And that Mimi is apparently my new boss?
And that I want to cry with the absolute sweetness that is Zen telling everyone that Grey bought the café to give Mimi a chance to live out the dreams she had as a young woman?
I think I love him.
I think I’m a goner.
And I’m so much more okay with this than I ever thought I could’ve been.
He’s seen me at my worst. And he’s still here.
Or he was.
Last night.
This could work, the very, very most skeptical part of my gossip-loving brain whispers. He is your one.
“Go home,” Zen says to me an hour after my shift ends.
“I’m making up my time.”
“Sabrina. Go home.”
“I got her, Zen,” Decker says. He’s been hanging out under all of the leftover decorations from last night’s speed dating event too.
“Where’s Grey?” I ask Zen.
They roll their eyes. “He got a look this morning that could mean anything from we’re hightailing it out of this joint and moving back to San Diego where it’s warm to I figured out that butterflies are the secret ingredient to clean energy and have to go lose track of time and space in the name of research.”
My lips part, and it takes a hot second for my brain to catch up. “Who’s feeding him?”
“Um, the entire community if he’s at the townhouse. If he’s not, I have a tracker on his phone. I’ll find him before he starves to death.”
“C’mon, Sabrina.” Decker hooks a finger into the back of my shirt. “Nappy-poo time for you. I’m sure you’ll see your sweetie-weetie soon enough.”
“Can you be a little more immature?”
He grins.
The triplets are a couple years younger than me, and they don’t normally act like it, but they have their days.
I let Decker push me into my car and follow me to my house to make sure I get there safely. As soon as he leaves the parking lot, I dash outside and knock on Grey’s door.
No answer.
I knock again.
Still no answer.
Then I remember my mom still has my dog, and I load up and head back downtown.
Jitter’s the toast of the salon, and Mom tells me I can’t have him back.
She also tells me if Mimi hurts Grandpa, I’ll be in trouble.
“Zen says Grey gave Mimi the café,” I tell Mom.
“And how do you feel about that?”
My eyes flood. I try to blink it all back, and I can’t. “Really good,” I whisper.
It feels like his way of saying he’s gotten what he needs to feel even with Chandler.
I don’t understand it, but I feel it.
I don’t see him the rest of the day.
Saturday, Grandpa hangs out with Mimi all day while she fusses over the menu, samples coffees, and asks if she can bake oatmeal cranberry cookies to put in the display case.
“Your café, Mimi,” Zen says.
Grey’s not in.
Zen goes flat-faced whenever anyone asks about him.
Including me.
It’s Valentine’s Day.
And I haven’t heard from him since yesterday morning.
Before yesterday, I wouldn’t have thought a thing about not hearing from him.
But now?
Now, this is weird. And worrying.
I know things happen. I know stuff comes up. I know this might not be about me at all.
But I still corner Zen when my shift is over. “Did I do something wrong?”
They pull a face, and then the unthinkable happens.
Zen hugs me.
Not a little hug either.
A tight hug.
“Can you chaperone Mimi and Harry tonight and make sure they don’t break anything?”
“What did I do?”
“You called Mimi and set them up, so them wanting to go skating at midnight on a frozen lake under questionable lighting is your responsibility.”
“To Grey.”
They hug me even tighter. “He told me to start the paperwork to give the café to you once Mimi’s done with it.”
I suck in a breath. “I don’t want the café.”
“Okay, Queen Gossip of the Tooth.”
“I don’t. I told him that and I meant it.”
“All I got out of him before he left was that he needed to find closure.”
“He left?”
Zen lets me go and rolls their eyes. “And this is why I didn’t want to tell you anything.”
“Is he coming back?”
They wince.
My heart thuds to the floor and makes a bigger mess than the mashed potato fight mixed with the powdered cheese incident.
“Can you give him my phone number?” I whisper. “I never did.”
“Are you—of course you’re not kidding me. Of course. You two are ridiculous.”
The Valentine’s Day skate sucks.
Everyone else has fun, but Emma and I work the hot cocoa booth with Devi for the small business owners’ association, both of us staring glumly at everyone on the midnight ice, the lake lit up with fairy lights. The only bright spots for us are Laney and Theo—Laney on the ice in a wheelchair that Theo’s pushing—and Mimi and Grandpa Harry.
“I figured out a better revenge than ruining Bean & Nugget,” Em tells me as things are shutting down. “But now Grey’s gone and we don’t know why and I can’t help anymore.”
“Would it make you feel better to do it?” I ask her.
She grins.
It’s an honest Emma grin that makes me feel a decade younger.
An then she shakes her head. “Not as much as it would help him, but I’ll consider it solo if he doesn’t come back.”
“You think he’ll come back?”
“I think I hope he does, since I’ve never seen you hung up on a man like this before.”
“We had a fling in Hawaii my last night there,” I whisper.
She gasps. “Oh my god, and you’re just now telling me this? Details, Sabrina. I need all of the details.”
It feels awkward at first—So, Em, I felt like an absolute heel after your wedding and needed to do some good deeds—but as her face lights up more and more as I tell her everything I remember from the time I met him to the time I ghosted him, I feel something breaking free inside of me.
The guilt.
The guilt is going away now that we can talk about it.
“He…was there to cause trouble at your wedding,” I tell her.
“Do you know what Chandler did to him?”
“I do.”
“Did Chandler deserve it?”
“You did not.”
She squeezes my hand. “I think my life will be a lot better in this new direction I’m heading.”
“If you want me to forget Grey because of what he was willing to do to you on your wedding day—”
“No. No. Guys who abandon grand revenge plans to give their grandmothers cafés and support their grandmothers dating old flames from seventy years ago are the good guys. And if he’d been the reason my wedding had broken up, but I still found out everything I know now, I’d still be grateful. The universe saved me. That’s the important thing.”
I fling my arms around my friend, my head barely hitting her boobs because she’s so much taller than me. “I love you, Em.”
“I love you more, Sabrina.”
“I’m glad you’re my Valentine.”
“Can I buy you a hot chocolate spiked with espresso?”
“You seriously know the way to a girl’s heart.”
Sunday morning, I wake up to a cryptic text from an unknown number. The right kind of justice isn’t easy. Back soon.
What does that mean? I text back, hope blossoming in my heart once more, but I don’t get a response.
“He’s probably forgetting to charge his phone,” Zen tells me when I charge into Bean & Nugget on my day off.
“Where. The fuck. Is he?”
“I could tell you, but Mimi just decided she’s done owning a café. The paperwork will get rolling in the morning to turn it over to you, so you’re going to be very busy very soon here.”
“For. The very. Last. Time. I. Do not. Want. The café. I want. To know. Where. The. Fuck. Is. Grey?”
“He’s staging a coup and buying out the company that bought out his research,” Mimi pipes up. “That’s my brilliant boy.”
I gape at her. “He’s moving back to San Diego?”
“It’s lovely this time of year,” she says. “Actually, it’s lovely every time of year.”
Fuck this.
Absolutely fuck this.
All of it.
From here to eternity.
I am fucking done with Super Vengeance Man.
34
Grey
It’s a beautiful day to get back what’s mine.