Chapter 19
Grey
Sabrina Sullivan has invaded every one of my thoughts at every moment of every day, and it doesn’t matter what I do to try to shake her, she manages to cement herself in there even more firmly.
Worse?
From the moment the words find it left my mouth, hope has taken hold.
Hope that she comes through with an alternate plan to destroy Chandler in a way that I haven’t been able to puzzle out myself.
I’ve been working on it too, but I don’t have the connections or the background knowledge of this town and how he fits in it to have any fresh ideas myself.
Since yesterday morning, the dude-bro’s taking up a lot of space in my head. That five-minute exchange cemented my need to make him pay, not just for what he’s done to me, but to everyone he’s hurt.
Even his wedding getting canceled and him starring as the villain in the world’s most viral video hasn’t changed him.
Since yesterday evening, though, all I can think about is playing dirty with Sabrina.
Kissing the ever-loving hell out of her.
Stripping her out of her clothes.
Licking every square inch of her body.
Making her scream my name in utter ecstasy.
My real name.
And this is a problem.
Because I’m walking around prepared to go Super Vengeance Man while constantly suppressing a hard-on, which makes it hard to think.
You don’t see Thor distracted from saving the world because he’s battling boners.
I’ve sunk to new lows, and I’m now demanding Zen find out every morsel of gossip they can about Sabrina.
I close my eyes, I think about her.
I open my eyes, I think about her.
I go to Bean & Nugget, I think about her.
I get home, I think about her.
I avoid her, I think about her.
I see her, I think about her.
I comp someone’s meal because I heard them compliment another customer, I think about her.
I hold a door for someone, I think about her.
I call the number on the collar of a stray dog sitting outside the café, I think about her.
A less chilly breeze blows, and you guessed it, I think about her .
Fine.
Fine .
I’m destroying Chandler Sullivan because he made Sabrina cry.
Fuck everyone else in town.
He’s going down because he made Sabrina cry.
That’s the bare, simple truth of it.
“You didn’t get anything out of her old gymnastics teacher?” I ask Zen on our way into Bean & Nugget early Tuesday morning.
“I learned I can still do a cartwheel,” Zen reports.
“I meant anything helpful .”
“If you ever need to torture me, you should hold me upside down, because while I can cartwheel like a nine-year-old—that’s all momentum—I can’t handstand to save my life.”
I stop at the back door, hands freezing, toes going numb, and give my nibling a you know that’s not what I mean look.
As usual, Zen is immune, but they smile as they finally give me the information I’m waiting for.
“Sabrina Sullivan was mouthy but mostly walked the line of not being too mouthy while being friendly and helpful when she took gymnastics as a kid. She would’ve gone a lot further if she hadn’t twisted her knee in second grade, which her teacher suspected was a fake injury, but could never prove.
And she also said if a kid didn’t want to be in gymnastics, then it’s better for them to find what they wanted to do.
And considering Sabrina was, in fact, born in the kitchen right next to the sink and basically grew up there, there’s no question Bean & Nugget is where she belongs. ”
“It took you five hours last night to find that out?”
“No, I stuck around and did an adult gymnastics class.”
“You did an adult gymnastics class,” I repeat.
“It was fun.”
“You participated .”
“In corduroy pants and a button-down shirt.”
Now I’m the one stopping us from entering the back door when the cold is generally something I’ll avoid at all costs. “And?”
“Does the name Austin George ring a bell?”
I frown. “Is that one of the neighbors who dropped off food?”
They laugh. “ Uncle Grey . He’s a gold-medal gymnast from like twenty years ago?”
“ Oh .”
“He and his husband run the gym in town now. Bought it like eight years ago. So after Sabrina’s brief rule as the terror of Tooth Gymnastics.”
I bite back the question about how Sabrina’s now a terror . “That doesn’t mean they get the instant Zen seal of approval.”
“Yes, it does.”
“It does?”
“When one of your childhood idols offers to help you do a cartwheel, you do the fucking cartwheel, and then you stay and gossip with all of the fabulous ladies who were there for class before heading to the salon where Sabrina’s mother works for an apparently super late night rendezvous that might’ve been hosted by a local Wiccan who’s Wiccan cool . Heh.”
I refuse to admit how much my entire body perks up at the mention of Sabrina’s name again and how much I don’t really care about the rest of that sentence. “ And ?”
“And I don’t remember any of their real names, so take this with a grain of salt, but Myrtle has a grandson who just switched college majors for the fourth time, Viola’s Subaru is at that age where she knows it’ll last another ten years, but also, if she sells now , she’ll get a better deal than if she lets it get any older on a trade-in, and Sue Ellen’s daughter seriously needs a divorce, in Sue Ellen’s opinion, but if you ask me, Sue Ellen is a judgmental hag who sees what she wants to see and has no idea what her daughter’s marriage is really all about. ”
“You’re fired.”
Zen is grinning broader than I’ve seen them grin in ages when talking about anyone other than me or my sister’s gastrointestinal issues.
“Myrtle also said Sabrina saved her from going on a date with a guy who turned out to be some kind of scam artist in the obscure profession of toy train collecting. Something about passing off replicas as vintage. Viola reports Sabrina’s the reason the old mayor lost his reelection bid six years ago, and the new mayor’s the reason tourists keep coming to the train station and the old mine even in winter now.
Oh, and the Valentine’s Day heart walk on Main Street next week was apparently Sabrina’s idea too, and if we back out of hosting the speed dating station, the general single population of the Tooth will be what runs us out of business and also makes sure that the kombucha bar fails.
Sue Ellen thinks Sabrina knows things about her and is saving them for a rainy day, but I couldn’t get out of her what gossip she thinks Sabrina knows, so she’s probably either in debt or secretly has a crush on some crusty old dude. ”
“You’re rehired, but on probation.”
“Uncle Grey, you know all the right things to say to make a person’s dreams come true.
P. S., freaking ask Sabrina out already .
She is so not on Team Cheese Turd. Plus she can make or break this place after you renovate it.
Also, you’d be doing me a favor if you got laid again.
” Zen throws the back door open, and we step inside to a disaster of a kitchen.
Disaster may be something of an overstatement. But there shouldn’t be dishes in the sink at five in the morning. The grill shouldn’t be on. I shouldn’t smell coffee this strongly. And the dining room light definitely shouldn’t be glowing, nor should voices be coming from there.
Zen doesn’t seem to connect the something’s wrong dots.
I look behind me.
Why are there six cars in my usually empty lot?
What the hell’s going on?
“Yes, yes, do the dishes,” they say perkily.
“Look at me. Who am I? Oh, I’m so excited!
I have piles and piles of dishes! I’m going to sing my heart out at the top of my lungs like I’m Cinderella to see if it’ll annoy my new boss so he quits looking at me like he wants to strip me out of my clothes! ”
“You’re fired again.”
“You’ll have to do the dishes.”
Is it possible to have a permanent cramp in your eyelid?
All I wanted was to hear everything they could tell me about Sabrina, and then they did it, and now I don’t know which way is up and if they just insulted me or not.
“Who’s here this early?” I ask Zen, as if they’ll have any more of an idea than I do.
“My powers of deduction tell me someone who’s messy,” they reply.
“Your powers of deduction are so acute this time of day.”
They grin and head for the dining room.
I hang up my coat, which is beginning to smell exactly like the café, peek inside Jitter’s doghouse and come up disappointed that he’s not there, and then I follow my nibling.
“Zen!” an unfamiliar woman’s voice says. “You made it. Good. We were getting worried.”
“Morning, Iris,” Zen replies cheerfully.
“Come sit by me,” someone else says. “Look. I got the special Guatemalan coffee beans from my friend for you to try. Here. Have a cup.”
“You are a goddess.”
What on earth?
I stop in the doorway and survey the Bean & Nugget dining room, which is housing roughly a dozen people at five in the morning, all of them drinking coffee and enjoying pastries.
There’s Devi who owns the art gallery and her grandmother who runs House of Curry, which makes delicious food when you’re not wearing it.
Shirlene, the health department inspector.
Marley, our neighbor with the little girl who knocks on Sabrina’s door regularly looking for Jitter.
Bitsy, who dropped by a mouth-watering casserole the other day that was just as good as her English Sunday dinner, which is a sentence I never expected to come out of my mouth, but is still true.
A few other people look familiar, but I can’t immediately place their names or where I’ve seen them.
And then there’s a woman who’s so startlingly similar to Sabrina, but with a few more crow’s lines at her eyes, that it must be her mother.
Her mother .
That’ll make a guy nervous this early in the morning.
I take an extra breath, tell my dick to stay down , and let myself look at Sabrina too.
Naturally, she’s here.