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“I wonder if you could get a space right on Cove Boulevard. Isn’t there a vacant shopfront down by the old hardware store?” Simone asks. “Hey, Candice! What’s that empty shop next to the hardware store?”
Candice glances at us from the door, where she’d been saying goodbye to a few students. “Across from the garden?” She wanders over, a questioning look on her face. When Simone nods, Candice bunches her lips, squinting. “I’m not sure. Why?”
“Georgia wants to open an art gallery,” Simone explains, and Candice’s face lights up.
“Oh! Fantastic! You know what would be even better than the garden side of Cove Boulevard is that space beside the barber. It’s higher than the adjacent building, and it has all those windows up high above the barbershop’s roofline. Lots of natural light.”
Fiona sits ups, excited. “The old antiques store? The one Mr. and Mrs. Thomas own?” She turns to me. “Oh, it’sperfect.”
“I’ll talk to Margaret. She knows the Thomases,” Candice says, angling toward the front of the room where her phone is plugged into a speaker. “They’re in their nineties and she mentioned something about their grandson coming to manage the properties. I bet they’d be over the moon to have the space rented out again.”
“No,” I blurt, head spinning. “Please, stop. It’s just a silly idea. I’m not actually going to do it. Seriously, I know nothing about art.”
“But you’re glamorous and beautiful, and you could pull off ‘elegant, aloof gallerist’ like nobody’s business,” Trina says while all the other ladies nod. “It’s all about image, really.”
Scoffing, I shake my head. “It’s about more than image. How would I even start?”
“With a name!” Fiona says, beaming.
“What would you call the gallery?” Simone asks.
I huff a laugh and shake my head. “I don’t know. Honestly, I hadn’t thought that far.”
“Hmm,” Fiona says, narrowing her eyes. “I don’t quite believe you.”
Despite my best efforts, my lips start to curl. “Fine.Fine. This might sound really cheesy, but… What about ‘Art’s Cove?’”
Squeals erupt. I’m tackled in a side hug by Simone. By the time my yoga mat is rolled up, the ladies have developed a bulletproof business plan and bullied me into talking to Margaret about the vacant space on Cove Boulevard.
“Grant will help you with renovations, obviously,” Fiona announces. “I’ll get him to call you tomorrow. Do you know an interior designer, or are you going to do the design yourself?”
I bite my lip. “Well, actually, my sister used to design commercial spaces. She hasn’t worked in a few years because she was taking care of her kids, but she’s been talking about job-hunting lately. I was going to ask her if she’d like to brush off the cobwebs with this project.”
Trina clicks her tongue and gives Simone a sideways look. “And Georgia was going to pretend like she didn’t know where to start. ‘I’m not qualified,’ she says. Puh-lease.”
Laughing, I shrug. And damn it if they weren’t right about me needing a project, because that night, there’s a spark inside me that I haven’t felt since the days when I opened my first spa all those years ago—and it’s got nothing to do with a man.
The next morning,coffee cup in hand, I’m standing in front of an empty shopfront that looks dusty and dark. The windows are half-covered with old paper that’s falling down at the corners, revealing a view of worn floorboards and dangling light fixtures that don’t exactly look like they’re up to code.
“First impressions?” Margaret asks as she makes it to my side of the street, stepping up onto the curb with a smile on her face. She’s an elegant older woman with silver hair and lots of crinkles and laugh lines on her face. In her hand is a key, which I’m told was procured within an hour of Candice asking about the empty space. The owners are elderly and in failing health, and they own both this empty space and the barbershop next door, among other properties in town.
“First impression is…encouraging,” I say, trying to contain the excitement in my voice. It’s not much. The space needs a lot of work. But the possibilities areendless.
Margaret smiles. We both turn at the sound of cheers, only to see Simone and Candice exiting Four Cups. They glance both ways before crossing the street at a hard diagonal toward us.
“We had to come see!” Candice says, beaming.
Simone just wiggles her eyebrows.
“Trina said Mac was on board to display some of his pottery,” Candice adds. “And Grant will clear his schedule to put you as the priority this summer. He can start next week directly after the Fourth of July weekend.”
All I can do is inhale deeply. This is all happening very fast—but is that a bad thing? I’ve been divorced for over a year, separated for even longer. I’ve been mourning the loss of my business and my marriage, the future I thought I’d have. Is it so bad to jump into something new and exciting?
It’s better than making out with a high school sweetheart who thinks I’m no better than the woman who took him for everything he was worth. It’s better than making the same mistakes I did when I was seventeen, for crying out loud.
“Well, open the door, woman!” Simone says, nodding at Margaret.
Margaret laughs, finds the right key, and grants us access to the musty, dank space.
