Grey disappears for most of the rest of the week, which is a good thing. The intensity in his expression when he was poking for information about Addison and making it very clear that he remembers every word I told him in Hawaii has me off-balance. And the two-gallon jar brewing a batch of kombucha on the desk is an ever-present reminder that he’s changing things.
Zen says he’s off doing responsible business owner things. The managers from the other two locations seem to think I want to know everything he’s doing, so I’m getting regular communication from both that confirms Zen’s story.
In Elk Knee, it’s simple. The crew had already quit and found new jobs, and the manager is doing the barest obligatory duties to help get the building for sale while working his new job too.
In Tiara Falls though, apparently Grey’s been working to help the soon-to-be-displaced crew there all find new jobs, and he’s providing severance packages for them until they do.
That’s a little above and beyond if you ask me.
Which you didn’t.
And it makes me like-dislike him a little more.
He does so many good things, but here?
Why does he have to change my building?
I can help him find another building in town if he wants to run a kombucha brewery. But the one time I casually mentioned it to Zen, they snorted, muttered good luck with that, and climbed up on a stepstool to tinker around the piles of things on top of the fridge and take inventory of all of this powdered cheese.
“What happened with Grey and Chandler?” I finally ask Zen just before my shift is over on Thursday.
They’re warming up by the day, but I get the blank-faced, you don’t get that answer from me look. “Who says something happened?”
“My gut.”
“Same gut that led to your friend’s wedding disaster?”
“Low blow, Zen. Low blow.”
They shrug and go about their business.
I spend the rest of the day texting with Laney about how much more time Emma needs to herself before I get to check in on her. I tried sending Emma a text directly, but I couldn’t make myself type the words and hit send.
If I don’t message her, if I pretend she’s still on her runaway-moon and that I’m giving her space, if I tell myself she’ll ping me when she’s ready to talk, I can almost convince myself that this new normal will be okay.
Jitter and I visit Mom at the salon, and she hugs me and tells me everything will work out.
We go visit Grandpa and he shakes his head and says change is the only inevitable thing in life.
So I spend Thursday night with all three of the triplets at Silver Horn, getting just tipsy enough that one of them drives me home.
And Friday morning, I wake up hungover and antsy and still processing the new gossip I got from the triplets before the martinis took over.
Worse?
It’s only like 4 in the morning.
But I want coffee. And to do something.
Keeping myself in the kitchen and away from people all week at work has been seriously draining. I miss the gossip. I miss the community. I miss feeling like I’m in the middle of everything.
But I don’t trust myself to not misuse information, and I was rudely blunt to Addison the other day.
This is not me at my best.
I deserve to feel like shit this morning.
My car is still downtown, so I pour myself an extra-large tumbler of black coffee, bundle up, and head out with Jitter to walk to work with flurries swirling all around us.
Yep.
Snowing today.
Café should be slow.
Empty, even.
Good day for starting to face the inevitable, which is that I’m going to have to clear out my stuff from the only job I’ve ever had and the only place I’ve ever wanted to work.
But when Jitter and I arrive, the lights are on.
And the kitchen isn’t empty.
For the first time since the food fight, I’m face-to-face and alone with Greyson Cartwright.
My Duke in tarnished armor.
He looks just as surprised to see me as I am to see him, but I have the advantage of my nearly-empty coffee tumbler, so I fake taking a drink as I pass him at the prep table to hang my coat up. “Morning, boss-man. You’re in early. Didn’t see your car out there.”
When he doesn’t answer, I look over my shoulder at him.
He’s staring.
Not at my ass.
But at my head.
My head? My hair?
I brush a hand through it, feeling cold moisture mixed with the texture of my curls. “Do I have something—”
“Snow,” he says shortly, and then he ducks his head and goes back to the prep table.
My heart does a slow crawl through my stomach and down to my thighs.
Building plans. Design plans.
All of the changes he wants to make to Bean & Nugget.
Can’t hide anymore.
This is it.
This is what he wants to do to my home.
I swallow thickly and move to stand next to him, looking down at the large sheets. Jack would geek out over the technical aspects, but I’m looking for a broad overview.
And I get it.
There’s a front-view illustration of the building, and I can see the rock outcropping at the back corner, and the edge of what’s clearly the art gallery next door, but where our old-fashioned Bean & Nugget block typeface sign over the picture windows should be, the signage is in a cursive font, spelling out The Hive, with a gigantic bumblebee hung at the corner of the building.
I point to the picture windows, which aren’t windows, but aren’t not windows. “What’s that?”
He pauses before he answers, and I can feel the weight of his gaze shifting to me. “Plexiglass beehives.”
“Chandler hates bees.”
“Does he?”
I open my mouth, then close it again.
Grey knows.
There’s no way on Earth he doesn’t know Chandler hates bees. And that’s not almost thirty years of studying human interactions telling me Grey knows Chandler hates bees.
That sarcastic, biting Does he? clearly says that this is not new information.
“We were maybe twelve or thirteen when he found a tree in a local park that was swimming with bees. He decided he wanted honey, so he started banging on it, and the next thing we knew, he was covered with them. Stung probably a dozen times. No anaphylactic reaction or anything. Not allergic. Just stung a lot. One of the stings got infected and he had to go on antibiotics that he did have an adverse reaction to.”
Grey grunts.
If I were the type of person to read into a grunt, I’d think that grunt said so he’s always been an asshole.
Grey loves bees.
It’s not just his magic beeswax-biodegradable-plastic self-sealing cereal bags. The triplets told me last night that Grey used his first profits off of his patent to start building his own research lab with a tight friend from college. He has a solid reputation as a certified bee genius in certain circles. Works with universities and government organizations sometimes. And suddenly in early December, with no warning, he sold all of his research to a completely unknown company and signed off on an agreement to not do bee research for anyone but them for the next ten years.
Decker found a small corner of the internet where the bee-obsessed hang out, and he said there’s speculation that it was a sabotage job.
That Grey and his former business/research partner haven’t spoken other than through their lawyers ever since.
I tend to believe you only get a third of the story off the internet. And I know I’m missing pieces of the story.
But the man I met in Hawaii? The man who wanted to do good in the world despite indicating that he, too, was having a bad day? The man who made me feel like I was worthy of basic human affection on what was one of the worst nights of my life?
The man who was a friend when I needed one the most?
I want to believe he’s still inside this zipped-up man who only makes noncommittal grunts when I say Chandler’s name.
“Why were you in Hawaii?” I ask him.
Those blue eyes shift until he’s looking at me straight on. “To crash a wedding and destroy a man’s reputation.”
I swallow.
Hard.
“What did he do to you?” I whisper.
His eyes flick away.