Chapter 4
TESSA
The coffee shop on Seventh Avenue had been Tessa’s Thursday morning ritual for five years.
She claimed the same corner table near the window early enough to watch the neighborhood wake up, ordered the same medium dark roast with extra cream and a single sugar, and was greeted by the same barista, who had grown from an awkward high school sophomore into a confident college student during the years Tessa had been building her business one event at a time.
Now she had a warehouse in Sunset Park with industrial ovens and a walk-in freezer the size of her first apartment.
She worked with a team of fifteen who trusted her vision.
Her contracts were with clients whose names appeared in society columns.
Some rituals you didn’t abandon because you could afford better coffee.
Tessa opened her laptop and pulled up the August timeline.
Oath Capital’s client appreciation dinner was eight weeks out.
She had already locked in the vendors, but the plating specs needed another review.
She scrolled through images, made notes, and tried to focus on garnish placement instead of his eyes.
Her phone buzzed.
Jessica: Confirming china rental for Berkowitz bar mitzvah. They want gold-rimmed. Thoughts?
Tessa: Gold rim reads formal. Check if they’re doing candlelight. If yes, gold works. If not, plain white.
She set the phone down.
“Medium dark roast!”
Tessa stood, grabbed her coffee from the counter, and returned to her corner. She wrapped her hands around the cup. The August dinner would be flawless. Flawless was the standard she set, and it had never failed her.
The door chimed. She didn’t look up. Door chimes had been part of the soundtrack of this hour for five years.
“Large coffee. Two sugars, extra cream.”
She knew that voice before she looked up. She looked anyway.
Gabriel stood at the counter in a charcoal suit and a navy tie loosened just enough to suggest the morning had already tested his patience. He hadn’t seen her yet. She had a window of thirty seconds to decide what kind of woman she was going to be in this moment.
A different woman would’ve left. Tessa stayed.
He paid for his coffee, turned, and saw her.
For one beat, she watched something soften in his face that he didn’t bother to hide. Then he crossed the room, coffee in hand, and stopped at the edge of her table.
“Good morning.”
“Gabriel.”
“May I sit?”
“I have a few minutes.”
He sat.
It should’ve been awkward, and it was, briefly.
Tessa had decided on the long drive home from Martha’s Vineyard that she was done being awkward about Gabriel Sterling.
She had years of practice at commanding a room.
She picked up her coffee, took a deliberate sip, and set it down exactly where it had been—a small performance of calm she could almost believe.
“What brings you to Park Slope?” she asked.
“Knox bought an apartment two blocks east. He’s getting the kitchen redone—what he insists on calling a small project—and asked me to look in on the contractor before my eight-thirty.”
“I’ve worked in a lot of kitchens. A remodel is never a small project.”
Gabriel’s mouth curved. “Everything is minor in Knox’s mind.”
“Then he’s in for a lifetime of surprises.”
“I know.”
She let herself laugh, and the laugh was easier than she expected. She’d forgotten how easy it was to laugh with him.
“How’s your mother?” she asked.
“Still terrorizing the Upper East Side. Yours?”
“Retired. She’s living in South Jersey. She volunteers at the library and hands me books I’m supposed to have time to read.”
“Do you?”
“No. But I tell her I do.”
He smiled, and it reached his eyes.
“What about you?” she asked. “Where are you, Gabriel? Not what do you do. I read the website. Where are you in your life?”
The pause was familiar. He had always taken her questions like she’d asked him for something more than the words.
“I work too much. I bought a place in Tribeca three years ago that I haven’t finished decorating because I don’t know what I want it to look like. I see Knox and Ronan and not many other people. My mother thinks I should marry a Lawrence. I disagree.”
“A Lawrence.”
“There are about six of them. They’re all interchangeable.”
“Catalogue brides.”
“More or less.”
She laughed again. Easier this time.
“Your turn,” he said.
“I built it. I run it. I’m very good at it.
I bought my parents a house in South Jersey three years ago.
I keep granola bars in my bag because old habits die hard.
I have a friend named Lucy who supplies my desserts and tells me when I’m being ridiculous.
I haven’t been on a real vacation in four years. I’d like to go to Paris.”
“Paris? “
“I went once,” she said. “Forty-eight hours when I was twenty-two on a layover I extended on purpose. I ate three meals. I cried at the second one and then I came home and didn’t let myself think about it for a decade. So, Paris.”
“You’ll go.”
“Will I?”
“You said you were going to build a catering company without resources or connections, and you did. If you say you’re going to Paris, you’ll do it.”
She drank her coffee. There were a hundred reasons she hadn’t gone yet, and none of them belonged in a Thursday-morning coffee shop.
“You said a few minutes,” Gabriel said. “I don’t want to monopolize your morning.”
“It’s only a problem if I object.” She set her cup down. “And I was finishing up before you walked in, so it’s not a problem.”
“In that case, tell me a story.”
“What kind?”
“Tell me about your first year in the business.”
She thought about it for a beat. “The first month of Thorne Events, I catered a fortieth birthday party in a Brooklyn brownstone for a client who had three cats. I’m not a woman who knew, in that period of my life, to ask a client about cats.
I had a tray of crab cakes resting on a sideboard while I went back to the kitchen.
I came back, and the tray was gone. Vanished.
Like the rapture had taken it. The largest of the three cats, a Norwegian Forest cat the size of a beagle, had relocated all twelve crab cakes one at a time into the master bedroom and arranged them on the bed. ”
Gabriel set his coffee down and leaned forward. “Did the guests get crab cakes?”
“They didn’t. I told the client her cats had excellent taste, and I replaced the crab cakes with a scallop crudo I invented in fifteen minutes from what was in the fridge.
She told everyone the scallop was the best thing she’d ever eaten.
I worked the rest of service on autopilot, smiled at every guest like my face had been wired in place, and didn’t say a full sentence to my own team until I was loading the van at midnight. The client tipped me forty percent.”
He was laughing. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed that sound.
“My grandmother taught me to feed people through any disaster. She used to say if you can’t feed someone, you can at least sit with them. I’ve been over-correcting on the first half of that sentence ever since.”
“I’d like to meet her.”
“She’s been gone seven years.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Me too. She left me her cookbook. There are notes in the margins in red pen where she corrected the original author. I keep it propped open on my counter like she’s still telling me what to do.”
He was looking at her again the way he had at the wedding, only this time she didn’t feel exposed by it. Her hand tightened on her coffee cup. That was worse.
“I have to go,” she said.
“I know.”
He stood and picked up his coffee. He hadn’t finished it. Neither had she.
“Thursday mornings,” he said. “Is this a regular thing?”
“Five years running.”
“Good to know.”
He walked toward the door, then stopped and turned back.
“The Norwegian Forest cat,” he said. “What was its name?”
“Buttercup.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” He paused, one hand on the doorframe, and looked at her with an expression she couldn’t quite read. “When it comes to you, I seem to remember everything.”
He left.
She watched him through the window until he turned the corner onto Sixth Avenue. The coffee in her cup had gone lukewarm at some point during the cat story. She wrapped her hands around it anyway and sat for another minute, because the chair felt different now.
She closed the laptop, shouldered her bag, and stepped out into the warm June morning. She walked toward the subway with the coffee she had decided to abandon halfway down the block.
A man sat on the corner near the subway entrance with a cardboard sign propped against his knee, and a worn jacket too heavy for June hanging loose on his frame.
She didn’t break stride. She reached into her bag for the granola bar, and the water bottle she always carried.
“Here.” She set them beside him. “Have a good morning.”
“God bless you.”
She raised a hand and descended into the subway.
Nobody should be hungry. Ever. That was the promise she had made when she was thirteen, watching her mother choose between groceries and medication.
The promise that had shaped her career, her company, every spreadsheet and every donation pickup and every granola bar in every bag she had ever carried.
Her phone rang as the train pulled out of the station. Lucy’s name glowed on the screen like a lifeline.
“Morning, Luce.”
“Hey. Quick question about the Berkowitz bar mitzvah next weekend. You wanted three dozen chocolate babka and two dozen lemon poppyseed, right?”
“That’s right. Can you handle it?”
“Already on it. I’m also testing a new honey almond tart. Want me to throw in a dozen for the dessert station? No charge. I need feedback.”
“You’re going to make me fat.”
“That’s the plan.” A pause. Lucy had a gift for pauses. “You sound off. Talk.”
Tessa watched the tunnel lights flash past. “You know your friend Devney? The one who just married Ronan Wilder last week?”
“The cake was a triumph. Yes.”
“One of his partners was my high school boyfriend. He walked into the coffee shop this morning and sat down at my table.”
Lucy went silent. Then: “Wait. Hold on. You went to your stupid coffee shop that isn’t my shop and you ran into him, and you let me sit here asking about babka? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I’m telling you now.”
“Tessa. Which one is he?”
“Gabriel.”
“The buttoned-up one?”
“That’s the one.”
“And?”
“And he asked me where I was in my life. In words. Like a person.”
“Tessa, that’s not nothing.”
“I know.”
“Are you okay?”
“Rattled.”
“Yeah.”
“He had an eight-thirty. He stayed past it. He didn’t finish his coffee. He walked all the way to the door, then turned around and came back to ask me the name of a cat.”
“Honey. He came back from the door.”
“I know.” The train pulled into her stop. She gripped the pole. “I need to go. Warehouse meeting in twenty.”
“Call me later.”
“Lucy?”
“What?”
“He said when it comes to me, he remembers everything.”
Lucy was quiet for a long beat. “Tessa. Honey. Get to your warehouse.”
“Working on it.”
“And eat a real breakfast. You handed your granola bar to a stranger again, didn’t you?”
“Possibly.”
“I knew it.”
Tessa ended the call and climbed the stairs to street level. Her warehouse stood three blocks away, red brick with industrial windows, a building that had once housed garment workers and now housed her dreams. The sign she had commissioned two years ago hung above the entrance. Thorne Events.
Inside, her team was already setting up for the day. Jessica coordinated china deliveries on her phone. David reviewed weekend event assignments while testing a new sauce reduction.
“Boss.” Jessica looked up from her clipboard. “Berkowitz vegan option?”
“Add roasted cauliflower with tahini and pomegranate. Update the count.”
Jessica made a note. “Will do. Anything else?”
“No. I’ll be in my office if anyone needs me.”
Tessa walked to the back of the warehouse where she had carved out a small office space.
The desk and filing cabinet sat against one wall, and a corkboard above them held event timelines and vendor contacts.
A framed photo of her mother at the grand opening sat on the desk, her mother beaming with pride.
She sat there and stared at her screen.
I remember everything.
Her phone buzzed.
Lucy: You’re catastrophizing. I can feel it from Brooklyn. Stop.
Tessa: I’m working.
Lucy: Liar. Seven o’clock. Bakery. Cookies. Don’t make me come find you.
Despite everything, Tessa smiled.
She had lived in New York for years without seeing Gabriel Sterling once. Now she had seen him twice in one week. Twice was a coincidence. Three times would be the universe testing her.
Bring it on.