Twice Shy

I AM UP IN THE clouds now, drumming my fingernails on a countertop. Outside the window, in an ever-swirling fog, there’s a pink neon sign that spins at an all-the-time-in-the-world tilt, which reads: maybell’s coffee shop au. Beneath, with one of the letters blinking out: Open 24 hours.

My AU (alternate universe) café has taken years to build, the past three months being its busiest season yet. I’ve put up fairy lights and aqua tiles, floppy houseplants and red vinyl booths. A jukebox comes to life whenever I glance its way, spontaneously playing one of my favorite songs. Maybell’s Coffee Shop AU is the most beautiful place I can imagine, and I’ve imagined lots of places.

The fog breaks on cue. I glance up, on high alert, knowing what happens next because it’s happened before a hundred times. A story with a scripted beginning and boundless possibilities for how it might end.

The man who throws open the door is tall, broad shouldered, strong jawed, in a suit of blackest black. Dark blond hair falls in tousled wet waves that make me think of a fallen angel who almost drowned, thrust out of the sea by Poseidon and made alive again with a lightning strike. If he were in color, his eyes would be topaz—a glass of root beer held up to the light.

He’s all edges and shadow, black and white. Raindrops sheeting off the windowpane behind him project onto the right half of his face like a monochrome film reel, and his gaze sweeps the café before settling on me. I suck in a deep breath, gripping the counter to stay tethered. This is the moment I’ve been waiting for all my life.

“I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” he tells me. “Why haven’t you returned my calls?”

My having seen all of this before does nothing to dull the elation of seeing it again. Joy bursts in my chest, no room for air. “Jack! What if someone sees you here?”

“I don’t care anymore.” He leaps over the counter to gather me up in a passionate embrace. “I’m not hiding us. Yes, you’re a coffee shop girl and I’m the prince of Effluvia. What does it matter? I love you. That’s all there is to it.”

“You love me?”

This is my favorite part, the love-declaring. I rewind so that I can hear it again, and make some small adjustments for dramatic flair.

“Yes, you’re a coffee shop girl and I’m the prince of Effluvia,” he repeats, a bouquet of stargazer lilies materializing in his left hand. And in his right, a glittering engagement ring. I silently mouth the rest of his lines along with him. “What does it matter? I love you. That’s all there is to it.”

“But . . . the monarchy,” I whisper against his shoulder. “They don’t want us to be together.”

“They can’t stop us. Our love is a force too powerful to be defied.”

“Maybell,” I hear a faraway voice chirrup. I rearrange the sound into background noise, letters becoming rustling leaves.

Jack lowers to one knee. The stargazer lilies triple in size. A string quartet appears.

“My beloved . . . light of my life . . .” Jack clears his throat, but my gaze flits uneasily to reflections that don’t belong here. They stir in the silver napkin dispenser, the coffeepot, the gleaming backsplash, like they’re two-way mirrors. A tiny knob on the vintage rotary landline, boxy and beige, lights up red a half second before the phone’s metallic ring interrupts Jack’s proposal.

“You are the most special person I’ve ever met,” Jack begins, totally oblivious, tears in his eyes. “Intelligent. Beautiful. Capable. Unparalleled. There’s nobody else like Maybell Parrish.” According to my schedule, we’re going to kiss in thirteen seconds. The passionate kiss that follows the declaration of love is another very favorite part. It’s the essential ingredient to every romance that ensures it bakes properly.

The red light is impossible to ignore now. A piece of masking tape at the knob’s base glows with each flash, bringing my handwriting into sharp focus. IRL Calling.

I wave impatiently for Jack to speed it up, but before we can get to the Will you marry me and the inevitable Yes, a thousand times, yes, mainlining serotonin directly into my brain to get me through the next two hours of my shift, a disembodied hand touches my shoulder.

The proposal hits pause. I smile wistfully at this perfect man and his perfectly love-struck, adoring expression. He would move mountains for me. He would walk the earth for me. He would avenge and protect and come back from the dead for me. Really, the only bad thing about Jack McBride is that he doesn’t exist.

A sidewinder of white light blows across the café, shattering windows. My ears are ringing, my vision patchy as it adjusts. I drop out of the clouds of my dissolving happy place and back into the here and now, which is the last place I want to be. And standing before me, with her unwelcome hand on my shoulder, is the last person I want to see.

Gemma Peterson doesn’t realize that, of course. She thinks we’re BFFs.

“Hello! Earth to Maybell!” She snaps her fingers in front of my face. “Someone threw up all over the second-floor ice machine. Projectile vomit.”

I groan. The here and now is Around the Mountain Resort & Spa, a Southern charm–infused hotel and indoor water park in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. All the appeal of an old-fashioned timber lodge, but with souvenir shops, HBO, and a lazy river.

When I’m not zoning out into imaginary worlds, I’m planning fun guest activities as the newly promoted event coordinator, and then getting my ideas shot down by my co-coordinator, Christine. Up until New Year’s Day, I worked here as a housekeeper, so getting flagged down with reports of vomit on ice machines was par for the course. Unfortunately, it’s now April first and people are still running to me with these issues. It’s as if the promotion never happened.

“That’s for housekeeping,” I remind Gemma.

“Oh, you’re right! I’m just used to . . .” She bestows a huge smile on me, hooking her arm in mine as I pick up my pace down the hallway. I check the time on my phone and internally despair. My detour into the coffee shop in the sky only burned through ten minutes? I just want to go home, throw all the memories of this place into an incinerator, and sleep facedown on the couch for twelve hours. “Wanna play hooky in the arcade?” Gemma asks. “The claw machine’s actually grabbing prizes today.”

“We’ll get in trouble with Paul.”

Paul’s the Big Boss, and while it’s true that I’d probably get chewed out for losing to rigged Skee-Ball on the clock, Gemma’s his daughter and can do whatever she wants. She gets paid five dollars an hour more than I do to stand in the lobby wearing a cutesy train conductor’s costume, informing guests in an exaggerated twang that RainForest Adventures Zoo is only five miles down the road, visit the customer service desk for coupons! Then she disappears to the pool for the rest of the afternoon.

It’s hard to hate Gemma—she’s fun and bubbly. What’s not to like? After she was fired from a string of jobs, Paul got rid of seventy-four-year-old Dennis, a veteran, to make room for her at Around the Mountain. She latched on to me on day one. Gemma brings me banana nut bread samples from our resort’s breakfast bar, Sunrise in the Smokies, and is enthusiastic about everything I say even if it’s just chatting about needing to get groceries. Whenever I wear new jewelry, she zeroes right in on it with an ego-inflating compliment. The only bad thing about Gemma is tangled up in the only bad thing about Jack McBride.

For a period of two wonderful months, I thought he was real. I look at Gemma now, radiant with friendliness, and I want to adore her to bits. But I can’t.

“Did I tell you that Eric and I are moving in together?” she asks, steering me away from the direction in which I was heading. We turn left at the end of a corridor, fading out the constant loop of “Welcome to Around the Mountain Resort and Spa!” that blares from a big screen in the lobby, cartoon bear cub in a straw hat pointing at a map of entertainment options.

“I don’t have time for the arcade right now.” I strain to present myself as nice, harmless, nonthreatening, even though I wish I could be direct and assertive. Slipping up for even a moment and forgetting that Gemma has Paul’s ear is dangerous. “I’ve gotta talk to Christine.”

Gemma makes a face. “Christine’s the worst. You don’t want to talk to her.”

“I don’t want to, no, but I have some new ideas about—”

“Honey.” She laughs. “I love you, but you know it’s never happening. Christine’s too obsessed with weddings. I heard her discussing your Halloween dinner theater idea with Dad and basically she thinks that sort of stuff degrades the resort and makes it less appealing as a venue. We get so much money for weddings, you know, so that’s got star priority.”

“When did she say that? She told me she was considering—”

“Anyway,” she interrupts, “Eric and I are moving in together next week! Can you believe it? We’re gonna throw a huge housewarming party. You’re at the top of the list, so you’d better come, no excuses. And bring those amazing cinnamon twist donuts of yours! Everybody’s gonna love them.”

I’m still pissed about Christine’s disregarding my contributions yet again, but a new irritation sidetracks me. My donuts are amazing, but when Gemma compliments them, I second-guess what the truth is because she lies all the time for no reason. Maybe she’s lying about how much she loves the cinnamon twists, too.

“We need to get you a man, Maybell,” she’s saying now, dragging me over to Whack-a-Mole. She bangs her mallet with a scary degree of violence for someone so petite. “Then we can double-date! It’ll be so fun, having both of my favorite people together with me.” She beats the crap out of the plastic rodents as she talks, silky brown hair tumbling from her ponytail.

Gemma has such an abundance of nerve that it makes me question my own sanity. I know I didn’t imagine the last few months because Gemma apologizes for them incessantly, bringing it up at least once a week. Her apologies are reality-warping mysteries that somehow end with me comforting her, and reassuring her, about everything that happened. “Everything That Happened” is how Gemma, Paul, and my other coworkers phrase what she did: a thick coat of sugar slathered over one of the most depressing experiences of my adult life.

“Your turn.” She hands me the mallet, which means I’m the one who looks bad when Christine happens to walk by. Fantastic.

“Are you on break?” Christine barks at me. No attitude for Gemma, naturally. Gemma could be holding a chain saw dangling human innards and Christine would find a way to praise her for it.

“I stole her away for a second,” Gemma replies, fixing on an angel’s smile. “Blame me, not Maybell.”

Christine holds my stare. “If you have time to waste, you have time to work. There’s vomit on the ice machine and all over the walls on floor two.”

It’s on the walls, too? Good lord. “But—”

As she turns away, I gather up the courage to call out, “Have you finished reading my proposal for the scavenger hunt?”

“We tried a scavenger hunt in 2018,” she says without turning. “Nobody was into it.”

“I think the pirate theme would be fun for kids.”

She claps her hands three times. “Get! To! Work!”

Gemma waits until she’s out of earshot and pats my shoulder. “Ugh, I hate her, too. I think she’s having an affair with my dad.”

“I don’t hate her,” I’m quick to say, simultaneously imagining pushing Christine into the lazy river. Gemma probably waits until I’m out of earshot to whisper, Ugh, I hate her, too, about me to other people. At least now I have an excuse to leave. “Gotta go clean up, I guess.” Two hours. Two more hours and then I can go home.

She slides away to a game called Ticket Jackpot. “Wish me luck!”

Padding down the dark green hall, I replay Christine’s words and am strongly tempted to rip off my “Event Coordinator” badge. After changing trash bags, making beds, and bleaching Jacuzzis from the time I turned eighteen, I’d moved out of housekeeping just before hitting thirty and into an arena where I could finally flex my creative skills. Now I’m told the events I want to produce are too big, too niche, or too much. No matter what I do, I’m perpetually ending up alone in a room with a roll of paper towels under my arm and cleaning supplies to take care of somebody else’s mess.

“I’m going to quit,” I grumble. It’s my personal anthem, which I sing every day. “Job is in title only. This is stupid. It’s stupid!”

Caleb Ramirez nods in greeting as he walks by, likely on his way to Sunrise in the Smokies, where he works. Seeing him is like being stabbed with a very small pin, because he was the unwitting catalyst for Everything That Happened. Unfortunate, because Caleb’s such a great guy. The only bad thing about him is that once, several months ago, we shared a bag of popcorn together in the break room and he mentioned he liked my sneakers. I’m bad at receiving compliments, habitually reciprocating with a compliment of my own to erase the one given to me, and I said I liked his car. He grinned. I’ll take you for a ride sometime.

Gemma, who falls in love about a dozen times a year and falls hard, had a huge crush on Caleb. As I came to find out, on a deceptively ordinary Wednesday evening two months afterward, with Gemma snotting all over my shirt as she wrapped her arms around me and wouldn’t let me squirm away, she’d simply done what she thought she had to do. She was sorry. She was insecure and desperately in love. People who are in love can’t think straight, don’t act normally. Please don’t hate me. I couldn’t keep it going any longer, my hair’s starting to fall out and I’m losing sleep.

Gemma had catfished me with a fake Tinder profile.

I’m nursing some conflicted feelings over this because I wasn’t the victim of a personal vendetta; I was collateral damage in Gemma’s quest to keep the object of her affections single and available. Now that it’s over, I’m less surprised—a couple months before it happened, a guy loafing about the lobby asked me where the ATM was. While leading him there, we got to talking a little bit, just innocent chitchat, which culminated in his asking for my number. I was doing my job. Being friendly. I did not flirt with him.

But it definitely looked like flirting to Gemma, who, as it transpired, was casually dating him at the time. He claimed that she’d misheard him, that when he asked for my number he meant “what number of the month it was, like, on a calendar.” I told her I never gave him any of my contact information, and she said that she believed me, but if Caleb’s offering me a ride in his car was enough to make her pull some pictures of a random hot guy off the Internet and trick me into a long-distance relationship, maybe she still had some trust issues.

In Gemma’s defense (literally, she used this as a defense), she tried really hard to be a considerate fake boyfriend. Jack would “just know” when I was having a bad day and could benefit from a surprise delivery from my favorite takeout place. He played the ukulele, which I thought was so cute, and he was drop. Dead. Gorgeous. A giant who could probably crush pebbles between his fingers if he wanted, but he wore the sweetest smile and softest expression. My favorite picture “Jack” sent was a black-and-white one of him in formal wear, and when I envision my imaginary ex-boyfriend I still see him without color sometimes, like he belongs to a different era.

The longer our relationship went on, the more I wanted from Jack, and the harder it became for Gemma to keep the ruse up. I wanted to meet in person. I wanted more selfies of him. I wanted concrete plans. After a while it didn’t matter how gorgeous or supernaturally insightful he was (Gemma’s advantage of knowing me as well as she does was an awful, lovely, double-edged blade); I didn’t like that he wasn’t putting in as much effort as me. Didn’t he want to meet up, too?

Then Gemma met someone else, lost all interest in Caleb, and was tired of expending energy on this. She had to come clean. I feel terrible. I’m the worst person ever. Can you forgive me? I’m sorry I did it, but in a way it wasn’t all that bad because you were happy, weren’t you? You’ve been so happy these past few months! If you think about it, I gave you a gift.

She begged me not to tell her dad, but another housekeeper overheard the whole confession and told a pool attendant, who told everyone, and before I knew it I was shaking Paul’s hand and accepting a promotion. It was coded into Paul’s upbeat congratulations that the promotion hinged on my not making any waves. I’d keep to myself, and be sad in private, and it meant no more scrubbing wine stains out of carpets. Which was fine. Maybell Parrish doesn’t make waves. She doesn’t even make ripples.

As I wipe down the ice machine, I listen to the distant chime of a door opening up in the clouds. What’s your daily special? a patron asks. Mentally, I follow the sound.

A different Maybell smiles back at her customer from behind a glass case of pastries on display. Like me, she has round glasses with rose-gold frames and honey-brown hair growing out in a Rumours-era Stevie Nicks shag. She sports the same constellation of freckles on her upper arm that I do, and we both wear a dainty heart-shaped ring on our right index finger that our mother got us for our sixteenth birthday.

But this Maybell is smooth and confident. She has a devoted boyfriend, Jack, and an honest, authentic best friend called Gemma. No indentations on her lower lip from nervous nibbling; her fingernails are manicured, not the kind you’d hide in your pockets. Her fresh-from-the-oven donuts are famous in five counties. This Maybell Parrish knows how to stand up for herself and gets what she wants on the first try, her little corner of the universe protected by magic. She controls the weather, the conversation, the emotional mood, who stays in the café and who goes. Here, she is somebody.

Slipping away into the dream version of my life is sometimes a conscious decision. But frequently, I don’t realize I’ve been daydreaming until a loud noise jars me, and when I check the clock, I’ll find I’ve lost an hour. A whole hour, just gone. The more anxious or stressed or lonely I am in reality, the less time I’m inclined to spend in it.

It requires effort to resist spiriting away to my coffee shop. I choose to focus on a topic that will keep me grounded: Gemma. Enough time has passed that she isn’t embarrassed about the catfishing anymore. Now she thinks it makes for a good anecdote, spreading it around, adding embellishments as she goes. I’ve heard her tell Javier that Jack and I had even gotten engaged, which isn’t true.

I blink and center myself, ice machine drifting back into focus. I’ve moved past it and now I’m smearing Clorox circles onto the soda machine. The paper towel in my hand is soggy shreds.

“Excuse me?”

I turn wearily, knowing in my gut that I’m seconds away from being asked to fish a wedding ring out of a bathroom drain. It happens once a month.

It’s a woman in a pink tweed coat. She eyes my name tag and her face lights up. “Well, hello there!”

I offer her the most customer service-y smile I can muster. Please, please don’t tell me someone’s done something unspeakable in the elevator again. The restroom is right there across from it, for crying out loud. I’ll quit. I’ll legitimately quit, right now. “Hi. Can I get you anything?”

“Actually, I’m here to give you something,” she replies, stepping forward. A thick folder is tucked under her arm. “I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but your great-aunt Violet is dead.”