Chapter 12
Jillian
“No—of course she can’t continue to work here—” Frankie protested.
“She was hired for at least two weeks,” I returned. “Firing her would be too much paperwork. So we are going to get two weeks work out of her.”
Christabelle’s jaw dropped open again.
“Honey, can we talk about this?”
But my tears were dried now.
Ignoring him, I went to the supply closet and grabbed the massive crab costume. It was a bright, nightmare-pink and had the words PINCH A PAGE AT PERK UP & READ.
“If you still want a job here, you can wear this costume and twirl the sign. Be sure to do the crab walk, too. Customers love that. Now get out there.”
"You still want to employ me?" Christabelle asked sharply, “even after what Frankie and I did?”
"Workers are in short supply in the busy season," I said. “Now that Frankie and I are no longer together, he can date who he pleases. But you'll need to really spin that sign, I'm afraid we don't tolerate laziness here."
She looked nervously around at Frankie. “What the hell—I mean, ok, sure.”
But Frankie wasn’t even looking at her. There were big dark circles under his eyes, and his handsome face looked drawn.
I turned to the latte machine as he cleared his throat.
"Jilly!" he pleaded, wiping his tears with the back of his hand, his voice cracking. "Please don’t do this. We don’t need to open up. Let’s keep the café closed so we can figure this out.”
“There’s no we,” I said. “And I want to keep it open. You can go home if you want to.”
"Please let me explain myself! I made mistakes but I’m never doing that again!" Frankie cried, trying to follow me into the attached room where we kept a small bookstore.
“Oh really?” I asked coolly. “Because I saw Christabelle practically climbing into your window last night.”
“She was not!” Frankie cried. “She tried to get in, but I wouldn’t let her.”
“That’s not what Cash told me.”
“He’s just—trying to get you for himself!”
Christabelle emerged, almost staggering sideways under the weight of all her crab claws.
“Out front,” I said.
“All right,” she grunted, but she was already sweating in the heat.
"Jilly, I love you!" Frankie cried, holding his hands out in supplication. “I’ll never even look in another woman’s direction again.”
“It’s not about her,” I said. “If you’re a cheater, it would always be someone.”
“No, I’m not! I’m a one-woman man, I swear.”
“Look me in the eyes and tell me I wasn’t ever your second choice.”
The way his eyes widened was all the answer I needed to know.
"At first—I was just trying to forget her,” he said, panting heavily. "But that was only at first! Now I know you’re the only woman for me. I just gave into temptation. It was a mistake!"
I shrugged. My chest felt tight.
My stomach felt sick at the thought of this temptation.
"How can I convince you how sorry I am if you won't talk to me?"
“I’m no one’s consolation prize,” I said. “Get your documents out of the filing cabinets because you’ll need them. How do you want to proceed with the Perk Up & Read. Are you open to me buying you out of it?”
But he refused to discuss anything to do with our divorce, his face looking drawn and miserable. But it didn’t matter.
I did what I had always done when confronted with a problem. Got out a pad of paper and began to make a to-do list. Everything would have to be split up. Difficult because everything in my life revolved around Frankie and our business.
Did my husband expect me to go home and cry? Nope!
I was going to do my best to ignore this and serve the customers as usual.
Cash sauntered in.
“Want me to fix that leaky toilet?” his low gravelly voice rumbled.
Frankie had delusions of fixing it, but he was truly hopeless at all mechanical things, and his only attempts had made the situation even leakier.
Well, I was done caring about his feelings, so I immediately agreed.
“I’m ready to have a toilet that works perfectly again,” I said. "Not an unexpected bidet."
He chuckled. “No problem. Just give me a few minutes to drink a cup of your amazing coffee.”
“You don’t need him! I can do it!”
Frankie grabbed the toolbox in the corner, but Cash only raised his eyebrows.
“Don’t hurt yourself there.”
It was time to get a few more errands done, and my first call was to the only lawyer in town, Earnest Farnsby-Woof.
“Well, if it isn’t the town’s leading lady! What can I do for you, Mrs. Mayor?” Earnest caroled in my ear.
My stomach was sinking into the ground and I desperately needed to eat something, but I was still tied up in knots inside.
“I would like to make an appointment,” I said, suppressing all quavers in my voice.
I stopped briefly to give Athena a little piece of papaya and stroke her beautiful emerald-green feathers.
Just you and me now, girl.
“Of course,” he said. “What’s it for?”
“My divorce,” I said.
“Mfhnnghapaa,” Earnest choked, and I heard the sputtering sound of him spitting a mouthful of coffee all over that fancy wooden desk. “Really? You and Frankie are donezo?”
“Yes. Yes, we are."
“Please,” Frankie whispered from across the café where he was wiping down tables, but I ignored him.
“Don’t you worry, baby girl,” Earnest chortled through the speakerphone. “I am going to get you the prettiest divorce you’ve ever seen.
“I just want a quick divorce,” I said, and there was a noise at the entrance to my little office where I’d done paperwork for a life with a man who didn’t deserve it.
“No!” Frankie cried hoarsely, his eyes looking wild. “Please, no. Please just give me a little time to convince you how sorry I am.”
“Is that him?” Earnest cackled. “Tell Frankie to count his days. I’ve been hoping for a case against Mr. Perfect over there for years.
I’m the only lawyer in town, too. He’s going to have to get some city slicker in here to represent him.
By the time I’m through, you’ll own the gold in his dental fillings. ”
“No!” Frankie protested again. “I don’t agree to a divorce. I do not want a divorce.”
He fell down in front of me. “Look at me! I was an idiot!”
I ignored him, waving Cash into the bathroom.
“Thank you so much,” I said, “I needed a skilled man to fix some mechanical issues around here.”
“I have skills, baby girl,” Cash said. “For anything you want done with my hands.”
Frankie’s jaw dropped. “Are you seriously flirting with my wife?”
“Maybe I am,” Cash said, setting his toolbag on the ground. “What are you going to do about it?”
Frankie looked taken aback, but I felt a warm prickly blush across my cheeks.
Me and Cash? My eyes scanned down his broad back and massive shoulders as he bent over the toilet.
He was definitely hot.
Athena flew down and pecked my estranged husband hard in the ear.
“Please, let's talk about this,” Frankie begged.
“There’s nothing to talk about,” I said, swallowing through a lump in my throat, but my next breath felt a little bit lighter.
“You wanted to be with Christabelle, so now you can be with her. No problem. You can be with Christabelle, and I will be free.”
“I don't want to be with Christabelle,” Frankie moaned. “It was a stupid immature fantasy.”
Cash set his tools down beside the toilet, which was gurgling in a sinister fashion, and bent to his work.
“I don’t know how you can show your face around here after what you did,” he said, the muscles in his broad shoulders shifting as he picked up a wrench.
I felt less humiliated than I expected.
After all, Cash wasn’t patting my head sympathetically, just glaring at Frankie as he gripped the heavy wrench.
“It was a mistake,” Frankie said, “Let me help you fix the toilet.”
He reached for the tools, but Cash’s arm shot out and blocked him.
“No, thank you. I don’t need you dropping any of them in the toilet.”
Frankie wriggled in embarrassment because he hated to be reminded of his mechanical ineptitude.
“Do I have this right? You two are not together anymore?” Cash asked.
“Correct,” I said evenly.
Frankie’s face looked haggard. “I don’t want to split up!”
“This is a win, win situation. We can split with a minimum of fuss.”
It only took Cash a few minutes to fix the toilet. Even though I certainly was not ready to date again, there were other things besides getting serious with a man. . .
“No charge,” Cash said, straightening up to his full height and ducking to get under the door frame.
“Thank you for coming on short notice,” Frankie said. “We’ll be happy to give you a big tip.”
“It doesn’t sound like there’s a we anymore,” Cash said dryly. “No charge for you, Jillian.”
Cash and I headed back to the front with Frankie following behind.
“Jillian, please, please, give me another chance. I promise I won’t screw it up this time.”
“No,” I said.
“All I want out of life is for us to run our coffee shop together.”
“Don’t you mean her coffee shop,” called a loud voice, and I heard Earnest rattling down our driveway enthusiastically, with his poor assistant Augustus following after him with a rolling suitcase full of law textbooks and a piece of paper with a fancy quill pen.
Earnest was a tall and gangly man with slicked-back dark hair and the zeal of an ambitious man usually stuck defending tourists getting drunk and lighting fires at the beach, while his assistant was a big gentle giant.
“Can’t wait to see you in court,” Earnest cackled with delicious anticipation. “I’m so excited I’m here in person to get paperwork from you.”
“I reject it!” Frankie said hotly. “I will do everything I can to keep this marriage.”
“I am enjoying the thought of ripping you apart into tiny pieces in court and stomping on your bloody body,” Earnest said, straightening his tie, “Metaphorically speaking. Franklin J. Davenport, you’ve really fucked up this time.”
“He’s going to get a lawyer, too!” Christabelle shrieked, suddenly charging up the stairs in her crab costume. “You have just as much right to this place as SHE does.”
“Yes, please DO,” Earnest cackled, “Bring in all the fancy city slickers you want. I look forward to tearing into them. Augustus, make a note of that.”
Augustus was dutifully making a note of it as Christabelle stomped her foot on the porch.
“Frankie, your parents will help. I know they’re loaded.”
My ex’s face was pale with shock.
“Fuck you, Christabelle. I will never move a muscle to take away the coffee shop. Jillian can do whatever she wants with it. This doesn’t concern you. What happened between us was a stupid mistake.”
Her eyes widened. “But what we had—“
“We had nothing,” Frankie interrupted, his jaw set. This was a tone I’d never heard my sunny husband use before.
“Nothing worth remembering.”
Christabelle’s jaw dropped, but before she could speak I heard a cheerful tootling I recognized very well, and a massive, sleek yacht pulled up with luxuriously wealthy ease at the Ramshackle Bay docks.
Out hopped a tall, handsome man in his 60s with a thick head of white hair and a captain’s hat twinkling with diamond embellishments. Next to him was a beautiful woman in her late 50s, her long blonde hair teased up several inches around her face and her slim wrists dripping with diamond jewelry.
“Oh, look!” Christabelle said smugly, her crab crawls wiggling with fury.
“There’s your parents now. We’ll see about you owning the Perk Up & Read, Jillian. Once their lawyers get done with you I’d be surprised if you owned the shirt off your back.”
I said nothing as my ex’s parents walked down the docks, Franklin Davenport, Senior snapping his fingers imperiously at a servant who had just leaped out of the waiting limo to spread a long silken walkway down so his wife Claudette didn’t have to get her heels dirty.
Then, as we all stood on the porch, they turned and saw us.