by Lauren Layne
I feel a swell of professional pride at her words because the “don’t need it, but too cute to pass up” crowd was exactly the clientele I was banking on when I’d decided to add the & More.
See that, Mr. Andrews? We’re doing just fine.
Sort of.
Nicola absently picks up a little tin of outrageously priced mints and slides them toward me as I ring her up. The mints, wrapped in black and hot pink packaging, are shaped like champagne flutes and taste vaguely like vanilla. I carefully hide another victory smile. Displayed in a crystal bowl at checkout, they’re one of our most popular impulse buys.
I place her bottle of champagne in a sturdy, skinny white paper bag and slip the corkscrew and mints into the sides. That is another of my improvements. We used to use the industry standard brown paper bag slipped into an equally ugly plastic bag. After taking a class on branding at business school, I decided that one way Bubbles & More could differentiate itself was to create an experience of luxury, even after you walked out the door, carrying a sleek, attractive bag that you could carry to happy hour with friends without ruining your outfit.
“Thanks so much,” Nicola says, blowing me a kiss. “You know I’ll be back. I always am.”
She glances in Mr. Andrews’s direction one last time, then I hear the tinkle of the bell, and I’m alone again. With him.
Sebastian takes his time coming around to the counter, and I’m unsurprised to see he has no wine bottle in hand. And it goes without saying he’s not the type to pick up cocktail napkins while he’s here. I lift my eyebrows. “You did see the no loitering sign on the door, yes?”
There isn’t one, but it doesn’t matter, because he ignores the question and thoughtfully picks up one of the mint tins from the bowl. “Eight dollars for a tiny thing of mints.”
The mildness of his tone is more insulting than a snide intonation would have been. “They’re one of our best sellers.”
“I’m sure.” He sets the tin back in the bowl carefully. “Does the profit margin cover the cost of the fancy bag?”
He can’t know it, but his question hits me right in the deep, dark, endless hole of worry that I reserve for those 3 a.m. anxiety attacks.
Or maybe he does know it, because his gaze is level and steady. He sees too much. Almost as though he knows the margin on the mints is next to nothing, and the cost of pretty white bags that are sturdy and well made enough to entrust a hundred-dollar bottle of champagne is astronomical. And no, not covered by the mints.
I channel my older sister’s snootiness and look down my nose at him, which I secretly think is rather impressive because I’m five two and he’s at least six feet. “Little luxuries are a crucial hallmark of the Bubbles brand.”
“I’m sure. And profit? Long-term viability? Your own financial security? Are those hallmarks of the Bubble brand as well?”
I’m not particularly prone to anger, but I feel an unmistakable bite of indignation at his condescension. “You overstep, Mr. Andrews.”
He concedes the point with a nod. “I do. I apologize. But brick-and-mortar stores are rapidly becoming a thing of the past in all industries, Ms. Cooper. There’s no shame in admitting that this shop will never make you rich.”
“I would never be ashamed to admit that,” I say quietly. “In fact, I say quite proudly that there are more important things in life than being rich.”
He doesn’t ask what things? but his expression tells me he’s thinking it.
Those unfairly beautiful eyes cut to the fresh bouquet I was holding when we first met, before I realized he was a shark in a really smart suit.
“Enjoy your flowers,” he says, somehow managing to make it sound like a parting shot as he turns and strides toward the door.
The bell tinkles with his departure, and I stare blindly at the beautiful blooms, hearing everything he didn’t say.
Enjoy your flowers. But they won’t save your shop.
To Sir, with plausible deniability,
Do you think a good maiming is ever justified? Kidding, mostly.
Lady
* * *
My dear Lady,
She has a dark side! Consider me intrigued. Noisy neighbor? Cheating boyfriend? Toxic relative?
Yours in the cone of silence,
Sir
* * *
Workplace frustration. Some people are so… so… there are no words.
Lady
* * *
Ah yes, something I understand all too well myself. The word you’re looking for is actually two: utterly provoking. Some people are utterly provoking.
* * *
Yes! That is it exactly. This individual has me utterly provoked.
* * *
Same. Same.
Five
My sister, Lily, is one of those beautiful people. As a kid, I’d been unaware of it. As a teen, I’d been a little jealous. As an adult, I’ve learned there are more important things than outer beauty.
Just kidding! Rarely do I look at her without thinking damn you, gene pool, you didn’t play fair!
Don’t get me wrong, I’m just fine with what I see in the mirror. My hair’s a little on the thin side, but I’ve learned that if I don’t let it grow beyond my collarbone, I can keep it from looking scraggly. Naturally it’s somewhere between light brown and blond, though I lean into the blond with a little help from CVS hair dye. I got my dad’s strong chin and my mom’s blue eyes and petite stature.
But then there’s Lily. She also got Mom’s blue eyes, but with Dad’s dark brown hair and insanely thick lashes. Hers are the sort of eyes described as “startling,” whereas my high school boyfriend once described my eyes as “bluish?” I think the question mark at the end had been the most insulting part.
Lily’s also tall, curvy, and has that sort of commanding presence where she owns a room just by stepping into it. The current room being Bubbles & More.
“Hey!” I say in surprise, looking up from my laptop where I’m reviewing our numbers for the week. They’re not good.
I shut the laptop and go to hug my sister. “I didn’t know you were stopping by.”
“I had to pop into Bergdorf’s,” she said, inspecting my summer display. Her nose wrinkles just for the tiniest moment, and she straightens the cocktail napkins into a tidy stack, unaware of the fact that I’d fanned them out just so for a reason.
I feel a flicker of irritation, but I let it go. It’s much harder to push aside the flicker of hurt that the only reason she’d stopped by was because she was already in the area.
What happened to us?
Lily and I have always been different, but we were also close. She’s seven years older, fourteen when my mom died, and in a lot of ways, she fulfilled the mom role in those early years. It was Lily who put mac and cheese on the table when my dad worked late, helped me muddle through long division, and stroked my hair after a nightmare.
Even after she married her high school sweetheart and moved out of the apartment, we talked daily, and she still helped out at Bubbles on weekends. But by the time I was well into my twenties, both Lily and Caleb had moved on with their own lives. I’d been the lone Cooper kid helping Dad with Bubbles, and neither sibling had questioned whether or not I wanted to be there.
“How are things going?” she asks.
“Great!”
Lily studies me closely, the same way she used to when she’d ask how my social studies tests had gone.
I’d lied back then too, and she’d always known it.
She scans the shelves of sparkling wine. “You switched Italy and Spain.”
“Cava’s been having a moment,” I say with a shrug. “Though if it were up to Robyn, anything that isn’t real champagne would be in the back of the store, behind a black curtain.”
She sets her chic black bag on the counter and heads into the back corner to look at the art. “You’ve expanded the art selection.”
I shrug, feeling a little self-conscious. “Lots of tourists poppin
g in on weekends looking for souvenirs to take home. It was getting a little crowded.”
“That’s so great!” she says enthusiastically, picking up one of my more recent pieces—a tiny pink fairy using a ladle with a bow on it to sip champagne from a coupe.
“I always forget how talented you are,” she muses. “You could always draw, but these are… remarkable.” She scans the handful of works. “They’re all yours?”
“Yeah. I tried bringing in other artists’ work, but…”
Lily’s smile is smug and proud. “They didn’t sell as well as yours?”
I spread my hands and grin. “What can I say? I’m a marvel.”
“You are,” she says, carefully setting the fairy piece back down. “I’ve always been jealous that you have a hobby you’re actually good at.”
A hobby. Some of the joy I feel at her praise fades. It’s never occurred to my family that my art could be more than a hobby, and it chafes more than I should let it, considering I’ve never told them I once wished it could be more.
When she turns back toward me, she’s still smiling, but there’s something else there—concern mingled with hesitation.
“Just say it,” I say with a sigh.
“I don’t want to overstep.”
That’s a first.
“Lily.”
My sister takes a deep breath. “Alec went to this fundraiser at the Guggenheim on Saturday.”
First I note the choice of words with interest. Alec went, not we went. Fundraisers at museums have always been Lily’s bread and butter. My brother-in-law, not so much. He’s a bigwig about town, but also an introvert. He’d take a bourbon and a book over a social outing any day, so the fact that he went without being dragged by Lily is… unusual.
“Apparently he ran into the son of one of New York’s most famous families…”
I close my eyes and pretend to snore, waiting for her to get to the point.
“The Andrewses.”
My eyes snap open. No. Not those Andrewses. It’s a common last name, one of the most common last names, surely…
“Gracie.” Lily’s voice is soft, chiding. “How could you not tell me and Caleb that there’d been an offer to buy out Bubbles? It’s our company too.”
And yet, this is the first time you’ve stepped foot in here in months. Caleb hasn’t been here in years.
But my frustration at my siblings pales in comparison to my anger at Sebastian Andrews. The insufferable man didn’t get what he wanted from me, so he went to my brother-in-law?
Of all the chauvinistic, snakelike moves…
“I’ll kill him,” I mutter.
Lily’s eyes widen slightly. “Whoa. What am I missing?”
I lean heavily against the counter. “It’s a really long story.”
“I’ve got time,” Lily says, lifting a finger. “Hold.”
She goes to the refrigerated section, sliding open the glass door, and comes back with a bottle of Pol Roger. She digs into her purse, comes out with a sleek black envelope, and pulls out a fifty-dollar bill. She starts to go around to the cash register, opening the laptop. I know she means to record the transaction, but I place my palm on the laptop. The store’s numbers are still up, and they’re ugly.
“I’ll take care of it later.”
She blinks in surprise at the sharpness of my tone, but she shrugs, then picks up the champagne and begins twisting the wire cage with expertise. Dad always used to joke that his kids knew how to open champagne bottles before they were off their milk bottles, though he was old-fashioned in that he didn’t let us drink the stuff until we were eighteen, and then only little sips of whatever he was tasting.
The real lesson came on our twenty-first birthdays, when he’d open a bottle of Dom Perignon. Our lifestyle was modest. We were not Dom Perignon people. But on twenty-first birthdays, we pretended we were, and it was magical. Though in hindsight, it was rather unfair of him. Having something as decadent and fabulous as Dom as your first proper glass of champagne is rather ruinous. The sparkling wine that is in my budget can’t hold a candle to it.
I pull out two of the glasses we keep in the tall, old-fashioned curio behind the checkout stand. My dad had taught us sparkling wine should be drunk out of proper stemware, or not at all. Robyn supports this philosophy wholeheartedly, which I suspect is half the reason she got the job. She’d wooed Dad with talk of nose and bouquet and aroma and damaging the bubbles.
Personally? I think it’s rubbish. Sure, the science probably stands up, but as far as I’m concerned, wine isn’t about science. Wine—especially the sparkling kind—is about the moment. A ten-dollar sparkler sipped out of plastic cups to celebrate an engagement beats the pants off a three-hundred-dollar bottle of Cristal sipped from a crystal glass by someone bored by life.
“These are new,” Lily says admiringly, picking up one of the tulip glasses I’ve pulled from the cupboard. She expertly fills one glass, letting the bubbles get to the very top, but not overflow, before moving to the second. She repeats the process until the bubbles settle to drinkable level.
I’ve had this particular champagne—a reliably good one for the price—dozens of times, but I lift it to my nose anyway out of habit. Lily does the same, but neither of us swirl the way we might with a robust cab. It’s sacrilege to swirl bubbles.
“So,” she says, taking a tiny sip of the champagne and fixing me with her big-sister stare. “Sebastian Andrews.”
“Ugh. The worst. A troll in a suit.”
Her dark eyebrows lift. “I’ve met him. Just briefly, a mutual acquaintance’s wedding last year. But he seemed perfectly polite. And even as an old married lady, I can see he’s ridiculously handsome.”
“He’s ridiculous all right. Ridiculously smug, thinking the world should bow to his every whim.”
“His current whim being buying out the lease here?”
I nod.
Lily sips her champagne. “I hope you told him to suck it.”
“Lily!”
“What? It’s our family legacy. It pisses me off that some corporate drone, even a handsome one, just waves a big check and doesn’t think twice about trying to snuff out a locally owned business.”
I sip my wine to carefully hide my resentment. It’s one thing to defend a family legacy with words. It’s another to have to be the one putting in the work.
Oblivious to my frustration, Lily picks up one of the fancy mint tins and smiles. “You ever wonder what Dad would think about all the stuff you added?”
“All that stuff is the only thing saving the business.”
She looks up in surprise, though I’m not sure if it’s at my words themselves or my tone. I’ve always been the one who had smoothed out the sharp edges of my stubborn father, bossy sister, and impulsive brother. I used to take pride in being the good-natured, easygoing one in the family, but lately I wonder if I haven’t also been a bit of a doormat.
“Is the store doing okay?” she asks.
“It’s doing okay,” I say, purposefully repeating her word. “But it’s not doing great. It’s not even doing good. For all Dad’s insistence that a personal touch and exceptional customer service will save the day, it’s hard to fight the power of the Internet and free delivery.”
She taps her nails. “We could lean into the e-commerce space. Have Caleb redo the website, let people buy online.”
“I’ve asked Caleb about five times to redo the website,” I say, sipping the champagne. “He always says he’ll get to it, but in between his paid projects and playing lumberjack…”
“But—”
“I know you want to help,” I cut in gently. “But respectfully, I’m the one who’s been managing the day-to-day. I’m the one who’ll figure out how to handle Sebastian Andrews.”
I don’t tell her that a body bag is involved in my fantasies.
“You’re right.” She holds up both hands. “You’re absolutely right. Let’s change the subject.”
“Thank you,” I say
, reaching out to squeeze her hand. “How’s the renovation coming along?”
Two years ago, Alec and Lily vacated the little one-bedroom they’d rented for more than a decade and bought a three-bedroom apartment in Tribeca. Despite the new place’s fancy address and upscale building, the former owners had questionable design tastes: lots of black in the kitchen and a powder room I can only describe as construction-cone orange. The sink had been shaped like a butterfly.
To say that the renovation was an ambitious project is an understatement, but Lily, being Lily, had attacked it with a vengeance. The neon-orange powder room would be painted over with soft grays and mauve accents, the black lacquer cabinets in the kitchen replaced with white wood and glass, the stainless-steel kitchen island redone with black marble. The second bedroom would be turned into a guest room, the third into an office or a nursery.
The part of me that can’t wait to be an aunt is really curious about the destiny of that third bedroom, but I’m not entirely sure how to ask. I know they’ve always wanted kids—they’ve been trying to conceive the natural way, but they’ve also tried a variety of fertility treatments. But I also know that biology is a real bitch and that while forty-year-old women do have babies, it’s often not an easy road.
“The renovation’s great,” she says, though the smile doesn’t come anywhere close to reaching her eyes. “But I don’t want to talk about my boring married life. Tell me about your single life. Seeing anyone?”
“Trying to,” I mutter.
She smiles. “Still chasing the fairy tale?”
I lift my glass. “Still chasing.”
“Maybe Sebastian Andrews is on the market,” she says teasingly.
“Nope.” I take a generous swallow of wine. “He’s got a gorgeous girlfriend with the best hair and freckles you’ve ever seen.”
“I bet not as gorgeous as you.”
I snort. “On a good day, I’m cute, but hardly Sebastian’s type, nor he mine.”
She purses her lips. “Don’t get mad at me for going all Big Sister on you, but… do you ever think maybe it’s time to let go of your type? I’m all for knowing what you want, but if your Mr. Perfect hasn’t shown up by now…”