Chapter 10
10
Kieran
The officer closed his notebook and handed me his card, sharing there’d been similar break-ins and vandalism across town and they’d be in touch if there was more information. Feeling numb from the cold still blowing in through the shop and the number of complications this added, I thanked him and tugged the door shut as much as I could—whoever had destroyed the shop had taken a few hits at the door frame, presumably for fun, and it was warped and dented.
“We should make a list,” I said, approaching the counter. “There’s insurance, getting the door frame fixed, replacing the case…” I searched the counter for a pen and noticed a single penny still shining at the bottom of the overturned tip jar.
“And you’re a multimillionaire who could hire someone to do all of that,” Lila said, eyes wide.
“Let’s take a minute to celebrate,” Granddad said, clasping my forearm.
“There’s nothing to celebrate,” I said. “It’s not mine.”
“Holy hell!” Tom’s voice filled the shop as he pushed through the door. “Everyone okay?” He gave Lila a side hug on his way to the counter and stepped over broken glass.
“No one’s hurt,” Granddad said. “But big news!” His smile was wide for his friend, and I rolled my eyes.
“It’s not good news,” I said, but he ignored me, and I heard him telling Tom about the ticket as Lila dragged me into the back.
“What is wrong with you? Why are you blowing this off?”
“I’m not,” I said. I stretched my neck from side to side, the stress sliding up my spine like a slowly moving fog rolling in. “If she comes back, we’ll give her the ticket.” And I’d get to see her again and maybe get a second chance to impress her. No. I shook my head and fought the urge to check if she’d somehow sauntered back into the shop. She was everything I didn’t need. A tornado of distraction, and I didn’t have to look any farther than the shop to see that.
“She might not come back. How would she even know to come back? I have never had sex so good that I’d go back after a situation like this.” She lowered her voice. “If a woman I didn’t know interrupted my orgasm and then a mixer exploded outside the door…” Lila looked up and to the left in thought. “Well,” she said. “I mean, if my partner—”
“Lila, I swear to God. Today has already been seven years long. Please. I’m begging you. Do not finish that sentence.”
Lila laughed, her face softening, almost pushing me to smile through my exhaustion. “Fine. Fine, but I don’t think she’s coming back,” she said. “And you don’t have a way to find her, so why are you being stubborn?”
I pulled the apron over my head and hung it on a hook. “I’m not being stubborn. I’m being ethical. It’s not mine.”
“I think there’s legal grounding here—she effectively signed it over to you. Look,” she said, pointing to where Sybil had scribbled her name at the bottom, ironically almost exactly over the space for a winner’s signature.
“Not sure ‘thanks for the orgasm’ would stand up in court,” I muttered, stacking the papers sitting on the corner of the desk, eager to get moving.
“Can you imagine how much great press we’d get for the shop if you shared that?”
“Shared that my sexual favors were up for sale at the cost of one lottery ticket? Yeah,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Not sure that’s the press I want.” I pushed through the swinging door leading back into the shop, where Tom and Granddad spoke excitedly, and I heard a few more voices. “I’m serious,” Lila said from behind me, standing in the door frame, her expression no longer playful.
“Drop it.” Even to my own ears, my tone sounded cold and like I was at a breaking point. And I was. The sleepless nights were getting to me.
“No, seriously.” Lila pushed forward and joined me behind the counter. “If you won’t claim the ticket…” She let her sentence trail off.
“Which I won’t.”
“Then use it to get some good press. My old roommate works for Channel Thirteen, and Stewie has a huge follower count. You could go public with the story—it’s a win-win.”
The coffee machine gurgled behind me, and I watched a jogging couple move toward the store before turning the other way at the light. “What’s your definition of winning? I’d be humiliating myself.”
“It would be a fun human-interest story, plus…” She leaned forward and poured herself coffee in a disposable cup. “How else are you going to find her to give her back her ticket? She already signed it, so it’s not like someone else could claim it.”
“What Stewie finds interesting isn’t how I want to save Granddad’s shop.” Stewie, as far as I knew, had been Lila’s friend with benefits all through college, something I tried not to think about.
“Well, here’s some cold, hard truth. Pretty soon, it won’t matter what we do, and Granddad’s shop will be gone. I know you’re the smartest in the family, and I know you gave up a lot to be here and you’ve done everything to try to keep this place afloat.” She met my gaze, our dark eyes like mirror images, only hers were lined in black.
I glanced away, her words hitting me in the chest in a way I didn’t expect.
“But we’re still sinking, and this might be the last lifeboat coming.” Her words hung in the air between us alongside the sounds of the coffee brewing. Each drip was a soft punctuation mark on her points, but before I could answer, the bells over the door chimed, bells our grandmother had hung before we were born, and two business owners from down the street walked in with questions for Granddad.
“So?” Lila was back to questioning me as soon as the door closed behind the two women.
I inhaled the surrounding scents that were so familiar. She was right. The bills hung over me constantly, the looming threat of shutting down. My pride was the only thing in my way. I couldn’t stand it if I was the one who let Granddad’s business slip away from us. I caught my reflection in the security mirror nearby. The distorted image of me was just as accurate as reality—I was a barely recognizable version of the person I’d planned to be. A shadow of the person I’d imagined that morning outside with the dog. What did my pride matter at this point?
“Fine. You can call Stewie.” At least this charade would stop conversation about me claiming the ticket for myself.
Her eyes sparkled, and her expression turned into one I knew so well. “I knew you’d cave. He’ll be here in an hour.”
“We’re doing this now?” It bugged me that my first concern was how my hair was out of control and I probably looked like someone who hadn’t slept in days. And that was what Sybil would see again, but this time in the light of day.
“No time like the present!” Lila gave me a quick hug and disappeared into the back, her fingers moving over her phone. “All you need to do is figure out what you’re going to say. If you sound like you’re lovestruck, all the better.”
I rolled my eyes, avoiding the security mirror and wondering if there was any chance this could possibly work—both the publicity angle and if Sybil would actually see it and come back. “I will not sound lovestruck. I’m going to be annoyed. Am I the only one who remembers we were robbed a few hours ago?”
“You’re always annoyed.” She was tapping furiously at her phone. “Just fake it.”