Chapter 14
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Georgie
The coffee truck smells like the end of a long day—steamed milk, dark roast, and a hint of cardamom from about five million It’s Bean Reals, thanks to the sweet woman from the reunion who told the entire incoming reunion group to try it.
Now I’m standing in the truck in the factory lot trying to remember if I’ve eaten anything since Alma’s breakfast burrito at four thirty AM.
Wait, did I eat a breakfast burrito?
No problem. Logan is taking me out for dinner in an hour, so I have ten minutes left to clean the truck, ten minutes to get home, and forty minutes to get ready. I don’t need to wash my hair, do I?
Doesn’t matter. That’s what dry shampoo was made for.
All I have left to clean is the portafilter, drip tray, and steam wand, which typically takes ten minutes.
I run through the motions easily until I’m left with only the steam wand.
I could do this one in my sleep. Purge, wipe, purge, wipe.
The rhythm of it is almost meditative, with the warm steam against my hand, the damp cloth moving in the same small arc over and over.
My eyelids softly close. The rhythm continues. Purge, wipe, purge—
My forehead smacks the machine.
I jerk back, heart slamming, the shock of it crackling through my every nerve. My hands are shaking and my eyes are wide open now, the adrenaline doing in two seconds what eleven hours of coffee couldn’t.
I stand in the truck cab breathing hard and staring at the steam wand. There’s going to be a mark right in the center of my forehead. I press my fingers to it. Yep. That’s a bump.
Okay.
So maybe it’s time to talk to Marlowe about getting more help.
I drive home on high alert, my mind turning again to Logan and the Tree. What was it he said? I don’t think she knew she could say no.
I click my turn signal.
This isn’t the time to ruminate on deep discussions. If I start thinking, I’m going to stop paying attention to the road, and I can’t risk that.
The seat is warm at my back, and the wheel is warm in my hands.
The angle of the sun makes the landscape amber and sweet.
It would be so easy to fall asleep watching the last of the peach orchards blur past the window, the trees heavy and drowsy in the hottest part of the day, the air coming through the vents carrying something sweet and almost overripe, completely unlike the dark, heavy scents of the truck.
My lungs almost don’t know what to do with it.
But it’s peaceful.
So very, very peaceful …
“No!” I yell, pinching my thigh as hard as I can, the pain jolting me awake. “Stay awake, Georgie,” I tell myself out loud. And then I start singing to the tune of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,” making up terrible rhymes that are dumb enough to make me giggle.
“Stay awake Geor-gi-an-a! You cannot sleep, you ba-na-na. Sleeping is for night, not day, if you sleep, you’ll go away. Stay awake, oh, Georgie Girl. You will make your family hurl.”
The second verse is even more hideous. I can only imagine what Logan would think if he could see me now, but something tells me he’d be chuckling, at least. And maybe checking my head for a concussion.
I pull into the Meant to Bean parking lot at four twenty-one and grab my bag and the day’s supply log from the passenger seat so I can restock tomorrow.
At four thirty in the morning.
I whimper.
The shop is bustling, and I just want to swing through and give Alma a quick hug before I go upstairs.
With Logan’s hat on my head, the supply log in my arm, and my bag over one shoulder, I come through the back, already calculating: hug, shower, hair, the white sundress I laid out this morning at four thirty.
Although on second thought, it’ll probably wash me out, considering the sun and I only know each other through the coffee truck window these days …
Alma’s at the espresso machine, and I snake around another barista to give her a quick one-armed hug.
“Ay, you look awful.” She grabs my face in her hands and squeezes my cheeks, pushing my face left then right to better examine the bags under my eyes.
“It’s just from being in the truck,” I say, pulling my face from her grip, though the movement makes me feel like my brain is bumping around. “I need to go get ready.”
“For what?” Alma asks, eyeing me.
My mouth stretches into a smile that feels used up after a long day of smiling at customers. A long few weeks, to be precise. “I’m going out for dinner with a friend.”
Alma’s eyebrows almost jump off her face. “What friend? I know all your friends. They work here.”
My face heats. “Some of them are customers.”
Alma’s gaze flicks to my hat and back down. “Ah. Good. Have fun.”
“I’ll try,” I say with a weak chuckle. I don’t go up yet, though.
I look past the service counter into the dining room, where I spot Marlowe speaking to a woman who looks around my age.
She’s lean and wearing Doc Marten’s with a rust-orange corduroy skirt that makes me hope she’s made a deal with Mother Nature to bring autumn early to the South.
“What’s going on back there?” I ask, my voice cracking from overuse. Alma eyes me before following my gaze.
“Go find out.”
“I don’t want to intrude.”
Alma squeezes the rag she’s been using. “It is your shop. Your grandparents built it. Your mother shaped it and left it for you, but you’re afraid to even touch it without wearing gloves. When are you going to leave your fingerprints on it, mija?”
“I can’t put my fingerprints on it when Marlowe’s the one keeping it all afloat. Until it’s paid off, I can’t make it about me.”
Not when I already agreed not to.
I was seventeen when Marlowe spread a mountain of paperwork over the kitchen table.
“Things still aren’t good, sweetie,” she said.
“But you can take over Meant to Bean when you come of age, or you can have your dad and me keep taking care of things until the loan is paid off, as your mother always wanted for you.” Her lips pulled into a thin smile the way it always did when she mentioned my mother.
“If you want me to keep helping until it’s paid off, I’m more than happy to.
I know I’m not your real mother, but I want you to inherit something real, because I care about you. ”
I didn’t do any math in my head or look at the figures circled on any of the loan documents. Marlowe was being so sweet to help me, and I would have done anything for her to keep wanting to help, for her to want to love me.
It never felt like a choice at all.
“I want your help,” I said. She smiled and hugged me and promised she would.
She’s kept that promise.
She has.
But try telling that to Alma’s gaze. It could roast me like coffee beans.
“Go find out,” she repeats. When I hesitate, she sighs and says, “Tell her I sent you.”
“Gracias, Alma.”
She shoos me with her towel.
I’m tired, my brain feels like it’s been wrapped in a blanket, I’m dizzy from hunger and lack of sleep … yet Alma’s lit a fire under me. Unfortunately, it’s a small one that’s flickering out after only four steps in Marlowe’s direction.
I can’t do this.
I veer to the left—toward the back, where the staircase is—when Marlowe notices me.
“Georgiana, good, you’re here.”
I turn toward her, like I hadn’t even noticed my stepfamily six feet away at a big open table. “Oh, hi,” I say, giving an awkward wave with my tumbler and pointing in the direction of my apartment. “I’m just—”
“This is Olivia Turner,” Marlowe says over me, giving me a tight grin. “Alma told her to apply for a job. I thought you were doing fine on the truck, but it appears you’re already looking to hire someone else.”
I can see it in her eyes: You’re all wishes, no work.
And I shrink.
All I wanted to do was impress her, and I’m not even the one who’s trying to hire someone right now. I want her to want to do it because she believes in me and cares about me.
I must look so pathetic.
I glance at this girl—Olivia Turner—hoping she isn’t silently yet openly judging me, but instead, she’s eyeing Marlowe like she would a stray dog.
Her brown eyes are even darker than mine beneath her long bangs, and she has a short wavy brown bob with platinum streaks.
Although she’s sitting still with her hands clasped in front of her on the table, she has the energy of a coiled spring, with her knee bouncing beneath the table and her black backpack sitting next to her feet.
“It’s nice to meet you,” I say, extending my hand to shake hers. “I’m Georgie Ashman.”
“Good to meet you,” Olivia says. She has a natural grit to her voice that makes me wish she narrated audiobooks. “I don’t mean to be rude, but are you okay? You look”—she grimaces—“not good.”
“I’ve been up for work since four thirty,” I explain before adding, “but I’m all right.”
“It’s the lighting in here. She’s fine in natural light.
” Marlowe looks up from Olivia’s resume, taking in my wrinkled T-shirt from the heat of the truck combined with nine hours wearing an apron.
Her lips pull into a smile. Does she think that was a compliment?
Then to Olivia, she says, “When my daughter returns, we can start the interview.”
Her words slice with the sharpness of a knife, making me stand up straight even as I get cut down.
I’ve spent ten years trying to fit into a sentence where her “daughter” is mentioned, not as the only one, but at least as someone on the list. I would give every branch on my tree to hear her say “my other daughter.”
“I’m right here, Mom,” Nicolette says, returning from the restroom with Lulabelle in tow. Lulabelle gives me a huge hug before taking her tablet and turning on an episode of Bluey in the next booth.
Nicolette isn’t wearing her usual easy smile. Her eyes are flitting between me and Marlowe and then to Olivia, who looks incredibly uncomfortable. Marlowe smiles up at her daughter, oblivious to the coldness of her own words.
Nicolette gives me a quick hug. “Hey, sis,” she says softly. Then she slides into the booth and mutters, “You have two daughters, Mom.”