Page 6 of Coffee Shop Girl
Hey Mal,
Sorry,can’t hear you from over here. The connection is bad, and you’re cutting out. Send my regards to Baxter, and tell Mom to save me some bacon.
Mav
Mallory could stew on that.My brother Baxter could deal with the fallout of his rage-filled CEO wife. In the meantime, I had planning to do.
Not only did I have emails to actively ignore, a house to tear apart from the inside out, and beautiful mountain vistas to stare at, but now there was a certain coffee shop owner to research, smooth over, and sweet-talk into changing her own life.
All while she changed mine.
3
Bethany
The sun was fading behind the mountains when I trudged upstairs. A watery palette rippled on the reservoir. The Frolicking Moose might be a collapsing shack, but it had killer views of the lake.
I collapsed onto my bed.
My eyes slammed shut, bloodshot and aching. Everything smelled like coffee, and I hated coffee. For several moments, I lay there, breathing in and out. Scenes from the day passed through my mind like ticker tape. Dad narrated in the background.
That espresso machine is killer sometimes.
Steamer is fickle.
Who doesn’t love a good frappuccino on a hot day?
“Me,” I whispered. “I don’t.”
Bad day? Just think it out. Think it through.
A smile twitched at the edges of my lips. Such a Dad thing to say. He said it about everything, whether I was stuck on homework, having a boy issue, or trying to figure out which college to attend.
Think it out. Think it through.
You could take the man out of the Army, but not the Army out of the man.
When my eyes opened, they stared at a picture of Dad and Pappa on the front porch, coffee cups in hand. Pappa saluted me with his usual three-finger greeting as I took the picture. He died the next day, never waking from his usual afternoon nap. That was five years ago.
Groggy with sleep, I pushed off the bed, kicked off my shoes, and stripped out of my clothes. I ditched them in a pile with the rest of the dirty clothes on the floor. A hot shower relaxed my tense muscles, allowing my thoughts to flow more freely.
Following Dad’s advice, I thought it through.
No employee, which meant more twelve-hour days.
Shorter hours meant less money coming in.
Lunch break shopping.
The next credit card statement would be coming through again soon.
Not a single soul that I really spoke to today.
Where hadit all gone wrong?
By the time I finished, my postage stamp-sized bathroom had turned to steam. I emerged into my sticky-warm bedroom. It was always hot above the coffee shop. With my wet towel, I yanked my hair into a turban so it could dry and tried not to think about the unnerving quiet.
The sun sank beyond the distant mountains, coating the sky in burnt orange and carnation pink. I pulled the drapes, yanked on shorts and a tank top, and dragged a comb through my hair.
