Maisie rolled her eyes at her and grabbed her bag from its usual spot next to the desk.
“Whatever is fine with me. I’m ready if you are.”
“Yeah, let’s go,” Lainey said. “Sell any books today?”
“Three. One was a special order, though. Ninety-dollar book.”
“That’s good,” Lainey replied. “That’s like selling five books, at least.”
“Ever the optimist, Lainey,” she said with a smile.
“You know me.”
“Yes, I do. Biblically,” she teased.
“Hey,” Lainey bumped her shoulder into Maisie’s. “It’s time for you to get to know someone else that way. How long has it been?”
“Since we’ve had this conversation about my sex life, or since I had sex?”
“The last one,” Lainey said as she pulled open the back door for them.
“A while,” she answered without adding anything else to it, which would tell Lainey that she should drop the topic.
“Hey, any news on the race?”
“No. I made flyers today, and I’m going to put them up tomorrow, but outside of the few banner ads I have online, I’m not sure what else I should be doing. I have the commercialmade, but it costs too much to air it. I swear, when I talked to the local networks and they gave me the cost, it was a lot lower than when I called them today. Prices went up, I guess. I don’t know. I want to make sure the shop is protected, and I want to help others, like your school, for example, but the incumbent has more money, so I’m not sure there’s much of a point.”
“Hey, hang in there,” Lainey said and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “I’ll help. We’ll win this thing, okay? And when we do, you’ll get me a raise or something.”
Maisie laughed as they climbed into Lainey’s car.
CHAPTER 2
“How much of that are you going to eat?” Lyla asked.
India had been about to put yet another piece of leftover Halloween candy into her mouth, but she held it in suspension inches from her lips, glared over at Lyla, one of her peers at Southern Roastery, andthenpopped the chocolate into her mouth. She chewed for a moment and looked down at the conference room table, where someone had dumped a big bowl of either their leftover candy that they had given away or some of their kids’ candy that they didn’t want them to eat. There was a bowl like this in just about every room and two in the kitchen.
India wasn’t normally a big candy eater. If she did actually buy herself candy or someone elsedidfor her, she preferred Swiss chocolate or, at least, something imported. A box of mixed chocolates could be fun if she pulled away the list of what flavors were where and just dove in. She hated nougat and swore that every third chocolate had nougat in it. Caramel was good when done well. Peanuts were usually unnecessary. Almonds were her favorite. She wasn’t a fan of fruit in her chocolate, but again, when done right, raspberry chocolate was fine.
This candy was store-bought, and she had just eaten a mini-sized candy bar with peanuts and caramel in it. It didn’t exactly make her taste buds jump for joy, but it was something, and India neededsomething. Her relationship with Finley was more than officially over; she knew that now. Still, even though she’d known it for weeks, had many conversations with Finley, and saw her with hernewgirlfriend, Molly, realizing what they already seemed to have, India supposed that there was still a very small part of her that thought Finley might tell her that she had made a mistake. It was stupid. She knew that. And as she opened another candy bar, she shook her head at herself because there was no mistake.
Finley was with Molly and wanted to be with Molly and not her; not India, the woman she had been with on and off for actual years. India knew that because she still followed Finley on social media, and she had seen the photos. Those photos were why she’d eaten a pound of candy before this meeting had even started. She’d seen probably fifty of them so far. Finley and Molly out in the city somewhere. Finley and Molly at Finley’s place in a selfie. Finley’s new dog lying next to Molly’s new puppy like they were siblings already. They even had the same beds at both Finley’s apartment and at Molly’s. The photo that got her the most, though, was the one of Molly and Finley wearing football jerseys while they sat on Finley’s sofa.
India remembered Finley gettinghera jersey once. She’d never worn it. She hadn’t ever watched or gone to a game with Finley. Sports weren’t her thing. Yes, she had sat on that sofa once or twice while working or doing something else so that Finley could watch a game, but that had been her limit. Molly appeared to have no limits with Finley. Or, at least, the two of them seemed to like some of the same things, while India had forced her ex to go to a ballet and the opera a few times. She’d complained about Finley’s small apartment and had tried to get Finley to drink good wine instead of her awful beer. She’d wanted them to move into her place, which India owned and didn’t rent. It was large enough for both of them and even had a third bedroom where they could add a kid one day if they wanted to.
India was already thirty-nine, and she’d gone back and forth about the kid thing since her twenties. It hadn’t been something she had done on purpose, and being with Finley hadn’t helped because they had never been settled enough to start that discussion. Well, continue it, really, since she knew Finley wanted kids. At least one was what she’d said to India when they had first started dating. India’s plan had been to date for at least a year, move in together, get engaged a year later, get married a year or two after that, because she would need enough time to plan the wedding, and another year later,start whatever process they would decide upon to have their child.
She had it all written down in her journal, which she had started keeping as a teenager and still kept today. She didn’t write in it every day. Sometimes, she went weeks without adding an entry to one of her now fifty or so notebooks that she had stowed in her large closet safe. It was funny to India that, because money didn’t matter much to her, she’d always worried about a thief stealing her journals, not the clothes or expensive art on her walls. She could always replace those things. She could never replace the handwritten journals that covered most of her life.
It was easy to say that she didn’t care about money because she had a lot of it. Being part of one of those Old South wealthy family empires had provided India with more than enough for herself and a possible family for generations to come. She used some of that family money to purchase fine wine and that artwork, but most of the time, she used her salary from Southern Roastery. As really the only person in her family who had a traditional day job, she got a lot of questions from her siblings, of which she had two, and her parents, who hadn’t ever worked. Her father had for a while, in the family business, but she didn’t consider that real work because he’d been handed every position and hadn’t earned anything. Being named CEO didn’t matter if her grandfather just gave him the title with a good, strong handshake one afternoon.
India had gone to Yale, followed by Harvard Business School. She had graduated near the top of her class and returned to New Orleans to start her career. Now that the family business was no longer in the family, she didn’t feel any pressure to take on a role there. Instead, she’d found Southern Roastery eventually and was now their head of business development, which was a change from her old sales role, but not by much. She had a team of people who worked with her to find new locations, new opportunities to move into grocery stores and banks, and new opportunities to support communities through charitable donations and partnerships, whichwas her favorite part of the job. Her family didn’t understand why she worked for a paycheck when she didn’t have to, but they’d left her alone about it for a while now.
While India was still chewing her candy and thinking about her whole life, because that was what one did after a big breakup, she watched as Molly walked into the conference room and set up her computer, connecting it to the projector. That made her think back to Finley and how they’d never followed any of her plans. Now, Finley was moving on and happy, making plans of her own with Molly, who was about to tell India and the rest of the people in the room about yet more changes to the performance review process that would begin soon. India picked up another piece of candy.
???
She walked into the bar and took a look around. It was better than some of the places that Finley used to try to drag her to, but it was clearly a run-of-the-mill pub with probably a massive beer selection and only a few wines, none of them good. India wouldn’t be surprised if at least one of them came in a box. She looked around and spotted Finley, who was in a booth and nodding at her to join her. India had asked her if they could still be friends because she didn’t have many of those, and Finley hadn’t been sure initially, but she’d been the one to invite her out for a drink tonight, so India considered that a step in the right direction.
