Let It Snow: Three Holiday Romances (24 page)

“Are you sure you’re all right?” she said.

I smiled brightly and peeled off the sticky note. “Never better!”

She went back to prepping the coffee station, and I folded the note in half and stuck it in my pocket. I lugged the pastries to the glass case, put on a pair of plastic gloves, and started loading the trays. Rufus Wainwright’s cover of “Hallelujah” filled the store, and I hummed along. It was almost pleasant, in a life-sucks-but-at-least-there’s-good-music sort of way.

But as I listened to the lyrics—truly listened, instead of just letting them float over me—the almost-pleasant feelings went away. I’d always thought this was an inspirational song about God or something, because of all the hallelujahs. Only it turned out there were words before and after the hallelujahs, and those words were hardly uplifting.

Rufus was singing about love, and how love couldn’t exist without faith. I grew still, because what he was saying sounded way too familiar. I listened some more, and was horrified to realize that the whole song was about a guy who was in love, only the person he loved betrayed him. And those heartbreakingly sweet hallelujahs? They weren’t inspirational hallelujahs. They were . . . they were “cold and broken” hallelujahs—it said so right there in the chorus!

Why had I ever liked this song? This song sucked!

I went to change the CD, but it switched to the next track before I got there. A gospel version of “Amazing Grace” filled the store, and I thought,
Well, it’s a heck of a lot better than a broken hallelujah.
And also,
Please, God, I sure could use some grace.

Chapter Eight

B
y five
A.M.
, our morning prep was done. At 5:01, our first customer rapped on the glass door, and Christina walked over to officially unlock it.

“Merry day-after-Christmas, Earl,” she said to the burly guy waiting outside. “Didn’t know if we’d see you today.”

“You think my customers care what the weather’s like?” Earl said. “Think again, darlin’.”

He trundled into the store, bringing with him a gust of frigid air. His cheeks were ruddy, and he wore a red-and-black hat with earflaps. He was huge, bearded, and looked like a lumberjack—which worked out nicely since he
was
a lumberjack. He drove one of those semis you never wanted to get behind on one of the many mountain roads around here, since, first of all, the weight he pulled meant he maintained a speed of a rip-roaring twenty miles an hour, and, second of all, the back of his open trailer was filled with logs.
Massive
logs, stacked five or six high. Logs, should the trailer restraints snap, that would roll off the truck and smush you as flat as a crushed to-go cup.

Christina crossed back behind the bar and got the steamer going. “Must be nice to be needed, though, huh?”

Earl grunted. He tromped over to the cash register, squinted at me, and said, “What’d you do to your hair?”

“I cut it,” I said. I watched his face. “And dyed it.” When he still didn’t say anything, I added, “Do you like it?”

“What’s it matter?” he replied. “It’s your hair.”

“I know. But . . . ” I found I didn’t know how to finish my sentence. Why
did
I care if Earl liked it or not? Eyes down, I took his money. He always got the same drink, so there was no further discussion required.

Christina swirled a generous galaxy of whipped cream onto Earl’s raspberry mocha, drizzled the cream with bright red raspberry syrup, and topped the whole thing off with a white plastic lid.

“Here you go,” she announced.

“Thank you, ladies,” he said. He raised his cup in a toast, then strode out the door.

“You think Earl’s lumberjack buddies tease him about getting such a girly drink?” I asked.

“Not more than once,” Christina said.

The door jangled, and a guy held it open for his girlfriend. At least, I assumed she was his girlfriend, because they had that coupley look to them, all goofy and love struck. I immediately thought of Jeb—I’d gone, what, two seconds without his crossing my mind?—and felt lonely.

“Wow, more early birds,” Christina commented.

“More like
late birds
is my guess.” The guy, whom I recognized from school, had bleary eyes and an up-all-night sway to his posture. I thought I recognized the girl, too, but I wasn’t sure. She couldn’t stop yawning.

“Could you quit that?” the guy said to Yawning Girl. Tobin, his name was Tobin. He was one grade above me. “You’re giving me a complex.”

She smiled. She yawned again. Was her name Angie, maybe? Yeah, Angie, and she was nongirly in a way that made me feel
too
girly. I doubted she meant to, though. I doubted she even knew who I was.

“That’s just great,” he said. He appealed to me and Christina, spreading his arms. “She thinks I’m boring. I’m
boring
her—can you believe it?”

I kept my expression pleasant but noncommittal. Tobin wore scruffy sweaters and was friends with the Korean guy who said “asshat,” and he and all of his buddies were intimidatingly clever. The kind of clever that made me feel cheerleader-dumb, even though I wasn’t a cheerleader, and even though I personally didn’t think cheerleaders
were
dumb. Not all of them, anyway. Chloe-the-Stuart-dumper, maybe.

“Hey,” Tobin said, pointing at me. “I know you.”

“Um, yeah,” I said.

“But your hair wasn’t always pink.”

“Nope.”

“So you
work
here? That’s wild.” He turned to the girl. “She works here. She’s probably worked here for years, and I never knew it.”

“Spooky,” the girl said. She smiled at me and kind of tilted her head, as if to say,
I know I know you, and I’m sorry I don’t know your name, but “hi” anyway.

“Can I get drinks started for you guys?” I asked.

Tobin scanned the menu board. “Ah, Christ, this is the place with the messed-up sizes, isn’t it? Like,
grandé
instead of large?” He stretched it out all stupid and fake-French, and Christina and I shared a look.

“Why can’t you just call it a large?” he asked.

“You could, except
grandé
is a medium,” Christina said. “
Venti
is large.”

“
Venti.
Right. For the love of God, can’t I order in plain English?”

“Absolutely,” I told him. It was a delicate balance: keeping the customer happy, but also, when needed, calling him on his crap. “It might confuse me, but I’ll figure it out.”

Angie’s lips twitched. It made me like her.

“No, no, no,” Tobin said, holding his hands up and making a show of recanting. “When in Rome and all that. I’ll, uh . . . let me think . . . can I get a
venti
blueberry muffin?”

I had to laugh. His hair was sticking up, he looked utterly exhausted, and yes, he was acting like a tool. I was fairly sure he didn’t know my name, either, despite the fact that we’d gone to the same elementary school, middle school, and high school. Yet there was something sweet about him as he looked at Angie, who was laughing along with me.

“What?” he said, bewildered.

“The sizes are for drinks,” she said. She put her hands on his shoulders and aimed him toward the pastry case, where six identically plump muffins sat at attention. “The muffins are all the same.”

“They’re muffins,” Christina agreed.

Tobin blustered, and at first I assumed it was more of his act.
Hapless counter-culture-boy, thrust against his will into Big Bad Starbucks.
Then I noticed his rising blush, and I realized something. Tobin and Angie . . . their togetherness was new. New enough that being touched by her still came as a glorious, blush-worthy surprise.

Another wave of loneliness flooded through me. I remembered that skin-tingling exhilaration.

“This is my first time in a Starbucks,” Tobin said. “Seriously. My first time ever, so be gentle with me.” His hand fumbled for Angie’s, and their fingers locked. She blushed, too.

“So . . . just a muffin?” I asked. I slid back the glass door of the pastry case.

“Never mind, I no longer want your stinking muffin.” He pretend-pouted.

“Poor baby,” Angie teased.

Tobin gazed at her. Sleepiness, and something else, softened his features.

“Um, how about your biggest-size latte,” he said. “We can share.”

“Sure,” I said. “You want any syrup in that?”

He shifted his attention back to me. “Syrup?”

“Hazelnut, white chocolate, raspberry, vanilla, caramel . . . ” I said, ticking them off.

“Hash brown?”

For a second I thought he was making a joke at my expense, but then Angie laughed, and it was a private-joke kind of laugh, but not in a mean way, and I realized maybe everything wasn’t
always
about me.

“Sorry, no hash-brown syrup.”

“Uh, okay,” he said. He scratched his head. “Then, um, how about—”

“A cinnamon dolce white mocha,” Angie told me.

“Excellent choice.” I rang it up, and Tobin paid with a five and then stuffed a bonus five in the “Feed Your Barista” jar. Maybe he wasn’t such a tool after all.

Still, when they went to the front of the store to sit down, I couldn’t help thinking,
Not the purple chairs! Those are Jeb’s and my chairs!
But of course the purple chairs were the ones they chose. After all, they were the softest and the best.

Angie dropped into the chair closest to the wall, and Tobin sank into its mate. In one hand, he held their drink. With his other, he reclaimed Angie, lacing his fingers through hers and holding on tight.

Chapter Nine

B
y six thirty, the sun was officially on the rise. It was pretty, I suppose, if you liked that sort of thing. Fresh starts, new beginnings, the warming rays of hope . . .

Yeah. Not for me.

By seven, we had an actual morning rush, and the demands of cappuccinos and espressos took over and made my brain shut up, at least for a while.

Scott swung by for his customary chai, and, as always, he or-dered a to-go cup of whipped cream for Maggie, his black lab.

Diana, who worked at the preschool down the road, stopped in for her skinny latte, and as she dug around in her purse for her Starbucks card, she told me for the hundred-billionth time that I needed to change my picture on the “Meet Your Baristas” board.

“You know I hate that photo,” she said. “You look like a fish with your lips puckered like that.”

“I like that picture,” I said. Jeb had snapped it last New Year’s Eve, when Tegan and I were goofing around pretending to be Angelina Jolie.

“Well, I don’t know why,” Diana replied. “You’re just such a pretty girl, even with this”—she waved her hand to indicate my new hairstyle—“
punk
look you’ve got going on.”

Punk.
Good Lord.

“It’s not punk,” I said. “It’s pink.”

She found her card and held it aloft. “Aha! Here you go.”

I swiped it and returned it, and she wagged it in my face before going to claim her drink.

“Change that picture!” she commanded.

The Johns, all three of them, came in at eight and took up residence at their customary corner table. They were retired, and they liked to spend their mornings drinking tea and working through their Sudoku books.

John Number One said my new hair made me look foxy, and John Number Two told him to stop flirting.

“She’s young enough to be your granddaughter,” John Number Two said.

“Don’t worry,” I replied. “Anyone who uses the word
foxy
has pretty much taken himself out of the running.”

“You mean I was in the running till then?” John Number One said. His Carolina Tar Heels baseball cap perched high on his head like a bird’s nest.

“No,” I said, and John Number Three guffawed. He and John Number Two knocked their fists together, and I shook my head.
Boys.

At eight forty-five, I reached for the strings of my apron and announced that I was going on break.

“I have a quick errand to run,” I told Christina, “but I’ll be right back.”

“Wait,” she said. She grabbed my forearm to keep me with her, and when I followed her gaze, I understood why. Entering the store was one of Gracetown’s finest, a tow truck driver named Travis who wore nothing but tinfoil. Tinfoil pants, tinfoil jacket-shirt-thing, even a cone-shaped tinfoil hat.

“Why oh why does he dress like that?” I said, and not for the first time.

“Maybe he’s a knight,” Christina suggested.

“Maybe he’s a lightning rod.”

“Maybe he’s a weather vane, here to predict the winds of change.”

“Ooo, nice one,” I said, and sighed. “I could use a wind of change.”

Travis approached. His eyes were so pale they looked silver. He didn’t smile.

“Hey, Travis,” Christina said. “What can I get you?” Usually, Travis just asked for water, but every so often he had enough change for a maple scone, his favorite pastry. Mine, too, actually. They looked dry, but they weren’t, and the maple icing rocked.

“Can I have a sample?” he said gruffly.

“Of course,” she said, reaching for one of the sample cups. “What would you like a sample of?”

“Nothing,” he said. “Just the cup.”

Christina glanced at me, and I trained my eyes on Travis to keep from laughing, which would be mean. If I looked closely, I could see lots of “me”s in his jacket-shirt-thingy. Or rather, fragments of me, broken up by the crinkles in the foil.

“The eggnog latte is good,” Christina suggested. “It’s our seasonal special.”

“Just the cup,” Travis repeated. He shifted in agitation. “I just want the cup!”

“Fine, fine.” She handed him the cup.

I pulled my gaze away from the “me”s, which were mesmerizing.

“I can’t believe you’re dressed like that, especially today,” I said. “Please tell me you’ve got a sweater on under that tinfoil.”

“What tinfoil?” he said.

“Ha-ha,” I said. “For real, Travis, aren’t you cold?”

“I’m not. Are you?”

“Um,
nooo.
Why would I be cold?”