Iris is Mrs. Pineapple. Sabrina told me about these muffins in Hawaii.
I start to clear my throat, but it’s too late.
Zen’s taking a massive bite.
Sabrina stifles a noise. We make eye contact, and she goes pink in the cheeks.
I start to grin.
Until Zen makes a noise of their own.
“Aren’t they delicious?” Sabrina’s mom says.
“So much,” Zen lies.
They turn a subtle but desperate look my way.
Sabrina squeaks again.
Everyone looks at her.
“Jitter. You silly thing. What kind of a noise was that?”
The dog snorts, flips one way, hits the fireplace hearth and gets stuck before flopping back the other way. He spots me, barks once in utter jubilance, scrambles to his feet and charges, knocking over the tray of muffins on the way.
“Oh my god,” Zen whispers.
I pass them my tea.
They gulp.
Iris squints at them.
“Swallowed a dog hair too,” they force out. “God, Sabrina, bring a dust mop when you bring Jitter.”
“Grey, can we still use this space next year for speed dating?” Bitsy asks. “You’ll still have tables, won’t you? There’s nothing like the fairy lights on the lake at night, and you just can’t see them as well anywhere else.”
“We could do speed dating on the lake,” Iris says. “Bet we’d have way more success stories that way.”
“But it has to be here,” Bitsy replies. “John and I met at speed dating here. It wouldn’t be the same if it was somewhere else.”
“Zen, are you okay?” Sabrina’s mom asks. “You poor thing.”
“Still stuck in there,” Zen says hoarsely.
“Maybe it’s actually residual cheese dust.”
There’s another round of everyone sucking in a breath while they dart glances between me and Sabrina and her mom sits there sipping her own coffee like she’s completely innocent and didn’t remind everyone of the cheese dust on purpose.
“Oh, god, I didn’t mean you should do speed dating,” one of the women says. “Right. Right. You and Sabrina—”
“Are not dating,” Sabrina says lightly. “I don’t date.”
“That’s what your mom said before she got pregnant with you,” the oldest woman in the room whispers.
And I’m out.
Out out.
Retreating to the kitchen because I know when I’m in over my head, and it doesn’t matter what Sabrina’s mom says to that.
I have to leave.
The voices continue in the dining room.
There’s laughter. Conversation. Excitement. The clink of coffee cups on the tables.
And Zen’s in the middle of it.
Like they belong.
I have never seen Zen adjust to a place like this. Even when we were in San Diego after I kicked Felicia out, when it was just the two of us, they didn’t like accompanying me for anything to do with work.
Your researcher friends treat me like a specimen, they told me once. Maybe it’s in my head, but I don’t like it.
Here?
Here, they’re joining in like they belong. Finding a gymnastics class, for fuck’s sake. If I tell them I could’ve warned them about Mrs. Pineapple’s lavender muffins, they’ll laugh their ass off and then some, and probably serve me iced coffee in my chai mug tomorrow for revenge, and we’ll be even.
It makes me want to bail right now. Put the café up for sale. Just give it to Sabrina.
Get them out of here.
Before they get hurt.
I angle a glance inside the room and catch Sabrina watching the kitchen door.
She looks away immediately, reaching for her mug as she says something to the woman beside her.
I flush hot, then cold, then hot again, and then I go lightheaded.
Dammit.
I don’t want to leave.
Even knowing this infatuation has to eventually come to an end, that I have to trust the people in this community to accept Zen and me for who we are, that I’ll eventually crave research again in a way that won’t be satisfied by running a kombucha bar with a bee theme and live beehives, I don’t want to leave.
And that’s scarier than hell.
20
Sabrina
There are some lines that I’ve sworn to myself I’ll never cross.
But I’ve never been backed into a corner like this before, and I’ve never felt like a task was as impossible as figuring out what Chandler loves.
My mom doesn’t have a clue.
Grandpa doesn’t know.
Laney gaped at me when I asked her.
The triplets fell all over themselves stuttering golf and cars and hating Theo, none of which can give us an actual plan of revenge for Grey. Even if Chandler’s favorite golf course would let us paint Chandler is an asshole on the side of a golf cart, that’s probably not sufficient.
I won’t bother Emma with this. Absolutely not.
I’m five days into Grey’s challenge to me to find anything else he can use against Chandler, and I have nothing.
“What did Chandler do to him?” I whisper to Zen while we’re watching the local fridge repair person finally tackle the leak while our local drywall guy fixes the dent in the wall behind the fridge where it nearly rolled into the bathroom during the cheese incident.
Which is the only thing I can bring myself to call it.
“Not my story to tell,” they reply.
“But you’ll share anyway,” I say confidently. “It’s in his best interest. I can’t be fully effective at my job if I don’t know all of the circumstances that led to this assignment.”
“Uncle Grey loves puzzles. He’s given you all the clues you get to solve this one. By the way, warn a person next time they’re about to eat chewy soap.”
“I tried. You weren’t looking at me.”
“Try harder.”
“Is there any chance he’ll give up this dream of being Super Vengeance Man and just let us keep running Bean & Nugget as it is?”
They sigh and make a pucker face. “You know he’s rich as fuck, right?”
If I could gag with my eyeballs at how much I don’t care about the size of his bank account, I would.
They actually grin back, but sober quickly. “Very, very worst case for Uncle Grey financially is that this place turns into a big ol’ tax break. You can’t buy it off of him. If I can’t talk him out of it, there’s zero chance that you can talk him out of it. And if you don’t give him something real, he will slap a bee the size of a freaking school bus on the side of this building without a moment’s hesitation.”
“He can do that and still let us keep the café.”
“I heard Emma was the rose-colored glasses one of your group.”
I wince.
They make the pucker face again. “Sorry, Sabrina. Can’t help you. And I say that as someone who’s also listening to all of the gossip to see if I can find another way, and as someone who’s done all of the market research that supports the idea that a kombucha bar would be more popular here than you think it would. Tell me the ski tourists who stay here because it’s cheaper than the resorts twenty minutes away wouldn’t pack the place every night.”
They have a point, and I have definitely picked up on the vibe that this renovation is more than petty justice. That Zen’s smart and Grey’s usually smart but hurt, and they could make something fabulous out of their kombucha bar.
So knowing that Grey has a beef against Chandler that won’t be satisfied by anything less than destroying something of Chandler’s, that they have a solid plan for making this place a success later, and that sex won’t convince Grey to let me keep my café, it’s time for the last idea I have.
I can either cross a line that I never would’ve considered crossing since the day I was born, or I can watch the café that’s been my entire life’s purpose wither away and die.
So line-crossing it is.
He said he wanted to see me play dirty.
This is as dirty as I can go and still live with myself.
I do it at Laney’s house while Jitter waits for me outside so that my neighbors won’t have any chance of overhearing me through the walls. Laney and Theo are elsewhere, so I have the house to myself aside from their litter of kittens.
Then Jitter and I head home, where I fix myself an afternoon pour-over coffee, turn on the Razzle Dazzle channel for comforting background noise—it’s showing a movie that Laney, Emma, and I have seen so much, I can recite it by heart—and I text her.
It’s done.