’s worth finding out.”
I grit my teeth and resolve to get her back. I need to find out.
I’ll do everything I can to get us back to that magical place we were in when she clung to me in the lake, when we kissed in the telescope room, when we slow danced in the kitchen.
I’ll do anything I can to return to that version of us.
And I know exactly who can help me get there.
“Where are you going?” Jason asks as I burst out of his office, running down to the parking lot.
I grab one of the company cars and head out of the city, speeding down the highway to speak with the wisest woman I know.
“Oh great,” she says flatly as I walk into her coffee shop. “You again.”
Vivian is standing behind the counter reading an old paperback novel. She drops it onto the cappuccino machine and sighs as I walk up to her.
“Menu items only,” she says, narrowing her eyes on me.
“I’m not here for coffee.”
Vivian raises her eyebrow, looking at me wearily.
“I need some of your wisdom,” I tell her. “I screwed up.”
She laughs. “Shocker.”
“I need to get Faye back.”
“Oh?” she says, crossing her arms with a grin on her face. “Love is not just chemistry gobbledygook after all, is it?”
I shake my head. “I never said gobbledygook.”
“I’ll help you,” she says, but the amused grin on her face tells me I’m going to have to pay dearly for it. “If you drink this.”
I feel nauseous as she grabs the old coffee pot with the orange handle. I can already tell the coffee inside has been there way too long, congealing and cooking on that industrial burner. It’s more suitable to lubricate car engines than to drink at this point.
I swallow hard.
Is she expecting me to drink that? It’s not safe for human consumption.
A maniacal grin spreads across her face as she pours the bitter swill into a white mug. I grip the counter, feeling unsteady when I see a smudge of lipstick on the rim.
“How long has that coffee been sitting there?” I ask, feeling the blood draining from my face.
“All morning,” she says as she slides the pot back into the machine, grinning like some sick, twisted medieval torturer.
My stomach churns as I stare at the unpalatable black liquid, looking like an oil spill in the unsanitary communal mug. A thin, iridescent film has formed on the surface, casting a rainbow hue like you’d see in a nasty puddle in some abandoned parking lot.
It’s been sitting out much too long. The oils from the beans have separated out and oxidized from prolonged contact with the air.
Anything resembling flavor or aroma has completely dissipated and what remains is essentially a warm solution of bitter chlorogenic acids and melanoidins with no redeeming qualities whatsoever.
The temperature has dropped to somewhere between unpleasant and dangerous from a bacteria standpoint. I feel perspiration breaking out across my forehead as I imagine how many bacterial cultures have had ample opportunity to establish themselves in that undrinkable swill.
“Can I do something else?” I ask, acid stinging the back of my throat. “How about I eat one of those pastries instead?”
“No,” she says, pointing at the stale, room-temperature coffee. “I want you to drink that.”
“Why?”
She crosses her arms and narrows her flinty eyes on me.
“Because you expect everything in your life to be exactly right, and I’m here to tell you, bucko, that life isn’t a double ristretto served at sixty degrees.
Sometimes it’s bitter and gross and has been sitting on the burner all morning and is served in a mug with someone else’s lipstick on it. ”
“I’m not following.”
“And that’s the problem,” she snaps. “That girl is not going to be exactly how you want her every day. She’s going to be complicated, and frustrating, and surprising, and she’ll be wonderful, and sweet, and kind, but sometimes she’s going to be a dirty mug of terrible coffee.
” She looks at me. “The question is whether you’ll drink it anyway. ”
I take a deep breath as I look down at the coffee. I want to be there for Faye. Always. I want to be the type of man who will drink it no matter what.
“And it will prove how much you care,” Vivian adds. “And I really want to watch you drink it. It will be fun for me.”
A wave of queasiness creeps up from my gut as I grab the mug. I take another deep breath and the room tilts ever so slightly.
“I can do this,” I whisper.
My palms become slick. Cold sweat trickles down my back.
It’s so disgusting. The bacteria… The lipstick…
My whole body feels clammy as I put my lips to the mug and tilt it back.
Bitter, tepid coffee fills my mouth, perverting every taste bud on my tongue with the stale, spoiled liquid.
Every self-preservation instinct I have screams at me to spit it out and flee, but I hold still.
I swallow it down, one foul, disgusting gulp at a time.
I can hear Vivian squealing in delight as I squeeze my eyes shut and force it down my throat. I’ll probably have a stomach virus after this. Maybe even parasites. It might take ages to recover.
But it will be worth it. Getting Faye back is worth any price.
Finally, I swallow the last of the sour black acid and slam the cup onto the counter. My stomach heaves. Vivian steps back as I gag.
But I manage to keep it down, straightening my back in triumph as I stare at her.
“That wasn’t so hard, was it?” she asks with a grin.
It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. At least in the top five.
“How do I get her back?”
She rubs her chin as she studies me. “You have to show her how much she means to you.”
“How can I do that?” I ask with my mind racing. “Do I get her something? Perhaps a bouquet of edible fruits?”
She stares at me for a long, silent moment. “No. Not that.”
“Then what? Flowers?”
“No gift is going to be enough,” she says. “Anyone with twenty bucks can buy flowers. It’s not enough. You have to prove to her you care.”
“Can’t I just tell her?” I ask, feeling the frustration bubbling over.
“Words are cheap,” she says, shaking her head. “My husband is constantly saying he’ll stop leaving the hair dryer in the sink, but every freaking morning without fail, it’s there, and before I can brush my teeth, I have to put it away.”
“I’m not following. What does a hair dryer have to do with any of this?”
She lets out a frustrated breath. “You need a grand gesture. Something big. Something that will blow her socks off.”
I’m so lost. I wish Faye were here to interpret for me.
“Now,” she explains, “if my husband wanted to make a grand gesture—”
“He’d put the hair dryer away.”
“No,” she snaps. “That would be regular, decent behavior. A grand gesture would be him shaving all his hair off. Now, that would be romantic.”
“I’m supposed to shave my hair off?”
She huffs out another breath. “No, man. Geez. There may be no hope for you after all. You have to find the equivalent for her.”
“How do I do that?”
She shrugs. “Only you can know. But I wish you luck.”
My eyes drop to the floor as I try to think of some grand gesture that would get Faye back. I would do anything. Anything at all.
“How much do I owe you for the coffee?”
She laughs. “That one was on the house. Now, go get your girl back. I don’t know why, but I’m rooting for you.”
I sigh as I walk out and head to my car.
The grand opening of the shop is tomorrow.
And I have no idea what to do.