I stood up and grasped the first image.
My office was enclosed by an all-glass frame that looked across a wide open-plan floor to a second identical office, which was Molly’s. Some technology company had been in the small building before us and we took over their lease. On the right hand side of the building was where all the roasting was done. Roasting coffee. For whatever reason, Molly took to the idea and was actually good at it. The company was growing and always busy.
In the middle of the floor were a handful of desks where employees worked.
Bambi was newly twenty-one and stood at my glass door wearing big red glasses and had her hair all twisted, and somehow, standing still on the top of her head. She raised an eyebrow and tapped a pointer finger on the glass.
“Come in,” I said.
She opened the door. “I have numbers.”
“Oh?”
“And orders. And… some bad news.”
“I don’t do bad news,” I said. I turned the picture of the woman at the table around. “I do good news. Happy news. I make it so you want to drink coffee.”
“Yeah, sure. So, these are the current financials…”
“Why do I want to see these?”
“I don’t know,” Bambi said. “Molly said so. And she also said you need to go out on a run.”
“Huh?”
“Kelly isn’t here today.”
“Why not?”
Bambi pointed to her stomach.
“Pregnant?”
“No. Period.”
I curled my lip. I thought about making a comment, but I held back.
I looked forward through my glass window all the way across to Molly’s office. She stood there, smiling at me. I put my hands up, the silent sign of what the hell? and she quickly reached for her phone and shook it as though she was getting a call. She put it to her ear and threw her head back with laughter.
“Bitch,” I whispered.
“I’m telling her you said that,” Bambi said.
“Then you’re fired.”
“Can you fire me?”
“Yes I can.”
“Oh. Well, in that case, Molly is a total bitch.”
“Hey, that’s my best friend,” I said.
Bambi’s eyes went wide. “Uh…”
“Give me the stuff,” I said. “Or just put it on my desk.”
She slapped down a bunch of folders that I had no desire to deal with.
“I have a conference call,” she said. “When you’re done with the financials, I’ll take them back and get everything finalized.”
“Bambi, pick a picture,” I said.
I backed up and picked the other picture up off my desk.
“Huh?” she asked.
“Which one do you like better?”
“Where’s the one of the half-naked guy in bed drinking coffee?” she asked.
I smiled. “Not sure how that would go over with our casual coffee image.”
“It’s casual,” Bambi said. “A little sex. A little coffee. Go home. No strings attached. What woman wouldn't want that?”
“Our target market…”
Bambi just stared. Ask her to code a website and she was a pro. Ask her to master social media and she was good to go. Talk to her about anything else and it was just wide eyes and dazed.
“Never mind,” I said.
“Haven’t you ever had anything casual?”
“Of course,” I said.
I turned and threw the pictures onto my desk.
I had no desire to go out and make deliveries. It wasn’t as fun as in the old days when it was me and Molly, in a used SUV that taught me how to do basic repairs on a vehicle. Or we’d just take it to the garage where my father worked. He’d fix it up, remind me that I was never too young for nursing school, and kiss me on the cheek.
Look at me now, Dad.
I got into my SUV and backed it up to the back door. Bambi met me there with what needed to be delivered and where.
When I saw the last stop, I rolled my eyes.
Deliveries weren’t that bad. It was nice to get out and see people. Talk to people. Talk to those who were buying the coffee and those who were drinking it. In fact, I caught myself a few times just sitting in a corner and watching people. That’s when it hit me that Molly probably gave Kelly the day off on purpose for this exact reason. To get me out into the world to see our customers.
I hated when Molly was right but I would never tell her that she was.
Going to my final stop was something I had to deal with carefully. The old building still had the look of a church. No giant steeple or anything like that. No bell. No clock. No tower. But it had that church look to it.
Stephanie was a nice woman. Her father bought the building and gave it to her to do what she wanted with it. I’m sure my father would have loved to have done the same for me and my sister, but it just wasn’t in the cards for us. That didn’t mean we loved our father any less. Even though he always wished that he gave us a better life.
I parked out back and walked around to the front. There were a handful of people there, none of them together. Three men. Two women. All alone at their own tables. Laptops. Tablets. Phones. Eyes glowing against the light of a screen. Amazing how the world was so much closer because of technology, yet the people right next to you were the ones you never talked to.
Behind the counter, a woman with a name tag that read Beth asked for my order. For the hell of it, I ordered a large coffee.
“Don’t let her pay,” a voice said.
I turned and saw Stephanie next to the counter, stacking up little tin cans of loose leaf tea.
I had already put money on the counter.
Beth looked at me. I smiled. “Take the money.”
“Uh…”
Stephanie climbed down. “Take that money back. I should be paying you.”
“True,” I said. I grabbed my cash. “How are you?”
“Wonderful,” Stephanie said. “Are you parked out back?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. Let’s go for a walk.”
I helped Stephanie carry in all the boxes of different roasts of coffee. Each was a large bag of whole beans that she would grind up herself. Then there were boxes of individual bags of both whole and ground up beans.
“Just leave it all here,” she said.
“You sure?”
“Yeah. You don’t get paid to put stuff away. Unless you’re looking for a job.”
“Not sure you could afford me,” I said with a wink.
“Plus, Beth needs to do something. She just stands there and stares at the stage waiting for… well, you know…”
You know.
That’s what it had all become.
I forced a smile and a nod.
“Come on, let’s go have that coffee,” Stephanie said.
As we moved from the back area toward the front, I heard the sound of a guitar. Funny how that sound took me back more years than I cared to admit.
Then I saw… him.
Standing on the small stage in the coffeehouse, strumming a guitar as he sat on a barstool.
I froze in place and he looked right at me.
We weren’t strangers. So it was no real surprise in seeing him. I knew he gave guitar lessons in the basement of the place. I knew he played shows around town whenever he could.
But I also knew what he had done to my heart over and over.
Foster saw me and quickly stopped playing. He put the guitar down and walked off the stage. He gave a wave and a smile as he walked toward me.
I clutched my coffee as though it were a safety blanket. Not that I was afraid of Foster or anything that had happened between us. It was just that old tug o’ war feeling on my heart that I had no interest in dealing with right then.
“Slug,” he said with a smile.
“Foster,” I said.
“Slug?” Stephanie asked.
“Don’t ask,” I said.
Foster lau
ghed. “Let me get that for you.” He reached into his pocket.
“Paid up,” I said.
“Oh,” Foster said. “Well, then let me get one. Got a few minutes?”
“Sure,” I said.
“Beth, got any whiskey for me back there?” he asked.
Beth giggled and snorted, her cheeks turning four shades of red.
I raised an eyebrow and felt my lip curling. As though Foster was my boyfriend and some woman was hitting on him. I looked away, shaking away that old flame that still gently flickered.
“Come on,” Foster said. “Let’s grab a seat and catch up.”
“I see you’re still the king of guitar lessons and open mic nights?”
“And you’re still the queen of caffeine,” he said, without missing a beat.
I smiled. He always could make me smile. As long as I guarded my heart, Foster was good to be around. He’d give you the shirt off his back if you needed it. But just don’t ask him to make plans or promises.
“How’s your father?” he asked.
“Good. Still working.”
“When’s he going to retire?”
“Never.”
“Doesn’t shock me. He was never the type to settle, huh?”
“No. What would he do? It’s all he’s known. To work and take care of me and Vivian.”
“How is your sister?”
“Good.” I felt the conversation was forced and repetitive. “Still doing hair. Enjoying life.”
“I saw her not too long ago.”
“Oh?”
“Doing hair.”
“Your hair?” I asked.
I looked at Foster’s messy brown hair and couldn’t see him in a salon chair, getting a haircut from my sister. He’d had the same messy hair from the day I met him. Only now, he had shed any boyish features, trading a chubby chin for one cut from steel, and he had a little stubble that covered his face and neck.
“Not my hair. Someone I was seeing.”
“Oh,” I said. “Right. Your…”
“Nobody,” he said. “Didn’t work out. They never do.”
“You’re too much of a pain in the ass, Foster,” I said with a smile.
Foster stood up and put a hand to the table. I realized then he was wearing the thumb ring he stole from me a long time ago. It had a unicorn on it. All silver. And it fit his pinky finger.
I looked at him.
His face was dead serious. Then he said, “They never work out, Rose, because they’re not the one I want.”
3
The Comeback Again Thing
Foster
Sometimes you could just look at a person and feel right at home. Days, weeks, months, years, they all just smash together and make no sense. That’s what it was like with Rose. Always had been, always would be. I knew what I had done to her, and she never completely understood why.
But standing there, looking at her cheeks blush a little, it made me feel right at home. I started to slide my hand across the table, actually considering touching her hand, but I hesitated. I tried to figure out when the last time I saw her was. Maybe about a year ago, a little less. In passing, I think. She was coming here to handle the arrangements with her coffee business and with Stephanie.
“What are you doing later?” I asked her.
“What?”
“I’m playing a small set. You should stop by.”
“Stop by. Here. Watch you play guitar?”
“And hear me sing,” I said. “Yeah. Why not?”
“I… uh…”
“Invite some friends if you want. Your boyfriend. Fiancé. Husband. Girlfriend…”
“Funny,” she said. “Perv.”
“What?”
“I don’t have any of those.”
“No friends, huh? That doesn’t shock me.”
Rose curled her lip. “What? No. I have friends. I meant the boyfriend stuff. And what the hell? That doesn’t shock you that I might not have friends?”
I laughed so hard that I won the attention of everyone else in the place.
“I’m just messing with you, Slug,” I said with a wink.
“When are you going to stop calling me that?”
“When it stops making you mad.”
When we were younger, people called her flower and other stupid nicknames. So I decided to come up with my own name for her. One day, I don’t remember when, someone told me that there were bugs called rose slugs that would eat roses. The second I heard that, I started calling her Slug. It pissed her off… but it also got her attention every single time I said it.
“It doesn’t make me mad, Foster,” Rose said. “It’s childish.”
“I know,” I said. “I’m a kid at heart.”
I stared at her features. I’d watched them change throughout the years, but when I closed my eyes, I still saw her sitting on the top wooden step of her back porch in a light blue dress, her blonde hair wrapping around the front of her face in a losing battle with a comfortable summer breeze.
Now her hair looked a little darker, probably dyed four hundred and twenty five times. Her face was the same though. A permanent little dimple on her right cheek. A freckle on the left side of her neck.
How many times did the tip of my tongue flick at that freckle and make her jump…?
I turned my head and cleared my throat.
“You okay?” Rose asked.
“Yeah, sorry. Frog in my throat.”
“Hey. You know why a frog is always happy?”
“No, why?”
“Because it eats whatever bugs it.”
“Really?” I asked. “Too bad this isn’t a comedy place. You’d kill it here.”
Rose shrugged her shoulders. “That’s all I’ve got. I wouldn’t be able to cut it in the joke world.”
“Just the coffee world, huh?”
“You know it.”
I smiled. It was nice to talk to her again. Casual. Comfortable. Like coming back home after being away for months.
“So, how is the coffee world?”
“Great. People can’t get enough.”
“Well, it tastes good,” I said. “And your job is to get people to drink it?”
“Yes,” she said. “I set up ad campaigns and hope for the best. I assist the sales team with their presentations. I help with the financials, even though I’m not supposed to.”
“Why not?”
“Well, it’s not my job. But I don’t mind. Could be worse.”
I held up the coffee cup and twisted it back and forth in my hand. “I always knew you’d do something great.”
“Great? Helping run a coffee company isn’t exactly great, Foster.”
I put the coffee down and walked along the small table and leaned against it. “Slug, you run a business. That’s great. You could be doing anything for anyone else for an hourly wage and be unhappy. Are you kidding me right now? You don’t realize this is great?”
“My father wanted me to be a doctor.”
“And my father wanted me to be behind bars,” I said.
Rose looked down. “You know what I mean.”
I touched her arm. “Your father never wanted you to be a doctor, Rose. You know that. He just said that because to him, that was a good job with lots of money. To make up for the money he couldn’t give you and Vivian.”
“Foster, I get that.”
“But behind that was nothing but love. He’s proud of you. I’m sure of it.”
“I think he understood the doctor dream ended when I failed algebra.”
“To be fair, Rose, I think I had something to do with that,” I said with a wink.
She laughed.
God, I miss her laugh. I miss hearing it all the time. In public, like this. In bed, curled up under the covers, whispering forever secrets to each other, sharing moments that nobody else would ever have.
When she laughed, she always threw her head back and opened her mouth really wide. She shut her eyes, put her hands together, her l
ittle dimples becoming really big. It was quite honestly an annoying laugh, one you wouldn’t think would come from someone shy like Rose, but it was a laugh that just stuck with you.
Fuck, I know it stuck with me.
I couldn’t stand when a woman wanted to laugh but held back. When she closed her mouth and lowered her eyes, covering her mouth, offering a little giggle.
Not that I would ever compare another woman’s laugh to Rose’s…
“Probably not a good question to ask, Foster,” Rose said, “but… your father…”
I shook my head. “Not around.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m not,” I said. “You know when he comes around things get messy.”
“Yeah,” she said.
There was a moment when our eyes locked. A teetering moment when our hearts needed to make a snap decision. Go to the left as friends or go to the right as something else.
Rose made the decision as she quickly stood up. She opened her mouth to say something and her phone started to beep. You would have sworn her phone was a bomb with a two second timer the way she threw her bag on the chair and turned, her hands diving into it.
“Ah, shoot,” she whispered.
“Everything okay?”
“What? Yeah.” She looked over her shoulder at me. “Just work stuff. I have to get back to my office. Finish this marketing thing I’m working on.”
“Of course,” I said.
She faced forward again. I helped myself to the view, bouncing my tongue between my teeth as I thought about all the times I’d touched those hips of hers. Those little curves that had been there since day one. The only difference now was the way she filled them out. Her hair, even a mostly fake color by now, still had the same thick curls at the ends. My fingers rubbed together, remembering the times I’d play with her hair until she’d fall asleep.
It was all my fault. It was always all my fault.
“You should stop by later,” I said. “Just throwing it out there again.”
Rose turned and threw her bag over her shoulder. “Right. Let me see how the rest of my day goes. Hey, can I ask you something?”
“Ask away,” I said.
“Look at these two pictures.” She reached into her bag. “Tell me which one makes you want to drink coffee.”
“What?” I asked with a laugh.
Let You Go Page 2