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Chapter Three
Wayne awoke early thenext morning. He had forgotten to close the drapes, and bright autumn light glittered across the sheets. He found himself in the very center of the bed, something he’d grown accustomed to over the previous year or so—
I wonder what it would feel like to share a bed again.
He shook the thought from his head, placed his bare feet on the chilly wooden floorboards beside the bed, and sprung up. It was just past six, which meant he needed to scrub up, dress, and head off to the coffee shop. Now that it was the off-season, the hours had shifted, and The Grind opened at seven, rather than six. Most of his employees had abandoned the island for “better” lives elsewhere: college or jobs in Lansing or Traverse City—leaving the islanders to wage war on autumn and then winter, before thawing out again in the springtime.
At times, Wayne had asked himself why he even hung around the island all year long—why he wanted to keep The Grind open.
In truth, he wasn’t sure anymore. It was some kind of allegiance to Tara, to the life they had planned with one another.
Wayne ran his fingers through his hair, mopped himself up with a thick towel, donned a pair of jeans, a red flannel shirt, and then rushed out the door. As he traced the familiar path toward The Grind, he found himself again thinking of the evening before.
When Michael had brought his grandfather over for that face-off, Elise’s face had turned deathly pale. Wayne had felt that thing again: that urgent desire to fix it. Almost immediately, the night had imploded, and he had dragged Michael out back.
He had done it for a number of reasons. One: he wanted to make sure Michael wasn’t losing his mind and taking out his rage on everyone around him. Two: he wanted to make sure Michael wouldn’t do another thing to hurt Elise.
He wanted to protect her.
When Wayne reached The Grind, he found the place barren, the counters sparkling clean, the ovens still cold. Normally, his second-in-command, John, arrived about a half-hour before Wayne to get the ship ready, as they’d joked before so that Wayne could take a few extra minutes to himself. As Wayne muttered to himself, confused, he pulled out his phone, seeing that John sent him a message informing him that he had a stomach flu, one that nobody wanted to deal with.
This left Wayne in a serious bind.
Basically, nobody else remained on the island to help him; he expected a number of islanders to rush in demanding coffee and scones at around eight-thirty, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to juggle it all himself.
He remembered Michael’s words from the back porch the previous night. “I don’t know what I’m going to do out here. I feel so useless. Mom looks at me like I’m incapable of doing anything correctly and I almost want to take her aside and tell her she’s right. Heck, I’ve done everything out there on the road. I lost a grand total of eighteen jobs due to laziness. I lived in ten different states and crashed four different cars.”
Wayne had leaned back in that porch chair, crossed his arms, and whistled. “You did more living out there on the road than anyone here on the island has ever done with his entire life.”
But this left Wayne to call Michael on this very fresh, very bright, very early morning. Michael answered on the fourth ring, long after Wayne had given up on him answering at all.
“Hello?” His voice was groggy like he was still deep in sleep.
**
MICHAEL WALKED THROUGHthe door of The Grind about twenty-five minutes later. As the door closed behind him, he lifted his chin, closed his eyes, and then exhaled. “Wow. There’s nothing like the smell of scones at the butt-crack of dawn.”
Wayne laughed as Michael sauntered toward the counter. He tossed an apron directly against Michael’s chest, which Michael caught at the last second.
“Is this job going to be all about reflexes?” Michael asked.
“Just keep yourself on your toes. You said you made coffee before?”
“In Nashville and Austin,” Michael said. “I tried it out in Los Angeles, but everyone was way too pretentious about the coffee thing. And one too many California girls asked me if the drip coffee had carbs.”
“You won’t get anything like that here,” Wayne said.
“Oh, I know. Born and raised.” Michael whacked a hand across his chest.
Wayne had always perceived Michael as the son he’d never had—but he had never seen Michael at work in this way. The minute Wayne flipped the CLOSED sign to OPEN, Michael turned into a different kind of person—the sort of worker his mother would have been proud of. The two men fell into a perfect rhythm with one another, even tossing bags of scones across the counter as a kind of performance for the visitors.
“Look at you, Michael Clemmens,” Marcy, the bartender from the Pink Pony said, clucking her tongue. “I thought you’d never come back, and now you and Wayne are in cahoots again. I can hardly tell you how happy that makes me.”
When they hit a lull mid-morning, Michael grabbed a few stale scones and started to juggle them. His eyes were electric, flicking around to watch as the scones circled.
“All of Mackinac Island can’t wait to get their eyes on you,” Wayne said with a laugh.
“Yeah, well. Everyone except my grandfather,” Michael said.
