This was her fourth week doing story hour and it was starting to draw some regulars. The moms in town seemed relieved to have another Monday morning option for their kids, especially during the rains. She was thinking of starting one on Saturday mornings, too, to see if she could draw some tourists into the shop. The local moms browsed during storytime and sometimes bought, but tourists—they were paydirt.
Annie and Charlotte would likely be coming; they had yet to miss stories with Auntie Lila. Lila re-arranged the store display table devoted to cookbooks. “Fresh and Local: Bay Area Cooking at Its Best” was now propped front and center and Lila knew she’d be taking a copy home with her tonight for some bedtime reading.
Turning at the sound of the front door opening, Lila happily saw Annie and Charlotte coming in, both wearing purple scarves that clearly had been knit from the same yarn. Annie’s mother-in-law liked needlework.
“La La!” Charlotte yelled and made a wobbly run over to Lila to give her a big hug. She had her lovey with her, a battered stuffed lamb who liked to sit on Charlotte’s lap while she sat on mom’s lap for stories.
“Oh, Charlotte,” Lila greeted her. “Do I have some stories today for you!”
“Pupa?” she asked, looking around the store for the good stuff.
“Yes, of course,” Lila responded, going to get the basket of hand puppets Charlotte wanted. It turned out that when Lila did storytime she liked to bring puppets into the mix for dramatic effect. She didn’t really know where this inner preschool teacher had come from, but she was going with it. She guessed that once everything you’d been striving toward both personally and professionally crashed and burned it freed you up to start breaking out the puppets.
With Charlotte happily sorting through the basket, Lila opened up a small box of books that had just arrived and needed to be entered into their computer as store inventory. Annie settled herself by the front desk and rested her hand in her chin.
“I dreamed about biscotti last night.”
“Mmm.” Lila understood; good biscotti was truly the stuff of dreams.
“We should have a big glass jar of them.”
“Right next to the register. An impulse item.” Lila could see it in their shop.
“And maybe some chocolate-dipped peppermint sticks.”
“A mint and a treat.” As Annie contemplated the array, Lila cleared her throat. “So, I’ve been thinking,” she started. Annie looked at her. “I’m not sure how I feel about this.” Annie tilted her head. “What I’m trying to say is—OK, you can set me up.”
“What?” Annie asked.
“You heard me,” Lila continued, resignation in her voice. “Do your worst. Fix me up with some strapping young man.”
“Yes!” Annie rose her hand for a high-five. “I so did not expect you to say that!”
“One condition,” Lila added, giving Annie’s hand a half-hearted tap. “Double date. You and Pete come too. And nothing fancy. Maybe we can just go to that bar you’ve mentioned.”
“Done,” Annie replied, rubbing her hands together as she began plotting. “But if things are going well, Pete and I might just have to get home to Charlotte.” The twinkle of mischief in her eyes gave Lila pause.
“Charlotte will be just fine that night,” Lila warned. “I’m sure of it.”
The door opened and two tired-looking moms with three bouncing and chattering toddlers made their way into the store. Lila quelled her sudden urge to yell “positions!” as if preparing for a Broadway play. It was showtime for her and hand puppet crew.
Eight toddlers rapt and nearly as many moms happily browsing, Lila was in her element acting out the huffing and puffing of the Big Bad Wolf. Annie, however, was acting out. Sitting with Charlotte in her lap, Annie looked like the kid in class who couldn’t wait to get called on, bouncing up and down and waving her hand in the air. She didn’t exactly have her hand up but she might as well have for all her obvious over-brimming excitement. Lila knew it had to be more than just the story of the three little pigs, even with the hand puppets. Barely had Lila set down the last fairy tale—Rumplestilskin, minus the title character ripping himself in half at the end—when Annie was upon her.
“Bookstore café,” she burst out, as if answering the winning question on a game show.
“Yes, she was a princess,” Lila nodded, answering one of the toddler’s non sequitur questions. “What?” she turned to ask Annie.
“It’s going to be a bookstore café!” Annie repeated. “Our coffee shop! We buy the space next door, tear down the wall and expand into a café. Coffee, books, storytime, it’s perfect!”
“Next door,” Lila repeated, looking over at what was now a wall dividing the bookstore from a newly vacant storefront that used to be a deli. She could see it—the tourists stopping in for a coffee, children enjoying storytime, parents browsing and buying. It could work.
“We’re Barnes and Noble with a hometown touch!” Annie continued. “They come in for the coffee—“
“The kids enjoy story time.”
“Parents end up browsing, buying a magazine, some chocolates.”
“It’s good,” Lila agreed, smiling.
“It’s genius,” Annie said, never one to curb her enthusiasm. “It’s the perfect plan.”
* * *
Walking across the gravel parking lot from her car to the bar, a light, warm breeze lifted Lila’s hair back from her face. She realized she probably didn’t need the sweater wrap she’d worn pretty much every day the past couple of months. Lila could picture the crocuses in Gram’s front yard beneath the frozen March earth waiting to make their debut. Nothing frozen in Redwood Cove, the muddy earth and ocean air made everything already feel alive.
Deciding against taking off the sweater wrap—she had on a sleeveless tank underneath that suddenly felt revealing as she was about to meet her blind date—Lila grasped the big, brass handle on the door and pulled it open to loud music and laughter. Ted’s was Redwood Cove’s local’s bar, not to be confused with a local bar in Redwood Cove for tourists. There were a few of those, featuring pricy wines and delicacies like raw oysters. Ted’s featured a pool table, a dart board and a jukebox. It had ten round tables, a bunch of stools up at the bar, and neon beer signs in the window. It was where locals went to hang out.
Suddenly shy, Lila hesitated at the entryway looking for Annie and Pete. Annie had assured her that they’d be there at 8 so if she arrived around 8:30 there’d be no moment of ‘I’m alone at the bar waiting for my friends.”
“Lost?” a guy in a baseball cap asked, holding a beer and approaching her with a grin.
“Woo hoo! Lila!” Annie called out, waving from a table to her left.
Happily making her way over, Lila gave Tom, Pete’s friend, what she hoped was a casual glance. A big guy, plaid shirt, broad shoulders, baseball cap with what looked like sandy hair underneath. Nothing appalling at first glance.
“Lila-loo!” Annie greeted her, getting up to give her a big hug.
“You made it,” Pete smiled, hand up for a high five. It wasn’t the first time they’d invited her out, but it was the first time she’d shown up.
After a very obvious head to toe appraisal, Tom patted the empty chair next to him and said, “Got a seat for you right here.”
“Hey,” Lila said a bit shyly, swallowing and tucking a curl behind her ear. Shrugging out of her sweater wrap, she sat down and happily accepted the cold beer Pete handed her. She felt silly to be nervous, but the whole business with Phillip had left her confidence as solid as mud.
Plus, she wasn’t wearing her lucky jeans. Earlier that evening she’d discovered that, no longer being a size two, the jeans weren’t having it. The upside of her new, size six body was saying hello again to her long-lost boobs. Apparently the non-surgically enhanced had to make a choice: either curves or super-tiny-skinniness, but not both.
About an hour and two beers later, Lila found herself listening politely to the latest piece of infor
mation that Tom was relaying to her about truck classifications.
“See, with your compact pickup you’ll see a separate chassis frame. And a lot of people think that isn’t a big deal. But then they’re out on a rough road and you got your body.” He made a fist. “And you got your chassis.” Another fist. “See where I’m going with this?”
“I think I do,” Lila admitted. Not that she knew much about trucks, but his lecture thus far had cleaved close to one central theme: of all the types of trucks in all the world—and apparently there were a lot—his type was the best.
“Lila, tell Pete that’s how it happened!” Annie broke into their conversation from across the table.
Turning with some relief, Lila asked, “What?”
“Back in junior year. Remember? When I told him he had to step it up?”
“Oh, right!” Pete mocked with a laugh.
“You mean The Talk?” Lila asked, remembering the episode around midway through their junior year when Annie and Pete had nearly broken up. According to Annie’s version, tough guy Pete had cried and Annie had explained that he needed to mend his ways and how.
“I had it all under control,” Pete said, taking another swig of his beer.
“Oh honey,” Annie ruffled the back of her husband’s hair.
“Wait,” Tom interrupted, pointing between Lila and Annie. “You two knew each other in college?”
“Yeah, man,” Pete answered. “Remember, I told you Lila was Annie’s college roommate?”
“Huh.” Tom finished off what was easily his sixth beer. Bringing the glass back down to the table with a resounding smack, he turned to Pete and bellowed, “Moose!”
With a chuckle, Pete yelled back, “Moose!”
It was about the fourth time the men had referenced the largest species in the deer family. As far as Lila could tell, the outburst referenced something hilarious about which only they knew. The only other topic that had roused Tom was trucks; apparently he had a big one.
Annie looked at Lila and scrunched up her nose for a quick but revealing moment that communicated “Sorry.”
Lila responded with a quizzical look and one hand raised in a ‘Why did you think we’d hit it off, exactly?’ Getting it—such was the ability of college roommates 10 years into their friendship to communicate—Annie shrugged and then mouthed the words “great shoulders.” Nodding in agreement, Tom did have great shoulders, Lila took another sip of her beer and let her wandering eye rove around the bar as a girl out on a date with a man repeatedly yelling “Moose” is wont to do.
Over by the pool table, Lila spotted someone tall, dark and handsome and let herself beer goggle. She couldn’t quite see his face with what seemed to be the bar uniform of a tattered baseball cap pulled down low, but she liked how he focused so intently with that strong jawline, studying possible angles for his next shot. Funny how on one guy stubble made you think homeless or at least living in his mother’s basement playing video games, while on another it made you think how you wouldn’t mind finding yourself trapped with him in a closet. He had on the kind of faded, broken-in longsleeved t-shirt that you knew would be soft to touch and jeans that were just…normal, not skinny tapered or dyed pitch black or laced with huge pockets or droopy falling down off his hips.
“Here’s to not being in the city!” Lila exclaimed and she and Annie clinked glasses.
“’Nother pitcher?” Tom asked Pete, using his hands on the table to push himself up to standing. Pete nodded and rose to head to the bathroom.
“Here’s to getting you back!” Annie said to Lila, raising her glass again.
“Back?”
“You got lame for a while there, Lila.”
“Yeah, I didn’t feel much like heading out,” Lila agreed. This winter she’d hibernated. “I’ve been all about cashmere socks and soup.”
“Not just this winter—the past five years. You went all corporate on me. You had that ironed-out blonde hair. And you were so skinny I nearly cut myself giving you a hug.”
“Really?” Lila asked, amused and with a bit of a beer buzz.
“You left college and it was like you joined some cult.”
Lila could picture all her old AdSales co-workers buzzing around the cubicles like bees in a hive. Not first thing in the morning, though. Before the coffee kicked in they were more like zombies. She could imagine them, grey-faced, torn clothes, arms outstretched as they made the classic zombie moan. “Brains,” Lila groaned.
“You’re buzzed,” Annie laughed, filling Lila’s empty glass with the newly-arrived pitcher.
“Maybe you’re just not deep enough to follow what I’m saying.”
“Yeah, that’s it.” They both felt compelled to give their glasses another clink. “Anyway, welcome back.”
“I was just at the bar,” Tom replied, sitting down. “But, thanks,” he added, confused as to why he’d made Annie and Lila laugh harder.
After a quick call to her mother-in-law to ensure Charlotte was sleeping soundly—answer was yes—Annie announced that Pete was driving home and poured herself another beer. “Lila,” Annie said. “When you have a baby, make sure you have an awesome mother-in-law who lives down the street and loves to babysit. My tip to you,” Annie raised her glass. “Free advice.”
Looking around the bar in the hazy din, laughter, music, a table to her left playing a card game, Lila decided that there would be more Ted’s in her future. Most of the bars in the city, at least the ones she’d gone to with Valeria and Venice, had been packed with attitude in all its different varieties: bored to death out on a Friday night, sunglasses in a dark bar, tattoo encircling my throat, wanna be model. Lila had never found one that felt like her scene. At Ted’s, she already felt like a regular.
Taking the latest bellow of “Moose!” as her cue to make a brief exit, Lila headed up to the jukebox. A classic one that had been restored, it had pink and white dials that rotated with a press of a button. Happily, she saw that the faded t-shirt guy she’d been oogling by the pool table was now standing and flipping through song choices.
“Any Van Halen?” she asked, sidling on over. When the guy slowly looked up, Lila was glad she wasn’t sipping beer as she would have done a spit-take. Quickly looking away from Jake Endicott, she tried to focus down at the jukebox. “You can choose.” She took a step away.
Sliding quarters in the slot, Jake started flipping through song selections. “Are you up here planning an event or something?”
“Oh no. No, no, no. I’m not doing that anymore.” Lila shook her head and they both descended into silence, perhaps contemplating how beneficial that was for the party planning industry.
“What brings you back here then?
“I’ve moved here? To Redwood Cove?” Lila shifted her weight from one foot to the other and wondered when she’d regain the power to make statements instead of questions. What was he doing there, anyway, incognito? Didn’t he have a plantation to run?
“Are you from around here?”
“No, Massachusetts?”
“Yeah? I went to boarding school in Massachusetts. And then I went to Dartmouth.” Lila took a sip of her beer and waited for him to start regaling her with hilarious tales of frat boy high jinx lighting cows on fire and drugging Freshman girls. Either that or fascinating golf stories about sand traps and telling the caddy to be there in five or there’d be hell to pay. She knew since she’d gone to Colgate, a snooty private college in its own right, one might accuse her of being unfair. But she’d gone there on scholarship, thank you very much, and still had the chip on her shoulder to show for it.
“Broken into any cars lately?” Jake asked, still focused on the jukebox.
“I don’t break into cars,” Lila protested, stopping herself before she gave him a smack on the shoulder. This was Jake Endicott, after all, not Pete.
“That’s your story,” Jake replied, turning toward her. “But I was thinking about it and I realized, how do I know that was your car? All I saw was you
standing next to it in the rain.”
Unable to tell if he was teasing, Lila looked up into his eyes. Dark and brown, they gave nothing away. Remembering the scene—pouring rain, desperate measures involving low-quality licorice and her VISA card—she retorted, “Well, if I was trying to use a credit card to break in, then I pretty much suck as a car thief.”
“No, it’s brilliant,” Jake disagreed. “Play damsel in distress. Get some guy to break in for you. Then drive off.”
“That’s actually a great idea,” Lila acknowledged.
She was about to expand on it when a cold, red-nailed claw snaked its way around Jake’s forearm and dragged him away in a puff of perfume. At least, that’s how it seemed to Lila when Vanessa suddenly appeared and made her claim on Jake. Meeting Vanessa’s “We need to talk” with his familiar scowl, Jake barely grunted a goodbye before striding away.
“Ah, young love,” Lila thought, giving the departing pair a quick glance. Both seemed equally unhappy, Vanessa raking her fingers through her perfectly coiffed hair in distress and Jake with his arms folded implacably across his chest. Glad she wasn’t caught in the cross-fire of whatever was going on between them, Lila selected some Hall and Oates and headed back to her table.
By the door, Vanessa gestured somewhat wildly with her hands while Jake stood there glowering, imperious and unmoved. It reminded Lila of something. Sipping her beer, Lila’s eyes widened as she recalled the holiday party scene on the cobblestone, her rabidly gesticulating about the imminent danger of all the guests and him giving a stone-cold shut-down. Not liking the memory of either of their behavior, she brushed it aside in favor of focusing on the current drama. She and the rest of the bar’s patrons watched as Jake opened the door and gestured for Vanessa to head outside where they’d make less of a scene. In a huff, Vanessa stomped out, Jake following with a nearly visible dark cloud over his head.
“Fun!” Lila commented, turning back to her companions.
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