Total pages in book: 128
Estimated words: 121210 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 606(@200wpm)___ 485(@250wpm)___ 404(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121210 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 606(@200wpm)___ 485(@250wpm)___ 404(@300wpm)
Ignoring my grandmother’s badgering about being gentle with her precious candles, I walk down the steps to the trunk of her Buick, setting the box inside with the others before she hurries behind me and slams the trunk down with a slap.
“Put your seat belt on, dear,” she says as I climb into the passenger’s seat. “I’m gonna have to gun it the whole way there.”
She fires up the engine, and driving thirty in a twenty-five, we “gun” our way down the street and head for town.
The sun is bright through the window and feels warm on my face while I let memories of how good it felt to sleep in Clay’s arms last night run through my mind. I’m half tempted to text him, even pulling my phone out of my purse to look at the screen, but I decide at least one of us deserves to get some sleep this morning.
Almost two years together, and I still feel like I’m floating on a cloud—even if he did stupidly run for a city council position last year and win it. His phone rings constantly, and there’s never not someone trying to bend his ear at the bar, but he listens with the patience of a saint and genuinely tries to fix everyone’s problems. He’s a good fit for the role; I just wish it didn’t come at the expense of spending some of our date nights hearing Eileen Martin bitch about Mayor Wallace proposing to use city funds to paint Red Bridge’s red bridge a different color or Peggy wanting to find a way to get an additional two parking spots in front of her pawn shop.
It should be noted that the bridge is still red, and if they added more parking spots in front of Peggy’s shop, the only people who could park in her small lot would have to be driving one of those tiny smart cars.
Small towns are great in the fact that they create a community where everyone in town feels like they have a say. And small towns are also bad for that very reason, too. Especially when your boyfriend is on the city council. Last week alone, he must’ve received a hundred text messages about the graffiti that appeared on one of the stop signs near the center of town. A teeny-tiny sketch of a penis and balls really threw everyone into a tizzy.
Truthfully, you’d just about need a magnifying glass to see it from your car, but that’s neither here nor there.
“I saw your sketchbook last night, you know,” Grandma Rose says, startling my attention away from the window. “While you were still at Clay’s.”
I chew at my lip. “Yeah?”
My sketchbook is something I’ve had for years, and every time I get a new idea that revolves around my big dream of opening my own coffee shop, I keep tabs on it in there.
“One day, you’re gonna have to grab yourself by the cojones, tell Harold Metcalf you’re done workin’ for him, and open the coffee shop you want to.”
I look back out the window. “I’m not ready yet. I don’t have the savings.”
Grandma laughs. “You think I was ever ready for any of the stuff I did? For your dad? For him to get diagnosed with that horrible brain tumor and pass less than a year later? For losing Jezzy so tragically? For your witch of a mother taking you and Norah away from me? For you to be so grown on me?” She shakes her head. “Biggest lesson in this world is that you’re never ready. Now, a bad feeling, that’s different—you listen when you have those because that’s your intuition speaking. But not ready? That’s just the fear of the unknown talking.”
I wish it were as easy as she says. I wish I could just follow my heart to start my own coffee shop in the same way I followed my heart to Clay. But I don’t know. The dream feels almost too big to achieve.
Grandma pulls into the parking lot behind the market pavilion and turns off the car without another word. I follow her lead and climb out too, stacking our boxes onto one of the carts they keep for vendors and wheeling the load into our booth.
Grandma puts out her signature purple tablecloth, and I start unloading candles into their normal display.
“Hold down the fort, hun,” she says, stepping around the table and tapping the surface with her fingers. “I gotta go talk to Melba before Betty gets here. Tell her about bingo last week while she was out of town.”
I chortle. “You think you and Betty Bagley will ever bury the hatchet and get along?”
Grandma’s face is disgusted. “Not even when I’m dead, hun. That little schemer can rot.”
“Grandma!”
She shrugs. “There’s a whole history there with me and her and your grandpa, all right?”