Peace, Love, & Macarons Read online

  "Oh! You've met!" my mother gushed, walking over to him and putting one arm behind his back, one on his stomach, in a gesture that was so foreign to me, having never seen my mother within arm's reach of a man in my whole life, I felt myself stiffen.

  And then my overtired mind went somewhere I never in a million years thought it might go-

  Was my mother a... cougar?

  Full-Fat Frappe

  Maddy

  "I apparently saved her a lot of grief she doesn't need right now," he agreed, giving her a smile as she moved away.

  "Oh," my mother said and my stomach clenched as her face went solemn and I knew, oh yeah, I knew what she was about to say.

  "Mom..." I tried, hoping my voice held warning.

  Whether it did or not is up for debate because she was bound to charge on regardless. "Maddy got dumped after getting proposed to just two days ago."

  Yep.

  There it was.

  Now, I really remembered what it was like to come from a small town.

  "That's a shame," Brant said, giving me what I could only call a sympathetic brow raise and half smile. Whether it was sympathetic because of the break-up or having the news of said break-up trumpeted about like it was front-page news was impossible to tell.

  "After five years with him," my mother added for effect, making a sharp stabbing sensation pierce my heart.

  Oh, good God.

  All those songs I used to pretend to understand, all the angsty, heartbroken songs I had heard all my life, they suddenly made so much more sense.

  "Well, then she probably needs a giant coffee, a huge box of some of your creations, and some time to nurse her feelings in private, don't you think?"

  Brantley Dane, local hero, saves girl from sure death brought on by sheer mortification.

  That'd be his headline.

  "Right!" my mother said, rushing away from us and behind the counter, grabbing one of her sweet sage boxes and proceeding to fill it up. She, having not dated (to my knowledge) anyone since my father, I was pretty sure just didn't remember what it felt like to be dumped. It wasn't that she was cruel or oblivious, just couldn't relate.

  "Come on, sweetheart," he said, moving behind me, casually touching my hip in the process, and going behind his own counter on the other side. "What's your poison? Judging by the situation, I am thinking something cold, mocha or caramel filled and absolutely towering with full fat whipped cream."

  That was exactly what I wanted.

  But, broken heart aside, I knew I couldn't let myself drown in sweets. Gaining twenty pounds wasn't going to help anything.

  There was absolutely no enthusiasm in my voice when I said, "Ah, actually, can I have a large black coffee with one sugar please?"

  "Not that I'm not turned on as all fuck by a woman who appreciates black coffee," he started, making me jerk back suddenly at the bluntness of that comment and the dose of profanity I wasn't accustomed to hearing in my sleepy hometown. "But if you're only one day into a break-up, you're allowed to have some full fat chocolate concoction to indulge a bit. I promise from here on out I won't make you anything even half as food-gasm-ing as this." He leaned across the counter, getting close enough that I could see golden flecks in his warm brown eyes. "Honey, not even if you beg," he added and, if I wasn't mistaken, there was absolutely some kind of sexually-charged edge to his words too.

  Weird.

  I was having a really hard time accepting him as a staple in the town I knew like the back of my hand. But then again, it had been years since I really spent any time there and his sudden appearance wasn't likely the only thing that wouldn't be familiar anymore.

  "Say yes," he added, lips tipping up at one corner, an action which made the skin next to his eyes crinkle up charmingly.

  "Alright, yes," I agreed, knowing I would love every last drop of whatever he made me and likely punish myself with an extra long run for it too.

  "Good girl," he said as he turned away.

  And there was not, was absolutely not some weird fluttering feeling in my belly at that. Nope. That would be completely insane.

  "Okay, I got you one of everything!" my mother said, coming up beside me and pressing the box into my hands. She even tied it with her signature (and expensive, something I had tried to talk her out of many times over the years when she was struggling financially) satin bow.

  I smiled at her, knowing that sometimes, there was nothing liked baked goods from your mother after a hard day. I was just lucky enough to have a mother who was a pastry chef.

  "Thanks, Mom," I said, the words heavy. I wasn't just thanking her for the sweets, but for letting me come home, for not asking questions, for not making it seem like even the slightest inconvenience.

  She gave me a smile that said she knew exactly what I meant. "You have nothing to thank me for."

  She meant that too. Coming from a family that, when they found out she was knocked up as a teen, had kicked her out and disowned her, she made it clear all my life that she was always there, no matter what I did with my life, no matter how high I soared, or how low I crashed. Her arms, her heart, and her door were always open for me.

  I felt the unmistakable sting of tears in my eyes and blinked them back furiously. There were times and places for falling apart. My mom's business wasn't one of them.

  "Alright. A large mocha frappe with full fat milk, full fat whipped cream, and both a mocha and caramel drizzle. It's practically dessert masked as coffee," Brantley said, making my attention snap to where he was pushing what was an obnoxiously large large frappe with whipped cream that was towering out of the dome that the pink and sage straw stuck out of. "Don't even think about it, sweetheart," he said, shaking his head as I reached for my wallet.

  "Thank you," I smiled, and found that it was a genuine one as I reached for it and, in a move that was maybe not brilliant on my part, took a sip. And proceeded to let out an almost porn-star worthy groan of pure, delicious pleasure.

  Judging by the way Brant's smile went a little wicked, his thoughts ran along the same lines as well.

  "Alright, Brant," my mother said, giving him a big smile. "Can you hold down the fort so I can walk Maddy home and settle her in?"

  "Can't promise I will pronounce even half of those desserts of yours correctly."

  "Seeing as you still can't pronounce boulangerie, darling, I wasn't expecting you to do anything but point at things and ring them up," she said, giving him a very maternal-type smile.

  Okay.

  So she wasn't a cougar after all.

  That was somewhat of a relief. Not that anything was wrong with dating a younger man, but I had flashes of my mom in God-awful leopard print dresses with her hair teased and stuff and... no.

  "Well, I can certainly manage pointing," Brant agreed with a smile as he wiped down the counter. "Maddy, it was nice to meet you. And whoever the guy was, it was his fucking loss. Remember that."

  With that, and the weird way my belly went a little wobbly at his words, my mother put her arm around my back and led me away as if I couldn't be trusted to walk on my own two feet.

  "You never told me about the coffee shop," I said as we walked down the street. She lived right off the edge of the main drag in one of the town's many Victorian homes. The only difference was hers was split in two right down the center, one half belonging to some nasty older man named Martin who used to accuse me of digging in his yard when it had always been painfully clear the digging was by freaking groundhogs, not a child.

  It had been the only home I had ever known. She had lived in an apartment when I was very little and she was taking night classes, but that was before I had any recollection of anything. But then she had moved to the town I had always known as home and started renting the smaller half of the Victorian that she lovingly, painstakingly restored. My mother was meant for another time, I'd swear.

  "Oh, that's not a big deal," she said, shrugging it off.

  "Sure it is! That's a huge deal."

&
nbsp; "Well, Brantley just suggested it one day after he moved to town. He said the cold milk was a nice touch, but what people really needed was coffee. I told him I knew nothing about that."

  And she didn't. My mother had never had a cup in her life. She was a hardcore tea fan.

  "So he offered to open it?"

  "In a way, yes. It's been a good move. Business boomed for him and, in turn, I get more business as well. People sit and chat over coffee and eventually get snackish and come to me."

  "That's great, Mom," I said, meaning it. I knew she always struggled. She ran a very niche French pastry business, refusing to make anything as mundane as an apple turnover or cannoli. In a big city, sure, that was fine. But in a small town, it made things a bit tougher for her. "Wait... you painted the house?" I asked, stopping suddenly and seeing the house that I had always known as a deep, vivid purple with white accents was suddenly a deep gray with white accents. Tame. It seemed so tame compared to how it always had been before.

  "It was time for a change," she said, pulling me along.

  Change? My mother?

  My mother hated change. She liked the comfort of the familiar. Now she had painted her house completely differently and went into a coffee business? What was going on? How self-absorbed had I been over the past few years that I couldn't see how much was different?

  She led us onto the porch that didn't groan and bend under my feet like it always used to and to a door that didn't squeak in objection and then into a space that was mostly as I remembered it from the antique-looking, but actually new furniture, patterned wallpaper, and knick-knacks I had seen all my life.

  That was until we got back into my old room.

  I wasn't exactly a nostalgic kind of person. I was quick to throw away anything I hadn't used in six months or donate clothes I hadn't worn in a year. So when I had moved out, the room had been empty. That being said, it still had my old bed, my old paint, my old comforter and curtains.

  And that had never changed as far as I knew.

  But then again, I guess I had stopped looking years before as well.

  God, when did I become that girl? That so obsessed with her new life in a new city that she forgot to pay attention to everything else girl?

  I guess, in a way, it had been when I met Richy.

  There was another stab at that thought and I pushed it away.

  A time and a place, I reminded myself. The place might have been my childhood bedroom that was painted in a crisp new shade of dusty rose with a fancy tufted headboard bed and gorgeous white comforter, making the whole place seem incredibly feminine, but also modern and not over the top, the time was not while my mother was standing there.

  "Wow, I like it," I said, meaning it.

  "Yeah?" she asked, seeming relieved. "I didn't know how you would feel about change, but I had already done it about a year ago."

  "It's great, Mom," I said, moving to put my bag in the closet and looking at myself in the mirror over the dresser.

  I looked like hell.

  There was no nice way to put that.

  Hell.

  My hair was messy and slightly greasy at the roots. My eyes were swollen, my skin pale. My clothes were travel-rumpled and there were purple bruises under my eyes.

  And for some reason, in that moment, the thought that came to me was, oddly: I met the new coffee guy looking like this?

  "Well, I am going to let you settle in and maybe get a little rest, honey," she said, picking up on my mood. "I am making baked ziti for dinner. Your favorite," she added, moving behind me and wrapping me up from behind, giving me a squeeze. "It's nice to have you home, Maddy."

  With that, and the weird guilty squeeze my heart did, she was gone.

  I took a long drag of my coffee drink, making it mostly empty, put the sweets on my dresser to devour after my shower, grabbed clothes, put the water on scalding, and climbed inside.

  Then and only then did I finally, finally let it out.

  There was the pain at first, just the raw, brutal sensation of love lost, of a future I had been planning on disintegrating, leaving me to have to rebuild a new one.

  After that, oh yeah, that was when the bitter set in.

  Five years.

  Five freaking years and he dumped me because Mommy and Daddy didn't approve? What a pathetic, weak-willed, co-dependent excuse for a man. Any real man would have flipped them off, told them to take their money and shove it, and went home to the woman they loved and made plans.

  And it was an awful, ugly thing to realize that I had been all-consumingly in love with a man who loved money more than he loved me.

  On that thought and knowing to my soul that I was not going to be the type of woman who broke herself into pieces over a man who didn't deserve it, I wiped the tears away, I got redressed, I ate half my body weight in sweets... and I decided to move on with my life.

  Cherry Pie

  Brant

  Not much changed day to day in my town. Since I moved there three years before, you could pretty much count on the same places, the same faces, the same sleepy, stress-free atmosphere. That was, for the most part, the reason I moved there in the first place.

  I got tired of life in the City.

  I got tired of not knowing anyone.

  I got tired of the crowds and the overwhelming pressure of my career.

  I was just fucking done with all of it.

  I hadn't really even had much of a plan. I sold my condo. I packed my shit and I drove.

  I stopped to get gas in this town, took a walk, found the bakery and stopped inside to have something to eat.

  The rest, as the saying would go, was history. I got a place. I approached Alice with the idea from the coffee shop, sank some of my condo money into it, and settled in.

  The best goddamn decision I had ever made.

  Life in a small town was what I never knew I had always needed.

  That being said, it had its downfalls.

  This was especially true in the dating department.

  So seeing a drop dead fucking gorgeous woman step off that bus and seeming like she had plans to be around for a while, that was a breath of fresh air.

  I had heard about Maddy from Alice in the past. Alice had been a single mom and it was obvious her daughter was her everything. From what I knew, she had just finished a prestigious internship and was choosing between jobs at hotels and restaurants. She had been happily settled with what sounded like a douchebag for five years. I knew she didn't visit her mom much, something that Alice understood but it was clear bothered her.

  I hadn't even known Maddy was coming back until she introduced herself.

  And, perhaps in a move that was more than a little mortifying for Maddy, Alice had rushed to tell me why. Not because she was insensitive to her daughter's situation, but because we told each other just about everything seeing as we were together for long stretches of time every day and also because she and I both agreed that her daughter's boyfriend was a tool and, as much as she was hurting for her daughter's pain, there was a part of her that was glad the guy was out of her life.

  I should have seen it right off. Really, she looked a lot like a younger version of Alice. But I had been too distracted by her newness, the fact that she was gorgeous, and that I wanted to see if she was interested to put two and two together until she said her last name.

  She didn't seem much like Alice. Alice was light and sweet and a bit gullible and a pushover.

  Maddy seemed city-rough. I knew that type well enough to spot it right off. She was used to life being fast-paced and impersonal. She was used to men being nothing more than a catcall or unwanted groping. She was used to women being two-faced and catty. Life was superficial, but cultured.

  That being said, I would bet money on there being a sweet, open, small town girl underneath the layers the City and her asshole ex painted on her.

  And, starved for anything interesting going on in town, I found myself excited to watch her come back to he
r roots.

  I would put good money on her working with her mother in the shop in under a week. From the sounds of things, Maddy wasn't the kind of woman to sit around and nurse a heartbreak for too long.

  It would be nice to see another face around the shop, to have another personality to play off of.

  And, let's just say, I wasn't exactly opposed to making her another concoction that might make her moan like that again.

  Or do whatever she might want me to do to make her moan like that again...

  Crepes

  Maddy

  Okay.

  So there was one habit I inherited from my mother that I both loved and loathed in equal amounts depending upon the situation.

  Being a baker, she was an early riser. As in, before the sun even thought about uncurling his fingers across the sky. It was great in college when I partied to the wee hours, but still managed to wake up without an alarm and book it to class. It was wonderful during my internship, always being bright-eyed and bushy-tailed while everyone else was a zombie clutching their coffees like it was a lifeline to their humanity.

  I hated it on weekends when Richy wanted to sleep in.

  I hated it on holidays when I could be lazy and catch up on sleep, but couldn't.

  And that morning, my first morning in my childhood bedroom after moving home, yeah, I hated it right about then too.

  Because morning meant I had to get up and face my feelings, my uncertain future, and make plans to rebuild a life again. At freaking five o'clock in the morning. And then all damn day since I had nothing to do with myself.

  On a growl, I rolled out of bed, making it carefully, then digging through my bag to find my bright yellow exercise leggings, matching sports top that came down to cover most of my belly so I didn't look naked, and my sneakers.

  I dressed and moved downstairs, tying up my hair as I went, to be met with a sweet smell I knew from my childhood well enough to recognize as crepes, but decided to put it off until after my run. I found my key and tucked it into my sneaker and headed outside, shivering slightly against the cool air, but knowing I would be thankful for it once I worked up a solid sweat.