Chapter 6 Girl Talk and Peaches #2
Kelsea sat forward with a pained smile. "I'm still in my twenties, so it wasn't as bad for me, but yeah, your margaritas are more lethal than anything I had in college. And we didn't measure anything."
"Okay, but the point is that no, we're not drinking Crystal's margaritas, and we also don't hex unless we all vote."
Eloise raised a hand. "Ohhh, is it bad I kind of hope something comes up and we all vote to hex someone? I mean, I did join the coven and have yet to do anything truly witchy."
"Not at all. Hexing is great. Unless you jokingly hex yourself," Jen pursed her lips staring at two cats lazily walking between their chairs. Sulphur was curled up against Casper's side and lifted her head, blinked at Jen then went back to sleep.
"Yeah, think we can ever undo that?" Kelsea asked no one in particular. Jen shrugged.
"Okay, well I don't think Kyle needs to be hexed," Bess said with laughter.
She was wearing a red beanie over her wavy black hair.
"I'm pretty sure Uncle J scared him sufficiently after he heard Kyle tell me I was only interested in being a pink-wearing feminist who hangs out with old biddies who think they're witches. "
"I'm definitely hexing the little shit-head now," Jen said as she scooped Sulphur up into her lap.
Ursula pointed at Jen. "No hexing. Bess is right, Jenson scared the crap out of him," she confirmed. "But you let us know if it is a matter that needs to be taken up with the council," she winked at Bess who winked back at her.
The women slowly made their way home a little while later leaving Bess, Ursula and Eloise brushing elbows in the kitchen as they cleaned. The teenager was staying the night in her moonlight room while Jenson was a few hours away finishing a job with his crew.
"Oh hey, Eloise? Shellee called me back and she's actually going to be gone for at least three months and I swear she was jumping up and down when I told her Ursula's best friend offered to step in. She said that you have a unique charm about you."
"I do," Eloise agreed.
"Yeah, her parents taught her to love herself young. It's weird," Ursula added with a smile.
"That is weird," Bess joked. "Where did your sense of humor come from if not from parent trauma?"
"I read a lot. And I had my share of heartbreak. If you play your cards right, you can turn heartbreak into wit."
"I'll keep that in mind," she laughed. "But The Black Cat, are you still up for that?"
A thrill went through her at the thought of taking on a new coffee shop project. "Absolutely. I can be there tomorrow morning. What time do you open?"
They made a plan before Bess retired for the night leaving Ursula and Eloise in the freshly cleaned kitchen soft and dim with two candles burning and one small lamp in the shape of a napping gold cat glowing on the counter.
"So, this Taylor guy," Ursula started. "No potential there? He handled my report from the fall festival. Very handsome. Very kind."
"He said he doesn't date. I'm not looking to crack that code," Eloise said with a knowing laugh.
"I think I could truly be content alone.
" When she saw Ursula make a face she shook her head.
"No, really. I have you, and these friends and I'm looking forward to sinking my teeth into this coffee shop until I figure out what I want to do.
I feel, I don't know, like pieces of myself I've been missing are coming back to me. "
"Yeah, I get that. Alright," she conceded. "You know you can stay here as long as you want."
"I know. But one day you and your lumber snack of a man are going to probably get married and move in here with Bess, because this house absolutely trumps his, and then the weird friend, slash, aunt-like creature?" She laughed throwing a thumb over her shoulder. "I'm out."
"That weird friend, slash, aunt-like creature is still welcome here no matter what."
Eloise leaned her head on Ursula's shoulder as they sat at the island. "And I appreciate that. I'm okay not looking too far forward right now."
"I'm surprised you haven't scared Jenson yet with your, 'If you hurt my best friend I'll kill you,' speech," Ursula said, doing a terrible impression of Eloise.
"I sound nothing like that. And what makes you think I haven't?"
"Have you?"
Eloise lifted her head and wiggled her eyebrows.
Ursula frowned trying to read her. "You have?"
"Please," she scoffed. "Fourth day I was here."
She thought about that morning. Ursula had been in the greenhouse and she was sitting in the warm kitchen, the morning light taking its time leaving her in that early darkness with the soft glow of the kitchen lamp and a cup of hot coffee giving her warmth.
She watched the steam rise and dissipate as she thought about nothing.
There was a gentle numbness that had taken over her, the kind that settles on the shoulders of a woman who has been moving so fast and taking on so much that when she finally hit the brakes and settled into a moment, she felt like she was enclosed in a silent and peaceful pocket.
How long it would last was unknown, but in that early morning moment, sitting in her lost friend's cozy kitchen and Ursula's smell all around her, a world left behind along with its problems and an uncertain future ahead, she remembered thinking how lovely the steam was rising and evaporating.
Jenson walked in through the back door then. And he stopped when he saw her perched on a stool with a peach blanket wrapped around her shoulders. They stared at each other, strangers, and yet on the precipice of something greater. He was the lover of a woman she called her dearest friend.
She was the great love his lover lost.
"So, you're the lumberjack," she said.
"Brawny man," he corrected then shook his head at the slip of a silly joke drawing out a half smile from her. He cleared his throat and reached out a hand to her. His grip was exactly what she would expect: warm and rough. "Jenson."
"Eloise," she replied.
He nodded.
Man of few words. Which could be good or bad, depending on how he used his silence.
Some people mistake silence for benign behavior and thoughts, when really, silence in the wrong hands can be one of the most malignant organisms.
"Ursula and I have a long history," she started slowly, then closed her mouth pursing the words inside.
How does one feel out the man wooing a close friend she only recently got back?
She thought of the one who had left traces of self-doubt and insecurity on her friend.
She thought about her own silent war with him and how no one had won.
"I don't have much in the way of rights when it comes to warning people away from hurting her."
"She talked about you," Jenson said and the words made her eyebrows raise. He leaned his forearms onto the island. "You were her person, the one that got away. The great regret and loss."
Her heart warmed.
His dark eyes caught hers as he said, "The way she talked about you, you have every right where her heart is concerned."
She smelled wood stain and coffee grounds just when they've bloomed, and she wasn't sure if he knew the gift he'd just handed her.
"And now I'm here."
He nodded once. "And now you're here."
"She spent too much time letting someone not love her," she said softly, the words drenched in sorrow.
And she wondered if he picked up on the smell of warning she infused.
He watched her, his own head tilting. "I'll screw up from time to time, but I will make sure she never questions that from me."
She let the words settle, the meaning, hung between them.
"There's fresh coffee. I make really good coffee."
She nodded to the still half-full french press and the mug that looked like it had been carved from wood magically sitting next to it. After he poured a steaming portion into it he sat next to her.
There they settled, two souls who had a common love binding something between them.
"This is really good," he said, looking into the cup.
"Yeah," she replied. "I have a way with food and ingredients. I bet I could even make poison taste good."
She slid a look to him. His dark eyes studied hers silently as her words swirled around the warm kitchen. The half smirk on his face as he lifted the cup to his lips was an agreement.
"Noted."
"And?" Ursula asked bringing Eloise back to this moment. She and Jenson had gotten along since that morning, laughing and getting to know each other. She made sure to make him a cup of coffee whenever he was there.
"And I don't think I'll have to kill him," she responded with a mischievous smile.
Ursula laughed and lay her head on Eloise's shoulder this time. "Thank you," she spoke the words so softly, like they had come from another time.
Silence spoke between the two friends as they sat in the dim glow of the warm kitchen and sipped their sleepy tea.
Ursula wanted to ask her friend what she had run from.
Eloise wanted to tell her, but it always got stuck in her throat like a poorly swallowed pill.
But no matter what was left unsaid between these old friends, there was a satin ribbon that wove around and between them that tethered and grounded them.
Eloise had missed that. The knowing that no matter what she was facing, the kind of kinship she had with Ursula would be the safety net or perhaps the healing balm she would need.
Ursula had spent many hours in the years they were apart wondering, just as Eloise did, if she would ever feel the kind of soul-tie that she did with her lost friend.
But they had found each other again, and it was like that ribbon had never been cut. Stretched, frayed, impossibly thinned out at times, but the moment Ursula had opened the front door of The Lost Souls house to her, that ribbon tightened back into place.
They hadn't talked much about that evening years ago, the catalyst for their time apart.
They had danced around it, like they were both looking into a great canyon that neither of them knew how to begin to descend into.
But for now, they stayed on the frays, the edges of that great conversation until they were both ready.
"It's always a unique kind of scary starting over again," Eloise mused. "Whatever you do could end up being incredible or a failure. Or worse, mediocre and unfulfilling."
"I think you will do great things because there is nothing inside of you that is mediocre," Ursula nudged her shoulder gently.
"I was mediocre at calculus."
"Calculus is crap."
"Right? So much worry and emphasis on such a silly subject. We should have been taught how to talk with people and create spaces of welcome."
"There should have been a class on creating a circle of people who push you to be the best version of yourself."
"A class on friendship," Eloise said with a wistful smile.
"And maybe a class on boundaries and learning when to walk away."
Eloise tasted the regret in Ursula's words, tangy like not-quite-ready citrus. Sulphur jumped onto the island and Ursula ran her hand over the cat's stretching and arching back.
"I'm proud of you. And I hate I wasn't there when you left," Eloise said softly, feeling her own regret.
Ursula wanted to say that she had pushed Eloise away and allowed someone to measure out her worth for an embarrassing amount of time. "You showed up when it was time. And I'm glad you're here now," she replied as Sulphur jumped into Eloise's lap.
"Bedtime?"
"Yes. I have to harvest some dahlia tubers tomorrow and I need to start early."
"Shoot, I was going to help you with that," Eloise said realizing she would instead be at The Black Cat early.
Ursula stood up and filled Casper's bowl waving her hand. "You're helping out the coffee shop and I can feel your excitement. I've got it covered. If it takes an extra day, the nursery will be fine."
"I'm loving this flower-child, free version of you. It's like you found your inner 7-year-old Ursula and grew into her again."
Ursula smiled wistfully as she gave the orange-red tulips more water. "Maybe that should be a class: finding that child version of ourselves that is free and wild and a little whimsical. And learning how to marry that with the lessons we've learned as adults."
Eloise laughed. "I think that one is called therapy."
Eloise spent that evening walking with a sleepy Casper, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders as she looked up at the milky white moon wondering what her inner child would want.
She feared it would take some facing of demons and grief to get her to link hands once again with her younger self.
She slept under the peach tree, the wide world sleeping as the moon watched over it all.
Little snowdrops pressed through the dirt, their sweet, almond scent filling her nose and wrapping around her dreams like spun sugar, a promise of good things to come.