by Sarah Hogle
Today, Jack isn’t a prince. He’s a barista. We’ve enjoyed a will-they-won’t-they dynamic for ages, but we’ve reached my favorite part of the love story: the sexual tension is at its peak and we’ve got nowhere to go but over the edge in a sensual, tour de force declaration of love. We know each other inside out by now. We trust each other and accept each other’s flaws. I know he’ll never hurt me, because in Maybell’s Coffee Shop AU, hurting me is impossible without my say-so.
“Maybell,” he says breathlessly, rushing over. “I can’t hold it in anymore. The past few months have been unspeakable torture, and if I don’t tell you how I really feel I will fall down dead right here and now.”
“Jack!” I exclaim. “Whatever is the matter?”
He takes my hands in his. “When I look at you, I can’t think straight. Aphrodite who? You are the goddess of beauty. Your mind is a splendor. It’s impressive how you can do any calculation inside your head, like if I asked what fourteen thousand two hundred and eighty-seven times twenty thousand five hundred and forty-one is, you’d know the answer like that.” He snaps his fingers.
“The answer is [redacted],” I reply humbly. “But I don’t like to think of myself as smart. I’m just your average girl.”
“There’s nothing average about you, Maybell,” he goes on, gaze yearning. He sweeps me off my feet, holding me princess-style in his arms. “You’re compassionate and genuine and popular, all eyes on you every time you walk into a room. And your eyes! Incomparable. They’re the prettiest blue, like the water in Sandals Resorts commercials. I hope I’m not gushing too much. But my heart can’t take it any longer—I have to know how you feel about me.”
“This is all so . . . unexpected.” I am positively faint. To think I’ve been so consumed with my busy, successful café—the most successful café in this entire vague area, in fact—that I’ve hardly noticed what’s been brewing between us, right under my nose. Or maybe I’ve been secretly pining. I haven’t finalized the trope just yet.
“I love you, Jack McBride,” I reply solemnly. “And I am ready to bear your children.”
Everyone claps. I notice my parents in one of the booths, proud as can be. They’re in matching white leather jackets that say world tour on the back in rhinestones, and my mother (who’s also my best friend) is beaming with happiness. She has everything she’s ever wanted; she has only ever wanted the same happiness for me.
Color bleeds back into the scene, and for the first time, I realize we’re standing in red rose petals that take the shape of a heart. Candlelight dazzles off every surface. Jack’s reached a level of hotness so severe that I have to shade my eyes, as his hair is dripping wet for some reason and he’s wearing a loose white cotton shirt with buttons that come progressively more undone every time I look away. He grins seductively. “Well, what are we waiting—”
BEEEEEEEEEEP. BEEEEEEEEEEP. BEEEEEEEEEP. BEEEEEEEEP.
The café disintegrates. I spring out of my bed in the real world so fast that my foot gets caught in the quilt and I bang my elbow on the nightstand. “What the hell!”
The obnoxious beeping noise is coming from right outside the cabin, stopping when I throw open the front door. A bunch of men have marred my view of the lovely Smoky Mountains with two monstrously large containers that are about forty yards long each, sides emblazoned with walland dumpster rental & waste services. It’s eight a.m. I’ve been lying in bed awake and daydreaming since a quarter past seven, so I’m still in my pajamas, barefoot in the rain-soaked yard.
Wesley Koehler, mirror image of the starry-eyed barista I’ve unfortunately been forced to abandon, trots out of the house with a busted cabinet on his shoulders. I watch him balance the cabinet with one arm so he can free the other, shake hands with the guys, and throw it into one of the trucks as easily as if it were a loaf of bread. Wood splinters apart on impact. A small mushroom cloud of dust billows into the atmosphere.
“Hey!”
The dumpster-rental guys wave at me and climb into their vehicles, which look like the front parts of semitrucks but without the trailers, and peel out.
Wesley doesn’t wave. He glances at me, then dismissively away, heading right back into the house. He emerges with one of the trash bags from the grand staircase, giving it a heartless toss. I hear glass breaking.
“Hey!” I roar again. “Now, wait just a minute!” I hurry into the cabin to forage for my shoes, discovering one in the living room and the other under my bed. No time for socks.
“Hold up!” I flag Wesley down, but he doesn’t stop to listen. Just keeps carrying stuff out of Violet’s house and throwing it in the dumpster. “Did you go through that first?” I inquire as he tosses another garbage bag.
He looks at me like I’ve unzipped my skin and shown him my skeleton. “Did I stick my hands in Violet’s garbage? No. Why would I?”
“You don’t know if that was trash!”
“Certainly smelled like it.”
“Violet’s dying wishes,” I press urgently, following him into the house. “Didn’t you read them? She wants us to inspect everything very, very carefully before throwing it out or donating or whatever. Extraordinarily carefully.”
“Violet,” he replies through gritted teeth, picking up a rust-eaten Weber grill, “liked to be difficult.” The grill becomes smithereens.
“Okay, but—”
He walks away. Nostrils flaring, I hurry to catch up again. “I think we should honor her wishes and make sure there isn’t anything valuable in these bags before we throw them out.”
He gestures to the dumpster. “Be my guest.”
When he comes and goes again, this time with an armful of clothes, I find my voice. The one I don’t usually use because no one ever listens to it, or if they do, they laugh at me.
“I want to look through that,” I declare firmly. “Can you stop for a minute? We need to discuss what we’re doing.” I can’t help tacking on a please. It’s why I’ll never get ahead in life: I undercut myself with too many pleases and submissive body language, my annoyingly timid Okay, I understand, forget I said anything, let me know how I can help that makes me mad at myself later.
“What I’m doing is clearing out this house,” he informs me. By this point I’ve seen more of Wesley’s back than his front, and in spite of the nice view I’m getting real tired of it.
He attempts to pitch a guitar case into the dumpster, but I tug it out of his grip. He capitalizes on my moment of distraction and disposes of the moth-eaten clothes I’ve just tried to save. “You’ve only been thinking about estate plans since, what, yesterday afternoon? I’ve been planning this for a year, since Violet first told me I was going to inherit everything after she died. I’m going to fix it up, raze five acres of land, and turn it all into a sanctuary for old farm animals.”
“Into a what?”
Wesley shoots me a hard glare. I’m not prepared for it, for the horrible way it feels to have someone who looks like someone I thought I knew, someone who was warm and kind, direct such coldness at me. “What’s wrong with an animal sanctuary?”
“What’s wrong is that you’ve decided this all by yourself.” Plus, I’m not living next to a literal pigsty.
“Why shouldn’t I? Violet was my friend. I cared for her every day.” He tugs the guitar case from me, opening it to reveal broken hinges and stained velvet lining. See? his expression tacks on smugly. “You, on the other hand? You’re a stranger. You appeared from out of nowhere. No offense, but I don’t believe DNA gives you seniority over me.”
He’s calling me an opportunist. Julie Parrish’s girl, through and through.
“I know what improvements are best for Falling Stars,” Wesley concludes pragmatically. “I’ve been suggesting them ever since I was hired.”
“If Violet liked your suggestions, she would’ve implemented them,” I retort. “I inherited half this place. And
so help me, if you throw out one more piece of my rightful property without my approval, I’m going to take legal action.” Please don’t call my bluff. I can’t afford a lawyer.
This stops him in his tracks. “I’m clearing out trash. Just trash, not anything that’s salvageable. Is that not the obvious next step?”
He’s got a point. I hate that he’s got a point.
“What about Violet’s wishes? Every little item, she said. Extraordinary care, she said.”
He exhales through his nose, irritated. The irritation is contagious. “That wasn’t serious. Movie night? Making cupcakes? Those aren’t wishes, it’s meddling from the afterlife.”
“Donuts,” I say, correcting him. “There’s a thousand-year curse hanging in the balance. Sounds plenty serious to me.”
“That’s because you didn’t know her.”
Wesley isn’t fazed by my crossed arms or formidable scowl. He chucks a cardboard box full of books with their covers missing and ignores me.
“Those can be recycled.”
“I’m paying extra for the trash company to sort through it for recyclable materials. Part of the premium service package.”
That sounds made-up. And possibly sarcastic. He’s saying whatever he thinks will get me to stop talking to him.
It’s a relief that I don’t have to feel bad anymore about intruding here, living in his cabin. He’s been waiting around for my aunt to die so he could do whatever he wanted with her home.
I busy myself quality-checking holiday lawn ornaments. That’s what I’m doing officially, anyway. Unofficially, I’m side-eyeing the muscles in Wesley’s arms that cord and shift when he lifts heavy boxes, hunter-green shirt straining across his broad shoulders and back. His skin is tanned and freckled from an occupation that puts him center-stage in the sunlight, so when sweat crops up along his forehead and the bridge of his nose, he shimmers like gold dust. Whenever I’m warm and sweaty, my hair both frizzes out of its ponytail and plasters to my face, which goes as red as a stop sign. When I blush or get overheated, I don’t get two cute splashes of pink on my cheeks. My face incites alarm. I blame the fact that I was born a redhead, which is my go-to piece of trivia whenever anyone mentions the strawberry highlights in my light brown hair.
I wonder idly if Wesley was born with dark blond hair, or if he’s one of those blonds who had snow-white hair as a child. The idea of him having ever been a child is ridiculous. He looks like he was born with a five o’clock shadow and some sharp words for the nurses. I bet he refused to wear onesies because he found them demeaning.
I resent my intimate familiarity with what he looks like, which is at rotten odds with the coarseness beneath his surface. I know every inch of that face, thanks to my dumb, deluded self not running Jack’s pictures through a Google reverse image search.
Physically, I speak fluent Wesley Koehler. Spiritually, he’s a mysterious unknown. An enigma. That kind of face should come loaded with a cocky grin and eyes that twinkle with teasing humor. In the game of Who Wore It Better?, Jack wins, and he doesn’t even exist.
Wesley threads his fingers through his hair, rumpling the every-which-way waves, darting a peculiar look in my direction, then away again. I watch him a while longer while trying to be discreet about it, but now his attention stays firmly fixed on his task. No good morning, no how did you sleep, no curiosity about me as a person and where I came from, no small talk between roommates. No bless you when I sneeze. It’s next-level rudeness.
It’s a feeling too familiar to be mistaken. I’m unwanted in my home.
“Zero points for originality, universe,” I mutter. “You’ve given me that story line loads of times and I’m still here.” The Maybell Parrishes of the world are a gullible, often down-on-our-luck breed with determination that exceeds our talent, but at the end of the world, we’ll be the last ones staggering through that field of zombies. Grumbling, shaking our fists at the sky, too bullheaded to know when to quit, with soft, stupid hearts that won’t be jaded. Being delusional is our downfall but it’s also our saving grace: we’re deluded enough that we don’t see why tomorrow shouldn’t be better, even if the last thousand days in a row have been bad.
Our being equal inheritors of my aunt’s estate is going to be a circus, I can already tell. But if one of us is going to give up, I know it won’t be me.
Chapter 5
A FEW HOURS HAVE PASSED since I first began cock-blocking Wesley’s mission to run afoul of Great-Aunt Violet’s dying wishes, and I’m forming a hunch around how he justifies this behavior.
He and Violet were close, I’m guessing, being the only two people all the way out here, cohabitating in the very close quarters of the groundskeeper’s cabin. When you live with somebody long enough, you pick up kernels of information about each other that lead to anticipating what the other person might say or do, how they might react in any situation. You learn their habits, you establish rituals. You grow comfortable. This spawns an easy rapport.
I didn’t have an easy rapport with Violet, or at least I haven’t had one in a long time. Our relationship was a chasm, basically. I sent a holiday card every year, because holiday cards were easy. Thinking of you! Short and sweet, with the thinnest slices of personal information. Apartment-hunting again. Saw a sweater with jingle bells on it and thought of you. We sure are having a rainy month. She replied with checks for twenty dollars and a few odds and ends: a bookmark with kittens on it; a newspaper feature on My May Belle, the historical Knoxville riverboat I was named after.
For birthdays and Christmases and Thanksgivings, I couldn’t bring myself to pick up the phone. Too much time had passed, which led to awkwardness and putting it off even longer—and you see where I’m going with this.
What would I say? What if she didn’t care about me anymore? Didn’t remember me? Didn’t want to hear from me? The possibility I might be accused of being a negligent niece—or worse, that she’d confess what a disappointment I’d turned out to be . . . my guilt grew steadily, but I couldn’t face it, so I locked it in a drawer. Now I’ll never get the chance to make things right with Violet.
Wesley doesn’t carry any such guilt. Maybe he feels the inheritance was owed to him, after taking care of Violet. He must’ve had his hands full as a caretaker, because he certainly wasn’t doing any groundskeeping. The landscape looks like a child’s drawing of a tornado.
Maybe neither of us deserves the estate. But this is where I can make it up to Aunt Violet. I can honor her list. I owe her that much, at the very least.
It goes like this:
Wesley carries a crapload of stuff out of the house, and I make him put it in the Inspection Station (it’s the spot near a shrub that’s shaped kind of like a flamingo). I sort out anything salvageable into Keep and Donate piles. A sticker book I saved from the hoard has found new use designating what to do with it all.
Wesley delivers three more boxes to the Inspection Station and braces himself for interaction with a sharp inhale. “Does the yellow sticker mean ‘donate’?”
“It means ‘keep.’”
“I was afraid of that.”
“Be reasonable. You can’t possibly expect me to part with everything.”
“Me be reasonable?” He points to himself. “Me?” Wesley leans across me suddenly, causing me to jerk back, and extracts a sweatshirt from the pile. It’s older than I am, a paisley crime against fashion in brown, orange, and mustard yellow. “What are you going to do with this?”
“Not that it’s any of your business, but I’m going to wear it.” I’m still recovering from almost being touched by him, even though it was accidental and meant nothing. And also didn’t happen.
“Really,” he deadpans.
“It’s vintage.”
“There are, no exaggeration, hundreds of vintage clothes in the house. You’ve got to narrow it down. Be a little more discerning.”
“Says who?” He isn’t my boss. I’ve never seen this much stuff in my life, and I can’t believe it’s all mine. Most of my shirts have the Around the Mountain Resort & Spa logo on them, since I got a discount at the gift shop and gift shop clothes were a trendier, management-approved alternative to the staff uniform (blue pin-striped hat and overalls, which management stressed the importance of wearing while dodging the dress code themselves).
I grab a velour skirt from the box he just put down. It has a few holes, but I could patch them up easily with one of Violet’s (twelve and counting) sewing machines. “Oooh, I want this, too.” I swipe a Sonny & Cher shirt with a (broken) zipper that goes up and down the turtleneck and Wesley pinches the bridge of his nose.
What a Grinch. If anybody’s going about this the wrong way, it is him, ignorer of Wish #1. Violet held on to her belongings for a long time, so I can’t picture her being thrilled with our tossing out too much. If I can find a use for something, then I will. Wesley walks away shaking his head, and even though we don’t know each other and his opinion shouldn’t affect me, I can’t help but feel like I’m failing a test of adulthood.
I was fifteen years old when my mother was thirty, so that number used to feel a lot older to me, practically middle-aged. Watching Julie’s decision-making was a lesson in what not to do. I thought I’d surely be married to my soul mate by thirty, not necessarily with a teenage daughter in tow but definitely a slew of pets, living happily ever after in a cute cul-de-sac Cape Cod. I’d have a walk-in closet with sophisticated pencil skirts and chiffon scarves. A dependable best friend who was always there for me, thick or thin—a fiery, independent businesslady who brought out my sassy side (I hoped to develop such a side one day). We’d drink wine and laugh. Commiserate. She and her husband would double-date with me and mine, a perfect quartet. Perhaps she deserved it, perhaps she didn’t, but I judged my mom back in the day because I compared our lives to these arbitrary markers of success and wondered how she could be so careless. Like she could have had it all, if only she’d wanted it enough.