Heart Breaths (23 page)

“Why do I give a shit? Because I protect the people I love, Diane. Obviously a concept you’ll never understand.”

Taking a deep breath, I looked at her and smiled my best polite society smile. Sweet, and full of venom. “You can leave now,” I said.

“This isn’t the end,” she snapped, whirling away.

“And that’s where you’re wrong,” I said.

The door clanged shut behind her, and I sagged against the counter. “Holy shit, Maddie,” Sam whispered as the customers in the café began to talk amongst each other again. “Holy, holy, holy shit.”

“I know,” I whispered, my voice shaking.

It was exhausting, skewering someone so completely like that. “I have to get stuff from the back,” I said to Sam. “Grandma Ev will be out in a minute.”

Turning, I ran through the doors that led to the kitchen, and let myself collapse against the wall.

“Maddie, what happened?” Grandma asked, hurrying up to me, wiping her hands on her apron.

“Can you go out in the front?” I whispered, head buried in my hands. “I need a little break.”

Peering down at my pale face, she nodded. “We’re going to talk about this later,” she said.

“Okay,” I whispered, too exhausted to argue.

I sat there, crumpled up against the wall, and hoped that nobody would come in and watch me break down. Again.

Chapter · Twenty-One

“Bright and early today,” Grandma said as she shut the lights in the front of the café. “Busy season is starting.”

“Busy season?” I asked blankly.

“Honey child, it’s time to stop getting your mope on. It’s Memorial Day weekend—we’re going from part-time café to full-time money makin’ machine.”

I burst into laughter as Grandma swung her hips. “Oh, honey, today you’re going to realize why I needed you,” she said. “This was all just good fun and practice.”

I smiled. “I’m looking forward to it,” I said, and I meant it.

It had kind of felt a little like cheating Grandma Evelyn, hanging out with her at the café a couple of hours every day. The mornings were a little busy, but it was nothing she couldn’t have handled herself. Knowing that today was going to be busy was a relief—firstly, that I was actually going to be earning my keep, and second of all… I sighed.

The busier I was going to be, the easier it would be for me to not think about Gabe.

I grabbed the empty pot of coffee and switched it for a full one. Grandma was right. The café had been open for not even two hours, and I had already rang up more orders than I had in the past two days.

“Coffee and muffins for you, ma’am,” I said, handing over the bag of pastries and a tray full of coffee cups. “Enjoy the rest of your trip.”

She flashed me a smile, and stuck a bill into the tip jar. “Thank you, darlin’,” she replied.

It seemed that everyone in the entire state of North Carolina was stopping by the café on the way to their beach houses for the weekend. There was something magical about Grandma’s café. I would have expected the drivers to stop before, at a drive through further up north, but none of them were having that.

It was tradition, I heard from one customer after another. Stop at the café in Eno on the way to their house. “Now you get it?” Grandma said to me as we flew past each other, juggling drinks and pastries and breakfasts for the people who were eating in the café.

I flashed her a smile. “I get it,” I said, as I grabbed a stack of paper bags before jogging back to the counter.

As much as I loved the slower pace of North Carolina, the Memorial Day rush reminded me of New York, and the mornings in the cafés where I would stop to grab coffee on my way to school.

It was a never-ending flow of customers- one that didn’t stop until we closed the doors that night.

The lock clicked in the front door, and I leaned against the counter, spent.

“Dear God,” I panted. “Is every day this crazy?”

Grandma laughed from her spot against the wall. “Nope,” she replied. “Calms down after the weekend a little bit.”

“Well, I understand needing the help now,” I said, catching my breath. I had been running non-stop, all day. “What I don’t get is how you managed last summer.”

She shrugged. “I had a little bit of help here and there,” she said. “But I swore that wasn’t going to happen this summer.”

I looked at the tip jar, which was almost full. “God bless the people of North Carolina,” I attempted to drawl. “They are a mighty fine bunch of tippers.”

Grandma laughed. “That they are,” she said. “Especially Memorial Day weekend, when they’re all so wonderfully thankful to be on vacation.”

“As they should,” I said, straightening up and picking up the rag to wipe down the counters. “Tomorrow we do this all over again?”

“Oh, hell, yeah,” she drawled, picking up the broom and starting to sweep. “All over again, darlin’.”

At the end of Memorial Day weekend, I wanted my own Memorial Day weekend. The constant customer rush had been incredible—it was four days of nonstop running, and was a perfect excuse not to go to the beach with Sam, Hannah and Mary Elizabeth.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to go. Well, it was.

It was Gabe, mostly.

He hadn’t stopped in the café since—and as much as I told myself not to think about him, I did. Was he okay? Was Noie okay?

I didn’t know.

“Good morning, sunshine,” Sam drawled as she leaned against the counter.

“Good morning,” I said, turning to start her coffee. “How’s everything?”

“Well, I spent quite the romantic evening with Chris.” She beamed. “So everything is just wonderful.”

I laughed, and handed her her first cup of coffee. “You going to be back later for caffeine in a cup number two?”

Her eyebrows wiggled as she paid. “You know me too well.”

“That I do,” I agreed. “Try not to cut off any ears today.”

“I’ll try my best,” she said, waving as she walked away.

“Maddie!” It was Petey.

“Coming right up,” I said. “What’s been happening with you, Petey?”

“This is the only café in town,” I heard a voice say. It sounded familiar. Shrugging it off, I kept looking around for the extra stash of bags I knew I had put under the counter that morning.

“Well, I suppose it will have to do,” another voice said.

I stopped breathing.

It couldn’t be.

There was no way… patting my hair down the best that I could from my crouch by the counter, I stood up to face my sister.

“Can I help you?” I asked, trying to pretend that it wasn’t her standing there. That it wasn’t her, in her expensive little outfit that cost more than most of the people in this town ever made. That it wasn’t her, with a diamond the size of a small country, resting on her finger. That it wasn’t her, with her perfectly made-up face, even though it was humid and gross outside. That it wasn’t her, with an arm slid around the man she stole from me.

Damn it.

She paused for a moment, raking her eyes up and down my outfit. “Well, well, well,” she drawled. “Never thought I’d stumble on you down here.”

Every muscle in my body tensed up. It was everything I had ran away from. And as much as I tried to hide, she had found me.

She had found me, and she was going to ruin everything.

I mentally started to pack my suitcases that were stored under the bed upstairs.

“Is there something I can help you with?” I repeated, not willing to go down any road of conversation with her, unless it involved her ordering a drink and getting the hell out of my life.

“So this is where you decided to disappear off to?” she said, the crisp tones of her polished rich girl accent a startling difference from the sweet, Southern drawls I had grown so used to. “Look at you, dressed like one of those morons you used to slum with.”

It didn’t matter that I was older than her. In the mind of Jennifer Anne Darlington-Gray, I would never be above an earthworm in her scale of importance.

I began to shake as she stood there, looking down at me as if I was nothing but a pathetic loser. While he stood there, pretending he didn’t know who I was.

Jerk.

My mind flashed back suddenly to the day that Diane had walked into the café. How roles had been reversed, I thought morosely, holding onto the counter as tightly as I could. Gathering the last bits of my courage, I looked at her disdainful expression. “Is there something you’d like to order today, Jen?” I asked, hearing my voice wobble and feeling disgusted with myself.

“I’d like a coffee and a blueberry muffin,” Crawford said, as though I was nothing to him but some girl behind the counter at a café. Just the means to his coffee.

“Never mind,” Jen sniffed as she turned to Crawford, ignoring me completely. “I don’t want to order anything here. The service looks terrible.”

My grip tightened on the handle of the coffee pot but didn’t say anything as I prepared Crawford’s coffee and picked out his muffin, praying they would leave before Grandma Evelyn came back in.

“Well, I hope the rest of this vacation isn’t as disappointing as this café is,” Jen said as I bagged the muffin. “What time is the meeting at the architect’s, Crawford?”

“Eleven-thirty,” he said, checking his phone. “And then we’re going to check out the house after that.”

Jen pouted. “I thought the house was going to be finished by now,” she said. “Honestly, they’re taking too long. You should have gotten someone else to finish it. Someone a little bit more flexible about the changes we made.”

“Jen, honey, adding those four extra closets took a little working because they had to work around the foundations,” Crawford said indulgently, as if he thought it was adorable that her precious closets were causing the entire foundation of the house to be…

I dropped the cup of coffee as my mind whirled.

It was Crawford’s house, the one Gabe had been working on. It had to be.

“What kind of substandard service does this place have?” Jen’s voice raised just enough for the entire café to hear, but not loud enough to sound like she was shouting. It was a trick she had learned from our mom, who used to raise her voice just enough when she wanted to really destroy someone. “I don’t understand how the owner is okay with this pathetic display of serving manners.”

My cheeks flared as I bent down to try to mop up the mess. Grabbing another cup, I took a deep breath and prepared it for Crawford, who had been watching the whole scene with a look of vague distaste on his face.

Putting the lid on, I put the coffee down next to the bag with the muffins. “Three seventy-five,” I said, punching the numbers into the cash register and waiting for the earth to swallow me up. The café was quieter than usual, especially after Jen’s little performance.

Crawford pulled out a credit card and handed it to me.

American Express Titanium.

“I’m sorry, sir, but there’s a ten dollar minimum on credit card purchases,” I said, pointing toward the sign on the wall. And we don’t take stupid rich boy credit cards here anyway, I thought as I smiled blandly at him, as willing as he to pretend we didn’t know each other.

“What kind of establishment is this?” Jen snapped as Crawford reached into his pocket for his wallet. “Every self-respecting café takes credit card.”

“And we do, as long as the total comes over ten dollars,” I said as Crawford handed me a fifty dollar bill.

God, was I ever that spoiled and clueless? I wondered as the cash drawer clanged open and I began to put together his forty-six dollars and twenty-five cents. I thought back to the days where Ravi and I ate ramen noodles so Devi could have a healthier dinner.

If I had been that spoiled and clueless, it had been so long, I forgot what it was like.

“Forty-six twenty-five is your change,” I said, handing the pile of bills and a quarter over to Crawford, along with his receipt. “Thank you for coming to Evelyn’s Café, enjoy the rest of your day.”

Crawford didn’t say anything as he folded the bills back into his wallet. Jen smirked as she turned to leave.

“Oh, if only they could all see you now, Maddie,” she said, smiling down at me from her perch on her three-thousand dollar stilettos. “You’ve really fallen hard, haven’t you?”

I couldn’t do this anymore. Turning around, I walked toward the kitchen, my hands shaking. “Everything okay?” Grandma asked.

I nodded. “I’m going out to the back to take a break,” I said, trying to keep my voice as steady as possible. I would not break down here. I wouldn’t.

Peeling off my apron, I stumbled out the side door and leaned against the building, taking deep breaths of ocean air and tried to get my footing back under me.