Page 126 of The Promise Of You

thirty-eight

Chloe

My alarm blasts at ten in the morning.

It’s too early.

Way too early.

At seven I plopped onto my bed. I’d stuffed only part of the mailboxes, seeing as dawn started shortly after four, but I’d been strategic about it. Some areas are more affluent than others. Even in the countryside, you can tell. Even if you can’t see the house. A mailbox can sometimes tell a whole story. Not every house is the target clientele for the restaurant.

After my mailbox run, I tried to do some bookkeeping from four to seven. Then at seven I nosedived on my laptop and got the hint. Time for bed.

The thinking was, three hours of sleep is two full cycles. And that should be enough. It being seven in the morning, I should be good to go at ten.

The thinking was wrong.

I drag myself into the shower, brush my teeth, and go downstairs wrapped in a towel to get the espresso machine going. I go back upstairs to get dressed, down the espresso on my way out, get in my car, get to Easy Monday.

“How can I make your day awes—oopsie! What happened to you?” Millie rounds her eyes at me and comes from behind the counter to examine me closely.

A couple of ladies lift their heads from their books.

“Work or party?” Millie asks, zooming in on my eyes. “You’re not high, for sure.”

“Um…”

“Heard you missed dinner at the King’s last night,” one of the ladies says.

“Heard she was driving around town breaking into people’s mailboxes,” the other one whisper shouts.

“That right?” her friend shoots back, not whispering at all.

“Oh yeah. Frannie saw her as she was chasing a bear out the resort’s dumpster, and Shannon on her way back from the hospital, and then Angela—you know Angela can’t sleep and she goes on her walks—and Declan didn’t deny it when he came here this mornin’.”

“Oooh,” Millie says super low so the ladies can’t hear, “see we got ourselves a little criminal. Welcome to the dark side, sistah!” She goes back behind her counter. “I’m making you a Back From Hell this morning. You’re gonna need it. And brownies to go with that. And the usual for your staff?”

The usual for my staff is beginning to cost a fortune, but they’re worth it. “Sure.” She’s already working the levers of her coffee machines.

“People are loving the pass, Chloe,” Millie says. “I’m out of brochures already.”

“How’s that possible? I left at least fifty last night.”

“What I said. They love it.”

Wow. “I’ll get you more.” I take a sip of the concoction she made for me and feel my eyes opening to their full extent.

“You do that. Great idea, by the way. I’m gonna do the same for Easy Monday. Call it the Easy Way.”

“That’s brilliant. And Mils?”

“Yeah?” she sets out a tray of to-go cups with the staff’s names neatly written on them.

I take another sip of my coffee, feeling excitement course through my veins at my new idea. “You ever thought of having reusable cups? You sell your customers the cups branded to your store, with their names on it? They get a free day-old muffin every time they use it?”

“She sells’em day olds a dollar,” one of the ladies in the back chimes in. “And they’re goooood.”

Oh. “Whatever. You’ll figure it out,” I say with a wave.

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