In the Age of Love and Chocolate (Birthright #3)(4)

“I’ll help you clean up,” I said. “Where’s Gable?”

“Out with his brother,” she said. “Then he has to go to work.” Gable had a truly wretched-sounding job as a hospital orderly, which involved changing bedpans and cleaning floors. It was the only work he could find, and I suppose it was noble of him to have taken it. “Do you think it was a mistake to invite the kids from Trinity?”

“I think it was fine,” I said.

“I saw you talking to Win.”

“Nothing has changed.”

“I’m sad to hear that,” she said. We cleaned up the apartment in silence. Scarlet started to vacuum, which is why I didn’t notice right away that she had begun to cry.

I walked over to the vacuum and turned it off. “What is it?”

“I wonder what chance any of the rest of us have if you and Win can’t make it work.”

“Scarlet, it was a high school romance. They aren’t meant to last forever.”

“Unless you’re stupid and get yourself knocked up,” Scarlet said.

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I know.” Scarlet sighed. “And I know why you’re opening the club, but you’re certain Charles Delacroix is worth the trouble?”

“I am. I’ve explained this to you before.” I turned the vacuum cleaner back on and vacuumed. I was pushing the vacuum in long, mad strokes across the rug: angry-vacuuming. I turned the vacuum off again. “You know, it’s not easy to do what I’m doing. I don’t have any help. No one is supporting me. Not Mr. Kipling. Not my parents or my nana, because they’re dead. Not Natty, because she is a child. Not Leo, because he is in jail. Not the Balanchine family, because they think I’m threatening their business. Certainly not Win. No one. I am alone, Scarlet. I am more alone than I have ever been in my entire life. And I know I chose this. But it hurts my feelings when you take Win’s side over mine. I’m using Mr. Delacroix because he is the connection I have to the city. I need him, Scarlet. He has been part of my plan from the beginning. There is no one else who could replace him. Win is asking me for the one thing I can’t give him. Don’t you think I wish I could?”

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“And I can’t be with Win Delacroix just so my best friend doesn’t give up on romance.”

Scarlet’s eyes were tear-filled. “Let’s not argue. I’m an idiot. Ignore me.”

“I hate when you call yourself an idiot. No one thinks that of you.”

“I think it of myself,” Scarlet said. “Look at me. What am I going to do?”

“Well for one, we’re going to finish cleaning this apartment.”

“After that, I meant.”

“Then we’re going to take Felix and go to my club. Lucy, the mixologist, is working late and she has a bunch of cacao drinks for us to sample.”

“And then?”

“I don’t know. You’ll come up with something. But it’s the only way I know how to move forward. You make a list and then you go and do the things on it.”

* * *

“Still bitter,” I said to my recently hired mixologist as I handed her the last in a series of shot glasses. Lucy had white-blond hair cropped short, light blue eyes, pale skin, a big bow of a mouth, and a long, athletic body. When she was in her chef’s coat and hat, I thought she looked like a bar of Balanchine White. I always knew when she was working in the kitchen because even from my office down the hall, I could hear her muttering and cursing. The dirty words seemed to be part of her creative process. I liked her very much, by the way. If she hadn’t been my employee, maybe she would have been my friend.

“Do you think it needs more sugar?” Lucy said.

“I think it needs … something. It’s even more bitter than the last one.”

“That’s what cacao tastes like, Anya. I’m starting to think you don’t like the taste of cacao. Scarlet, what do you think?”

Scarlet sipped. “It’s not obviously sweet, but I definitely detect sweetness,” she said.

“Thank you,” Lucy said.

“That’s Scarlet,” I said. “You’re always looking for the sweet.”

“And maybe you’re always looking for the bitter,” Scarlet joked.

“Pretty, smart, and optimistic. I wish you were my boss,” Lucy said.

“She isn’t as sunny as she seems,” I told Lucy. “An hour ago, I found her crying and vacuuming.”

“Everyone cries when they vacuum,” Lucy said.

“I know, right?” Scarlet agreed. “Those vibrations make you emotional.”

“I’m serious, though,” I said. “In Mexico, the drinks weren’t this dark.”

“Maybe you should hire your friend from Mexico to come make them, then?” My mixologist had trained at the Culinary Institute of America and at Le Cordon Bleu, and she could be touchy when it came to criticism.

“Oh Lucy, you know I respect you enormously. But the drinks need to be perfect.”

“Let’s ask the heartbreaker,” Lucy said. “With your permission, Scarlet.”

“I don’t see why not,” Scarlet said. She dipped her pinky into the pot and then held it out for Felix to lick. He tasted tentatively. At first he smiled. Lucy began to look intolerably smug.