Chapter Thirteen
Daisy, Now
Current Coffee’s patio has cream-colored metal tables and chairs, which look absolutely darling but lack comfort. Perfect. I’d like to keep this meeting with Dawn about the proposal as short as possible.
She waves me over to a table, holding her phone in her other hand. Dawn’s filming her coffee-filled kraft paper cup with the café’s logo on the side.
I lift my fingers in a wave.
“Oh, you can talk,” Dawn says. “I’m not recording audio, just B-roll.”
“Cool.” I have no idea what that is. “Sorry I’m late,” I say over the moody dream pop playing on the speakers.
“It’s all good. Wasn’t sure how you like your coffee.”
She tilts her head toward a cup resting on the railing and out of the shot. Dawn won’t win me over that easily, but I can’t waste a perfectly good coffee.
“I drink it black,” I say. “As black as possible.”
“Oooh, my kinda gal.”
I take a sip and can practically feel my body come to life, cell by cell. “That’s good.”
“This place opened less than a year ago, but it quickly became one of my faves.”
I know this already because I have Dawn’s blog bookmarked to hate-read her posts. She has a way of taking her audience along on the journey with her, and I secretly enjoy the armchair travel every week. She’s maddeningly good at the influencer thing, even if she has impossible standards for hotels.
“Good coffee, good vibes, and good Wi-Fi,” Dawn says. “I’d rather be in my home office, but…well, this is what I’m working with.”
“They sell their beans here.”
“Oh, no, I mean with the divorce and everything. Sorry, I sort of assume everyone knows.”
“Shit, I—” I forgot about that update on her site, and sweat drips down my calves in the dry June heat. Dawn may not top my list of favorite people, but I wouldn’t wish anything bad on her. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, it’s a nightmare. The fucker wants to move to LA with his new boyfriend, but he doesn’t want me to have our house.
So for now, neither of us gets it, and I’m couch surfing with a friend who owns an angular mid-century modern sofa made of bricks.
” Dawn grips her beverage with both hands and leans over the table toward me, like we’re two close girlfriends catching up.
“Word of advice?” Her voice deepens. “Whoever you date, whoever you marry, whoever you fuck, make sure they adore you.”
My mind flashes, not to my ex-boyfriends, and not to Alex—who texted me only last night to say that he missed me.
Instead, Max jumps to the forefront of my thoughts, like he always seems to lately.
How he’s willing to beg his parents for money for this project, or how he cupped my face when he found me crying about Freddie…
I’m clearly still adjusting to him being a regular presence in my life again.
“Cherry on top,” Dawn goes on, “I have to hire a new designer because my ex was the one behind my site. We were in the process of launching T-shirts and everything.”
The sheer absurdity of her comment makes me laugh, and Dawn’s face scrunches in confusion.
“Sorry, it’s…your divorce seems hellish, but you’re more worried about a clothing line.”
“They were really nice shirts. I had hats planned, too.” The corner of her mouth tilts up. “Anyway, what else am I supposed to do? Wallow over the fucker?”
This time, we both burst into laughter. I suppose Dawn is more fun than I gave her credit for.
She could let her divorce destroy her, but she’s here instead, joking with me and powering through her pain.
Discovering that the world keeps spinning even when your own world stops—I know what that’s like.
“Actually, I—” Overcome with compassion for her, I blurt out the words without thinking. “I have a guest room in my casita. Small, nothing fancy, pull-out couch situation.”
“Oh.” Dawn’s eyebrows jump to her hairline.
“When my mom died, people were incredibly kind to me,” I explain. Dawn and I aren’t exactly on a stay-at-each-other’s-places level of familiarity, but she could clearly use the help. “Kindness didn’t change that life was shit, but I won’t forget the generosity.”
I remember very little from those first few days.
It wasn’t until someone ordered delivery for me, and my neighbors stopped by weekly with casseroles, that I realized I was barely eating.
But I couldn’t stay sad. There was too much to do, so rather than sit around and dwell on her death, I focused on what could keep her alive.
“Sorry about your mom. She sounded like quite a lady.”
“She was.” I nod with a tight smile.
“And I’ll stay at my friend’s place, but I do appreciate the offer. I’m surprised, though. You never seemed to like me.”
“I-I like you perfectly fine,” I reply, too brightly.
Her mouth falls into a thin line. Damn, this woman’s good at reading people. She and Gwen can never team up. I would have no secrets.
“How close were you to begging Ms. Willow to remove me from this project?”
“I…” There’s no point in making up excuses. Something happens when your personal life falls apart the way Dawn’s did, and the way mine did two years ago—you gain X-ray vision to see through people’s bullshit. “Okay, I was kind of hoping I might get paired with someone else.”
Dawn snorts. “No, you were hoping no one else would volunteer so you could do this alone.”
I open my mouth, at a loss for words. That would have been ideal.
“I’m a woman of color. I’m used to people shooting me looks and not giving me a chance. If we’re working on this, I don’t need you to like me, but you do need to respect me.”
“I do,” I say, shaken by her bold approach.
“So what’s the deal?”
“You…” I lower my voice, somewhat aware of how childish I am to bring up a couple-years-old article. “You slandered my hotel in a review.”
“The Mirage is cute.” She looks genuinely confused. “What’s there to slander?”
“Slander might be exaggerating. But you gave my hotel a three-star review.”
“Three is good.”
“Not great, and The Mirage is great.” I grit my teeth, my anger over the whole situation returning. “You stayed with us when we were in transition. My mom had died, I was taking over, and—”
“Oh, fuck.”
“For a small business, three stars hurts. The first thing that shows up in Google is that review.”
“Seriously?” She whips out her cell phone and taps the screen with rapid-moving fingers. “Damn, he did a great job with my SEO.”
“People see that before the link to my site.”
Dawn’s expression shrinks when she catches my eyes.
“I’m really sorry, Daisy.” She shakes her head and leans toward me.
“I didn’t realize…and honestly, I wrote that when I was starting out on my own.
After years in journalism, I wanted everyone to take me seriously as I got the blog going.
Guess I kind of took it out on The Mirage.
” She continues scrolling on her phone. “Geez. I called it ‘standard’? This is nothing like how I review now.”
“I know.” I don’t need to tell her I visit her site multiple times a week.
“Like, I’m honest with my readers. But The Mirage is adorable.”
“Then why not include it in roundups or something?”
“Because I thought you hated me. Why would I promote your business?”
“Oh, my god.” I can’t help but laugh. “We’ve been disliking each other for years for basically no reason.”
“Well, not no reason. That review sucks. I’ll take it down. No, wait—I’ll revise it. I’ll book a room at The Mirage and update the page.”
“You don’t need to do that.”
“I update posts all the time when I go to a place more than once. Aren’t you doing some kind of event?”
My brain does a cartwheel at the prospect of a revised review. I clear my throat and give her the spiel, as best as I can.
“My friend, he’s a curator, and we’re making a museum together. Temporary, but with all kinds of popular artists. It’s—Max explains it better than I do.”
“Wait, is he that hottie with the dark curly hair who was following you around at the sustainability meeting?”
“He’s…” I chuckle, taken aback by the hottie comment. In high school, I wouldn’t have called him that, but we’re not in high school anymore. I’d be lying if I said he wasn’t good-looking.
“Sure, that’s him,” I say. “He’s a friend.”
“He’s not my type, but damn, girl. If I had a friend with a penis who looked at me the way he looked at you, I’d be having a lot more fun post-separation.”
I don’t want to think about Max’s penis right now. Or ever. Or just not now. Because that thought unearths more thoughts, like how big he might be. How it would feel to wrap my hand around his length. What he’d look like, erect and pressed on top of me. The sounds he makes when—
“Daisy?”
“Y-yeah?”
“I was saying, you deserve to have fun, too.” She waggles her brows, which makes me smile.
“He’s a friend,” I say again, a reminder to both her and me. “Anyway, he knows artists all over the world, so it’ll be a great lineup.”
Dawn looks like she wants to push the topic further, but resigns herself with another sip of coffee. “And local artists, right?”
I scramble for a response. Max’s spreadsheet with prospective artists listed everyone’s locations, but I didn’t notice Harlow on there.
“This is such an artsy city,” Dawn says. “It’d be a shame to airdrop a bunch of outside work like stuff doesn’t happen here, too.”
Dawn’s right—it would be cool to see a mix of local and international art. But Max seems so organized and in charge, I don’t know if I want to question anything. He’s done this hundreds of times before.
“And let me know what dates to book for my stay,” Dawn says. “We gotta bump up that three-star review.”
I could leap across the table and kiss her on both cheeks, but I stick to squeaking out a “Thank you.”
“Of course. That’s what community is for. Now let’s get to work, shall we?”
Ava opens the door and tackles me with a hug, her hair blocking my vision as she squeezes me like a python.
“You’re gonna crush Daze,” Max calls from behind her.