Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
EMILY
“What’s the plan?” Dallas asked, expectantly.
“My plan is to get my things and leave without making a fuss.” Although, it could be argued that the fuss had already been completed via mass resignations. “I have no plan after that.”
“This is so fun.” Dallas giggled. “I’ve never done anything spontaneous before.”
“Dallas.” I looked her squarely in the eye. “I don’t have a plan. For real. Currently, I’m thinking I’ll sell my apartment so I can open a chocolate shop. Which, as you can see, is not really a plan worthy of quitting my partner-sized income for.”
Oh no. Oh, no, no, no.
Actually… I should’ve done the math before I gave the damn speech because in this market, and with my student debt, I would be hard pressed to scrape enough capital together for anything that would even kind of replace my current income.
“Nope.” Dallas grasped my arm and herded me in the direction of my office.
“There will be no thinking about what has been done while there is still time to undo it. Not when you are standing up for what’s right.
Now, go get in your office and get your things.
And I’ll go get mine. And then we’ll regroup at the elevators in like.
..” She checked her watch. “… four minutes.”
Now that? That was something of the start of a plan.
That I could work with.
I hurried back to my old office on autopilot. I moved with the same determined stride I used when walking into a courtroom, except this time the only person I was trying to convince I wasn’t a total fraud was… myself.
My office had been my second skin. Now, it seemed like a stranger’s apartment that I’d broken into.
The expensive ergonomic chair, the commissioned abstract art Angela helped me acquire, the sweeping view of the city. None of it really belonged to me.
No, this was a stage set, and I’d just stepped off script.
My eyes landed on the only things in the room that held any real meaning.
I rounded the desk and scooped up the two silver frames. One was of me, Finn, and my brother, Elliott, squinting into the sun on a boat, years before life got so damn complicated. The other was of Angela, Maya, and me, arms slung around each other at a concert, blissfully unaware of billable hours.
These were the faces of my reality. The reality that I truly wanted.
My attention caught on the perfectly weighted fountain pen sitting in its holder. My favorite. A gift from the firm when I’d made partner.
An instinct I’d honed over a decade of signing documents had me plucking it from its stand and tossing it into my purse. It landed with a soft thud against my leather wallet. A final scan of the room confirmed it.
That was it. Two picture frames and a pen.
I glanced into my purse at the damn pen. Because this? This was not a gift from the firm.
No, this was a tool of the firm.
Property of the firm, just like the person who wielded it.
To. Hell. With. That.
I pulled it out and set it back on the corner of the desk. Next to it sat the soft squares of sugar and butter I’d made with my own two hands.
One was the life I was leaving. The other was the one I didn’t know how to start.
And I knew which one was mine to keep.
I took the caramel and left the pen. Headed straight for the elevators as a bird that had just flown face-first into a window but was, technically, free.
Dallas and two other admin—former admin by the looks of it—waited by the elevators. Dallas pushed the call button as soon as I came into view. She looked less like my former assistant and more like a getaway driver. Her purse slung over one shoulder, her chin up, and a defiant glint in her eye.
“You all…” I glanced to each of them. “I don’t have jobs for you.”
I don’t even have a job for me.
“I’ve been wanting to get something with better hours for a long time now,” Pam from Len’s staff shrugged. “And I don’t really like Len.”
“My husband retired last year. This is as good a point as any for me to spend more time with him,” the older brunette with the round cheeks said. She was the person who always brought in the birthday cake. Made sure each cake was something the specific birthday person loved.
And then there was me. Me without a fancy pen.
I hadn’t even bothered to learn her name.
The conference room door swung open, spilling the low rumble of Douglas’s masculine outrage into the hall.
His voice, sharp with disbelief, was followed by a confused murmur from the other partners. They were starting to emerge, their faces a gallery of dawning horror as they took in the quiet exodus.
The elevator doors slid open with a serene ding.
Before I could hesitate, Dallas grabbed my arm and practically shoved me into the elevator. The others stepped inside, and the polished steel doors slid shut, silencing the space with a soft, final whoosh.
“So,” Dallas said, turning to face me, her voice deceptively casual. “For real? No plan?”
The words stuck in the small, enclosed space, a stark reminder of the cliff I’d just swan-dived from.
“I think…” I swallowed, the words feeling foreign and flimsy on my tongue. “I think I’m going to open a chocolate shop.” It sounded even more ridiculous saying it out loud here than it did to Finn. “But that’s it. That’s as far as I’ve gotten.”
Yep. Official. I’ve lost my mind.
“I volunteer as official taste tester,” birthday-cake lady said, raising her hand.
I held out the plate of chocolate-covered caramels as an offering, since, clearly, I’d been a total jerk up to this point. “Your first assignment.”
She grinned and nabbed a confection.
I offered one to Pam, too. Then Dallas.
“You’ll be fine,” birthday-cake lady said, covering her caramel-filled mouth as she spoke. “I’ll be coming to buy a box of those as soon as you’re ready.”
Dallas nodded, a thoughtful purse to her lips.
“A chocolate shop,” she repeated, not as a question, but as a statement of fact. “Okay. I can see it.”
“And I know just the spot. It’s a perfect mix of tourist foot traffic and enough local business to get you through the off-season. It’s got these big, charming windows. If it’s still available, it could be amazing,” Pam said. “I can call and find out?”
My brain was still trying to process the fact that I no longer had a job, a career, or a 401(k), and she was already scouting locations.
“How do you know about this?” I asked, my voice barely a whisper.
A slow, mysterious smile spread across her face. She gave a little shrug. “I just know things.”
“And her wife is in real estate,” Dallas added. “That kind of helps, too.”
The elevator doors opened onto the lobby. We walked out into the afternoon sun, all of us blinking like newborn creatures.
We were shaky.
We were unemployed.
And we stood on the sidewalk with the city rushing around us, none of us sure what to do next.
My entire life had been a series of meticulously planned steps.
“What do you say, ladies?” Pam asked. “Wanna go look at some real estate?”
I nodded, because of course I was in. What I didn’t expect was Dallas to agree to tag along.
“Sharon?” Pam asked the birthday-cake lady. “You coming?”
“Try to stop me,” Sharon agreed.
I tucked Sharon’s name close to my heart, swearing to myself to never be that person again. From this point on, that was the other Emily. She was free to be, well… me. And me? I knew the names of the people who mattered.
In good news? Pam was absolutely right. The location was fabulous and perfect for a little shop like the one I envisioned.
Small enough to afford, but it looked like there was plenty of space that I could easily process online orders when the tourists weren’t in town. It even had a tiny apartment above the shop, so I could live there while I figured life out.
The dusty storefront was tucked between a yoga studio and a vintage bookshop. It had big, charming windows and dark-green trim that was peeling in a way that looked more romantic than neglected.
There was a food truck in the parking lot across the street selling burritos, so I bought my new-also-unemployed-friends celebratory we-quit-our-job authentic Mexican food.
One, because I was hungry and, two, it was the best that I could offer while we waited for Pam’s wife to come unlock the door and show us inside.
Inside the building that could hold my future.
I was excited. This was excited. So excited.
“Why do you look like you might be regretting your choice of salsa?” Dallas frowned at me.
“No. It’s amazing. I’m just… This is insane. I’m the responsible one. That’s my position in my family, in my friend group, at the firm, everywhere. I’m not sure how to be anything else.”
“What you did is kind of responsible,” Sharon said, tossing on a dab of tomatillo sauce and studying her burrito.
“There is no world where what I did was responsible.” Of that, I was certain.
“You realized you weren’t doing a good thing, so you stepped away. If you were my daughter, I’d be so damn proud of you.” Sharon gave me a pointed look. Then finished her lunch like she hadn't just cracked me wide open between bites.
I wasn’t going to think on that too hard. That was not a right now thought to process.
“It’s just that my friends are the wild cards. I’m the grounded one. And nothing feels grounded right now.”
“Your friends sound fun,” Pam said. “We should invite them to come chocolate shop shopping with us.”
“Her wild card friends include Maya Mitchell,” Dallas said, deadpan. “You should probably know that.”
Sharon gasped. “Even I know Maya Mitchell. She got married in Vegas to that football player guy, right?”
To Finn’s teammate, Sloan, and it had been a whole thing.
“She’s the ultimate wild card,” Pam agreed. “We should totally invite her to come check out the shop. Can you even imagine the kind of publicity she can get just by showing up?”
And she’d do it for me as a favor, hands down. But I didn’t want to ask, not yet. This was still… mine.
“Maya’s on tour right now, so she’s rarely in town and, when she is, she’s with Sloan.” I wasn’t sad about it, either. The two of them were happy together, and that made me happy. “And Angela curates galleries all over. She’s not exactly available to pop by, either.”
Yes, I did desperately want to text them that I’d made the jump with this big life update, I really did.
But something held me back. Because when I texted them, it would be real. More real than it already was.
No, I wasn’t going to do that. Not yet. I would listen to the whisper that encouraged me to take just a little more time, just a little more of this feeling, just for me, before I invited all of my outside life inside.
Because the truth was? If they were here right now, they’d be here because of our history, and years of shared inside jokes.
But these women? These were my accomplices.
We had met over contracts and coffee, not over shared growing-up experiences and drunken karaoke.
There was no real reason for them to be here. No obligation except that they wanted to be. And that was kind of amazing.
“Willa’s nearly here and her office sent over the info sheet on the building.
It’s only been on the market for a couple of weeks,” Pam said, reading from her cell screen.
“There was a cupcake shop that outgrew the space. Decided to go more industrial. But the seller is insistent that the new owner mesh well in the neighborhood vibe.”
Finn’s voice echoed in my head. “What would you do if you could do anything?”
Chocolate shop.
“This place is cute,” Dallas murmured beside me. “I dig the whole street thing they’ve got going on.”
It wasn’t just cute. It was possible. A tangible, brick-and-mortar possibility.
This is crazy. You have no plan. You have no funding. You have no idea how to run a business. This is the first place you’ve even looked!
“Ladies, see that face?” Dallas asked. “Her inner litigator wants to build a case for this location. But logic is preventing it.”
“You can see that just from my face?” I asked.
“Yep.” She popped the p at the end.
“Exhibit A,” Sharon said, leaning forward. “The proximity to the mountains.”
I nodded. “It’s perfectly positioned. We’d catch the weekend exodus of skiers heading up for fresh powder…”
“And then again on their way back down,” Dallas chimed in.
“Exactly. Their wallets will be lighter, but they’ll be in desperate need of a hot chocolate,” Pam said.
“Okay, solid point,” I agreed. “But consider my Exhibit B: the convention center just a few blocks away.”
“The sea of lanyards?” Dallas smirked. “A steady, rotating stream of out-of-towners on expense accounts, all looking for a gift to bring home that isn’t a keychain.”
“I see your skiers and your suits,” said Pam, confidently, “and I raise you a closing argument: the built-in clientele from the neighbors.”
“Go on,” I said with a smile. “I’m listening.”
“The post-savasana bliss from the yoga studio would practically herd people in here for a ‘mindful indulgence.’ And all the book lovers from next door? They’re going to need a sweet companion to go with their next read,” Pam said with impressive gusto.
“And she is not just saying that because her wife gets the commission,” Dallas added, slyly.
“It’s not just a cute street,” I said, soaking it all in.
“Not even close,” Dallas said with a sigh. “It’s a self-sustaining ecosystem of the exact kind of people who would appreciate the difference between a grocery store candy bar and a hand-rolled dark chocolate ganache.”
“I’m going to buy it,” I said, already falling in love with whatever stood on the other side of that doorway.
“This is thrilling.” Sharon was practically shaking with excitement.
Her excitement was infectious.
And there was no going back.
Not when I had just torched the bridges and launched my one and only lifeboat toward an island made of cocoa beans.