The Fortune Cafe (A Tangerine Street Romance)

by Wright, Julie

  Ocean waves? Blake in Seashell Beach appeared. Blue sky? Color of Blake’s eyes. A flower? She could only see the pink peony that was supposed to have been in her wedding bouquet.

  Supposed to have been. Past tense.

  The tears fell faster, and she sniffed, the inside of her nose as sore as if it had been sandpapered.

  Carter cleared his throat and spoke in that same don’t-spook-the-wild-animal voice. “Can I do anything for you? Call your fiancé for you?”

  And that did it. That turned the quiet tears into noisy, ugly sobs and pulled them right out of her— way scarier than any noise Shoe Man had ever made.

  “Oh man, I’m sorry. What did I say?”

  “Blake broke up with me tonight.”

  She heard a long intake of breath and then a quiet, “Damn.” She could almost feel him thinking about what to say, but nothing came out of him. Instead he rested his hand against her back, light and steady, exactly the way her mom would have.

  After a few minutes, she was able to breathe through her wet-sounding hiccups. “Sorry,” she said once she thought her voice would stay even. It wobbled anyway.

  “I appreciate that,” Carter said. “I’ve been getting an epic number of dirty looks while I sit here. An apology is the least you can do.”

  She didn’t smile. But she thought about it. She flashed him her broken fingernail, and he was the one to smile.

  “I’m going to walk you up to your place now, okay? And then you can tell me who to call to come stay with you for a bit.”

  That finally made her smile. “I’m not a danger to myself, Carter. I just need to crawl into bed, let work know I’m not coming in tomorrow, and sleep for a couple of days.”

  “Uh, so parts of that sound healthy. The rest of it sounds like you really need to give me a friend’s number so I can get them over here.” He rose and held his hand out to help her up.

  Standing so close to him on the top step, she was surprised by how tall he was. Most people were tall to her since she was only five feet three, but Carter had a slight build, at least compared to Blake’s gym-sculpted muscles, and she’d thought of Carter as smaller. But he was maybe only an inch or two under six feet.

  Six feet. Six feet under.

  That’s where she wished she was at the moment— not that she would be taking any steps to put herself there. But it sounded quieter and less painful than the here and now. Anger stirred inside her beneath the white noise of hopes collapsing in on themselves. She pushed deeper to find it and cling to it.

  “The lock’s jammed,” she said. She wanted to pound the door again. And again and again.

  Carter’s key slid into the lock and turned easily. Of course it did. Why wouldn’t it? Why would one single thing go right for her this week when everything had been going wrong since Seashell Beach?

  She climbed the stairs behind Carter, concentrating on putting her feet in the right place, then plodded down the hall behind him. When they reached her door, he held out his hand. She looked at it, trying to understand its purpose lying there palm up in the space between them.

  “Your key?” he said.

  Right. She picked out the correct one, and he opened the door and followed her in.

  “I’m serious about calling someone for you. Do you have any friends nearby who would come over?”

  She pulled her phone from her purse and blinked at it, not even registering the crack she’d put in the screen the day before when she’d tripped over an extension cord at the Duchess. The contact list scrolled past, a blue blur. It stopped and she blinked at it some more. Sherri. Slade. Sophie. Spyglass Jewelry.

  Spyglass Jewelry. More than sleep or a babysitter or her next breath, she needed her jade piece back. She’d thought it was like missing a limb, but it was more like missing an organ. She mashed the button, and relief crossed Carter’s face.

  The phone rang and rang on the other side before a voice mail message informed her that she was calling two hours after closing but that she could try again during normal business hours. “This is Lucy Dalton,” she said, and Carter’s eyebrow quirked like he was trying to figure out why she’d need to identify herself to any of her good friends by first and last name. “I dropped a necklace off on Saturday, my jade one. I was just wondering what the repair status was. Please call me back as soon as it’s convenient.” She left her number and hung up, not caring that it was days too soon for the jeweler to have gotten to it.

  Carter pointed at the sofa. “Sit.” She walked past him because her legs weren’t going to hold her up much longer anyway, and he snagged the phone from her hand before she plopped herself down. “I’ve seen your mom here before, haven’t I? Petite blonde, a slightly older version of you?”

  She nodded.

  “You guys seem to get along.”

  She nodded, tired now, wanting to leave her head down with each nod. “She’s awesome, but don’t call her. I’ll be fine in the morning, and I’ll tell her what’s up when I don’t sound like a wreck.”

  “You sure? I found her number.”

  “I’m sure. She’s going to worry all night when she can’t do anything about it. I just want to go to sleep. Can I have my phone back?”

  He handed it to her. She dialed work to leave a message for the hotel manager that she would be out the next day. At the rate the last few days had gone, he’d probably be relieved anyway. When she hung up, she looked at Carter and blinked, surprised that she wasn’t more surprised that he was still there. “Tomorrow or the next day, I’m going to think the me right now is really, really stupid. But the me right now feels as bad as I’ve ever felt.”

  He took the phone from her and set it on one of the sofa end tables. “Then the you right now needs to go to bed. Go. I’ll let myself out.”

  She trudged to her bedroom door. “How are you going to lock it behind you?”

  “I’m going across the balcony.”

  “Am I going to be able to argue you out of that?”

  “Nope.”

  “Good night, Spider-Man.”

  He wiggled his fingers to shoo her toward her room. “See you in the morning.”

  He didn’t though. When she stumbled out around noon with her eyes still swollen to slits, it was her mom waiting for her on the sofa. Without a word she collapsed next to her, and her mom gathered her into a hug so tight she couldn’t breathe for a second. It made the world stand still.

  Lucy curled up beside her and laid her head in her mom’s lap, knowing her mom would sit and run her fingers through Lucy’s hair, gently picking out snarls and smoothing it better than any conditioner.

  “Why are you here?”

  “Your neighbor called me last night from your phone. He explained the situation, and I grabbed the first flight out of LAX.”

  Lucy’s eyes flew open. “I’m going to kill him. Don’t you have the AP tests coming up? You didn’t need to come up.”

  Her mom taught high school history, and the last six weeks before the AP tests involved intense review with her kids.

  “This is more important.” She stroked Lucy’s hair. “He was on the sofa when I got here this morning. I guess he fell asleep keeping an ear out for you. Nice guy.”

  Prickles of guilt at the thought of Carter squishing himself into a sofa proportioned for her eroded the numbness she’d woken with.

  She wasn’t in the mood to feel, so she snuggled further into her mom. A half hour passed before her mom patted her back. “You need to eat. I’m going to whip something up.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “I don’t remember asking,” her mom answered in the tone that had guaranteed every chore of Lucy’s childhood got done in the time and manner that her mom decreed. Her mom rummaged around the kitchen and within minutes the scent of sautéing onions floated out to the sofa, making Lucy’s stomach grumble. Maybe she could handle breakfast after all.

  “Mom? Thanks for coming. I’m going back to work tomorrow. You should too.”


  “We’ll see how you’re looking tonight. In the meantime, eat.” She set an omelet down in front of Lucy. “I figured we’d better focus on protein because you’re going to need some endurance for talking through this breakup.”

  Lucy nodded and ate, cleaning the whole plate. When she was done, she pushed it back and turned to face her mother who had waited quietly beside her. Lucy opened her mouth, and her phone rang. For a second, her stomach lurched. What if it was Blake? What if it wasn’t? She snatched it up. Spyglass Jewelry.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, this is Stella at Spyglass. I got your message last night. I’m sorry, but it’s not done. It really is going to take at least a couple of weeks. I promise I’ll call you when I start working on it so you know what to expect, okay?”

  Her voice was gentle, and Lucy swallowed, feeling guilty for hounding her. “Thanks, Stella. I swear I’ll be patient from now on. Thanks for calling me back. That was nice of you.”

  Stella assured her that it wasn’t a problem. Lucy hung up and dropped her face in her hands. “Nothing’s gone right since I broke my necklace, Mom.”

  Silence met that, and she glanced up to catch a look on her mother’s face similar to the one she wore when grading her students’ essays and not buying their interpretation of historical facts.

  “Let’s start with what happened last night,” her mom said.

  “Blake called me yesterday and said he wanted to go to dinner. He took me to our favorite café. I was going on and on about how good the stupid salad was, and then he said, ’We need to talk.’ And since nothing good has ever followed that, I wanted to puke up the salad.”

  “Did you?” her mom asked, looking alarmed.

  “No.”

  “Good. That would have been a waste, especially since the right thing to do would have been to throw any remaining salad at your fiancé.”

  “Mom!”

  “I’m sorry, sweetie. I’m already breaking my own rules. It’s hard to be nice when he’s hurting you.”

  “You didn’t like him?”

  “We want whatever is going to make you happy. If that was going to be Blake, then we loved him.”

  “But I didn’t make him happy. He said that he’d been unhappy for a long time. I told him that it would be a lot better when the wedding was done. A lot of the tension between me and Deborah would go away. But he said,” and here she gulped, afraid that the next words would come out on a sob. She took a deep breath and tried again. “He said that he’d been unhappy before the wedding craziness started and that he didn’t want to put either of us through any more of it. How could I not know that I was making someone I love unhappy?”

  “Come here, baby,” her mom said, pulling her back into a hug and rubbing her back. “You couldn’t make him unhappy if you tried. You couldn’t make anyone unhappy. You’re not wired for it.” She pushed Lucy away enough to fix her with a stare that wouldn’t let Lucy look away. “What I noticed about Blake right away is that he’s deeply unhappy in a way that some people are doomed to be.”

  Lucy couldn’t make sense of the words. “I know he wasn’t great this weekend, but you saw how he was last summer. Laughing, joking, having a good time with everyone. He’s a life-of-the-party kind of guy.”

  “He is,” her mom agreed. “And a lot of those guys need that, the constant party where he can shine. Every joke they make, every funny story they tell, is about keeping him front and center. I’d bet he doesn’t spend a lot of time alone, does he?”

  No. He didn’t. Whether it was going to the gym or buying groceries, he liked her right there with him. “I think that’s pretty normal for two people who love each other, right?”

  “It can be. But you have to add up all the parts to see the whole. Dad likes to do stuff with me because he likes my company, not because he dislikes his own.”

  “Then why would he break up with me? Wouldn’t it make more sense for him to stay in a relationship?”

  “Maybe. Except you have such a strong sense of self. I think that started coming out more and more as you got into the wedding planning.”

  Lucy stiffened. “You’re saying I railroaded him?”

  “No! Oh sweetheart, absolutely not. I think he realized you weren’t going to disappear inside this marriage, but that’s a good thing.”

  Lucy rubbed her palms into her eyes. “How did I get it so wrong?”

  “Well… he’s a pretty good-looking guy,” her mom said, mischief twinkling in her eyes. “You wouldn’t be my daughter if you didn’t have an appreciation for that kind of thing.”

  Lucy laughed for the first time in hours even though it hurt her throat. “You’re awful.”

  “Maybe. But this is my advice for any future relationships. If he’s pretty, keep him around for a while to look at, maybe a little longer if he makes you laugh, but if the guy isn’t the kind you would let hold your hair back while you’re vomiting at two in the morning with the flu, cut him loose sooner than later, okay?”

  Lucy’s smile faded. “I can’t even imagine a future relationship. I can’t even process that I’m not in one at the moment. Yesterday I was, and now I’m not.”

  “Blake’s not a bad guy. Just an unhappy one. You’re definitely going to find a guy who is happy to be with you.” Her mom patted her leg and stood, gathering up her dirty dishes and depositing them in her tiny kitchen. “I’m going to jump in the shower. Then you’re going to take a shower. And while that happens, I want you to think about what’s most upsetting to you about this engagement being called off. We’ll go for a walk and talk some more.”

  Lucy nodded. She couldn’t think of anything she wanted to do less but needed to do more. An hour later, she emerged from her shower feeling about twenty percent more human, mainly from washing gallons of dried tears off her skin. Lucy decided on Golden Gate Park for their walk because Blake, for some perverse reason, had hated it. She and her mom sat on rocks in the sunshine, and Lucy talked. And she talked. And the longer she talked, the more of her frustrations with Blake flooded out— the way he always decided where they would eat because he had more “food moods” than she did, the way he told jokes as if he’d practiced them for maximum effect, the way he’d refused to take sides between her and Deborah, saying they’d have to figure out how to work with each other.

  Her mom listened through it all without interrupting. When Lucy finally wound down, she sat quietly as her mom scrunched her forehead and thought hard for a minute. “I thought the wedding planning was getting to me too, but maybe I just…”

  Her mom waited and when Lucy didn’t finish, she rested her chin on her hands and smiled at her. “You never answered the question back at your house. What bothers you the most about the engagement being called off?”

  “What doesn’t?” Lucy asked on a groan. “A massive amount of work went into this. I’m going to lose some deposits. My friends are going to pity me, which is never fun.”

  “How do you know?” her mom asked.

  “How do I know my friends are going to pity me?”

  “No. How do you know how it feels? Have you ever been in a position where people would have a reason to pity you?”

  “Of course I have. Everybody has.”

  “Name it,” her mom said, a small smile playing around her mouth. “Name the time when people pitied you.”

  But Lucy was stumped. There had to be something, of course. Right? Who didn’t have incidents like that? But she couldn’t think of a single example. “I’m drawing a blank.”

  Her mom’s smile widened. “I kind of thought you might.” She scooted over until she could put an arm around her daughter and press Lucy’s head down to her shoulder. “You’ve had a pretty charmed life.” Lucy started to lift her head and object, but her mother held her head in place. “That’s not to say you haven’t worked hard for everything you have. And you deserve every bit of it.” Lucy quit straining and leaned into her mom, comforted again. “The truth is, though, you haven’t had anything r
eally hard happen to you since your grandpa died. And in my heart of hearts, I’ve always believed when the first big challenge of your life came, you’d rise up and meet it, but there’s no way to tell until it happens.”

  She dropped her head against Lucy’s, and the vibrations of her next words traveled down through Lucy’s skull and shivered her spine. “It’s here, Lucy. The hardship that’s going to test your mettle and show you who you really are. It’s here. So the question is, what are you going to do about it?”

  Lucy ran the question through her mind, feeling out the truth of her mom’s observation. It felt pretty damn true. Yes, she’d run into obstacles in her job and other things, but she’d never for a single second doubted that things would work out. And they always did. Hard work and luck tended to go like that.

  But hard work couldn’t fix this. And her luck was long gone. So what was she supposed to do? Tears stung her eyes again, and she straightened, refusing to let them fall. What she would not do is sit around feeling sorry for herself. “I’m going to wash that man right out of my hair?” she said, quoting the song she’d sung when she’d won the lead in her high school production of South Pacific.

  If relief had a sound, it would have been the musical scale of her mom’s laugh. “That’s what I figured. None of the reasons you listed for regretting that breakup had much to do with Blake and missing him or loving him. This is a good thing, even if it doesn’t feel like it.” She patted Lucy’s thigh, and it was more reassuring than hot coffee on a foggy San Francisco morning.

  “It’s not that easy, Mom. I already miss him. I mean, the last few months weren’t great. But it’s not like I fell for him for no reason. He was pretty amazing when I met him. Funny and good-looking, ambitious, smart. And he’s been a big part of my life for the last year and a half. Now he’s not going to be in it at all? I can’t just snap my fingers and be okay with that ending by bed time.”

  “Of course not. But when you say he was funny, did he make you laugh?”

  “Yes.”

  “But when it was just the two of you, and he wasn’t trotting out one of his perfectly polished jokes, did he make you laugh? Don’t answer,” she said, holding up a hand. “Just think about that for a while. And when you find the answer, ask yourself what you’re really missing.”