Always a Bridesmaid

by Lizzie Shane

  Sidney’s voice rushed out, impatient and frazzled. “Hey. Sorry. I saw you called this weekend, but it was an insane time. I think I was holding up one end of a couch when the phone rang.”

  “Redecorating?”

  “No, we moved. Didn’t I tell you? God, I don’t know where my brain is these days. I can’t keep track of who I’ve told what.”

  “You moved?” Parv echoed.

  Sidney lived just down the street in the attic apartment two stories above the storefront for the wedding planning business she ran with Victoria—when she wasn’t filming her new wedding reality TV show with Josh. Victoria lived in the apartment on the second floor of the building with her daughter Lorelei, where she’d hosted Girls’ Nights and they’d spent countless hours commiserating over the sad state of the Dating World these days.

  But now Tori’s ex was back and Sidney had Josh and they hadn’t had a Girls’ Night in weeks.

  “I’ve been sleeping at Josh’s most nights anyway since he got the new condo. And with Nick living with Tori and Lorelei now they were tripping over each other. My place was too small for two people, but it’s perfect as a suite for Lorelei, especially now that she’s getting old enough to really want her own space. The two apartments were originally one two-story place so it was the obvious choice to combine them again—we’d been talking about it for weeks. When we realized we had a weekend without filming, we had to jump at it. Our schedule is insane for the next few weeks, but Nick and Josh called in some of their frat buddies and we were able to get my stuff moved over to Josh’s and Lorelei’s transferred upstairs all in two days.”

  “Why didn’t you call me?” An irrational trickle of hurt threaded through the question. “I could have helped.”

  “We had it under control. And I figured you’d be working anyway.”

  “I could have made time. I can’t believe you moved without even telling me.”

  “Why are you making a thing of this?” A hint of irritation sparked in Sidney’s voice. “I was trying to be considerate. I didn’t want you to feel like you had to take time off work to help when we didn’t need you.”

  “I wasn’t working. I had my parents’ anniversary thing.”

  “So you were busy.”

  “That isn’t the point.”

  “Well, can we get to the point?” Sidney asked. “I have about seven thousand things to do before we film tomorrow.”

  The sharpness in her voice sealed Parv’s lips. She couldn’t tell Sidney about Common Grounds closing now. The timing couldn’t be more wrong. And she really should tell Tori and Sidney in person. “Are we doing Girls’ Night tomorrow?”

  “We can’t this week,” Sidney answered without hesitation—and Parv felt another irrational surge of hurt that Sidney hadn’t even paused to consider.

  She didn’t know who the ‘we’ in Sid’s sentence was—her and Tori and Lorelei? Her and Josh?—either way, it was obvious Parvati was no longer part of the we.

  “I have another call coming in.” Sidney’s voice was abrupt, her attention already elsewhere. “We’ll talk soon.” She hung up before Parv could say another word, leaving her staring at the phone wondering what just happened.

  * * * * *

  Max could see Parv was pissed as soon as he walked through the door of Common Grounds that night five minutes before closing. The shop was empty and she stood in front of the counter, polishing the already-spotless pastry case with manic fervor—as if she could make it shine by sheer rpms.

  She looked up when he entered, no smile of greeting lighting her face, just a hint of a scowl. “If you want coffee it better be French press or drip. I already cleaned the espresso machine.”

  He crossed the shop to lean against the counter near her. “And if I just came to bask in your sparkling personality?”

  “We’re all out of sparkle today.” She flung the Windex wipe into the garbage for a three-pointer and pivoted to face him, hands planted on her hips, her stance confrontational. “Did you know your sister moved?”

  “Sidney?”

  “Do you have another sister?”

  “What, did she move in with Josh?”

  Parvati rounded the counter and snatched up another cleaning product, attacking another already-gleaming surface. “Apparently while she was ignoring my calls all weekend, she was moving.”

  Max eyed her cautiously. “And we’re angry about this.”

  As soon as he said the word angry, the fight seemed to drain out of her and she sagged against the counter. “I used to know everything. I was the one Sidney told about her day. I was the one she would bitch to when the cable guy was late or the florist for some wedding was jerking her around. I was her best friend. Now I don’t even know that she’s planning on moving in with her boyfriend, let alone that she already did it?”

  “Hey.” He came around the counter, ready to offer what comfort he could, but before he reached her she was back in motion, moving past him, flipping over the closed sign and locking the front door.

  “I wasn’t needed. I get that,” Parv said as she moved, briskly going through the motions of closing with the inattention of years of experience. “But I wanted to be there for sentimental value, if nothing else. Josh’s frat brothers helped them move out, but I helped her move in. Tori and Sidney and I wrestled that stupid couch up three flights of stairs all by ourselves, swearing and laughing the whole way. How could they not remember that? I used to be part of everything.”

  “If it’s any consolation, they didn’t call me either.” And he could have been much more than just sentimental help. He could have shown up with a team of muscle and gotten it done in half the time.

  “Of course they didn’t,” Parvati said, offhand. “Sidney knows better than to rely on you for stuff like that. But I’m always there to help. That’s what I do.”

  Her analysis jarred him, the words hitting like an unexpected right hook to the jaw. “I’m reliable.”

  “Of course you are,” Parv agreed. “But you’re an island. You don’t involve yourself in other people’s lives.”

  “Sidney knows she can rely on me.” He hated how defensive he sounded. Like he was afraid she was right. “I did all the security for her for that celebrity wedding in May.”

  “And she’s grateful,” Parv said quickly. “That isn’t what I meant. It’s just… It’s the love languages.”

  “I don’t know what that is.”

  “It’s this book,” Parv explained, finishing up with the front of house closing routine and waving him with her back to the kitchen. “My sister Asha used to be obsessed with it—I think because she’s never been particularly good at dealing with feelings stuff and this was a way of approaching it analytically.” She paused, seeming to remember that he hadn’t just arrived to hear her vent. “Did you want coffee? Or a muffin?”

  “I’m good.” He really had come just because he wanted to see her—the fact that he could grab a late cup of coffee or a danish just a convenient excuse.

  “Anyway, there are five love languages. The ways people show and receive love—and I’m probably going to get this wrong because I only heard about it from Asha—but they’re physical touch, verbal praise, gift giving, the other one that I always forget, and acts of service. That’s me. Acts of service. I do things for people to show them that I care. I want the people in my life to know that they can always call me, day or night, and I will move heaven and earth to help them. And Sidney didn’t call.”

  And finally her tirade made sense. “That doesn’t mean she’s rejecting your friendship.”

  “I know.” She sank onto a kitchen stool. “I’m sorry. I know I over-freaked, but it’s been a day. I told Madison and Anna today that I’m closing Common Grounds.”

  Max hadn’t realized she’d already gotten to that point. He’d been thinking about her situation for the last couple days, turning over options, his brain automatically churning away to fix the problem.

  “What if you didn’t have
to?”

  Chapter Nine

  “What did you say?”

  “The luxury coffee angle is a good one,” he went on, oblivious to the dual spikes of hope and panic his words inspired. “But you need to work on broadening your market. People in Eden can afford to pay a ridiculous amount for a premium cup of coffee—you were right about that—but you need to attach a cachet to your product. Make it the kind of luxury item that even someone who can’t really afford it would treat themselves to when they wanted to feel pampered. Something that the rich indulge in and the aspirational splurge on. Marketing is all about psychology. You need to drum up demand as a luxury brand and build a reputation as the elite coffee spot—and the best way to do that is getting celebrities involved. Your problem is you’re too far north. People will travel for a luxury experience, but you have to get them hooked first and most of the stars live farther south—Mulholland, Pacific Palisades, the Hollywood Hills. There’s a reason I have my offices in Beverly Hills even though the commute is a pain in my ass.”

  “I can’t afford a storefront in Beverly Hills. I can’t even afford one here.”

  “What if I invested?”

  Her heart began hammering, distractingly loud—and she couldn’t tell whether it was from excitement or terror. She’d never realized how similar those two emotions could be.

  “You have to admit I have an eye for business and I think you have something here. You could move the shop, but I’d recommend opening a second one. Keep this one as the flagship location.” He looked around her kitchen, his gaze seeming to weigh and measure the value of everything it touched, and she had to resist the urge to smack him, suddenly defensive of her beautiful sparkling ovens. “You’d have to change the name,” he went on relentlessly. “No one wants to pay exorbitantly for something Common. Why not Uncommon Grounds?”

  “Because the whole idea was to create a place where different people from different perspectives and different walks of life could come together. To have a gathering place.”

  “Gathering places don’t make money.”

  She grimaced. “So I’ve discovered.”

  “I know this is your comfort zone—Eden is home. It’s familiar. But you need to think big.” He thrust his hands into his pockets, finally looking at her rather than the potential investment around him. “I would probably be annoying to work with,” he stated and she almost laughed at the understatement. “I’d be bossy and you’d want to kill me at least once a week, but if you trust me, Parv, I think we could have this place thriving in six months.”

  “Six months,” she echoed, the words hitting her in the gut and she finally identified the chaotic emotion that had been sneaking around behind all the hope and fear.

  Anger.

  He was right. She’d failed abysmally in five years of trying, but Max could doubtless make Common Grounds—or Uncommon Grounds—successful in six months flat. Which just made her feel even more pathetic.

  “I don’t need you to save me, Max. I know you feel bad for me, but I don’t need your pity.”

  He frowned. “I don’t make investments out of pity.”

  “Maybe I don’t want you swooping in and taking over.”

  “You’d rather go out of business than accept my help.”

  It wasn’t a question, but she answered him anyway. “It doesn’t sound like help. It sounds like it wouldn’t be mine anymore. Win or lose, succeed or fail, at least Common Grounds is what I made it.”

  “You’re being ridiculous.” The dismissiveness in his voice made her want to throw her mixer at his head. “There’s a time for pride—”

  “And a time to butt the hell out. This isn’t your business, Max.”

  “Don’t you want your business to succeed?”

  She couldn’t think about that. All she could see was Max’s perfect face, breezing through life without a single speed bump while she couldn’t seem to make it five feet without falling flat on her face. “Right now I just want you to get out of my kitchen.”

  “This is ridiculous.” His face tightened with irritation. “You’re being irrational.”

  “Get. Out. Of. My. Kitchen.”

  “Fine.” He started toward the back door. “I’m going. But the offer still stands.”

  She barely managed to keep from throwing things at him—the only thing stopping her the fact that the kitchen was already clean and tidy, everything put away.

  Irrational!

  As if anyone would be rational with the infallible Max Dewitt pointing out how easy it would be for him to succeed where she had failed. It was even worse because it was him—the man she’d admitted she had a crush on less than forty-eight hours earlier. As if this week could get any more demoralizing.

  She didn’t even have anyone she could vent to about his overbearing jackassery.

  She grabbed her mixer and thunked it on the counter before stalking into the pantry, gathering ingredients and smacking them down on her pristine counters with a little more force than strictly necessary. She’d planned to go home early—as soon as she closed—but there was nothing waiting for her there but her Netflix queue, so she set out to mess up her spotless kitchen instead.

  Twenty minutes of baking therapy later, she was ready to admit that Max might not, in fact, be the Antichrist. That he may have just been trying to help and that she may have overreacted a tiny bit.

  By the time she had a beautiful batch of cake pops ready for sale, she’d rolled through a dozen options as to why the idea of keeping the shop open and even expanding had freaked her out so much—and she kept coming back to the same conclusion.

  One that didn’t sit particularly well.

  She picked out five of the prettiest cake pops and bundled them in a little bouquet. She wrapped them in cellophane to protect them and put the rest in the pastry case, ready for the morning. By the time she had walked up to her place, collected her car, and driven out to Max’s she’d rehearsed in her head fifty times exactly what she was going to say to him. The flowery words of her apology. But when he opened the front door of his gorgeous mountain retreat and she thrust the cake pop bouquet at him, the first words out of her mouth weren’t what she’d planned at all.

  “I don’t want to own a coffee shop anymore.”

  * * * * *

  Max blinked at the woman on his doorstep—the same women he’d been mentally, and sometimes verbally, swearing at for the last hour. He’d tried to help—without a single ulterior motive, thank you very much—and she’d thrown him out of her kitchen. What the hell kind of thank you was that? He’d been ready to ride to her rescue—and the damn irrational woman needed rescuing—and she’d spat in his face. Metaphorically speaking.

  He’d been ready to continue their argument when he saw her car pull up out front. He’d stalked to the door, ready to whip it open and give her a piece of his mind as soon as she rang the bell—but the first words out of her mouth brought his tirade screeching to a halt before it even began.

  He eyed the cake-pop bouquet at the end of her outstretched arm. “Okay…”

  “I’m not sure I ever should have been a business-owner.”

  He took the cake-pops from her before her arm muscles gave out. “Do you want to come in?”

  She moved past him into the house, still lost in her epiphany. “What I really love is the baking. I was never cut out to own a business.”

  “I don’t think that’s true. You’re smart. You made a few missteps, but if a few things had fallen your way you could have made it work even without my help.” He dropped the cake pops into a glass—an edible bouquet in a make-shift vase.

  “I made emotional decisions. I think intellectually I knew they were bad when I was making them because I always felt like I had to justify them. I fell in love with the Main Street location—the warmth and kitsch of it—so I signed the lease even though the terms were poor and the rent was too high. I ignored the fact that our parking situation was a total clusterfuck because there was nothing I cou
ld do to make it easier for customers to get to me without moving to a new location and I’d committed to the lease. I figured if I just worked harder, it wouldn’t matter. I tried to get an exemption from the ordinance restricting our hours, but I could have fought harder. I’m not a hard ass. I’m a softy and everyone knows it. So I get screwed and tell myself it’ll be okay because I’ll work harder.”

  “Drink?” He was already pouring them both scotch, but Parv didn’t seem to notice, even when he pressed it into her hand.

  “The first time they raised the rent, I used it as an excuse to sell more baked goods. I brought in artists to sell their work on my walls for a small commission. I introduced new premium blends—but the freaking beans were so expensive our profit margins were pathetic. I brought in book club nights—when we weren’t necessarily ‘open’ but I could still sell products. And I never once felt like I could relax. Five years of stress, Max. The only place I felt like myself was in my stainless steel palace of a kitchen. Which was too big, really, for a coffee house, but I indulged because it was the only place I could breathe.”

  She took a long swallow of her drink, but he knew she wasn’t done by the way she was still pacing the floor. He waited—and her rant resumed. “I hate payroll and hiring and firing. I’m a people person. I wanted to create Common Grounds as a gathering place. A Mecca. Someplace warm and comfortable where people come to be together or to be alone but they always feel like they can be themselves. It was a stupid dream—I can see that now—but that’s who I am. I’m acts of service. I want to do things for people. Create things for people. Which makes me the worst freaking small business owner on the planet.”

  “No, it doesn’t.”

  “I never wanted the business owner side of things, but I couldn’t get an expensive degree and then go to work for minimum wage icing cakes in a bakery. I had to make something of myself. And this was the only way I could think of to do that and still be me. But it wasn’t me. It was me trying to live up to my sisters and be good enough to make my parents proud. It was five years of me trying to be something I’m not.”