2 Lattes
AT THE LITTLE ACORN, I was focused on lattes, pumpkin pies, and flashing the perfect smile for the tourists. I was good at pushing other stuff away.
“I don’t believe it!” Linda Snell, Dr. Laurel’s receptionist, gasped from a table in the corner. She was staring at a copy of The Oak Falls Gazette. “This is an absolute outrage. They’re just going to go ahead and cut it down, without a town vote?” Linda stood up with the newspaper.
“What’s happened, Linda?” Geoff called from behind the counter, looking more concerned than he probably was. Linda Snell was the town gossip, always making mountains out of the tiniest molehills.
“They’re cutting down the Kissing Tree!” she announced.
And now it was my turn to gasp.
“But they can’t! Isn’t it protected?” The Kissing Tree was part of our town history.
It was a huge copper beech that stood tall and proud, looking over the apple orchards.
The Kissing Tree was where I’d (sort of) had my first kiss, and so had Lennie, and Krista, and Avery.
And probably most of the people who lived in Oak Falls.
“It is protected. So … what are we going to do about this?” she demanded.
Silence again.
“We’ll think of something, Mrs. Snell, don’t we always?” Geoff said. He winked at Linda and she blushed.
But then he changed the subject, turning to me. “Listen, Willa, I’ve just had a call from Lana and I need to duck out. Would you mind holding down the fort just until I get back?”
“Of course. I hope everything’s okay?” I said, although the coffee shop was packed.
“Just one of the boys,” Geoff said with a sigh. “Sorry, Willa, I really do have to go.”
One of the boys meant Geoff’s sons. He had three of them, all older than me. The oldest two, Sam and Kyle, had always acted like the big brothers I wished I had. But James. Well, he was a different story. And speaking of the Kissing Tree …
I don’t even know why we were there that day.
Lennie and I had biked out near the orchards and Sam, Kyle, and James were there playing catch.
Their ball ended up flying our way, and even though it didn’t hit me, I lost my balance and fell off my bike.
It was James who ran over. James with his dark skin, dark hair, and dark eyes, with mud and cuts all over his knees.
“Where’d it go?” he asked. I pulled myself off the ground, looking for Lennie, but she was way behind.
“Aren’t you gonna ask if I’m okay?” I demanded. Even at that age, I was outraged by bad manners.
“Your legs look like they’re working just fine. So do your arms. Is your head working just fine too?” James asked.
I picked up the ball, which was beside my bike, and held it up to him with a smirk, then ran with it until I was under the Kissing Tree. Everyone knew that tree was home base. Protection. “Looking for this?” I taunted him.
I held the ball in the air, I don’t even know why. He was way taller than me.
“Give it back,” he demanded.
“Not until you say you’re sorry.”
“I didn’t do nothin’ wrong,” he said, and I moved the ball when he tried to grab it.
“Yeah you did. You were rude. As my pop always says, manners cost nothing.”
He tried to snatch the ball again.
“Hey, you can’t do that,” I said, infuriated. “The Kissing Tree is base!”
“That’s a stupid name for a tree. What’s it got to do with kissing, anyway?” he asked.
I rolled my eyes. Didn’t everyone know this already?
“It’s where everyone comes to have their first kiss.
And then they put their names on the tree.
Look.” I held the ball tight and pointed toward the little hearts that had been cut into the tree.
If you looked closely, you could see initials in their centers.
“Where’s your name, then?” he asked.
“Ew, gross! Why would I want to kiss anyone?”
He looked at me like he was thinking. “Maybe you’d wanna kiss me someday, Red?”
“Yeah no,” I said. ‘‘ ‘Red’?”
He shrugged. He looked down. And his voice was softer when he said, “I don’t know. I like your hair, I guess.”
Then he smiled. This warm, wide smile that made his brown eyes twinkle like stars. And quicker than a flash he kissed me on the mouth, snatched the ball from my hand, and ran off faster than I could say “home base.”
I couldn’t even process what had happened, and I was just standing there with my fingers on my lips when Lennie finally caught up.
She jumped off her bike, out of breath. “Are you okay? What happened?”
What did just happen? Did I just have my first kiss? Did it even count if it was stolen?
“James Parker just kissed me!”
“Are you gonna carve your name?” Lennie asked.
“No way. He didn’t even ask if he could kiss me!”
Lennie nodded, because she got it. We got each other. She said, “We’ll erase it.”
Lennie waved her hand over my face, and right then we decided that it was gone. The first kiss had never even happened.
I’d still never carved my initials, not because I hadn’t had another kiss, but because I was saving my carving for something—or someone—really special. And now I wouldn’t even get the chance. Goodbye Kissing Tree.
By the end of my shift my legs were like jelly and my feet were on fire.
I got home to see Pop painting the front-door frame. While he dipped his brush into a can of barn red, he said, “Hi, love, I picked you up some chicken from the library. It’s sitting in there in the kitchen.”
That didn’t quite compute. “Sorry, what?” I laughed. “The library?”
“Jo. She fried up some chicken and gave me extra for fixing the roof. I snuck some already and it is good. Anyway,” Pop said, switching gears. “Thought we could play cards tonight, what do you think? It’s been a while.”
“Sounds good.”
And it was. This was what life was. Fried chicken and card games in front of the fire. Decorating the Little Acorn for Harvest Festival and making pretty designs on lattes. And it suited me just fine. But it was still there in the back of my mind. That weird email that was probably a scam.
Pop dealt the cards for Go Fish, the same game we’d been playing since I was five. It didn’t matter if I was distracted. I could play it in my sleep.
I mean, it was definitely a scam. If it had been real, then a real-life letter would have shown up by now. But it hadn’t, because it wasn’t real.
“Willa?”
“What?” I looked up, shocked, forgetting that Pop couldn’t see inside my head.
“You forgot to say ‘Go Fish.’ “ Pop looked at me carefully. “Are you okay?”
I hesitated. I looked at my dad’s kind, weather-beaten face, and I just couldn’t tell him. If I ever got the letter … which I wouldn’t … then I’d tell him.
“Oh, I’m fine. Go Fish!’
Something was immediately different when I walked through the door of the Little Acorn the next morning.
The usual air of sweet familiarity was absent, and so was Geoff.
Instead, behind the counter was some guy I’d never seen before in my life.
Tall, broad-shouldered, in a red flannel shirt, with gorgeous dark eyes, and taking up way more space than Geoff ever did.
“Hi there?” I looked at him quizzically, waiting for him to clear up the confusion.
“Do you work here?” he asked me, dish towel in hand, his forehead creased with irritation.
He’d barely even looked at me before he looked away again and started messing with my coffee machine.
I looked around the coffee shop territorially.
There was something else different, but I couldn’t put—The pumpkins.
My pumpkins. The ceramic ones I’d arranged so carefully on the floor beside the counter had been moved into a corner where you could barely see them.
I walked over and moved them right back.
“Yes, I’ve been here on weekends for more than a year now,” I told him. “Are you new?”
He sighed.
“No. I’m not new. My dad owns the place, and I’ve been sent in to save the day because he broke his leg last night.” He rolled his eyes.
“Wait, what? Your dad is Geoff? Geoff broke his leg?” So much for just ducking out.
The guy sighed again, like he could barely believe what he was saying. “Trying to put up Halloween lights on the house.”
This was seriously bad. How would the coffee shop get by without Geoff?
“Is he okay?” I asked. “What can I do? I could bring him some donuts? He loves the maple-glazed ones and I could ask my pop to stop by, see if he needs any help with the yard. He has such a big stretch of land out there …” My mind raced, trying to come up with something, anything I could do to help Geoff.
But this boy didn’t seem interested in anything I had to offer.
“He’ll be fine,” he said. “My mom’s gone into full nurse mode at the house, and her over-the-top involvement in other people’s lives is not just directed at Dad.
Which is why I’m living out back for the foreseeable future.
” He nodded behind him and toward a large shed behind the coffee shop, which Geoff had never actually used for tools.
I had always thought it would make a perfect tiny house.
But also. This was Geoff’s son … but it wasn’t Sam or Kyle.
“James?”
“Bingo. And who are you?”
“Willa. Willa Taylor.” I smiled breezily, pretending he and his kiss hadn’t been on my mind just yesterday.
He did not smile back. “Oh. Willa. Your name came up last night, actually. Before Dad fell and broke his leg, he said you did such a great job with the decorations here that he wanted to do the same to our house …”
“Oh no! He should have asked me to do it. No, no, no, I didn’t mean to put pressure on him. I just thought … Is he in a lot of pain? What if this is all my fault?” I asked.
James had no patience. “Like I said—he’s okay. My mom’s looking after him, but now it means that I have to deal with … all this.” He waved his arm around the coffee shop in frustration.
So I basically broke Geoff’s leg, and now I was ruining things for James too.
I took a deep breath. “Here, let me make us coffees,” I said. “Your dad and I usually sit and have a latte before we open.” I had to reach around him for the cups before awkwardly turning on the coffee machine, and somehow I could feel his irritation beaming into my back.
“I’m actually all set,” he said. For emphasis, he pointed at Geoff’s old chipped mug, filled with black coffee.
“Oh, oh-okay,” I stammered, but persisted with making my own latte.
It wasn’t my usual good work, though. I’d perfected the art of the latte, and even if I was making one for myself, I’d draw a little something in the foam.
Not today. My head was all over the place.
It wasn’t like Geoff was frail or anything, but he always liked to stick to what he knew.
Simple routines. I was the one in charge of decorations in the coffee shop, and I would have helped Geoff at home, too, if he’d just asked.
If I was distracted, I couldn’t even imagine how James was feeling. No wonder he was in a bad mood.
“So how come you’re back in town?” I asked him. “Was it just because of your dad breaking his leg, or a happy coincidence?” I smiled the smile that charmed all the customers.
“I wouldn’t call it happy,” he snapped.
“Aw, I bet your mom and Geoff are over the moon to see you. And just in time for Harvest Festival! I’ve ordered more decorations for us here, and I have some great ideas about what we could do this year—”
James put his hand up to silence me and flipped the sign on the door to Open. “I’d actually prefer to work quietly, if you don’t mind?”
Stunned, I cleaned the already-clean coffee machine. Who did he think he was, holding up his hand at me like that? I started drafting the message I would send to Lennie when James wasn’t looking.
But when I finally thought of the best retort, I turned to say it and … watched him disappear into the back room.
The bell dinged and I turned on my smile as Mr. Crossword walked in, wearing the same tweed jacket he always wore. His real name was Mr. Dillon, but he’d always been Mr. Crossword to me. He held up his copy of the Gazette, then sat down in his usual spot in the corner.
“Morning, Miss Willa. Seventeen across. ‘Remote and standoffish.’ Five letters?”
“Aloof,” I said.
“Aloof!” Mr. Crossword beamed and wrote in the word. “A perfect fit.”
I glanced at the back room where James had just disappeared. A perfect fit indeed.