CHAPTER 4
River
Today, she was making ribbon candy, which was one of her favorites to make.
River supposed it was because of the way the sugar was warm as she bent it back and forth, creating the illusion that the strawberry-and-cream-flavored candy was an actual ribbon.
To make it, she first had to make simple syrup by boiling the sugar.
Then, she had to pull the sugar like taffy and determine the flavor she’d use and the colors she wanted to add.
She’d decided on strawberries and cream for half of this batch and peppermint, which was a bestseller, for the other half, so she had added the flavoring and colored the strawberry kind with just enough red and white to make it pale pink and added more red to the peppermint one to give it the feel of a ribboned candy cane.
Pulling sugar was probably her least favorite thing to do, but it had to be done, and it gave her some nice arm muscles without her having to work out, which River also didn’t like doing.
The second batch of the day had also been split and turned into green apple and cherry-vanilla candy, and by the time the shop opened, she’d already been up and at it for over four hours.
River wasn’t tired, though. She loved her job.
She had fallen in love with the old-timey candy and the shops it was still found in as a little kid, when her parents had taken her on her first trip to Disneyland, which wasn’t all that far away from where she was now.
She had loved the rides there, of course, and the games had also been fun, but River had been obsessed with the candy shop that hadn’t been much bigger than her own ever since.
It had the new candy, too, but there had been enough of the old kind that she could still recall the feeling that she’d gone back in time.
They’d had caramel apples, homemade fudge, and all sorts of cookies and pastries on top of that.
Her parents had bought her a mixed bag of candy, and they’d gotten half a pound of fudge that they’d all split between them later.
She still remembered the whole experience, and she had been six years old at the time.
They’d not been able to afford to go to the park often, so trips back to that shop had been few and far between, but she’d only needed to see it once.
As a teenager, she’d already known that she would go to pastry school, because while making candy probably seemed easy to some people, there was a lot of science involved.
One wrong ingredient or even too much or too little of the right one could cause an entire recipe to fall apart, so she’d gone to school to learn as much as she could.
Then, she’d gotten a job working for a local candy manufacturer that still made things by hand, but she hadn’t been all that happy there.
She didn’t just want to be the one making the candy.
She also wanted to be the one conceptualizing it and deciding what to make and what to sell each day.
So, at age thirty, she’d gotten a small business loan and opened her own shop right where she stood now, and it had been the happiest moment of her life when she had filled it with all the things that she’d known would make people feel the same way she’d had at six years old.
Now, River had old barrels filled with treats all around the shop, but she couldn’t make all of them by herself.
Even with her co-owner and best friend, Calista, helping her, as well as their two part-timers, who each worked about twenty hours a week, they couldn’t make enough to stock the shop, so she did have some candy that she bought from vendors, but it was all from handmade manufacturers, and she didn’t carry any of the new stuff.
If it had been made after 1960, she probably didn’t have it in her shop.
She remembered her parents asking her if that had been wise because kids today would want the new stuff that they recognized in the stores, but she’d stuck to her guns about wanting to provide an experience, not just candy.
So, she and Calista, who was mostly a silent partner who spent a couple of days in the shop helping out when she could, were in year five of being in business and were actually turning a profit.
They made large orders for events and parties that brought in good money, had fresh fudge on hand five days a week, made caramel apples in small batches, and when they sold out for the day, they were just out and offered a wide variety of old-style candy, along with a small soda shoppe counter for people who wanted a soda with their candy.
They sold Coke in the bottle, but everything else was handcrafted, and the ice cream was homemade, too.
Her shop was everything she had ever dreamed it would be, and while she knew it would never make her rich, it was her passion that made her happy, so she was good with that.
River made chocolate peanut butter fudge in the afternoon, snuck a piece for herself after it cooled, and when they finally closed for the day around six, she sat down in her chair for the first time that day, exhausted but happy.
Well, she was happy with her shop, her professional life.
She wasn’t so sure the same feeling applied to her love life, though.
She and Lacey had met a year and a half ago at a party, and they’d gone out on their first date the next night.
They’d fallen in love quickly, and as she leaned back in the chair that creaked all the time, River smiled at the memories of how it had felt to finally meet someone she found to be beautiful, sexy, smart, funny, kind, and every other thing she had been looking for.
Lacey owned her own business, too, so she understood how much work it took to make a business successful, and River appreciated that.
Things had been good between them up until Lacey had asked her to move in and River had frozen.
She had said no, and her reasons had made sense to her, even if not to Lacey, but the whole wanting to be right above the shop thing wasn’t the real reason she didn’t want to move in.
Sure, it was nice, being able to walk downstairs and be at work, but Lacey was right: the heat from the stove and the ovens made the apartment upstairs unbearable at times, and she didn’t have central AC up there; she had fans and a small window AC unit that worked sometimes, usually only after she smacked it on the side.
Lacey didn’t like staying over because of the heat and because it smelled like candy and fudge all the time, and she always wanted to eat it.
River supposed that by being surrounded by those scents all day, she’d grown used to them and wasn’t tempted to grab several pieces of candy or fudge a day like Lacey usually wanted to, but none of that had been the real reason for her declining to move in with Lacey.
The real reason had been that she hadn’t been ready for that.
She still wasn’t. River knew Lacey wanted to move in together and then get engaged and married.
She had always wanted those things, too, and she’d wanted them with Lacey, but things had been off between them, and she didn’t know why.
“Hey. Did you just close up?” Calista asked, coming in from the back door that led to the small parking lot.
“Yeah.”
“How’d you do today?”
“We were slammed. I guess there was some outdoor event down the street, so we were busy from open to close. I’m wiped,” she replied.
“There are worse problems to have. Did you make any chocolate walnut?”
“Yes, I did.” She laughed. “I saved you a piece. It sold out, so you owe me.”
Calista smiled at her and walked to the fridge to pull out the piece of her favorite fudge that also happened to be one of their most popular.
“So, where are you heading after this. Want to grab dinner?”
“I can’t. Lacey and I are having dinner.”
“How’s that going? Have you even seen her since you basically tossed her out of your car last week?”
“I didn’t toss her out of my car. Come on, Cal.”
“What? It sounded to me like she planned a nice date night for the two of you, and you acted like an asshole. I’m the best friend; I get to tell you these things.”
Calista bit into her fudge and leaned against one of the pristine prep counters.
“She didn’t really plan it. She wanted to do dinner and a movie, knowing that rom-coms aren’t my thing, but I went anyway because I know that she likes them.
Then, I’m sitting there, waiting for her to come out of the bathroom, and she just asks me if I want to go to dinner.
It was her date night to plan, but she hadn’t planned anything.
She didn’t have a restaurant in mind; she hadn’t made a reservation or anything.
When I suggested we go home instead because I knew how busy everything would be, she didn’t want to do that, either, but I was trying. ”
“And yet, you didn’t actually have dinner with her.”
“I could tell she was at least frustrated or annoyed with me, and I was tired. I was also frustrated or annoyed with her. She was the one who wanted a date night, and it felt like she didn’t put in any effort.
I picked her up, and it appeared like she’d expected me to have flowers for her at the door.
When I just used my key and walked in, she, like, looked caught off guard, but I always use my key.
If she wanted an experience or something, she could’ve asked me. ”
“Experience?”