Well Met(77)

When Chris got in later that morning she gave me a knowing smile; roses were on her mind too.

“Nice weekend?” She sounded casual, almost disinterested. As if she hadn’t seen me adorned with roses, being elaborately kissed in front of a crowd.

“Yeah.” I kept my voice equally nonchalant as I finished making her vanilla latte. Her favorite. I knew that by now. “Pretty good.”

Chris snickered and took a sip of her latte, closing her eyes with a smile. “You’re getting pretty good. Are you sure you’ve never been a barista? Never put in time at a Starbucks?”

“Nope. I could make more money at a bar. But I have to say, this is a lot more fun.”

“The coffee?”

“All of it.” I gestured around, encompassing the entire store. “I’ve enjoyed helping you out, setting all of this up.”

“This wouldn’t exist without you. Well, the store would, obviously, since it’s been here. But all this . . .”

“It wasn’t much,” I protested. “A few tables and chairs.”

“And our new book club has its first meeting next month. And Nicole said a writers’ group called over the weekend. They want to have meetings here. I know it doesn’t seem like much, but I couldn’t have done it on my own. Organizing it all.” She tipped her cup at me in acknowledgment. “That’s something you’re very good at.”

“Oh.” The compliment flustered me, and I busied myself by wiping down the counter. “I don’t know about that. I just . . . I get an idea in my head of how things could be, and if I can make them happen I do it. Doesn’t seem like much.”

“Well, it is. Stacey keeps saying she can’t believe it’s only your first year at Faire. You have everything so well organized at the tavern.”

I laughed. “That’s where my years at working in bars comes in handy. A bar is a bar, even if it’s out in the woods.” But I couldn’t keep the smile off my face or the pink out of my cheeks. People had been talking about me. In a good way. That wasn’t something I was used to.

As the day went on, Chris did whatever paperwork needed doing at the beginning of the week while I did, well, everything else. Unpacked the boxes of new books that were delivered on Monday, tidied up some shelves. Little indie bookstores didn’t do a roaring business on a Tuesday at the tail end of summer, so we weren’t exactly busy. After a while Chris looked up from her paperwork.

“You know Lauren, right?”

“Lauren Pollard? She’s one of the kids, right?” Meaning, one of the kids in the cast. I was pretty sure Chris was talking about one of the dancers who came by the tavern a few times a day for water.

Chris nodded. “Nicole goes back to school at the end of August. I told Simon I wanted a high school student to help out this fall, and he suggested Lauren. She’s going to come in on Friday. Do you think you could train her back here?”

“Sure.” Even as I automatically agreed, my stomach dropped and my world stopped spinning. While we occasionally had a rush of customers, on the whole we were barely busy enough to keep the two of us from being bored. There was no need to hire reinforcements unless . . .

. . . Unless one of us was leaving.

Chris had been running this place on her own until I came along. Now she was hiring help. We hadn’t talked about my plans past the summer, but I’d assumed I was sticking around. Although that wasn’t fair, was it? Chris didn’t know my plans had changed. All she knew was what I’d said at the beginning of Faire: that I was staying through the end of the summer. It wasn’t fair to get upset that she was planning for a future with that in mind.

I could say something. I could say, “Don’t hire Lauren. I want to stay.” But old insecurities began flooding back, taking hold in my heart. What if she didn’t want me? What if my usefulness to her was at an end? I’d started to think of Willow Creek as my home. But if I was being fired, maybe I needed to rethink that.

Not to mention Simon knew about the new employee. He knew Chris was replacing me. Maybe he was fine with me leaving at the end of the summer too.

It was a lot to consider, and I was still turning over these new revelations when Simon dropped by the shop. I didn’t see him at first; I’d heard the door chime from the front while I tidied up the coffee counter and straightened up a nearby display. But I recognized the timbre of his voice, mixing with Chris’s in conversation, and I thought about staying back here. Hiding. Curiosity won out, though, and I headed up front to say hello.

“I’m not sure if they should come back next year.” Chris sighed. “Their shows didn’t bring in very many patrons compared to others. And if they’re talking about charging more next year, then maybe they’re pricing themselves out of our Faire.”

“I don’t know.” Simon’s brow furrowed and his expression was serious as I came around the corner. “They’ve been part of the Faire for a long time, haven’t they? They were one of the first acts Sean hired. I’d hate to start just changing things.”

“This isn’t a random change, Simon. And it’s been three years. We should start mixing in some new talent. What do you think, Emily?” Chris turned her attention to me as she saw me approach. “Did you catch any of the jugglers’ shows this summer?”