Chapter 29 Rose
“I still can’t get over Wes’ gift yesterday. That was the sweetest thing. I know you had talked a lot about him, but now, seeing him . . . I get it.” Lucy fans herself and I give her a playful shove in the shoulder. Leaning over, she grabs the necklace and looks over the details again, giving an approving nod as she dips back into her seat.
“Right? I can’t believe that things are working out after all this time.” Lucy giggles, but I lose myself in thoughts of the strangeness of the last twenty-four hours. Wes and I are together, again , but it still feels unreal. The last couple of weeks have been a whirlwind of forgiveness and falling for him all over again. It’s so much more than I thought.
Smiling, I notice the trees zipping by and the waves on the water look surprisingly calm today. I roll down my window to let a little of the summer air in and feel lighter than I have in a long time. The pine tree scent seeps into the car and feels like home.
“So, where is our first stop?” Lucy breaks me out of my Wes induced trance. “I want to make sure we can grab some pizza too before we head back.” Man, Lucy loves pizza.
“Of course, first is the bulk shop. But we can definitely stop for some pizza for lunch.” After turning things at the shop over to my mom this morning, Lucy and I are on our way for our quarterly trip to Duluth. It allows us to source some of our teas from a bulk tea shop at a lower price point, but also stock up on other items for the store—new books, and anything else that others might be needing in town. This time, we’ve also been charged with picking up an inflatable bounce house for the Sprouts Festival.
We drive in comfortable silence the rest of the way. It’s one thing I really appreciate about Lucy, she is totally fine just existing next to you and doesn’t feel the need to fill every void of silence with her own voice. The drive is too gorgeous anyways to not just take it all in. We turn on some Jack Johnson and just enjoy the time.
Arriving at the bulk tea shop, we head in to pick up our order. Tim, who runs the store, has known about our order for a few weeks and has it all packaged and ready to go for us. We mill around for a while, though. There’s so much here to look and see that it’s hard not to.
My eyes rake over the rows and rows of bins. They have every kind of tea imaginable and can even order in specialty teas if needed. They also have options for things you can add to your teas: flowers, dried fruits, spices. Anything you could want for your tea they have, and are all neatly organized. The smell is amazing. Herby but not too strong. I could live here and be happy.
“Look at this!” I hear Lucy chime from across the store. I make my way over to her. “What if we made our own blend from things here? A Lucy and Rose special.” Her eyes are twinkling with the idea. I like it too, but it does seem to pose a unique challenge with tasting and perfecting the mix. I wonder if that’s something Tim could help us with.
“Tim, do you do custom mixes? Or just the bulk orders?” I call out to him across the store. We’re the only ones here, but my voice echoes through the vast space.
Tim walks over to us. “Yeah, we definitely can do that. We’d save your specifications on file and then can do more batches as you need them, assuming we have all the items in stock, of course.”
I hear Lucy squeal. “Can we mix and test a couple batches here? Is that possible?”
“Of course, I’ll get some things set up and you both can start selecting the ingredients.” Tim scurries off, seeming almost as excited as Lucy is about us doing a special batch for the shop. I’m startled by a sudden hug around my shoulders.
“Eep, this is going to be so fun! What should we put in it?” Lucy is already starting to run down the aisles with a basket before I can get a word in.
“Hold on now, let’s think of a name first. I’m not sure I want my name as part of the type of tea, but what if it was something kind of cutesy? That way tourists and people in the town might both get into it.” Tapping my finger on my lip, I look around and see some dried raspberries in a bin and an idea starts to form.
“What if it was a Raspberry Falls blend? We could do raspberries, some pine needles and a base of black tea? Give it the North Shore feel?”
“I love that!” Lucy and I start rushing around, finding and grabbing things that might mix well with the other ingredients and meet Tim at a table he’s set up for us to do our concocting.
We quickly settle in and start mixing and brewing up some options.
Well, this will be fun.