Chapter 28
Sabrina
The check-in line for speed dating is endless.
And every last one of the women asks the same thing. “Is Grey Cartwright joining us tonight?”
Half of them add the question , “And is he okay? I heard he almost passed out here this morning.”
“Hadn’t eaten,” is my cheeky answer. “You know men.”
I have zero doubt the meal patrol will have a sign-up to take him breakfasts and lunches in addition to his dinners before the night’s over. Or at least to have someone else helping Zen make sure he’s eating those meals here.
The things we gossips do to make sure newcomers feel welcome in a community.
And to psychologically and food-logically sway them to reconsider what they’re doing to the community.
The worst part of all of the questions about Grey though?
I don’t want them to like him .
Because he’s mine.
Dammit .
Even when I know he’s pissed at me, and rightfully so, I want him to be mine .
I want him to be the friend that Duke was in Hawaii.
It just felt so right. So easy . And even with our differences, I feel like I can trust him.
He’s trusted me with some hard things about himself. He thinks I’m worth it.
Or he did.
Until this morning.
“Are you participating, Sabrina?” Kayla asks.
The question takes me by surprise—she’s the first to ask all night—but worse?
Worse, it makes me want to turn around and see if he’s watching me.
He’s been pissed at me for four solid hours now.
And I’ve been successfully avoiding him for those four solid hours, despite spending half of them here at Bean & Nugget, getting the café set up for speed dating.
Jitter is like a paperweight, but for people. He was a Grey-weight today.
That helped keep Grey from hunting me down.
“I know you usually do,” Kayla adds in a whisper, “but I heard you have a boyfriend you’re not talking about, so I didn’t know…”
I have a what?
I absolutely do not have— oh my god .
I burst out laughing, then clamp a hand over my own mouth.
Grey gossiped about me .
She leans closer. “Who did you tell you had a boyfriend and why? You never have a boyfriend. Ever . But Yolanda swore Fiona claimed her source was impeccable, even if she couldn’t say who it was.”
Grey’s watching me.
I can see his reflection in the window, thanks to the darkness outside, and he is definitely watching me. A shiver slinks down my spine.
“People change,” I tell her. “But that particular relationship didn’t work out.”
“ You had a boyfriend ?”
“I was in a very short-term relationship.” With myself. I’d still be in it, but I’m taking a short break from myself while I deal with the fact that I don’t like that I’m attracted to a man whom I need to not be attracted to.
“Your favorite kind, right?”
She laughs.
I laugh.
It’s true.
“Next, please,” I say, waving her inside with a smile.
Which promptly dies a horrific death involving all the worst things you can think of when I see who’s standing in line behind her.
“We’re full, go fuck yourself,” I tell Chandler.
“Sabrina,” my grandfather chides.
He’s standing just behind Chandler, his stooped, white-haired form easily hidden by Chandler’s bulkier figure.
And it doesn’t surprise me in the least that Grandpa would’ve forgiven him, no matter how much I know it hurt him to see the café leave the family.
Grandpa forgives a lot.
He truly is the best man in the entire universe.
“Sorry, Grandpa.” I smile at him, but put that smile away when I turn back to Chandler. Just looking at him makes my blood pressure rise. “We would have a spot open for you, but it’s a rule that if you’ve tried to get married within the past month, you have to sit out speed dating.”
Grandpa eyes me, clearly knowing I’m making up that rule on the spot and clearly thinking I should practice forgiveness too.
I shrug at him. “One could say I’m trying to spare someone’s ego when no one here wants to talk to him, but fine. Hundred dollars for a ticket, please.”
Chandler chokes. “A hundred dollars ?”
“Oh, you spent everything off the sale of the café already? Pity.”
“The sign says twenty-five .”
“It’s a hundred,” Devi says as she comes up beside me. “Twenty-five is the senior rate.”
“Better come with a blow job,” Chandler mutters.
“I hear there are machines for that,” I reply perkily.
I expect another look from Grandpa, possibly accompanied with a soft but chiding Sabrina , but it doesn’t come.
Why?
Because he’s squinting at something across the café.
You didn’t think the only reason I called Grey’s grandmother was because he bought my café and was threatening to ruin it, did you?
Please.
“Who’s that?” Grandpa asks.
“Who?” I ask back.
“The woman who’s staring at me. She seems—she’s not from here. But I feel like I know her.”
I look behind me. “Madeleine Cartwright? That’s Grey’s grandmother. Have you met Grey yet? He owns the café now. I think you’d like him.”
“Could you shut up?” Chandler mutters while he shoves four twenties at me.
“No, she can’t,” Devi answers for me. “And you’re short two twenties.”
“This is extortion.”
He’s right. He’s only short one twenty for the already inflated price we quoted him, but I’ll take Devi’s side over Chandler’s any day.
I would take a poisonous toad’s side over Chandler’s any day.
“You could try to find a new girlfriend without speed dating,” Devi says. “Maybe somewhere like Florida. Or in Europe. Or Siberia. Basically, anywhere thousands of miles from here.”
I gesture her into my seat. “Here. You finish. Grandpa, come on. I’ll introduce you.”
When I rise and turn, though, Zen is helping Mimi slip into the kitchen and six people are blocking our way.
And yes, she’s absolutely Mimi to me now.
She insisted.
First impressions from this afternoon? I adore her just as much in person as I have on the phone.
An excited murmur goes up as Iris calls for all of the ladies to take a seat. She’s running things this year.
“Is Grey participating?” one more woman asks me. “That poor man. His divorce was awful.”
And that’s all it takes to set off the whisper chain.
“I saw a picture on Insta, and it looks like his sister’s still really close friends with his ex-wife. Like, they went on vacation together .”
“I heard she took his dog.”
“I saw an article that said he had to pay her a hundred-million-dollar settlement because of a loophole in their prenup.”
“ Oh my god .”
“Ladies,” Iris calls again. “Seats! Gentlemen, let the ladies through. They’ll be seated while you move from table to table.”
Grandpa stills, looking at the kitchen.
“Madeleine Cartwright?” he says to me.
“That’s what she told me her name was. But do you know, I heard she went to Carnegie Mellon too. About the same time you did. I wonder if you knew each other.”
He eyes me with bright blue eyes that are getting watery at the edges. “You’re trouble.”
“You used the wrong word for the best ,” I squeeze his arm. “Want me to get you a seat by the window so you can watch everyone be totally goofy as we all try to put our best feet forward?”
His gaze wavers. He’s staring at the kitchen, but he looks to the table at the edge of the front window, where he used to tuck himself in to work on payroll and inventory or share a cup of coffee while chatting with artists who wanted us to display their creations and fellow business owners along Main Street.
He’s never participated in speed dating, but he’s always come to watch. Grandma used to come too.
“I’ll sit,” he says. “You go get a table. Find a nice man who makes you happy.”
Not likely.
Someone grabs me by the arm and pushes me into the nearest seat. “Numbers are uneven.”
“We could kick Chandler out,” Kayla whispers.
“We are not assholes,” they reply. “Besides, how much more fun is it to watch him strike out tonight?”
“You ready for this?” Frannie says from the next table. “It’s so weird that Laney’s not joining us, isn’t it?”
“Laney hasn’t been here in three years anyway.”
“I know, but I thought she’d have her year after her bad breakup and then be back. Instead, we get you. This is fun.”
“Gentlemen, line up,” Iris calls. “And, go!”
Three-quarters of the men swarm the room, looking for an open table.
Decker slides into the seat across from me.
“ We’re cousins ,” I remind him with a smile.
He winks. “Not by blood, apparently. That makes you fair game to the powers of my irresistible charms.”
I crack up, despite the sentiment making me throw up in my mouth a little.
If I were watching this from the outside, that would be hilarious. And so, I’m happy to let every other woman in this place think that my cousin is a catch.
I’m not the only person in the family with zero intentions of settling down.
He lounges back in his seat with a broad grin, threading his fingers together as he rests his hands over his Don’t piss off the writer or he might kill you in a book long-sleeve T-shirt. “Jack and Lucky are gonna be so jealous that I got a crack at you first.”
The fact that I’m not laughing right now speaks volumes to how worried I am about whatever Grey will have to say when he finally corners me. “You are ridiculous.”
“And you’re stressed.”
“Never.” I am so stressed.
“Where’s Jitter?”
“Mom came and got him. Too many people tonight.”
“First timer has started,” Iris calls. “You have three minutes.”
I glance around the room and spot my other two cousins.
Jack was apparently a slowpoke. He has a look of these three minutes might kill me on his face as he leans back and Addison Hunter leans forward, drawing something on the table with her finger.
Probably explaining to him that since she’s in finance and he’s an engineer, they’d make smart, competent, beautiful children.
“Ew,” Decker mutters.
Lucky, on the other hand, is on the opposite side of the room, actively engaged in an animated conversation with Viola Hammerbach. She’s twenty-five years older than he is.
And she was his kindergarten teacher.
“Are they catching up, or is he flirting with her?” I ask Decker.
“I asked him yesterday who his favorite teacher of all time was, and he named her, so it’s anyone’s guess. Shame about her husband. Good for her for getting back out there though.”
I look back to where Grandpa was headed to sit along the wall.
Not there.
Grey’s noticed too.
He’s two tables down, apparently pulled in to make numbers even, which I’m attempting to actively ignore. And speaking of ignoring, he’s completely ignoring whatever Kayla is saying to him at their table.
“So who is she?” Decker asks.
“Oh my god, did you sit with me because you want to hit on an old lady and think I’ll just give up the scoop? I’m off gossip, remember.”
He cracks up.
Fair.
I was totally giving him shit. “I hear she’s Mr. Cartwright’s grandmother,” I murmur.
“You hear?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“With what degree of certainty?”
“Given what we all know about genetics…”
“ She was in his life as his grandmother , correct?” Decker clarifies.
“Correct.”
“And you’re sure?”
“Yes.”
“As in, she was the woman in that picture in Grandpa’s yearbook that I found?”
“Mm. I assume so.”
“Why’s she here?”
“She got on a plane and flew here from wherever she’s from?”
“ Sabrina .”
“Time!” Iris calls. “Everyone move. No, this way. Lucky. Other way. There you go. Mrs. Hammerbach has you all flustered, doesn’t she? Talk as soon as you sit. We’re not giving time for moving tables from here on out.”
“Did you do that?” Decker asks while he rises.
“Introduce Lucky to his kindergarten teacher? No. Also no to setting the rules for tonight.”
“We’re talking later about why Grandpa disappeared after making I’m seeing a ghost eyes at the new old hottie in town and why you didn’t tell me you called her . Don’t deny it. I know you did.”
“Get moving, Decker, or people will think you’re asking for my phone number.”
He makes a face and dives for the table in the next row, settling in across from Devi.
Walter Blunderman, whom I’ve known since he used to yell at Laney, Emma, and me anytime we got too loud in our treehouse, since his property bumped up against Grandma and Grandpa’s yard, eases his way into the seat Decker’s just abandoned.
Grey is taking the seat at the table beside me.
Dammit . I was hoping they’d move the other way.
“Hi, Mr. Blunderman,” I say with fake cheer. “Bad arthritis night?”
“Getting better. That herbal tea Fiona whipped up for me made it a lot worse, so I’m doing better since I’m off it. You still know too much about everybody and their brother?”
“Nope. I’m off gossip.”
“That’s not what I heard.”
I fake gasp. “ Mr. Blunderman . Are you taking up my previous occupation? I love it. Tell me what else you’ve heard.”
“Nope. You’re off gossip. Bones might be creaky, but my ears still work.”
I miss half of what he says.
Not because I don’t want to listen to him, but because every time Grey says something to Isabella next to me, his voice rumbles in my ears over everything else.
Get a grip, Sabrina .
You don’t do this .
Men are dicks. They don’t make ’em like Grandpa Harry anymore. Look at what Laney’s father did. Look what your own father did. Look at what Chandler did. Even Theo’s a dick, but at least he’s a known dick, and he knows I’ll cut off his dick if he pulls a dick move on Laney now.
I’m not a man-hater.
I’m just so fucking wary after everything I’ve seen over the years. The couples who make it, who truly adore and respect and accept each other every day of their lives? They’re so rare.
I’d rather be alone with my dog and tight with my besties.
And when they have kids, I’ll be the best damn Aunt Sabrina to ever exist.
They are my family.
And three minutes goes by entirely too fast while I’m desperately trying to convince myself that I’m still anti-relationship and that I don’t want anything to do with this wounded, vulnerable, sometimes dorky, always hot man at the next table.
My stomach tightens. My pulse flutters. My fingers tense. And all too soon, I’m wishing Mr. Blunderman a great time tonight while he pushes out of his chair and heads to the next row.
Grey drops into the seat and hits me with a glare that tells me every last second of the next three minutes will feel like an eternity.
It’s time to face the music.