“I’m pretty sure that’s the last of it!” I stepped into Cassidy’s Bar & Grill and kicked my foot up behind me to shut the solid-oak door just as the creaky, swinging screen door slammed closed.
Cole’s head appeared in the kitchen service window. “What do you mean that’s the last—” His eyes flew open at the sight of me standing just inside the door, peering at him over the mountain of precariously stacked catering equipment in my arms. His top half disappeared for a quick second, until all of him came barreling through the kitchen door. “What are you doing? I told you I’d be back to grab more.” A handful of sizable strides got him close enough to grab the heavy stainless steel chafing dish sets from my hands, but rather than relieve me of them, he took a step back and sighed.
“What?” I muttered with pouted lips against the slipping fuel canisters I’d just been forced to catch.
He simultaneously groaned and laughed as he grabbed a fuel canister in each hand, set them on the table behind him, and then came back for more. “Oh, nothing. I just didn’t know Laila Jenga was on the activity schedule for the evening.”
“I would have planned better,” I insisted once the remaining catering-grade containers of oil and wicks and such—along with three or so long-stem lighters I had slipped into the gaps between all the highly flammable things—were no longer being precariously balanced by my chin. “But by the time I realized how little was left to carry in—”
“You mean by the time good sense and a little bit of patience gave way to some good old-fashioned Laila Olivet stubbornness . . .”
“I didn’t really have the wiggle room to stack things better.”
“Clearly.” Cole maneuvered a coffee urn out from under my arm while balancing some serving platters with his other hand.
“Be careful with that,” I instructed as he prepared to lower the urn to the floor, in the second before we both heard gentle clinks reverberate from inside it.
He set the serving platters on the table and then unscrewed the vacuum-sealed lid of the coffee urn and looked inside. I watched the progression of emotions dance across his face—dismay, annoyance, frustration . . . Every last emotion accompanied onto the dance floor by humor and, more than anything, not even the tiniest tinge of surprise.
“Thank you for protecting the champagne glasses,” he finally said, smiling at me as he looked up.
I waited for the follow-up, but there was none. He just kept smiling at me.
“Oh. You’re welcome.” I placed a couple of scalloped deli crocks into his waiting hands and then dug into the pockets of my coat, pulling out the serving utensils I had crammed in there and setting them in the crocks. “I thought you were going to make some crack about how if I had time to open up the urn, take out the coffee filters you had in there— Ooh!” I reached into the front of my dress and pulled out the package of plastic-wrapped coffee filters resting at the dress’s waistband. I’d almost forgotten. Cole shook his head slowly as I handed them to him but remained otherwise unfazed. “And, you know, had time to wrap the glasses in dish towels—”
“What? You thought I’d make some crack about how if you had time to do all of that, you probably had time to just wait thirty more seconds until I came back out there to help you bring it all in?”
“Yeah.” I looked up at him sheepishly.
“I would never.” He spotted the basting spoon I had slipped through my increasingly deflated updo. “Can I take that, or is it the latest in maid-of-honor fashion?”
I laughed and attempted to pull it out as easily as I had slipped it in. No such luck, however. The weighty steel spoon end slipped down to my shoulder, further entangling my hair and the ridged, coated handle as it went.
“You’re a mess,” Cole whispered as he stepped in to rescue me. Or to rescue his catering utensil, which he may have felt ever so slightly more protective of in that instant.
“It was a beautiful wedding, wasn’t it?”
“It was,” he replied, but his focus was definitely still on trying to sort out the chaos on my head.
“And a super-fun reception.”
He shrugged. “That I’m a little less sure of.” He placed the palm of his hand flat on my head and applied some pressure as he handed me the almost-free spoon with his other hand. “Hold this,” he instructed. Once I had it within my grasp, his hand returned to my head and promptly pulled out a couple hairs.
“Ouch!” I exclaimed, though truthfully the grounding pressure he had preemptively applied to my scalp kept me from feeling much of anything. “You pulled my hair out!”
“I did.” He took the utensil from my hand and began unraveling the connected hair as he made his way back to the kitchen. “And I would never even consider making a crack about just how very, incredibly, overwhelmingly much you only have yourself to blame for that. Wouldn’t dream of it.”
The corner of my lips smirked at him, and I scratched my head at the site of impact. “That’s good of you.”
“What can I say? I’m a nice guy.”
I rolled my eyes as he smiled widely at me through the service window. Once he turned away, I indulged in a soft chuckle. Not a moment sooner.
“So why didn’t you have fun?” I called to him as I raised the coffee urn to a tabletop and began carefully removing the bridal party champagne flutes.
“Hmm?”
“At the reception. Why didn’t you have fun?”
I heard the familiar roar of the commercial dishwasher coming to life. The first of several times it would have to run before Cassidy’s was ready to open tomorrow for the dinner crowd.
He stepped out of the kitchen with a sigh, dish towel in hand. “Oh, I don’t know. It wasn’t that I didn’t have fun, really. I was just more focused on making sure everything went perfectly for them. It wasn’t supposed to be fun. I was working.”
I turned and leaned my hip against the table as I faced him. “And since when is that not fun for you?”
Cole finished drying his hands and threw the dish towel over his shoulder. “The fun was had in the kitchen, ahead of time. At the reception I was just trying to fulfill my best-man duties while simultaneously doing all I could to keep the hot food hot and the cold food cold on the top of a mountain. Not to mention never taking my eyes off the open bar to make sure the PTA ladies stayed out of trouble. That was work.”
I’d been serving the PTA group at their Tuesday night meetings at Cassidy’s for years. He wasn’t wrong.
“You should have let me help you more.” I began shrugging my arms out of my coat, and he stepped behind me and held it as it slipped off.
“You helped plenty.” He folded my coat over his arm as he stood in front of me again. “You helped so much, in fact, that I don’t even know why I bothered hiring those fancy-schmancy waiters from Denver. I thought the point was that you were going to focus on being maid of honor.”
“Um, hello. First of all, if you have any doubt as to whether or not I more than adequately fulfilled my maid-of-honor duties, you need only ask me how many times I reapplied Brynn’s makeup due to tears and/or wind. Spoiler: The answer is approximately seventy-two thousand. And second, don’t give me that. You hired fancy-schmancy waiters because this was your first celebrity wedding, and you didn’t trust me not to spill food on Hoda and Jenna.”
“Allow me to say once again: Brynn and Sebastian invited neither Hoda Kotb nor Jenna Bush Hager to their wedding, Laila.”
“But why, Cole? This makes no sense to me.”
“You know as well as I do they just wanted it to be family and close friends—”
“Yes, but they both know Hoda and Jenna. I guess I just don’t see how you can know Hoda and Jenna and not consider them close friends. I mean, I’ve never met either one of them, but I would be willing to make them the godmothers of my future children right here and now. No questions asked.”
“Some things do indeed defy understanding. Regardless, you’re the best waitress I’ve ever seen, and you never spill food.” He turned to carry my coat to the door to hang it on the coatrack. While he was straightening it, he looked out the window toward our vehicles. “I mean, look at that. You managed to close the doors and still carry all that stuff in, and all you lost were a couple unrelenting strands of hair. That really is impressive.”
“Thank you. Now don’t you feel bad about all those things you thought but didn’t say?”
I crossed into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator door. Truth be told, as fun as the day had been, watching two of my favorite people so happy and so in love and being celebrated by all the people who mattered to them, it had been a lot of work. I’d been too busy to eat—a fact I hadn’t really thought about until I found myself practically inside the fridge, rummaging around, the sound of my growling stomach reverberating as I lustfully eyed an unopened pack of raw bacon in the back on the top shelf.
“When was the last time you ate?” Cole asked, his voice distant and tinny, like he was calling to me from the outside of the cave I was lost in.
Hmm . . . When . . . Good question . . .
“On the drive up the mountain, I guess.” It had been too warm during the day to put my coat on, so I’d thrown a poncho on over my dress, like I was in the front row of a Gallagher show, bracing myself for all the watermelon smashing. Hadn’t spilled a drop of that peanut butter sandwich, thank you very much.
Ooh! Whipped cream!
I grabbed it and stood from my crouching position, beginning to remove the safety seal from the can’s plastic lid as I shut the refrigerator door behind me.
Cole laughed and snatched the can out of my hands just as I lifted it upside down and prepared to shoot it straight into my mouth. “I think we can do better than that. Here.” He reached behind him and set the whipped cream down, then handed me a storage container of food. Real food. I pulled back the plastic lid and was hit by the delicious scent of rosemary. And thyme, maybe? Didn’t know, didn’t really care. All that mattered was it smelled amazing and Cole Kimball had made it, so I was sure it was amazing.
“You’re the best!” I hurried out of the kitchen and set the food down on the bar before hiking my dress up above my knees and hopping onto a barstool. Then I dug my fingers straight into the tender, aromatic chicken breast, which tasted even better than it smelled. I moaned in satisfaction. “I didn’t realize you had any left,” I mumbled with my mouth full, stuffing a steamed baby carrot in to make it even fuller.
“There wasn’t much.” He grabbed a glass from above the bar, filled it with Sprite from the soda gun, and set it in front of me. “I sent a veggie tray with Maxine for Prince Charlemagne.”
“Seriously, Cole, there are vegetarians in Aspen who don’t eat as well as that bearded dragon.”
“And Jo gathered up a smorgasbord of cake, cookies, and eclairs to drop off with my grandfather.”
“Oh, good.” I took the napkin and fork he handed me and quickly wiped off my hands before diving into the mashed potatoes. With the fork. I’m not a barbarian. “He’ll have something besides pie for breakfast for a change.”
“Variety is the spice of life.” Cole chuckled, but the humor faded quickly as he studied me. “And I made a couple plates for Larry and Melinda. Dropped them off on my way back into town.”
It wasn’t as if my dad and stepmother had ever really been out of my thoughts throughout the day, of course. Or even over the course of the past months as Melinda’s voice had grown gravelly and the nervous energy we’d teased her about for years morphed into an unmistakable tremor, however slight. But the mention of their names brought them to the forefront once again.
“Thanks for doing that.”
“Of course.”
“Did they seem okay?”
“Yeah. Your dad was asleep, so Melinda and I talked for a couple minutes. You know how she is. She’s just ready to get to work. She’s already ordered a bunch of books and supplements, and she’s looking forward to going to Denver to meet with the neurologist at the end of the month. I think she’s a lot more worried about Larry than she is herself.”
I nodded as guilt washed over me. I shouldn’t have gone all day without checking on them. No, I didn’t have cell signal at Adelaide Gulch, and no, I didn’t so much as find time to get onto the wooden parquet dance floor. Right about the time Lucinda and Jake Morissey were trying to pull me out there for the Cupid Shuffle was when I’d had to go shoo away a fawn that nearly hit the scavenging jackpot with Cole’s cheese and fruit charcuterie board.
Still. I should have gone straight over to check on them when I got back into town.
Cole leaned onto the bar across from me and lowered his head to try to catch my downcast eyes. “She’s worried about you too. So am I, for that matter. You doing okay?”
“Yeah,” I responded as I looked up at him. And I meant it. “I’m really glad Dad has something to work with now. You know how he is. He hates feeling helpless.” I swallowed down the argument in my mind that we were still going to be helpless bystanders far more than seemed fair to Melinda.
“Must be hereditary.” He studied me. “Want to talk about it?”
I shook my head. “Not right now.” I set down my fork, my appetite suddenly satisfied—or forgotten. I’m not sure which. “Thanks, though.”
“Do you mind if I change the subject for a minute, then?”
“Please!”
He stood up straight, and his face took on a completely different countenance. His bottom lip was caught between his teeth, and his eyes darted around the room. “Okay, I want your opinion on something.”
I took a sip of my soda and nodded.
“And I want you to be completely honest.”
I snorted in response to that unnecessary request, causing a few carbonation bubbles to burn their way through my sinuses, resulting in Cole throwing another napkin at my face while laughing at my pain.
“I know, I know,” he continued. “But really, Lai. I know you’ll be honest, but I don’t want you to sugarcoat anything or try to be considerate of my feelings or anything like that. If this is a stupid idea, I’m counting on you to tell me.”
I raised three fingers to communicate my commitment to tell the truth via “Scout’s Honor,” though I got hung up for a moment thinking I might have just volunteered as a Hunger Games tribute instead. When in doubt, use words.
“What sort of friend would I be if I didn’t stand at the ready to point out your stupidity as needed?”
The nervousness on his face was replaced by a warm smile as he sidled up next to me at the bar. I turned on my stool so I could face him and prepared to listen and honestly respond, but the assuredness that had overtaken his eyes made me fairly confident whatever was about to come out of his mouth wouldn’t be stupid at all.
“Okay, so I’ve been thinking. Adelaide Springs is growing. Between the attention Brynn and Seb have brought to it and the success of Township Days, more and more people are visiting, and it looks like people are even starting to stay. To actually move here.”
They were indeed. The combination of an It power couple calling Adelaide Springs home and the revival of a kitschy annual festival that was just weird and wonderful enough to attract attention from social media influencers and YouTubers (who obviously hadn’t played a role in Township Days’ first incarnation, starting in 1975) had already resulted in the town’s biggest population boom since they found silver in Adelaide Canyon in 1889.
Early indications were that the population would surpass five hundred before the end of the year.
“And obviously no one can blame Andi for closing up the Bean Franklin. I mean, her sister died. Of course she’s going through a lot and dealing with things. But Wray’s been dead for weeks now, and we’ve barely heard from Andi at all. We don’t know when she’s coming back. Or even, at this point, if she’s coming back. And, of course, if she does, there’s more than enough business for everyone. But with the Bean closed, there aren’t any other restaurant options for breakfast and lunch, and I’m afraid we’re going to start losing tourists to Alamosa or something. So I was thinking—”
“You should open Cassidy’s for breakfast and lunch!”
His shoulders fell. “Wow. Nothing like letting a guy build up to a joke and then stealing the punch line.”
I gasped and covered my mouth with both my hands and then reached down and rested my hands on his knees. “I’m so sorry. I just got excited. Forget I said anything. Go ahead. You were thinking . . .” I chewed on my bottom lip to keep myself from interrupting again, and I felt the contained energy begin to bubble at my feet, which were suddenly rocking up and down on my barstool’s footrest.
He laughed and leaned in and kissed me on the cheek before standing and going back behind the bar. “Just tell me it’s not stupid, and I’ll forgive you.” He tossed me the can of whipped cream, which he had very wisely brought out with him.
I caught it and jumped down from the stool. “It’s so not stupid, Cole! Cassidy’s is ready for this. You’re ready for this. I feel stupid for not thinking of it and telling you to do it.” I shot some whipped cream into my mouth as the possibilities swam around in my head. “You need Wi-Fi,” I insisted, enunciating as well as I could through the cream. “For the breakfast crowd, especially.”
He motioned for me to give him a hit, and I filled his mouth to overflowing as I rambled on about needing more staff and maybe having a trivia night and creating punch cards for frequent customers. He leaned against the wall and crossed his arms, listening to every word I said, until I finally paused long enough to shoot the nozzle into my mouth for a refill.
“So you’re with me on this?”
I tilted my head and actually went to the trouble of swallowing before speaking. “Of course I’m with you on this. I’m with you on everything. Always. And this is also just a fabulous idea, so I’m pretty sure I’d be with Prince Charlemagne on this, if he’d thought of it first.”
The smile returned to Cole’s face, and I knew I’d told him exactly what he needed to hear. “Who says he didn’t? I don’t give away veggie trays for nothing, you know.”
I nudged my shoulder into his chest, then slipped my arms around his torso. “I’m so proud of you. This is going to be great. Seriously.”
He sighed and wrapped his arms around my back before leaning his cheek down onto my head. “It’s going to be a lot of work.”
I scoffed and pulled away to look up at him. “Nah. Not really. Not compared to all the work you’ve put in already.” I separated myself from him and turned to face the door into the kitchen. “Remember when that led to nothing more than rows of shelves and stacks of boxes? And remember when there was just that one lamp hanging from the ceiling, with the bulb we had to turn on with the chain, like we were in an old-timey interrogation room or something?” I shuddered at the memory. I’d spent the first half of my life creeped out by that dark, dingy storeroom.
I turned back to face him. “Your dream and your vision and your hard work turned Cassidy’s into this. And it’s about to get even better.”
He nodded once. “Thanks, Lai.”
I shrugged. “What sort of friend would I be if I didn’t point out your brilliance?”
The smile returned to his face. “Well, then . . . here is the real test of friendship. You’ll point out my stupidity, and you’ll point out my brilliance, but are you willing to help me deglaze stained pans while wearing . . .” He reached down and grabbed the fabric of my skirt between his fingers. “What is this? Taffeta?”
“Beats me. But I do happen to have a poncho for just such an occasion.”
I headed toward the door to grab the poncho from my car but stopped short at the sight through the window of Mrs. Stoddard walking up the steps and onto the porch. Cole noticed her at the same time I did and hurried over to open the door.
“Hey, Jo,” he greeted her as she stepped inside. “What’s up?”
“Hi, kids.”
Kids. She’d been our teacher all through school, right up until high school graduation. Never mind that we’d been out of high school for more than twenty years. Half the people in Adelaide Springs called us kids, and I figured they always would.
“Sorry to barge in so late.”
“No problem,” Cole assured her with a smile that quickly fell away. Just as familiar to us as Mrs. Stoddard the strict educator was Mrs. Stoddard the caring adult who was completely invested in our success and committed to our well-being. The warmth and concern in her eyes informed us it was that Mrs. Stoddard standing before us. “Is everything okay?”
Grandma Hazel always said big, life-changing events came in threes. I really wish she’d been right about Paul Newman instead.