Page 14 of Beaches, Bagels & Babes

Candace

C andace messed up. She knew it as soon as Daisy started scrolling.

All at once, she was sure it was… a lot…

seeing the scale of what she’d managed to build in a couple of scant weeks.

Even she was impressed by herself. However, she had years of experience managing her college cafe’s social media pages.

With some recycled memes and bagel-themed puns, she’d been able to get engagement going with no trouble.

But Candace realized that she had overstepped, especially with the picture of Daisy.

It was an accident. She had been checking her notifications while the woman’s back was turned, and happened to look up as she hauled the chain open.

A single moment that seemed suspended, waiting for Candace to open her camera app.

She snapped the picture, then almost deleted it just as quickly to avoid feeling like a dirty old man .

Rio said it, though. It was too good to relegate to the trash bin’s ether.

Candace had told herself she could use the shot because of how prominent the Bagel Bombs!

logo was on Daisy’s tank top. Loose, with long, wide arm holes that showed a tantalizingly large amount of the woman’s toned side, if she turned the angle of the shot just a little more…

Commenters were asking where they could get their own Bagel Bomb!

apparel, or the blonde in it. Candace tried to delete and ban the creeps, but a few slipped by. All of which Daisy saw.

Again, Candace let her down. Maybe this was as awful an idea as Demi seemed to think after all. She sniffled, but refused to cry. Instead, she gathered her things. Rio watched, arms crossed.

“You’re seriously leaving me to clean up this mess?”

Candace stopped before the backroom partition. Mumbling an apology, she set her things back down and picked up a rag.

“That’s not what I meant.”

“What should I do? I’m pretty sure that kind of exit means she’s had enough of me.”

“Frankly,” Rio suggested, “you could start by apologizing. Don’t get me wrong, what you did was impressive. But Zee is touchy about this kind of stuff.”

“What ‘stuff’ specifically?”

“Attention, maybe? I’m not sure. She almost fired me when I tried to set up an Insta a while back.”

“Wow… I thought you were close.”

Shrugging, Rio admitted, “We’re closer now. I might be one of the only people she’s close to, between you and me. It’s taken time for us to get to this. And even then, she puts up walls.”

“I see…”

An ache for Daisy thrummed inside Candace’s chest. Loneliness and isolation were things she understood all too well.

Rio continued. “To be honest, I thought Zee had given up. She’s worked herself to the bone and burnt out. Nothing gets her excited lately. Nothing, until you showed up. ”

“If by excited, you mean furious. Making her mad seems to be my specialty.”

With a wink, Rio said, “Maybe. But who doesn’t root for a good enemies-to-lovers story?”

Scoffing, Candace shot back, “It’s definitely not that.”

No , her thoughts echoed, this isn’t that kind of story. Not after what I’ve done.

At the very least, Candace knew Rio was right about her needing to apologize. Even if this was the end of whatever business partnership she and Daisy might have, she did not want to leave things between them on a sour note.

Not a second time.

Candace took a bolstering breath. She cast Rio a guilty look, but the helpful human waved her off.

“I’ve got things here. Not too much to do but close up when we’re sold out. Which is probably also part of why Daisy is pissed.”

“I don’t understand. Isn’t being sold out a good thing?”

“Not when Zee’s the only one making these things. From shopping cart to oven, she’s a one-woman show.”

“Really?”

“Yep. She keeps an inventory system that even I can’t make heads or tails of. Your deals are great, but they upset the balance. Now that you’ve wiped her daily inventory and her backup freezer stock here, we’re down to whatever she has prepped at home.”

Candace blanched. Her hand flew to her blouse, where she anxiously played with a button. “Oh no…”

“Yeah. Zee’s got some work to do thanks to you. At least it’s a Dotty/Me day tomorrow, but there goes her day off.”

“I really messed up. You’re right. I need to tell her I’m sorry. Do you have any idea where she’s gone?”

Rio tapped a finger to their elfin, angular jaw. “Well, she didn’t head out the back, so she couldn’t have gone far without Otto.” By Candace’s blank stare, they must have gathered her lack of a clue. They clarified, “Her golf cart. She doesn’t have a car, but she uses Otto to get around.”

“Ah.”

One mystery solved. Candace noticed Daisy pull up in the golf cart decorated with streamers, local Wonderwood regalia, and Bagel Bomb!

branding. Probably not street legal, but it suited Daisy.

Candace could picture her, aviators on and hair whipping in the open air, looking like she owned the island.

It brought a smile to her face without even realizing it.

“Oh!” Rio slapped their hand on the counter, startling Candace from her mental image. “I bet she went to visit Horace!”

Horace, as Candace belatedly recalled, was the name of the horseshoe crab star of the boardwalk nature center’s new summer exhibit.

Thankfully, the satellite center was not far, unlike the larger Wetlands Institute research facility that was located out in the mosquito-infested marshes.

It was built into the boardwalk storefronts past the convention hall pier, between an adventure mini golf course and a jewelry shop.

A seaweed-covered, rusty diver robot waved at passersby while an audio recording belted out sea life factoids in a chipper, Flo-from-the-Progressive-commercial voice.

The building itself was, like Bagel Bombs!

, in bad need of a makeover. Candace supposed state funding and donations only went so far.

Even so, the place had a sort of kitschy charm.

It seemed to be closing time. The ticket counter was vacant, and the pull-down metal gate was half-shuttered. With practiced privilege, Candace ducked inside. From there, Daisy was not hard to find .

The building itself was composed of artful, creatively placed glass cases that were teeming with local flora and fauna displays. There was a long, low table where kids could paint hermit crab shells alongside a beach hut-themed enclosure that teemed with the critters.

A hilly sand dune line was replicated in a detailed miniature scale model, and tiny plaques explained their importance; distantly, Candace recalled someone telling her the very same information. Someone familiar, with ashy hair and warm, amber eyes…

As the star attraction, Horace’s enclosure was in the very center of the hall.

A sign explained that despite the masculine name, Horace was an elderly female crab who had been a subject of the nature institute’s research program for years.

Thanks to her blood, the scientific community gained valuable research knowledge.

Now, Horace was retired and had a nice setup made to look like the New Jersey bay where their kind liked to nest.

A see-through plexiglass barrier that was a few feet tall encircled the exhibit, giving a raised view of the angled marsh recreation.

There was a deep section of water planted with marsh reeds, a muddy bank, and even a sandy beach scene complete with a mannequin family beneath an umbrella.

It looked like the nature center had picked up a piece of the bay and plopped it right here in the building.

Candace found Daisy seated on a bench that surrounded the enclosure.

She made no attempt to hide her approach, yet the other woman ignored her.

Daisy’s attention was trained on the horseshoe crab, where the creature was burrowed into the faux bank.

Candace held back a cringe as she looked at its weird carapace body.

She noticed the tiny Go-Pro strapped to it for the enclosure’s so-called “Crab Cam” live YouTube feed, but could not imagine what it possibly showed apart from sand.

In her nervousness to fill the silence, she made the comment aloud.

Daisy took notice of that, and not kindly .

Still facing the display, she said, “It’s not ‘nothing.’ It’s important research on a unique, close-to-endangered species. If the right people in the medical community took notice, it could make Wonderwood the ecological hub it’s meant to be. But why would you care? You hate it here.”

Slowly, Candace sat on the bench, a little more than an arm’s length from Daisy. “I thought I did. But I think it’s more complicated than that. I hate the memories that get dredged up when I’m here. Wonderwood isn’t without its charms, though.”

“Oh? Like what? Those sorority girls?”

Was that jealousy Candace detected in Daisy’s voice?

No way, that would be crazy .

“They certainly don’t hurt. But there’s more.”

Quiet settled between them. However, Daisy did not tell Candace to go, so she went on.

“I forgot how much I missed the salt air. In the morning, when everything is covered in mist and dew, no one else around, it’s otherworldly.

With sound and sight muted, the tinge of brine in every breath, it’s like something out of a scary movie.

But it’s somehow peaceful at the same time. Great for the skin, too.”

Daisy made a ‘you would say that’ snort.

“I missed the way Wonderwood moves at its own pace. It's not like the city. People put their guards down, and they’re not in as much of a rush. Yes, I liked talking with Marta and her friends… They’re nice, and they spent a good chunk of change.

But I like talking with Norman and the other Bagel Bombs! regulars just as much.”

Quietly, a begrudging slip, Daisy asked, “Anything else?”