Chapter 26 Hazel #2
“What are your hopes?” Emma asks. “What are your dreams?”
I look between Emma and Gloria. It’s not that there haven’t been people to trust. It’s that I haven’t let myself notice them. Before I glance away, in one of the reflections of the glass candy jar, I catch an oblong, blurry reflection of myself.
I haven’t let myself trust me, either.
“I… I don’t know. I was the one who had to think about everything,” I say.
“At some point, I started acting as impulsively as what I had witnessed growing up. Too-high highs made me scared for the drop. Too-low lows had me reaching for something that could bring me out of it. I’m impulsive, and I’m afraid I’ll hurt people I don’t want to hurt. ”
I recall my thoughtlessness with Logan at the theater, right before he took me to Top of the Rock.
My heart rate accelerates. Wasn’t our whole relationship built on recklessness?
Me going to the fortune teller that led to a chaotic reading?
My impromptu plans to fix Logan’s luck without much success? I’ve brought him into my ups and downs.
“Maybe you’ve made impulsive decisions,” Gloria says, her voice more serious than I’ve ever heard it. “And maybe those decisions have led to less-than-ideal situations. But I’d bet this entire candy store that some of those quick choices you’ve made have led to something good.”
“Hey! Speaking of being rash,” Emma says. “You can’t be using this place as collateral.”
Gloria waves her off. “On the day I first came into your store, Emma, I was supposed to meet someone for a date at a restaurant around the corner.”
Emma looks confused before something clicks. “That’s why you were dressed up. I’d never seen someone with so much fur on before. You looked like a bear.”
“It was faux, darling,” Gloria reassures us.
“You…” Emma blinks in surprise. “You hung out with me all night. You had a date?”
Gloria shrugs. “It was your opening week. You were panicking about how you were offered partner, and instead of accepting it, you quit your high-paying, stable, fancy lawyer job on the spot to open this.” She looks around at all the worldly trinkets lining the walls.
“We make thoughtless decisions all the time, whether we realize it or not. Sometimes impulsivity can lead to the very best things.”
“You ghosted your date for me?” Emma grabs Gloria’s hand, her eyes glistening. “Thank you.”
Gloria taps her hand. “This is why I deserve more than a fifteen-percent discount on candy.”
I huff a laugh at this as my thoughts wander to my hasty tattoo, which intrigued Logan enough to buy me a charm because of it.
In my mind’s eye, I see Logan and me dressed up as the older versions of ourselves.
An act that ultimately led to our true identities being revealed, which led to the truth coming out to my dad.
A truth that I hadn’t been fully ready to face but needed to.
I think again of the fortune reading. If I had never made that impulsive decision, I never would’ve met Logan. The thought sends pinpricks down my body.
Sometimes impulsivity can lead to the very best things.
Take the job, save the house.
Don’t take the job, lose the house.
Everything I’ve wanted before, it’s not what I want anymore.
And that’s okay. I can give myself permission. I can dream new dreams.
“I love what I do,” I say, staring at the bowl of gingerbread gummies. “I want to keep working in data. But I don’t want to be a manager. I’ve managed people my whole life. I don’t want to do that anymore.” I pinch my eyebrows together. “It feels wrong to say that.”
“Because it’s deeply ingrained in us to constantly strive and achieve more,” Emma says as Gloria nods beside her. “I felt this when I left my job.”
“Yes,” I say, a little breathless. It’s such a relief to know I’m not the only one who’s felt this way. “We’re supposed to climb the ladder, make more money. Do more, be more. Otherwise, you’re getting in the way. You’re a rock in a river while everyone rushes around you.”
“Isn’t it tiring living your life based on what other people think you should do?” Emma asks.
Gloria points a dark-purple-manicured finger at me. “What does Hazel Yen want?”
The lake house pushes its way front and center. Then my grandparents. And Mom. To lose the house Grandpa built, the house that Mom loved, would feel like I was disappointing them.
If we lose the house, it feels like losing them.
I run my fingers along my bracelet, feeling each of the charms. Mom’s just as much in this bracelet as she is in that house. She’s in me, just as much as she’s in anything.
I make my way around to the bird.
“You know, phoenixes symbolize rebirth,” Gloria says, watching me. “After destruction and hardship, they emerge stronger. They rise from the ashes and start over.”
“This isn’t a phoenix,” I say, confused. “It’s a dove.”
Gloria squints at the charm. “That’s a phoenix if I’ve ever seen one.”
“Because it works better for your metaphor?” Emma asks.
“Precisely. Eagles are symbolic, too, if you’d be willing to meet me there,” she offers.
Emma smiles. “Well, doves represent freedom and peace.”
A laugh bubbles out of my throat. Phoenix. Eagle. Dove. All I hear is: more birds.
“When you quit your job to open this place,” I ask Emma, “were you scared?”
“Shitless,” Emma says without missing a beat.
“But I had spent years working for others. It was time to do something for me.” She looks around her shop appreciatively.
“If there’s anything I learned, it’s that the future is not written.
When I passed the bar, my fifteen-year plan did not look… this orange.”
“A psychic once told me I was going to be married three times,” Gloria says. “I’ve only had two marriages, but hey, there’s still time.”
We have so many people telling us what our futures should look like. Get a good job. Then get a better one. Get married. Have kids. Buy a house. Live in the suburbs.
But what if I don’t want all of that? What if I want to change that vision? Make my own version?
What if I want a shoebox of an apartment with a boyishly handsome man with way too many tie-dye shirts?
What if I want to choose myself for once? What then? It’s like Gloria said, there’s still time.
And it’s time—and my actions—that will tell what happens in my life. Not a bunch of fortune tellers. I want to have a say in what my life looks like. Present and future.
“I want to be here for the candy charcuterie,” I blurt out. “I want to help with the register, and clean the shelves and tables, and fill up jars with candy. And when I have time in between that, I’d like to analyze your data.”
Emma looks surprised. “You want to work here? With us?”
Gloria beams at her use of us.
“I do,” I say. I feel so sure about it, too, I find. “I don’t want to be a cog in a machine. I want to add real value. Our days make up a life. And I don’t want to save a billion-dollar company millions of dollars.”
“You want to save my candy store thousands?” Emma asks.
“I really, really do,” I say with a little laugh. “Being here, helping customers, spending time with you two, that’s made me happy these past few weeks. This place makes every customer who comes in here happy, too. I want to be part of something like that.”
“I’d love to hire you full-time, but I can’t afford to match what you’d be making as a manager, let alone a data analyst,” Emma says, looking apologetic.
I smile. “I think I’ll be able to make it work.” These words, this decision. They’re for me. That’s something I need to get used to.
“You can make it work, huh?” Gloria asks, flashing me a wink.
It reminds me of the day at Grand Central when she—and Emma, now that I think about it—didn’t dig deeper into the lottery name coincidence.
I just figured we were all busy and that they weren’t interested in that kind of thing, but… had it been more than that?
The question is on the tip of my tongue when Gloria says, “Her analysis could be useful as you try to expand.”
“You want to expand?” I ask.
Emma’s nod turns into a head circle. “It’s a far-fetched dream.”
“At my last job, I did analysis on demographic information and consumer behavior in various areas to help my company figure out where to open new locations,” I tell her. “I can help you. No. We can help each other.”
Emma smiles. “I would love that. Okay, you’re hired… again! But hear me when I say this: You had the job before you said all that.”
I sit back. “Just like that?”
“Just like that,” Emma confirms.
Leaving a six-figure job to work as a cashier–slash–data analyst at a candy shop for five figures? I don’t think anyone could’ve seen that coming. I’m thrilled.
“Speaking of, we need to talk about my pay raise,” Gloria says. “I want more money.”
“You don’t work here, Glo. I don’t pay you anything,” Emma says.
Gloria huffs. “Exactly. So you see my problem.”
“Maybe I could take on the ideas I pitched about the candy boards and rewards program,” I say. “And leave inventory and stocking to Glo?”
Gloria smiles at my use of her nickname.
“Look at you promoting yourself and you haven’t even been here a full month,” she says with humor in her voice.
“That’s what I like to see. And darling, if any of this has to do with Logan—which I’m sure it does because even though you haven’t mentioned him by name, seven decades on this earth has made my sense about these things very sharp—so here’s what I’ll say: Trust yourself. ”
I listen to my intuition on this one. It tells me Logan’s the one.
It also tells me that Emma and Glo are good people.
I smile. Maxwell’s lessons don’t apply just to Logan. I can apply them to my life, too. Being in the right mindset, saying yes to new opportunities, trusting my gut. Maybe I really can make my own luck.
I continue with another one of his lessons: opening up more to my friends.
I start with the birds.