The Fortune Cafe (A Tangerine Street Romance)

by Wright, Julie

  “Can I take you home?” Harrison asked when the closed sign had been flipped, and everyone but Cái and Emma had left. She’d wanted to take off, too, but felt weird leaving when Harrison seemed so intent on staying.

  “I have my bike.”

  He nodded. “Oh. Okay. So how about I walk you while you walk your bike. I’d offer to put the bike in my car, but I’m in the two door.”

  The two door?

  “Or we could leave the bike here, and I can just drive you home.”

  She cocked an eyebrow at him. “I kind of need it to get back, and I have this rule about not taking rides from strangers.” She wasn’t so sure why the idea of him going home with her filled her with such terrifying excitement.

  He put his hands over his heart and gave a pained expression. “I’m wounded! How can you call me a stranger after all those years of cheating off my papers?”

  “I never cheated.”

  “Huh. Yeah, that must’ve been me cheating off you then.”

  She gave him a playful shove. “You didn’t cheat either. You were always top of the class. You graduated with a 3.8 or something.”

  He grinned. “You know my grade point average, yet you call me a stranger?”

  What she didn’t want to admit was that she used her time commuting to process through lines of dialogue and story in her head so that she hit the ground running as soon as she walked in the door at home. What would he think if he knew she was still doodling dragons after all these years? Especially when he’d become a grown-up and had a grown-up business. Most people didn’t understand her love of her web comic— especially when she worked so hard to meet deadlines for something she gave away for free. It was bad enough he’d seen her in her “waitress” world. She couldn’t let him see her in her nerdy comic book world too.

  “How will you get back to your car if you walk me home?” There. That was a good excuse for him to part ways with her.

  “I’ll walk back to my car.”

  “You’re making this really complicated,” she said.

  He leaned against the door frame. “No. You’re making this really complicated. Just say yes.”

  She never said yes to people. Couldn’t. Her life didn’t have room for extra people crowding their way in. Not anymore. But as she stared into his eyes, she thought about graduation day, throwing her cap into the air, and Harrison’s warm breath against her ear as he whispered something she never heard. “Okay. Sure,” she said, not quite believing the words had come from her mouth.

  Cái escorted them out and locked up behind them. Then he grinned at her through the window and waved with a fortune cookie in his hand. The little punk still looked smug. She’d have to let him know she was immune to his trickery.

  Harrison waited while she unlocked her bike from the telephone pole and kicked back the stand. She usually rode on the bike trail that followed along the boardwalk and turned her bike toward the beach. They followed along her usual route with the bike rolling along between them.

  The sound of waves breaking against the sand and fizzing back out into the ocean filled the silent spaces between them. Awkward. “So,” she began, “you’re in town for your parents’ thirtieth wedding anniversary?”

  He seemed surprised. “How’d you know?”

  “Your date sort of shouted it. I think everyone on Tangerine Street knows. She yelled loud enough to shatter the windows in most of Seashell Beach.”

  He winced. “I am so sorry—”

  “No. No more apologies. And who knows? Her outburst might be good for business. People might keep coming back to the café if they think food fights are part of the evening entertainment. Seriously though, you can’t help the actions of another person.”

  “I can. Sort of. I should have picked a better place for that conversation.”

  Emma laughed. “That wasn’t a conversation. That was a death match. If you’d been in private, no one would’ve ever found your body.”

  Harrison laughed too, and Emma sighed with a bit of personal satisfaction. She’d made Harrison laugh. Take that, Lunatic-Andrea.

  “So what happened?” she asked, feeling only kind of guilty for prying. She really did want to know, and seeing Harrison again after so long, she couldn’t help but be curious about him. How was it possible that she sat next to him for all those years and never saw him the way she saw him at this moment? They’d always been friends, sure. But now his presence intrigued her. She felt hot and cold all at once. She was either violently attracted to him or coming down with the flu. She felt a pang of missed opportunity, but then... wasn’t her life just a long series of missed opportunities? Stop feeling sorry for yourself.

  Harrison had taken a long pause to try to figure out how to answer her question. Finally he said, “What happened... what happened was I opened my fortune cookie, and she insisted on me reading it out loud.”

  “A fortune did all that?” Emma asked. “Cái must be right. There really is a force to be reckoned within those cookies.”

  Harrison laughed again. Point two for me, Emma thought, then chided herself. It wasn’t a contest. How could it be a contest when the other girl wasn’t even around anymore?

  “So what did your fortune say?” she asked, more out of habit than anything since she used people’s fortunes in her web comic all the time. The difference here was that she found herself genuinely wanting to know what kind of fortune incited Andrea into a rage.

  “Oh, I see how it is. You won’t tell anyone what your fortune says, but you expect everyone to tell you?”

  Emma had actually forgotten she received a fortune. It wasn’t like it really belonged to her since she hadn’t willfully opened it. “Fine. I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours,” she said.

  Smells from other restaurants floated out onto the boardwalk from open doors. A low hum of conversations from other people out walking and joggers pounding past filled the air.

  He stopped under a light post and pulled his hand out of the pocket of his jeans. Good quality jeans. Likely name brand, not that she knew offhand any currents trends or brands worth knowing about. That part of her life had ended just after high school when she’d fled the walls of her home and got her own apartment. She no longer felt the need to keep up with anything. That had been her mother’s thing, not hers.

  He peeked at her from above the strip of white paper. He cleared his throat. “Tonight,” he began in a deep, mysterious voice, “you are reunited with your soul mate.”

  He gave her a meaningful look, and for a moment Emma thought he was telling her that she was his soul mate. But he’d received the fortune while with a date, so of course he wasn’t meaning that. Seriously? A good-looking man walks her home and she starts reading signals into everything? Emma forced herself to laugh at his theatrics. “Well, Cái must be wrong after all. There is no way that girl is your soul mate.” She didn’t know why she felt the need to point that out to Harrison. He was a big boy. He could handle himself. And maybe Lunatic-Andrea was what he really wanted in his life.

  He tilted his head as if needing to view her differently in order to understand her. A small smile played out over his full lips. She hated that she’d noticed his mouth at all— full or otherwise.

  She edged out of the light so they could keep walking.

  He finally said, “Wait a minute. What about yours?”

  She kept walking, but he snagged her hand to stop her. “You promised.”

  “You know what I don’t understand,” she said instead of answering his question. “Why did that make Andrea, who I don’t remember at all from school, incidentally, rampage through the restaurant?” She tried not to let herself shiver over the fact that he still had her hand.

  He let go, ran his hand down the back of his head, and took a deep breath. “She thought it was about her.”

  Emma cast a sideways glance at him. “That doesn’t sound good.”

  “Nope. Not good at all. She flat out proposed.”

  Emma c
ringed. “Ouch! She proposed? Not to sound like a poor excuse for a feminist, but shouldn’t you be the one popping the question?”

  “Somehow my opinion was left out of the equation entirely.”

  Emma hid her smile at the forlorn tone of his voice. “So can I take it that your response to her response was a no?”

  He reached over and flipped his thumb over the switch that rang the bell on her bike. “Ding, ding, ding!” He called out. “We have a winner!”

  She laughed and popped her front tire over the curb to turn them off the boardwalk and across the street away from the beach. She felt slightly sheepish over being a twenty-five-year-old woman who had a bell on her bicycle. After all, Harrison had just proved that bells on bikes were useful items.

  “The thing is,” Harrison continued, “my sister and Andrea are really good friends. They always have been. And that friendship expanded to include my mom. My whole family loves her. They’ve been scheming plans for my wedding since, well... forever.”

  “Seven years,” Emma said.

  He flinched. “You heard that too, huh?”

  Emma waved her arm to encompass the road they walked on. “Like I said, all of Seashell Beach heard it.”

  “To be fair, I’ve never seen her do anything like that before in my life.”

  “A first does not make it a last,” Emma said, then cringed. It wasn’t any of her business, and it made her look catty to insult this girl she didn’t know.

  He smiled. “She’s really not crazy. I just burst her bubble is all.”

  Emma blanched at the word crazy. She wasn’t really in a position to be judgmental about crazy, even if she had taken liberties in calling Andrea a lunatic. She mentally repented and vowed not to call Andrea anything derogatory again. The vow seemed easy enough to make; after all, what were the chances of her ever seeing Andrea in the future?

  “She really thought that there was still a chance between us,” Harrison continued. “And I don’t know... maybe I thought there was too until—” He blinked as if waking up from a dream and shook his head.

  “Until what?”

  “Nothing.” He shook his head again. “It’s nothing. Hey, you said you’d read me your fortune.”

  “Right. The dreaded fortune...” She fished around in her pocket, nearly toppling the bike while she wasn’t paying attention to the cracks in the sidewalk. She stopped under the nearest light post, cleared her throat, and tried to read in the same mysterious sort of voice Harrison used. She ended up sounding like a chain smoker. “Look around. Love is trying to catch you.” She waggled her eyebrows and stuffed the strip of white paper back in her pocket since no trash cans were nearby.

  “And you dreaded that why?” he asked after a few ticks of silence.

  “My catching a cookie doesn’t mean anything is trying to catch me. I’m kind of a recluse. Not a lot of love to be found in the eremite lifestyle.” They stopped to wait for another traffic light. Her apartment hadn’t ever felt so far away before. The bike certainly shortened the trip. Walking made it seem like they were heading to another continent.

  She worried they’d run out of things to talk about with the many blocks away from the beach still left to travel, but they didn’t. She felt surprised by all there was to reminisce over. She was even more surprised at how easily she learned new things about him. She learned he loved dogs in spite of his ex-date wanting them all euthanized. He sheepishly admitted that he’d been exaggerating when he’d made the crack about the dogs to Andrea, but Emma had the sneaking suspicion that he hadn’t been exaggerating at all. Vegan wearing leather. That was the only fact she needed to cement her judgment of Andrea. She gave herself permission to keep her opinion of Andrea. Having an opinion on the woman was not the same thing as making derogatory remarks about her.

  Emma learned while walking with Harrison that his parents were well-off people who were having a fancy sort of anniversary party— the kind her mother would have referred to as an “event” and would have loved to attend if she was still out and allowed to do social things, which she wasn’t if Emma had anything to say about it. Though in truth, Emma had little to say in anything regarding her mother.

  Emma learned that Andrea had gone to the same design school he had, but that he had stayed back east instead of coming home after he broke up with the girl because he didn’t know how to face his family when he knew they all planned on an engagement. This meant that he hadn’t just been casually dating with Andrea.

  She tried not to let that bug her. But it did. Like a big black beetle crawling up her arm sort of bugged her. She mentally froze the picture of the beetle on an arm and decided she’d need to work the image into one of the comics.

  She learned he opened his own design business and that he did quite well for himself. She loved his entrepreneurial spirit. That same spirit was what drove her to work all hours of the night to get the web comic into print. If she sold through this first shipment of books, she’d be able to cover her bills for the next five years. She would be her own boss and live life on her own terms.

  “So did Andrea want to work for your design company?” Was it wrong to ask questions about the ex-girlfriend so soon after a hard breakup? She considered the breakup hard since the plate that had hit her arm had certainly been hard. Beetle crawling up a bruised arm... That was the image.

  “Not really... more like wanted to run my business for me.”

  “Ah. Gotcha. I know exactly what you mean.”

  “And why is that?” he asked.

  She considered for a moment before giving a half truth. “My mom is like that. Running other people’s lives. Growing up was sometimes... stifling. My dad took the brunt of her full force though. He sheltered me from a lot. He was a great guy.”

  “Was?”

  Her chest constricted. Was. Lucky Dad. He’d had a heart attack during dinner one night. He was now forever beyond the reach of her mother’s grasping, clinging hands. But his freedom meant Emma no longer had the luxury of sheltering under his shade.

  She took a shuddering breath and glanced up at the changing traffic light along with the white walk signal. “Yeah, well, he died last year.” She pushed her bike out into the street ahead of him, not knowing why she told him about her controlling mother or dead father. She hadn’t seen this guy for seven years and she’s stripping down to her soul for him? Amateur.

  He quickened his step to catch up with her. His fingers briefly brushed the hand she used to hold her bike up by the handlebars. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  The touch felt intimate. She hadn’t realized how raw her soul still must have been for that brush to ache as much as it did.

  “It’s okay. He’s in a better place.” She didn’t add that even if there was no life after death, he was still in a better place. Any place was better than life with a constant diet of crippling criticisms.

  “How’s your mom handling it?”

  Speaking of the insane. “It’s hard to tell with her.”

  “I remember you having trouble with her in the past.”

  She blinked and drew a sharp breath. He’d known? How had he known? Her tongue tangled trying to find an answer when he stopped her from trying. “I’m sorry. Am I getting too personal?”

  She nodded.

  He nodded too. “Sorry,” he said again. “Change of subject. Did you do any college after we graduated?”

  Her chest constricted with the questions she hated, so she decided to get it all over with in one fell swoop. She’d learned long ago that it was easiest to disappoint people all at once rather than in little bites. “I moved into my own place right after graduation, went to two years of community college before the debt to income ratio became ridiculously unbalanced. I dropped out to work for a while and had a few horrible jobs, then went to work for the café and liked it. It kind of fit me and my lifestyle. So now I’m a waitress and still living in a one bedroom apartment, and I’m content, so please don’t try to give me any advice on how
to make my life more fulfilling or how college would be easy to finish if I decided to go back or anything.”

  He didn’t respond immediately, so she sneaked a peek at him. He was frowning. “Why would you think I’d be giving advice on life fulfillment?”

  “Everybody else does.” Well, not everybody— her dad never did. But her mom... Emma sucked in a lungful of air, feeling stupid for allowing the bitterness to creep into her voice.

  He stopped walking. “Hey. Do I look like everybody else?”

  She stopped too, and gave him her full attention, taking in the way the streetlight haloed his head. He certainly didn’t. But she wasn’t sure she wanted to think of how he looked. “No, you don’t,” she said honestly.

  He stared hard at her. “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “I’m good.” She moved forward again, grateful that movement made it harder for him to look at her that way. She hadn’t dated anyone since her dad died. She’d forgotten how intense a simple look could be. She’d forgotten how her heart could pump blood so fast through her veins that it left her dizzy. She’d forgotten how to feel.

  “This is me!” she said too brightly when they finally reached the steps to her apartment. “Thanks for walking me home. The last time anyone walked me home was when my dad—” She stopped, horrified to be caught trailing down that particular memory lane.

  He smiled though, like he understood. “What do you do with your bike?” he asked, and she felt immense gratitude with him changing the subject.

  “I take it upstairs with me. It’s not like this is a bad neighborhood or anything, but I’d be devastated if someone stole my ride.” She did an inward eye roll. “I mean, I do own a car.” She spit out in an attempt to appear less needy and pathetic. “I just don’t like driving when we have such mild weather. I like the thinking time and exercise of riding my bike.”

  He took the bike from her and picked it up. “Upstairs then?”

  Emma’s face warmed, and she held out her hands to try to stop him. “Harrison, no, really, I can take it up. I do it every day. Sometimes several times a day.”

  “But today you have someone else to do it for you. C’mon. Let me carry it. I could never show my face to my mom again if I didn’t help.”