Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
Georgie
The cicadas and crickets sing me all the way home to Meant to Bean.
It’s the kind of mild August night that makes me nostalgic for summer as a child, when I would run to the coffee shop to wait in a booth and read a book while Mama was closing.
She would bring me a hot cocoa or a steamed milk with vanilla in a real mug and kiss my forehead or brush a lock of hair from my face that I hadn’t noticed because I was too lost in Narnia or Avonlea or Hogwarts.
We still have all of the mugs Mama made in her earthenware kiln mounted along one of the walls in the shop. Whenever someone orders “for here,” they get to pick their mug.
Most people don’t care, but I do.
Because my mama did.
The walk home from the stadium takes me down Broad Street, past the Piggly Wiggly and the ice cream shop, and left onto Sycamore, where roots from the live oaks have buckled the sidewalk.
There’s a pothole at the corner of Sycamore and Mill with an orange cone next to it that promises someone’s planning to fill it soon, but I have my doubts.
I jump over it, looking at Mama’s high-top Chuck Taylors on my feet that used to be white and are now a shade of watered-down beige that Converse has never sold.
I think of every stain and scratch to the canvas as patina. Something that adds character.
What they do not add, however, is about a quarter inch of space to the toe box that I would greatly appreciate.
It doesn’t matter, though. Women wear shoes that are slightly uncomfortable all the time, and these really are fine, when I haven’t been on my feet working all day and cheering all night.
My mama got them just before her diagnosis and barely had the chance to wear them.
I used to put patches all over them until I lost the most important one.
Now, I let the shoes speak for themselves, a testament to all the places I’ve … never been.
Well, except for Phoenix during Spring Training. My one-and-only trip on an airplane. My one-and-only time leaving the South in my whole life.
It was also my one-and-only time meeting a hunky baseball player—number 49. Logan Fischer.
He grabbed my copy of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe like he had some kind of claim to it and, by extension, me. Like we were tethered together by words on pages that we both love.
The way he held my eyes while we talked …
I laugh at myself as I reach the parking lot of Meant to Bean. My long, wavy blonde hair falls in front of my face, covering a blush that the night sky is already doing plenty to obscure.
It’s not often that I have a crush, but they’re always from afar. Usually, it’s a customer—a regular who seems so thoughtful and perfect from a distance, especially if he stops by the Little Free Library I added a couple of years ago on the northwest corner of the shop.
But too often, a single conversation is all it takes to make me realize that the guys are more Mr. Collins than Mr. Darcy.
At least this time, the sole conversation I had with Logan Fischer was the opposite.
He started as Mr. Darcy in my mind, and after thirty minutes of talking about books, he became a three-dimensional figure.
A living, breathing man with a dry sense of humor who was a little rigid and a lot attached to The Chronicles of Narnia.
Plus so, so handsome.
As a proper dream man should be.
The sun set over an hour ago, but the metal handle of the front door is still warm.
The AC hits me the second I pull the door open, blowing hair into my face along with the smell of the place—dark roast and old wood, mingled with the floral, honey-sweet scent of the sweet alyssum in the window boxes at the front of the shop.
I smile at the pair of customers sitting, but they’re too busy looking at their phones to notice me.
“What are you smiling at?” my godmother, Alma, asks from behind the counter. She learned English watching action movies in Mexico in the eighties—Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone fighting bad guys—and it shows. Everything she says sounds like it should be followed by an explosion.
I walk over to the counter, pulling my paperback copy of Robert Frost poems from my back pocket and dropping it at my favorite booth while I go.
I smile bigger at Alma. “I think you mean, ‘what has you in such a good mood?’”
Alma shrugs, but I see her eyes crinkle. “That’s what I said.”
Alma’s warmer in Spanish, but I’ve never told her I understand as well as I do, because then she’d make me practice actually speaking.
I don’t mind hard work, but I draw the line at hard work that makes me look so silly.
I’m lying. I don’t draw any lines. Avoidance is so much easier!
“Come on, Alma,” I tell her. “You know my philosophy on smiling.”
“Yes, yes. ‘People should need a reason to be in a bad mood, not a good mood.’”
“Exactly.” I’m about to plant my hands on the counter between us when I remember that that will make her have to clean it. The shop doesn’t close for another twenty minutes, but no one needs extra work before closing. “Why don’t I grab a bucket and start cleaning the bathrooms?” I ask.
“Abby is already cleaning them,” she says, running a cloth along the espresso machine. A moment later, the door chimes, and I turn to see that the last two customers have left.
Alma rounds the counter and starts cleaning the table they vacated before I can step in to help.
“Okay, I’ll mop,” I say.
“I mopped before those two came in.”
“Then I’ll do dishes.”
“You’ll rest,” Alma says, putting a hand on her generous hip. “You work too hard all day by yourself on that coffee truck.”
I try to give her a level look, but it never delivers like hers does. “That truck was my idea.”
“Try telling your stepmother that.”
“Marlowe didn’t take credit for it,” I say, walking around the counter and lifting the chairs from the nearest table one by one, flipping them upside down onto the tabletop.
“Right. It was your stepsister.”
“Nicolette wasn’t trying to steal my idea. She told Marlowe she got the idea from me.”
“I was here, mija. You took Lulabelle to that food truck night at Sugar Maple Farms, and you came back saying Meant to Bean should have a coffee truck in Sugar Maple. And what did Nicolette do when her mother came by the next day?”
I move to the next table, flipping chairs. “She presented a plan for a mobile coffee shop,” I admit sheepishly.
Her eyebrows rise high enough to put all other eyebrow raises to shame.
“But that’s the difference: She actually made the proposal. I just said it out loud.”
“Because you were too scared to present it to Marlowe and just let it happen. Tell me I’m wrong.”
She’s not wrong, so I don’t tell her. Nicolette’s plan was good, but she put the truck on Maple Street—Sugar Maple’s Main Street—right next to the diner and the food truck at the end of the street. The truck was invisible.
What I knew after touring both Sugar Maple Farms and its canning facility with Lulabelle on field trips was that the famous farm and factory had no legitimate coffee options for visitors or employees.
A few thousand employees, plus the tourists who come for the jam, the u-pick strawberries, and the fall festival.
A captive audience with plenty of places to eat, but nowhere to get a good cup of coffee.
When Nicolette and Marlowe were talking one night about how the truck wasn’t doing as well as they’d expected, they actually asked my opinion … but only because I was the one they’d tasked with running it.
“Oh, I don’t know,” I said, cleaning the tables near where they were sitting. “The location? We’re sort of lost on Maple Street. Maybe we could try approaching Sugar Maple Farms directly—see if they’d want us on their property during market days and at the factory the other days.”
“Why?” Marlowe asked.
I felt my cheeks burning already. “Because they have so many employees?”
Why did I make it sound like a question when I knew the answer?
“How many employees is that?”
“A few thousand?”
Marlowe’s nostrils flared, and she breathed in deeply, the way she always does when she’s angry. “This is your family’s legacy, and you knew the location wasn’t working. Next time, speak up sooner.”
“Mom,” Nicolette chastised. “That’s good advice, Georgie.”
Marlowe gave me a smile that almost felt apologetic, and it was almost enough to make me feel like she cared. “You are just like your father with all your … big ideas, Georgie.”
That comparison makes me sick every time.
Alma is wiping down more tables and muttering in Spanish too softly for me to hear. She doesn’t like my stepfamily.
Considering they’re the only family in my life, I appreciate that she at least tries to keep it to herself.
After I’ve flipped the last chair, I ask Alma how the night went.
“Busy,” she answers.
“Game nights are always busy lately,” I say. The Mullet Ridge Mudflaps have been around since I was a kid, but over the last year, they’ve gone from the bottom of the minor leagues to the top. Marlowe installed one of those art TVs so we can air local sporting events.
It’s pretty anti–coffee shop having a TV, but it’s been a smart business move.
Last year, billionaire Kayla Carville bought the team and brought in the Fischer brothers—Logan and Lucas—twin pitchers with a massive social media following, who turned every outing into something that went viral. Lucas has since been called up to the Major Leagues.
Logan is still here. Number 49.
And when I haven’t been busy working at the coffee van over in nearby Sugar Maple, I’ve been to every home game.
I know it’s silly, but after we met in Phoenix, my crush became larger than life. I didn’t offer to give him my number because I didn’t want the inevitable disappointment of him never using it. Yes, we live in the same town, but not for long.
He’s out living his dreams, and I’ve confined mine to this sleepy Southern town.