Chapter 21
Thea unpacked the new shipment of sweatshirts, checking out her new designs. She held one of them up with both hands and kept it in the air.
“What do you think?” she asked.
Ryan sat on a stool, looking at her newest collection.
Ever since their love story broke out on the internet, people from all over the world had come to her little gift shop to buy her unique designs and art.
Surprisingly, her sales were spurred by that teenager, Addie, wearing Thea’s sweatshirt in the video, it had become the coolest thing that teenagers wanted from around the New England area.
“Wow, that turned out amazing,” Ryan said. He grabbed the sweatshirt and held it up, then checked out the others inside the box.
In three months’ time, Thea’s little gift shop had become a household name.
People had fallen in love with the beautiful woman dressed for a wedding and a professional football player confessing his love to her in a letter.
The film crew had filmed the entire thing, cut it with a popular song, and posted it to a football fan site for women.
The video of her trying to stop Addie and her mother from taking selfies in her shop when she’d first met Ryan had also gone viral.
The rest, as they say, is history.
None of it felt real, especially the long lines of eager customers waiting to get their hands on one of her pieces. She felt like she was living within one of her favorite sitcoms. Except, this wasn’t a television show or a rom-com movie.
She expected the hype to fade away within a few days like a story on social media, but when more and more people started coming back to the island, riding the ferry to see her work, her designs, her paintings, and anything else she created, it had started to feel real.
All her determination, all those nights and days doubting her talent, and now people were beginning to recognize it.
Shops from all over the world had ordered her stuff—not just Maine shops.
Her designed shirts, sweatshirts, and hats were being sold in cute boutiques in other different cities.
Art galleries had called and asked for her work to be displayed.
The last painting she’d started, she couldn’t finish fast enough, having sold for over five thousand dollars just because she’d thrown out a number and someone had immediately bought it.
Now, she painted every night and still didn’t have enough to meet the demand, especially since Cece wanted her to paint her one for the inn’s grand fireplace, the centerpiece of the whole inn.
Cece wanted it to become a staple of the island, one in which generations would come to the inn to see—an original Thea Manus painting.
“I like the way you did the lobster here,” Ryan said, folding up the rest of the sweatshirts and putting them into a box.
“How many can I take to the inn?” he asked.
“Look at you filling inventory,” Thea teased, trying to figure out how many to give to the inn.
“Please, Ma told me to get these,” Ryan said.
Ryan may have been MVP on the field, but he and Cece ran the inn like a team.
The Inn on Isabel Island had officially changed ownership to Ms. Cecelia Palmer, mother of the football player Ryan Mathers.
Despite an already booked season, people still tried to rent a room just for a chance to see their favorite player’s new inn.
With all the demand, Thea’d had to hire five new employees and a store manager.
She just didn’t have time to keep up. That’s when Crissy and her parents had stepped in.
Each one of them helping her in different ways.
Her father helped with advertising for local things, like the Sunday fliers and the coupons with Johnny’s golf cart rental.
Her mother helped with the inventory. She had been surprisingly good at ordering exactly what people wanted.
Crissy was helpful with everything else—payroll, inventory stocking, finding the best vendors, the list went on and on.
They didn’t just help Thea with her business, but Athena and Cece had rekindled their friendship. Thea had forgotten what good friends they had been back in the day.
“We were mothers working full time,” Athena explained one day while helping. “We understood each other.”
They still seemed to understand each other.
Cece seemed to understand Thea’s mother better than anyone she had ever met, sometimes even more than Nico Manus.
Within weeks, Athena and Cece had gotten so close that if Thea saw one, she knew she’d see the other.
Athena would just have to stop by the inn to offer help with the dining room arrangements or Cece would stop by to show off her dessert made by her new pastry chef.
Thea loved the new friendship.
“Never say never,” she said to herself, but she smiled at Ryan, who had heard.
“What’s that?” he asked.
She shrugged, thinking back to when he’d first asked to buy her painting.
She would’ve never thought she would be standing in her shop with boxes of orders and in love.
She didn’t wait for him to understand; instead, she threw her arms around his neck and planted the biggest and showiest kiss on his lips.
“Well, I like that,” he said as they parted.
She laughed, something she was doing regularly. “Never say never.”
She pointed to the big box. Ryan’s eyes flashed wide in excitement.
“You didn’t!” He immediately started opening the box.
She nodded. “I did.”
He pulled the red, white, and blue wet suit out of its plastic covering. She’d had it designed exactly the way he’d wanted it.
“It even has my number!” He ran to the mirror near the dressing rooms to check it out.
She watched, laughing as he took off his shoes, not caring that the store was open to the public. She didn’t care who saw or videotaped them as he tried on the wetsuit.
“How do I look?” he asked, unable to zip over his shorts.
She walked up from behind him and kissed his cheek. “Perfect.”
* * *
I hope you enjoyed Lobster Cove Lane!