Sweetheart Read online

  “I’ll do it. I’ll call the Bean tomorrow, take over some samples,” I said, because I wasn’t about to let anxiety dictate my decisions.

  Especially when my brother had just pointed out that that’s what I was doing.

  “You don’t have to do that. Like I said, I’m more than happy to take it on,” Sam said again.

  “Yeah, I know. Thanks, man.” I dredged up a smile. “But you’re right, it’s not a dealbreaker. I was just... I don’t know. Circling the wagons, I guess. But it was an over-reaction.”

  Sam didn’t know all the intricate ins and outs of the eighteen months I’d spent with Jess. He didn’t know the many, many ways she’d made me doubt my own judgement, sometimes even the evidence of my own senses. He didn’t understand what it was like to be gaslit and manipulated by a pro. He knew enough to want to protect me from having to revisit that time, though, and it made me feel warm with gratitude that he was ready to step up for me.

  Maybe he sensed my inner turmoil, because he moved closer and rested a hand on my shoulder.

  “The offer is there. Just say the word, okay?”

  His green eyes were steady on mine, and I nodded my thanks. Then I took a step backward.

  “Gotta hit the road.”

  “All right. See you tomorrow.”

  I stepped out into the afternoon sunlight and released a heavy sigh. Sam had been right to call me out, but that didn’t mean I was happy about it.

  Damn it.

  6

  Haley

  True to my promise to myself, I spent the night not thinking about Beck and the humiliation of my second visit to Dark Horse Coffee Roasters. Instead, I threw myself into finishing the cherry-blossom belt, applying a final protective layer over my artwork to seal it and ensure its longevity.

  Every time my mind drifted Beck-ward, I reminded myself that I was handing the problem over to Zara and Audrey tomorrow once I'd finished my shift, and I was feeling pretty pleased with how effective my strategy had been by the time I went to bed.

  Which was why I was more than a little ticked off the following morning when I looked up from serving a regular at the Bean to find Beck’s broad shoulders filling the doorway.

  For a moment I thought he was a product of my perverse subconscious as he stood there outlined by bright sunlight. Then he stepped into the shop, and I understood he was real and almost jammed my fingers in the cash drawer. I fumbled change for my customer, the small act taking twice as long as usual. When I shifted my focus to Beck again, I saw that Audrey had come out from the kitchen to meet him, the welcoming smile on her face cluing me into the fact that she’d been expecting him.

  For the next twenty minutes I went about the business of being amazing at my job while trying to simultaneously keep tabs on their meeting without appearing to do so. A complicated juggling act that I’m not one hundred percent certain I pulled off.

  I was clearing a table near the front door when Beck stood and shook hands again with Audrey. They were both smiling and Beck looked more relaxed, the stiffness gone from his shoulders. I kept my gaze on the plates I was stacking as he moved toward the door, not prepared to risk eye contact.

  I was burning to know what they’d been meeting about, but I told myself it was none of my business and ferried the plates to the kitchen. When I returned to the counter, Audrey was happily tearing open the seal on a commercial-sized bag of coffee beans.

  “Haley, we owe you big time. Guess who can fit us into their crowded client list now?” Audrey emptied our current beans out of the hopper on the grinder.

  “That’s great news,” I said, even though I was burning with questions.

  He’d been so rude to me last night, so adamant. But obviously something I’d said must have sunk in.

  “I’m going to let you do the honors, since you’re the one who made this happen.” Audrey waved a hand at the grinder as she passed me the beans.

  “I really didn’t do anything.” It was hard to feel as though I’d earned her praise and gratitude when I’d been the stumbling block in the first place. Or, more accurately, my sister had been.

  “Don’t be so modest. Daniel said you came to see him yesterday, and he was able to move a few things around to accommodate us. What exactly did you say to him?” Audrey asked, eyebrows raised.

  I poured beans into the hopper, giving all my attention to the small task. I hated lying, even by omission. My sister had always been able to do it so easily, so convincingly, yet every time I lied, I felt as though I needed a thousand showers to be clean again.

  “I just pointed out that the Bean was one of the fastest growing businesses in this part of Vermont.”

  I hit the button to grind the beans into the group handle, effectively killing the conversation.

  “Mmmm. Smells good.” Audrey leaned over my shoulder to catch a waft of freshly ground beans.

  “All coffee smells good when it’s just been ground,” I felt honor-bound to point out.

  “True, but I’m prepared to believe this smells extra good,” Audrey said. “Especially if it’s the trick to turning our coffee slump around.”

  I tamped the beans, then guided the handle into the Astra. Audrey and I stood side by side and watched thick, syrupy-looking espresso stream into the cup.

  “Drink this one as a short black, and I’ll make the next one a latte,” I said, handing her the glass.

  She swirled the dark liquid, sniffed it, then took a tentative sip. I watched as her eyebrows popped up, her eyes widening.

  “Oh, my,” she said, licking her lips.

  “Yeah. It’s pretty good, right?”

  “I’d abandon us for coffee this good. Make the latte, I’m dying to know how it tastes with milk.”

  I ground out another shot and made her the requested drink. This time she closed her eyes and made a happy noise.

  “How can this taste so much better than our coffee?” she asked when she was done swooning over her cup.

  “No idea,” I said.

  She pulled out her phone. “I need to cancel our regular supplier, stat. What have we got left on hand?”

  I did a quick stock-take and worked out we had enough for two days. Audrey made a quick call to Zara, then to their usual supplier. Then I eavesdropped shamelessly as she called Beck to place our first order.

  “Daniel Beck speaking, how can I help you?” he answered the phone, his deep voice somehow sounding even deeper on speaker mode.

  “Daniel, it’s Audrey Shipley. I just tried your beans. Wow. Don’t know what magic you are working over there in Montpelier, but we are in.”

  “That’s great to hear,” Beck said, and I could hear the smile in his voice. “When would you like your first delivery?”

  They talked quantities and dates, then I had to serve some customers and missed the remainder of the call. I’d heard enough to envy the easy friendliness of their conversation, though. Beck had always been super charming and easy to be around.

  With everyone except for me, apparently.

  I could hear the whiny self-pity sitting behind the thought and made an effort to shake it off. I’d lived without Daniel Beck’s approval in my life for twenty-five years. The world wasn’t going to end if he didn’t want to give me the time of day. That was his prerogative. I’d gotten what I needed out of our brief interactions—he’d agreed to supply the Bean. My work here was done, and we could both go about our separate lives now. Problem solved.

  I had another Etsy commission to launch into when I got home after my shift, a pair of slippers made from buttery-soft leather and suede, and I was more than happy to set aside the frustrations of the day and give myself over to the joy of creating. I’d given my client a range of vegetable-tanned leathers to choose from, and she’d selected a rich teal the color of deep ocean water. Just cutting out the pieces for the uppers made me happy. I’d finished stitching the pieces together and was about to stretch them over the lasts when I was interrupted by a phone call from my sister.


  “Hale-storm. I feel like we haven’t spoken for ages,” Jess said.

  “Pretty sure we spoke last week,” I reminded her, cradling the phone on my shoulder while I worked the leather over the last.

  “Sure, but not properly. Tell me what’s up with you. I want to know everything,” she said.

  I pictured her on the other end of the call, settling in for a long chat, and intuited that Jonny wasn’t home. My sister had never been good at tolerating her own company.

  I set the last down, then leaned back in my chair and stretched out my neck. I was happy to take a break but painfully aware that the topic at the top of my mind was one I couldn’t raise with her: Beck.

  “Not much to tell. The new job is still rocking along. I’ve got a couple of new commissions. What’s happening at your end?” I asked.

  “I booked a new job today,” Jess said.

  “Fantastic. Who is it with?”

  “A young designer. She’s being cultivated by one of the big fashion houses and everyone thinks she’s going to be the next big thing. She loves my ‘all-American girl’ look. So that’s pretty cool. She’s even talking about me being part of her branding.”

  I could hear the excitement thrumming beneath Jess’s words.

  “Woo-hoo. That’s so great,” I said. “Are you and Jonny going out to celebrate?”

  “That’s the plan. Although I’d rather save the money so we can start looking for a bigger place.”

  I frowned. “I thought you guys loved it where you are?”

  “The location, sure. But this apartment is so fucking small, Haley. When Jonny works from home, I almost go out of my mind with how much he’s in my face.”

  “But isn’t your place rent-controlled?”

  “Now you sound like Jonny,” she said unhappily.

  “Hey, you want to get a bigger place, I’m all for it.” I steered away from what was obviously a sensitive topic. “Sounds like you’ll be making good money with this new booking.”

  The conversation roamed from my sister’s new booking to a dress she’d scored at a recent photo shoot to the restaurant Jonny was taking her to, with me putting my two cents in whenever I was invited to. At some point I picked up a pencil and started doodling absentmindedly.

  “Before I forget to mention it,” Jess said, “I sent you a care package yesterday. Some makeup samples and hair products, stuff like that. You and Mom can sort out who gets what.”

  “I’ll tell Mom tonight, I’m going over there for dinner. She loves those makeup samples.”

  Jess had always been generous about sharing her freebies with us. Over the last few years she’d sent home cashmere scarves, jewelry, skincare products, makeup. The perks of having a model for a sister.

  “She’s still talking about the lipstick she scored last time. I swear she wore it every day for a month,” I said.

  “That’s hilarious. Find out what shade it was, and I’ll see if I can get her more.”

  I could hear a noise in the background and guessed that Jonny had arrived home from work.

  “Gotta go, Hales, my man is here,” Jess confirmed. “I need to make myself fancy for our big night out.”

  “Have a good one,” I said.

  “Give Mom and Dad a hug from me, okay?”

  “Will do.”

  I ended the call and put my phone aside. My gaze fell on my notepad, and I blinked at the image I’d drawn in big, bold strokes—the head and shoulders of a horse, his mane flowing in the wind, a certain cocky attitude in the way he was holding his head and ears. There was something missing, and I tilted my head for a few seconds, considering. Then I picked up my pencil and added a superhero eye-mask to the horse’s face. The result made me laugh out loud. There was something both hilarious and defiant about my superhero horse. Maybe it was the idea that a tiny eye-mask could hide his identity. Or maybe it was the attitude in his perked-up ears. Whatever it was, it was good and—

  What the hell are you doing?

  It was an excellent question—because I’d just sketched a logo for Daniel Beck’s business while talking to my sister on the phone. My sister, who happened to be Daniel’s ex.

  It was a good logo, too—a million times better than the crappy vector art images he’d been considering—but that didn’t make it any less batshit crazy that I’d designed something for someone who could barely tolerate five seconds in my presence.

  I could never show this to him. The thought alone was enough to make me want to squirm in my seat. I mean, the man hadn’t even bothered to remember my name. Shaking my head at my subconscious, I turned back to the slippers, determined to cleanse myself of Beck thoughts with the purity of hard labor.

  I set my tools aside half an hour before I needed to leave and spent the remaining time cleaning up my workspace, a habit I’d learned from Mr. Zametti. When everything was ship-shape, I headed for my parents’ place, stopping along the way to buy a bottle of wine. Their white ranch-style house was set off by the greenest lawn in the neighborhood—my father’s pride and joy—and I made a point of mentioning how good it looked as I let myself in the front door and greeted my father.

  “I’m not happy with my fertilizer regime,” my father said, glancing out the window with an assessing frown.

  “Okay, I’m going to back away from this topic,” I said with a laugh.

  My mom came forward to hug me, her cheek warm against mine.

  “Your hair looks so cute like this,” she said, reaching out to touch the blunt ends of my jaw-length bob. “I thought you were going to grow it?”

  “Meh. I got bored,” I said.

  We settled around the old oak table in the kitchen and helped ourselves to the cheese and crackers my father had arranged on a decorative board. I’d chosen a good cabernet sauvignon from the Napa Valley, and we all chatted and snacked happily for the next twenty minutes.

  “So, have you spoken to Jess this week?” my mom asked when my father stood to start serving up the meal.

  This was a regular query during any meal or conversation with my parents, part of the unofficial monitoring system we’d developed in the years since my sister swallowed a bottle of my father’s painkillers when she was seventeen. Generally speaking, one of us tried to touch base with my sister at least once a week, and if we heard anything from her that rang alarm bells, we’d pool information to try to head trouble off at the pass.

  It wasn’t a perfect system, but so far we’d managed to keep my sister from bottoming out again in the ten years since her suicide attempt. That didn’t mean there weren’t plenty of minor explosions and crises along the way, of course, and they have caused my parents multiple headaches and lost night’s sleep, but mostly we’d been able to work together to keep my sister stable and safe.

  “She called me this afternoon, actually. She’s really happy about a shoot she’s just landed, and we talked a little about her and Jonny maybe trying to find a bigger apartment.” I shrugged. “I think she’s doing okay.”

  “She still wants to find a new place?” Mom asked. “She’s been talking about that ever since she went to that party in Gramercy Park a few weeks ago.”

  “We all know what she’s like when she gets an idea in her head,” I said. “I guess that’s between her and Jonny, though, right?”

  Sometimes I worry that my folks spend too much time fretting about things they can’t do anything about when it comes to my sister, parsing all the little details, looking for clues that aren’t there. Then I remind myself that I wasn’t the one who came home to find my sister passed out and unresponsive in a pool of vomit. My father has never talked about how he had to give my sister CPR until the ambulance arrived, but I knew it had left an indelible mark on both him and my mother.

  “True. I just worry she’s putting pressure on Jonny, but I guess what will happen will happen, won’t it?” Mom echoed my shrug.

  “He’s good with her,” Dad said as he brought our plates to the table. “I think he’s in i
t for the long haul.”

  “We thought that about Beck, too, remember?” Mom asked.

  Hearing his name gave me a jolt. I’d never heard the details about why Jess and Beck broke up and curiosity got the better of me.

  “I guess things must have gotten pretty bad between them toward the end, huh?” I asked, feeling as though my interest was like a beacon shining on the horizon.

  “I assume so, but I really don’t know the details. Your sister was so distraught by the time I arrived in New York, it was hard to work out what was real and what wasn’t. You know how she gets.”

  I nodded. I was intimately familiar with my sister in crisis mode. When she got worked up, it was impossible to discern the truth. She catastrophized things, making leaps of logic that defied reason, and sometimes slipped into paranoia. She wasn’t above lying to cover something shitty she’d done, or lashing out destructively in an attempt to punish whoever she felt had done her wrong.

  That was her at her worst. When she was at her best, she was the most fun, the most exciting, the most charismatic person to be around in the world. All she had to do was walk into a room and people would smile and gravitate toward her.

  When we were both kids, my parents had called her Hurricane Jess because of the extreme highs and lows of her personality. It had been a joke then, but after the incident with the pills, it hadn’t been funny anymore.

  “Anyway, enough of all that. How are things going with your Etsy store?” my mother asked brightly, clearly ready to move on.

  “It’s steady,” I said. “I’ve got a couple of commissions for shoes, but mostly it’s belts and bags at the moment.”

  “You’ll get there,” my father said. “I get compliments every day on my briefcase, and I always direct them to your site.”

  I’d made my dad a gorgeous forest-green satchel for Christmas a few years ago. I’d kept the design simple and classic for him, but indulged myself with a few little details, like the delicate autumn leaves I’d engraved on the brass closures and the rich, wine-colored paisley fabric I’d used for the lining.