Chapter 35
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Group chat with Hannah, Briar, and Sophie
Hannah: Holy shit, holy shit, you won’t believe it.
Hannah: The gods are smiling on us today.
Hannah: This is MAJOR.
Briar: Did you just get engaged?!?
Hannah: BETTER
Me: Better than a double wedding? Unthinkable.
Hannah: THE SHIRTLESS CHEF WAS UNMASKED. THERE WAS ANOTHER UNMASKING.
Me: Holy shit, who is he?
Hannah: I’m sending you the video.
Hannah: His brother walked in, and the camera got jostled so we all saw his face. It was a live broadcast, so now everyone knows.
Hannah: Get this. His name is Giovanni Cafiero. He and his family run this Italian deli in a small town in Maine. That place is gonna get MOBBED.
Hannah: Not in the Italian way, but in the busy way.
Sophie: Uh, guys. That’s super interesting, but I have bigger news.
Briar: You’re pregnant?!?
Sophie: Nope. Not yet.
Sophie: Rob just got off the phone with his dad.
Sophie: JONAH GOT ARRESTED
Hannah: OMG. I almost just peed my pants laughing
Hannah: What happened?
Sophie: Let’s meet.
It’s probably bad form to celebrate someone else’s misfortune.
I honestly couldn’t care less.
It’s Thursday afternoon, twenty-four hours before Cormac is due to get back from San Francisco, and I’m in Tea of Fortune with Hannah, Briar, Sophie, and Dottie.There’s a handwritten sign on the door reading, CLOSED FOR PRIVATE CELEbrATION.
We’re sitting at a little round table drinking iced tea dosed with peach schnapps, which is a surprisingly refreshing combination.
My friends already know my big news: The Ginger Station is officially for sale.
José and I have been giving each other space, but we both feel it—the last of the magic has gone out of our partnership. The Ginger Station, as it was, is a ghost. What it might become, and whether I’ll still be a part of it, remains to be seen.
I’m meeting with a loan officer on Monday to discuss the possibility of buying it, but even if that goes through, I don’t want it to be the way it was before. I don’t want the brewery to be my entire life. I want more.
“I do wish Jonah had rubbed those crystals I gave him,” Dottie reflects with a soft sigh.
I wasn’t aware she’d given him healing crystals, but I’m not surprised. She’s always trying to give people grace. She dyed her hair again recently, a sweet habit of hers, and it’s now a soft periwinkle blue, very nearly the color of her eyes.
I reach for her hand and squeeze it. “It might have helped him avoid this outcome,” she continues, “although I’ve rarely seen such dark energy in a young man.”
“No amount of crystals could have saved his soul,” Sophie insists, twirling her wedding ring around on her finger.
Maybe she’s remembering a different ring—the one she threw at Jonah’s face after discovering he was a cheating prick.
“Rob doesn’t know too much about the arrest. But apparently this latest round of BS was bad enough that Rob’s dad had a change of heart about the way he’s been treating him.
Because he actually called him this morning to apologize. ”
“He finally realized he was backing the wrong horse,” Hannah says with a rough laugh.
“Yeah. He seemed genuine. But who knows. I don’t know how much Rob’s going to have to do with him.”
“This is seriously the best day of my life.” Hannah’s laughter shakes her bright red curls. “The Shirtless Chef and Jonah getting arrested. Speaking of. Did you watch the video of Giovanni?”
“Yeah, but I sort of felt bad for him,” I say. “He seemed really freaked out. He obviously wanted to keep it a secret.”
His brother and his grandmother had walked in on him during the broadcast, and his grandmother had cursed him out in Italian.
It had gone megaviral, obviously.
Dottie tsks. “Secrets have a way of coming out.”
“Well, I’m happy to be at this great happiness height,” Hannah declares. “But it’s all going downhill for me from here. Nothing could compare.”
I seriously doubt she’s on a downward trajectory. Travis just sent Sophie, Briar, and me an email asking for help finding Hannah the perfect engagement ring.
Briar, who makes jewelry, was the only one of us who could provide actual guidance, but I know he mostly consulted us so we’d feel included.
“The only thing that could make this moment better is if we could find out how the Jonah arrest went down,” Hannah continues. “Obviously it’s amazing, but I want to know everything, and the details are sadly lacking.”
All we know so far is that Jonah was arrested for stealing and reselling valuable goods from the homes of his elderly investment banking clients—yet another mark of his spectacularly shitty nature.
“From my understanding, he was reported through an anonymous tip,” Sophie says, glancing at each of us in turn.
Suspicion doesn’t look natural on her. She’s too kind.
I tap the table. “Wasn’t me, unfortunately. You know I’d claim credit if it had been.”
Hannah shakes her head sadly, as if she’s also disappointed in herself for not being the creator of Jonah’s doom. “It wasn’t me either. And Travis and Liam have both sworn it wasn’t them. Although Liam laughed a whole lot.”
“He did.” Briar smiles. “It was cute.”
Sophie turns toward Dottie and raises her eyebrows. “Dottie?!”
“Oh, dear.” She presses a hand to her chest. “It certainly wasn’t me. I was as shocked as you were, until I remembered seeing that snake in Nora’s tea. It stood for Jonah all along.”
I take a swig of my iced tea. “You don’t think it stood for Pansy?”
“I knew you believed in the tea leaves.”
I don’t, but she’s beaming at me, and I’d be a monster to tell her no.
“I’ll explain that,” Hannah says with a smirk. “It stood for both of them. They were equal opportunity tea leaves.”
“Indeed,” Dottie says, but her gaze lingers on me. “And when is your young man coming back?”
“His flight’s supposed to come in tomorrow.”
Hannah rolls her eyes. “But you’re convinced he’s fallen madly in love with San Francisco, and he’s not coming back.”
“He made you that robot,” Briar reminds me.
“And you know what happened with that. He’d be a fool to keep coming back for more.”
“Then you’re in luck, my dear,” Dottie says, “because we’re all fools for love.”
Maybe.
Logically, I know Cormac will come back, if only to gather his belongings and his dog, but I have a hard time believing he’ll stay. He told me he needs to “discuss something,” which sounds serious, and in my experience, serious discussions lead nowhere good.
I’ve also noticed the excitement in his voice when he talks about the foundation. He’s won’t find that kind of energy here in Asheville.
I’m not going to try to convince him to stay. But I’m going to do my level best to show him how much I love him. He deserves that much from me.
I'm reaching for my glass to take another sip when I notice Dottie staring at me. “Look, Dottie, you may be a wizard, but not even you can read the future from the ice cubes in a glass of iced tea.”
“I don’t need the leaves. I never have. I can read you.
And I can read that young man. From the moment I saw him kiss you at your mother’s wedding, I knew you’d found your perfect match.
Your soul match. I felt it here.” She places a hand over her heart, and I’m surprised by the lurch of emotion in my chest.
“I love you guys,” I say, glancing around at them. “I really do. Jonah’s a piece of shit.” I raise my glass. “But you know what? Here’s to Jonah the jailbird. Without him, we wouldn’t have each other.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Briar says with a smile, lifting her glass.
“Holy shit, when the schnapps hits, it hits hard,” Hannah says, grinning as she hoists her nearly empty glass into the air.
“We love you too, Nora,” Sophie says as we all clink glasses. “And it’s good to see you letting other people in.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I mutter.
I’m smiling, though, and I feel a kernel of hope inside of me as I sip the tea. It’s small but bright and powerful, and life has not yet extinguished it. I hope it won’t.
“Did you ever talk to the loan officer about The Ginger Station?” Briar asks.
“On Monday.”
The thought unsettles me. I’ll have to put it all on the line, again. I’ll have to open myself to a no that could crush me. But if I can do that with Cormac tomorrow, then surely I can manage to do it with the loan officer too.
I know which prospect is more daunting…
If I can’t buy The Ginger Station, then I might be able to stay and work for the new owner. Or start another business later down the line. But I can’t find a new Cormac. Cormac is the most unique man in the world, and if I can’t have him, I doubt anyone else would satisfy me.
“Don’t get mopey,” Hannah warns.
“There is a remarkable power attached to positive thinking,” Dottie says.
“I’ll drink to that too.” Sophie lifts her glass, and we all follow suit. I feel that kernel of hope in my chest again, trying to grow.
It’s dark when I pull up in front of Cormac’s house.
I expect Cookie’s usual cacophonous greeting as I reach the gate, but she’s surprisingly silent, and alarm ripples through my chest. Did she somehow escape the house?
Nope, not happening. I’d raze the whole neighborhood to get her back.
I rush through the gate, and as I’m unlocking the front door, I finally hear the familiar peals of her bark.
I open the door, bemused by how relieved I am to be barked at, and step inside—nearly stumbling when I see him.
Cormac is exiting the kitchen with Cookie at his heels. He’s wearing a pair of corduroy pants, a white T-shirt, and his new glasses, which are identical to the last. He must have gotten his hair trimmed while he was away. Even though it looks good, I feel robbed.
I reach back and slam the door shut, and then I’m running to him, so fast I nearly tumble over a ridge in the carpet that I almost certainly put there.
I tumble into his chest, my palms flexing against his solidity, wanting to capture him. “You’re home. You came home early.”
He smiles as he lifts his hand to my cheek. “I wanted to see you.”
“Too bad.” I take his glasses off, and he grabs them from my hand and tosses them blindly.
At this rate, he’ll need to replace them every week.
I lift a hand to his face and trace the healing wounds around his eye, which is a mostly normal color now.
“You’re okay.”
“So they tell me. But I barely made it through three weeks without you. I missed you.” He cups my chin with his hand, lifting me to him, and studies my face for a few long seconds before lowering his head to kiss me.
The kernel of hope in my chest wants to explode. It wants to go supernova, but he said he needed to talk.
Maybe this is just a Goodbye, I’m moving to San Francisco kiss.
If it is, though, I’m going to make the most of it. I get up on my toes and press into him, burying a hand in his hair as I kiss him back with everything I have. He groans into my mouth and pulls me closer.
“God, I missed you so much,” he says again, nearly speaking it into my lips.
“I missed you too.” The words feel raw, but being honest with him is part of deserving him.
I swallow. “I made you something.”
“You did?” he asks, his eyebrows lifting.
“It’s stupid.”
He runs his fingertips over my cheek. “I can manage my own expectations.”
“Okay, but you’ve been warned.”
Feeling like a genuine idiot, I take the robotic arm I built out of the hall closet I stored it in.
It took me over a month to finish it. I’m honestly not sure it has any utility, but I wanted to do something that would require real effort.
I’d started it before he told me about the robot he built in high school, and it felt even more important to finish afterward.
“It’s really stupid,” I say again, feeling my cheeks flush as I bring it over and set it on the coffee table. “It’s like one of those claw machine things, and everyone knows they don’t work well. But I thought it would only be fair if—”
“You built me a robot?” he asks, his eyes bright and full of interest.
Cookie, who has been very curious about this undertaking for weeks, jumps up and perches her front paws on the coffee table. Cormac clicks his tongue, and to my amazement, she backs off.
His gaze settles back on me. “You really did this for me?”
“It’s dumb. Like I said. But I wanted you to—” I swallow the old need to act like it’s no big deal.
That nothing’s a big deal, because if you go to a lot of trouble for someone, they might think they own you.
“I wanted to build you something useful, but it turns out making robots is really hard for people who aren’t geniuses, and there was a lot of trial and error.
It sort of works, though, and I guess I’m proud of that. ”
“Show me.”
I set about making my robotic arm work, using the remote control, although the only thing it manages to do is pick up—maul—a paperback book that I left on the table. It still feels like a victory, though, and we both cheer it on together.
He wraps his arms around me and kisses me, holding me like he doesn’t want to let go. “I love it. Thank you.”
“You said you wanted to talk,” I say, the words coming out a little shaky, “but there’s somewhere particular I want to do it.”
His gaze darts down the hallway, and I laugh and press a kiss to his jaw.
“I didn’t mean the bedroom,” I say. “Not yet.”
“So we’re going on a mysterious adventure?”
“Yes.”
“Do I get to ask questions?”
“Of course, but I won’t be answering them.”
He runs his finger over my lips before pressing another kiss to them. “Does this mean you’re driving?”
“You’ll have to get used to it sometime.”
He tucks hair behind my ear. “Okay. I’ll put my life in your hands, Nora. Let me just get Cookie settled.”
While he hunts down a bone for her, I grab my other gift from the refrigerator.
In the car, he steals several glances at me, possibly because my driving is making him nervous. (I did learn to drive from an asshole.)
It seems like a good time for a distraction, so I say, “Guess what? Jonah got arrested. You know, the—”
“I know who he is,” he says with a dark look.
From the way he says it, and his complete lack of surprise, the truth dawns on me.
“Did you do this?”
He gives me a sidelong smile. “How could I have? I was in San Francisco.”
“Not an answer.”
“Okay, I did it.” He watches me cautiously as he speaks, as if he’s worried I might be pissed. “I’m not even sorry. He’s a terrible person, and he obviously shouldn’t have stolen from old people. But he had to pay for what he did to you and your friends.”
“You did it for me?” I ask, still reeling.
“Of course.”
“Could you have arranged Pansy’s downfall this easily?”
He sighs and scrubs a hand over his head. “Probably. Yes.”
“So why didn’t you?”
“I wanted to keep being your secret fake boyfriend.”
Jerking the wheel, I pull the car over onto the side of the road and come to a sudden top amid the scrubby bushes.
His eyes widen as he turns to me. “Nora? Look, I should have—”
I tug the collar of his shirt toward me and kiss him hard.