How would Linda explain that?
“Butterflies fade.” That was what she always said. But here Gianna was, ten years after opening her restaurant, still feeling them. Which meant . . . that she was capable of feeling butterflies for the rest of her life when she truly loved something or someone. If that was the case, wasn’t it of the utmost importance that she marry someone who gave her butterflies?
She dialed the number Rosie had written down.
“Hello.” A woman answered.
“Charli?” Gianna’s breath caught. Had she really just gotten her on the line?
“This is Charli. Sorry I missed your call, but if you leave a message . . . ”
Gianna sighed. What if the last time Charli called had been Gianna’s only opportunity to talk to her? She apologized for missing her call earlier and told Charli to call back at her convenience. She thought about adding that she hoped to see her soon but decided against it at the last minute. Regardless of whether or not Charli was planning on showing up tonight, Gianna bet she was feeling pressure, and Gianna didn’t want to add to it.
“No luck?” Rosie asked, just as Gianna hung up.
“Voicemail,” Gianna said.
“I can keep trying her, if you’d like?” Rosie offered.
“No,” said Gianna. “I don’t think we try her again. I don’t think we do anything. We just wait.”
—
GIANNA WAS GOOD at waiting. Maybe too good. Look at her—thirty-seven and still waiting for the right man to come along and sweep her off her feet. Maybe if she were a little more impatient, she might have looked a little harder or decided to just move on with her life and be content with her professional success. Waiting had paid off there.
She’d spent ten years in the restaurant industry earning her stripes before opening Hayden’s. Her first job in high school had been at a small diner owned by Patrick Hannigan, a sweet, soft-spoken man, much like her own father, who taught her the ropes of the business. Then in college she worked for Ron and Patricia Harden, a husband-and-wife culinary team whose love for delighting people with good, beautifully presented food made her fall in love with the lifestyle of a restaurant owner.
“My kitchen is like my home,” Ron had said. “And I love always having my door open, hoping that the experience I provide converts strangers into loyal customers.”
Since opening Hayden’s, Gianna had seen a lot of strangers walk through her doors, but she had to admit none were as peculiar as this funeral party.
She found herself eavesdropping even more than normal as she poured ice water into the cup of the beautiful crying blonde—the woman who had reminded her of her hazelnut cake, the Marjolaine, earlier.
As she introduced herself, she heard Marjolaine’s friends saying things to her like, “Everything’s going to be okay, Kendall.” And, “You’ll get through this.”
Get through what? Gianna wondered as she rattled off a few of her dessert recommendations—a seasonal blueberry tart, a cappuccino brownie with creamy espresso mousse called the Café au Chocolat, and an English Toffee Cheesecake.
During Gianna’s monologue, the heavy-set gal reached across the table for Kendall’s hand and told her again that she was going to be fine. Café Cassata, Gianna thought when she saw the gesture. This woman was definitely a reincarnation of her espresso sponge cake called Café Cassata. She was clearly on a mission to soak Kendall’s pain up, the same way the Café Cassata sponge cake soaked up the kahlua and espresso, making for rich flavorful layers that made every bite worth savoring.
“So, does anything sound good?” Gianna asked once she’d finished. “Or do you ladies need another minute?”
“Kendall, what would you like?” Café Cassata asked, patting Kendall’s hand. “Get anything you want. Order two slices if it’ll make you feel better.”
Kendall’s shoulders sunk. “I don’t think two hundred slices would make me feel better, Ellie,” she said.
Ellie looked to the woman in the Susan Boyle frock seated next to her for help. This lady was a dead ringer for Gianna’s Midnight Lava Cake. Anger appeared to be oozing out of her just like dark chocolate oozed out of Gianna’s rich, chocolaty creation that was served with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.
“Maybe instead of ordering dessert,” the Lava Cake Lady said, “we should be tracking your Ex down and giving him his just desserts.”
“Oh Tina, cut it out,” Ellie said. “Seriously. There’s no need to go down that road again.” She yanked her silverware out from her cloth napkin and smoothed it down on her lap. “He’s dead for Christ’s sake!”
“What?” Gianna didn’t mean to speak out loud, but she must have because all of the women looked up at her. She didn’t usually involve herself in customers’ conversations unless they directly pulled her into them, but these women had been so intriguing that she’d slipped. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have been listening. And I’m sorry for the um . . . for your loss.” Had these women been burying reminders of this guy in the park when she’d seen them? But if they hated him, why would they have held a memorial?
Kendall, the crying blonde, looked up at her. “Hey, weren’t you in the park earlier? Didn’t I see you?”
She nodded, guiltily. “That was me.”
All of the women exchanged embarrassed glances. “Okay, look, no one actually died,” Ellie said, clarifying. “I was being metaphorical. We have this ritual when one of us goes through a breakup. We hold a mock funeral and bury all the reminders of an ex so that we can mourn and move on.”
So that’s what they’d been doing out there! Her kitchen staff was going to get a kick out of this . . .
“A breakup is such a loss, you know?” Ellie continued. “You go from spending every day with the love of your life to never speaking to him again. He really does drop off the face of the earth. At least in your world.”
Okay, that was either the craziest thing Gianna had ever heard. Or the smartest . . .
“I have to say, you ladies may be onto something.”
Ellie smiled. “We came up with this idea years ago as sort of a joke, but now I’m a therapist in Seattle, and it makes complete sense to me from a psychological standpoint. Clients who come in for my help after a death in their family are in and out of my office in a couple of months. But clients who come in after a breakup . . . some of them are in there forever, because they don’t accept that it’s really over. They hold onto this unrealistic belief that their ex might come back.”
Gianna immediately looked over at the table reserved for Charli and Jack. What would these women think of their pact? They’d probably think it was the unhealthiest decision in the world. Maybe it was.
“We try to prevent that mentality in our group,” Ellie went on. “When it’s over, it’s over, no looking back.”
Gianna shifted from one foot to the other, processing this. “So, what was the breakup this time?” She realized it was nosy, but the women had already shared so much. Would it really hurt them to finish the rest of the story?
Ellie and Tina looked across the table at Kendall. Clearly, from what Gianna had seen, she was the heartbroken one.
“My fiancé stood me up the day before my wedding,” she said. “He just left. Without an explanation. I was at his house helping set up for the wedding.” Kendall closed her eyes for a moment, and Gianna imagined her mentally going back to that moment, reliving it again. “He found me out on at the gazebo where I was stringing up lights to make our altar, and he said, ‘Kendall, I can’t do this.’ That was it. Like he was cancelling dinner plans! And then he left and drove away.” She shook her head like she still couldn’t believe it. “I should be getting ready for my rehearsal dinner right now, not sitting here.”
Ellie reached across the table for Kendall’s hand again, and in that moment, Gianna felt a rush of gratitude pass through her for Peter. He would never jilt her like that. Not in a million years. Wasn’t that worth something? Maybe even everything?
P
erhaps Peter was just the kind of guy she should be with. And maybe these women had come into her restaurant so that she would realize this . . .
“Obviously you know that dessert is the best cure for a broken heart?” Gianna said to Kendall.
“Yes, I have heard that.” Kendall dabbed her eyes with her cloth napkin. “And you know what, I think I’m ready to order.”
“Oh, good,” Ellie said enthusiastically as though Kendall had just had a major breakthrough.
“Yes, that’s great,” Gianna smiled, feeling good about her answer to Peter’s proposal for the first time all night. “So, ladies,” she said, “what’ll it be?”
fifteen
THEN
“OKAY, DON’T MAKE FUN of me,” said Rebecca Green, Charli’s new freckle-faced friend from Dayton, Ohio, who was in her PhD program. “But I see this stick on the ground right here, and I think, multipolar neuron.”
Charli looked at the stick, which had multiple branches jutting out from it, and laughed because it was so something she would have said.
“Don’t you just love being back in school mode?” Charli asked.
“I don’t know how not to be in school mode,” Rebecca laughed.
They were having lunch in between classes on a bench at the pond-sized lake down the street from their campus. It had become their routine in the few weeks since they’d started their program—a program that Charli absolutely loved.
She had known she made the right choice in schools since day one at the Welcome Reception out on the university lawn. She’d listened to past alumni talk about all the research they had done during their PhD years at MUSC and what they were currently working on in the field.
Charli had been so stimulated by the discussion that she’d barely been able to sleep that night. She’d stayed up late in the one-bedroom colonial flat she lived in on Council Street, just a few blocks from campus, and wrote down ideas for possible research topics of her own in an Idea Notebook that an alum had given her and instructed her to use diligently.
And then she’d met Rebecca the first day of class, and they’d clicked instantly.
Intellectually, this was her paradise. But, emotionally . . . she missed Jack every day.
They’d started writing letters the week he left, and she’d read each one he sent so many times that the white-lined paper he wrote them on was wearing at the creases from her continuously folding and unfolding of them. She had just sent him a letter giving him her Charleston address, telling him how much she liked her classes and letting him know a little about Rebecca, and she was checking her mailbox daily for his response.
It was just so weird not talking to him whenever she wanted. She constantly had to resist the urge to call him after something exciting happened, because that had been her habit for so many years.
“You thinking of your guy from home again?” Rebecca guessed.
Charli had told her about Jack the second day she met her, after Rebecca had caught her sketching a picture of him in her notebook during their lecture on protein synthesis.
“Am I that obvious?”
“You just get this faraway look in your eyes when you think about him.”
Charli sighed. “I’ve been feeling kind of guilty lately. Like I chose all this over him.”
“Aw, come on, you didn’t choose this.” Rebecca peeled the crust off her turkey sandwich. “This chose us. This is what we’re supposed to do, you know? If you’re anything like me, you have a creative, curious side of you that demands you pay it attention.”
This girl really got her. “Yeah, but I also have a side of me that’s really into Jack.” She pulled her hair up off her neck and tied it up, sweating from the topic of conversation and the southern humidity that she still hadn’t adjusted to yet. “Did you leave anyone special behind in Ohio, Rebecca?”
“Yeah,” Rebecca said. “Henry.”
So, she could relate. “What was he like?”
“Well, for starters, he was fat.”
“Fat?” Charli wrinkled her brows.
“Yes, very, very fat. Furry too. And a great cuddler. Unfortunately, my landlord doesn’t allow cats.”
Charli cracked a smile. “Very funny.”
Grinning, Rebecca continued. “No, I’ve never had a great love. A couple of boyfriends here and there, but nothing serious.”
“Well, I’m still trying to decide if it’s a blessing or a curse to fall in love when you’re young,” Charli told her. “So, since I haven’t figured it out yet, feel free to consider yourself blessed.”
“Okay,” Rebecca chuckled.
They both looked out over the blue-green water and at the walkers who were trekking around the lake on the concrete path, enjoying the sunshine. For a minute they ate quietly and then, breaking the silence, Rebecca said, “Christopher’s certainly upset that you’re hung up on someone else.”
“Christopher?” Charli squinted at her.
“The curly, dark-haired boy with the Johnny Depp retro specs from our program.”
“Oh, right.” Charli had chatted with him a few times.
“We’re in the same apartment complex,” Rebecca said, “so we’ve gotten to know each other pretty well, and the last few nights all he’s been talking about is how cute he thinks you are.”
Charli blushed, even though she wasn’t interested. It had been a long time since she’d heard any guy other than Jack pay her a compliment. She quickly recovered as she dug into her strawberry, spinach, and feta salad.
“Well, tell him he better set his sights on someone else. Jack holds a special place in my heart. I don’t think I’ll ever get over him. I’m hoping that down the road things will work out with us. When this is all over.”
“When this is all over?” Rebecca looked at her, amused. “You do remember this is a five-year program you committed to, don’t you?”
Charli smiled faintly. “I get it’s a long time.” She hadn’t yet told Rebecca about the pact she and Jack made and wasn’t sure she should share the details. The only people who knew about it were her parents, Jack’s mom, and Gianna from Hayden’s. She figured that to anyone who hadn’t known her and Jack together, the idea of their five-year-out reunion would seem ridiculous, but at the same time Charli wanted someone in her life out here to know in case she ever wanted to talk about it.
After debating it for a moment, she made Rebecca swear not to tell anyone and then filled her in.
Rebecca whistled when she finished. “That’s some plan. You two must have really had something great.”
“We did,” Charli told her forking a strawberry. “We were a perfectly bonded pair, like adenine and thymine.”
Rebecca smiled at her reference to the nucleotides that joined together to form hydrogen bonds in DNA. “Just keep your mind open,” she said. “That’s all I want to tell you. You never know what could happen down the road.”
Charli did know though. The same way she knew science was her professional calling. She and Jack were meant to be. And no other guy or amount of time could change that.
—
JACK LAY ON top of the faded floral-printed comforter in the musty motel room he was sharing with his away-game roommate, Bobby, another new draft pick. Wide awake at two o’clock in the morning, he held his phone up to the latest letter that he had brought with him from Charli so he could read it again in the light from the glowing screen.
It’s like being in my own little piece of heaven.
Jack smiled as he thought of Charli enjoying her book-worm life in Charleston. He scanned down the page a little further and then read another sentence that kept catching his attention.
Imagine only having to read your favorite chapters of your favorite textbooks in college—that’s how much I’m enjoying what I’m studying.
Jack rolled onto his side, set his phone down, and held the crinkled letter against his chest. Now that, he thought, is how a person who’s following her dream is supposed to feel.
Jack had
been trying to keep his spirits up since he got to California, but Charli’s letter made him realize how much he wasn’t really loving his Minor League life.
He would definitely not describe it as a “piece of heaven.” His days were long and exhausting. They usually started around one o’clock in the afternoon with a pre-game warm-up that included batting and pitching practice and ended around midnight after a post-game lift. Jack had a couple of friends, but the guy he was closest to, Ian, had just gotten released, and another dude he’d bonded with, Kimmel, had been bumped down a league mid-season. He was trying to get along with the other guys, but it was hard considering the ringleader of the team was a twenty-eight-year-old hothead who played Jack’s same position and who couldn’t stand Jack because he saw him as a threat to his chances of getting called up. The traveling was wearing on Jack as well. He wasn’t sure how many more hot, bumpy bus rides he could take or how many more Subway sandwiches he could eat. To be honest, he was grateful that the season was going to be over after they finished their three-game series in Visalia.
Jack picked his phone back up and shined the light on Charli’s letter again.
He read over some other parts.
I wish you could meet Rebecca. She’s exactly like me in every way except physically. Her face has so many freckles it reminds me of a connect-the-dot game. We do everything together. Go to class, study in our state-of-the-art library, grab lunch near campus.
He scrolled a few more paragraphs down.
On Saturday my classmates and I took a break from studying and went to the beach. Even though it’s October, the weather is still so beautiful here, and the water was warm when I splashed through it. We played a competitive game of beach volleyball as the sun was going down. You would have loved it.
Jack rolled onto his back again.
Reading through those passages, he couldn’t help but fantasize about moving out to Charleston and being with Charli. He hated missing out on her life, and it hurt knowing that she was building an entire new world without him.
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