Page 8 of The Barista's Beloved

4

Ben stifled a sigh as his mom regaled him with stories about his brother Nick, his sister Marjorie, and his cousin Neil’s beautiful new wife. Not that he begrudged any of them their success or happiness. It was just hard to get excited when the subtle subtext of the entire conversation was that he should be doing something worthwhile, too.

Not that his mom had ever stuck to subtlety for long.

“I’m concerned about you, Ben,” she said. “It’s not like you to run from your troubles.”

“I’m not running, Mom. I’m just taking some time to figure out what I want to do next.”

“I know, honey, I just worry.”

“I appreciate that, but you don’t—”

“Have you given any thought to what we talked about last time? Your father and I could move the exercise equipment back down to the basement and you could move in with us.”

“Mom,” he groaned. “I am not moving back to Portland to live with my parents.” The fact that she thought this was a reasonable suggestion continued to blow his mind.

“I just think—”

“Stop. Please, just stop.” Ben hated to be rude, but they’d had this conversation three times in as many weeks, and it was clear she wasn’t going to let it drop without him getting firm with her. “It’s not happening. Please don’t bring it up again.”

Through the speaker he heard her huff and then sniffle.

Shit, now she was crying. He hated it when she cried. He’d watched her wring her hands for years over Nick’s foibles, and he hated that he was now their parents’ problem child. They were good people who deserved to have a few years of peace and quiet where they didn’t worry about either of their sons. Marjorie, of course, had been the perfect daughter—or so they believed. Just once Ben would like to fill them in on the epic parties she’d thrown back in high school when they were out of town.

“Look, I didn’t mean to make you cry. I just—”

“I’m am not crying, Benjamin Andrew Worthington.” She sniffed audibly. “Where do you get such fanciful notions?”

Rather than arguing with her, he decided to move the conversation along. The quicker the topic passed, the quicker he could get off the phone. He loved his mom, but these calls always stressed him out. It was one thing to be a disappointment to yourself; but to disappoint your biggest supporter was even worse.

“Sorry, I must have misheard. Anyway, I have to go, Mom. I’m meeting up with Max for dinner.”

“Ooh,” she cooed. “Send Max my love. Such a sweet boy.”

Ben tried not to vomit. When they were kids, his mom had fussed over Max like one of her own. As an adult, that fussing had taken on an entirely different tone. It made him slightly nauseated to think that both his mother and his sister had an inappropriate crush on his best friend. Just last month, Marjorie had called him “a hunk of grade A prime beef.” Ben had ended that call fairly quickly, too.

“I will, Mom. Bye.”

“Bye, Ben. Talk to you next Sunday.”

He hung up the phone and dragged his eyes back to his open laptop. His LinkedIn profile picture stared accusingly back at him. The headshot showed him with close cropped hair and a stern expression—he almost didn’t recognize himself. Since walking away from corporate America—or, ahem, being escorted away—he’d taken an entirely new approach to his appearance. His hair was longer now, and he frequently had more scruff than not. He still wore the Oxford shirts he’d once lived in, but these days the sleeves were rolled up to his elbows and he wasn’t sure he’d picked up an iron in months.

But what if his mom was right? Was it was time to stop pretending he was anything but what he was? After all, it wasn’t like he knew how to be good at anything other than being a lawyer.

With a sigh of resignation, he clicked on his inbox. In seconds, the page was populated with messages from headhunters and in-house recruiters looking for someone with his particular skills and experience. Subject lines of “I heard you’re a shark in the courtroom” and “Your take-no-prisoners approach is what we need” stood out, along with offers of more money than one person reasonably needed to live on.

Just thinking about the deadlines, hostile takeovers, and angry faces exhausted him. It was precisely because he’d been a shark who scented blood in the water and went in for the kill that he’d burned out in the first place. A person couldn’t work eighty hours a week and still pretend he had a life. Something had to give, and unfortunately for Ben, that something had been his patience and his ability to deal with the bullshit.

Still, he couldn’t lie. He’d liked the money. A lot. Especially now that he had none. Oh, he wasn’t destitute or anything, but when you’d spent the majority of your savings on a gut renovation of a condo with a view of the Golden Gate Bridge that you’d had to sell less than a year later at a significant loss ... well, he definitely missed all those extra zeros in his bank account. His salary from The Hollow Bean barely covered his car payment (something he should also seriously consider selling) and, when you considered both his school loans and the mortgage on his parents’ house, what remained of his savings wouldn’t last long.

Which was all the more reason to seriously consider one of these jobs, right?

Unbidden, his mind drifted to Maeve, and he wondered what she would say if he told her he was thinking about going back to San Francisco. Maeve, who was the sweetest, nicest person he’d ever met, would probably stare at him in horror—especially if he ever worked up the nerve to confess the details of some of the cases he’d worked on over the years. He shook his head. No. He could never tell her about the wife of a small town grocer whose store he’d facilitated the buy-out of. Against his will, an image of the woman silently weeping in the background as her husband had signed the papers flashed through his mind and nausea twisted through his gut.

Ben slammed his laptop screen closed and dropped his head into his hands. At this point, he might as well just skip the corporate middleman and sell his soul directly to the devil.

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