Chapter Nine
Zephyr
I couldn’t be more excited for the weekly farmer’s market. The coffeehouse was my passion, but I drew inspiration from the booths for the week’s menu and seasonal items. This morning, I arrived after several hours of getting things back in order, but it didn’t dim my enthusiasm.
Out of the car, I grabbed my wagon and began to tug it behind me. My first time here, I’d rolled up a few empty cloth bags and put them under my arm expecting that to be enough.
Big mistake.
I usually left with at least a wagon full.
I could’ve easily ordered from frozen and pretended they were homemade, like a shop down the street did, but the local ingredients made our baked goods delicious and special, that and its name.
The first table was one of my favorites. Homemade salsas from late-season heirloom tomatoes. Could I have made the salsas for our wraps myself? Sure. Would it taste like Nando’s? No. He had a secret I had yet to make him divulge.
I bought three varieties and then moved to the next booth, the glass rattling in my wagon.
Last night’s conversation and all the overthinking thereafter hovered in my mind. No matter how hard I tried to focus on the task at hand, it was there, in that space near the back of my mind.
I breezed past some booths, uninspired, but others, like the ones with late berries and fresh corn and pumpkins from a patch I could drive to in a morning, those things brought forth the menu for the next week.
And pumpkin butter. All the pumpkin and apple butter.
They would go perfectly on the cinnamon-crunch scones and beyond that, we needed apples for Eliza’s new latte. Everything in my life was good, just as it was.
I had routines and schedules and nothing unexpected. No cogs in my clock were wobbly or rusty.
It all ran just fine.
So why was I so obsessed about the far-away notion that my mate wanted us to take on a third?
If I were a wolf shifter, I would know without all of this damned rumination. My wolf would simply say, There’s my mate. He scents amazing.
Period. Done. End of story.
Being a human wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. I wouldn’t even have known that if Cypress wasn’t in my life.
Last minute, I picked up some zucchini, excited to get back to the coffeehouse and make dark-chocolate zucchini bread for the first time. See how that went over with the customers.
If not, I’d eat it myself.
I was loading the boxes into the back of my car when my phone rang.
The ringtone a song from our first date.
I took a second and breathed out, determined not to let the tension seep into another conversation.
We loved each other fiercely. We could talk about these things without frustration. Or much of it.
At least, I hoped we could.
“Hello?” I answered and hefted another box. I had bought a lot. Good thing I intended to spend the afternoon baking.
“Hey, sweetheart. Find all the good things at the market?”
I released some tension hearing his voice. Cypress and I were like any other couple. There were arguments. Fights. Aggravation. But we’d learned how to be in our emotions but still kind to each other. I was glad for it in times like this. “Hi. I found all the things, of course. When do I not?”
He chuckled. “That’s great. I called because I’m worried about our conversation last night. Are we okay?”
Were we? Yes. “We’re okay, but I want to talk more face-to-face. It’s a big deal that you never told me any of this before, but we’ll work everything out together.”
“As we do,” he said.
“As we do. I love you, Cypress. I’ll see you tonight.”
“Love you, too.”
I hung up feeling a bit better about things between my mate and me, but the notion he’d brought up still stood.
He expected a mating with a reverse harem. And I needed to decide if that was something I wanted to explore.
Back at the coffeehouse, I delved into baking with a fury.
Before long, I had enough for the next day and treated the employees to some of my new creations.
They all approved, and thank goodness they were brutally honest about it.
We couldn’t take the chance of a customer not liking it and not coming back.
“Hey, Zeph, you’ve got something out here.”
I tore myself from the kitchen with one last timer still running. Banana-blueberry bread always took the longest in the oven.
“What it is?” I walked out, expecting a delivery though we’d received our overnight before I went to the market. Sam had authorization to order things when we needed them, but she often left it to me unless I was away or on vacation.
“What did he do?” Sam asked, stepping aside to reveal a big bouquet on the counter with a tiny envelope attached.
“He did nothing.” I hated lying, but mate things were private. “He just loves me.”
Sam made a gruff noise. My poor friend. She’d been railroaded by love more than once and barely come out of it on the other side.
“Take them away, and do us a favor and don’t read the note out loud.”
I took my huge arrangement with its oranges and deep-golden flowers to the back and read the note.
No matter what, I love you. C
He was right. We would get through this, but how it would go from now on, I had no idea.