Page 17 of Best Laid Plans (Rock Harbor #1)
CHAPTER NINE
ELLE
E lle sat in the local coffee shop she’d been meaning to try, Sips, but hadn’t gotten around to until Thursday morning.
She was waiting for Becca, now that they’d managed to find time when Becca was free.
Between Zoe and her job at The Rock Harbor Inn, it didn’t seem like Becca was flush with time for extracurricular activities.
Elle couldn’t sympathize with the feeling, and given her current living situation, she was looking for any excuse to get out of the apartment.
Sips was a cute shop, with vibrant splashes of color against muted walls and deep-set chairs around small tables.
Elle had arrived over an hour before their scheduled meeting time to continue painstakingly tweaking her resume and applying to any new jobs that had been posted in the last twenty-four hours.
The cafe was sandwiched between an antique store on the right and a stationary store on the left, the front facade one giant window that let in great natural light.
How the stationary store would survive in a town of tourists was none of Elle’s business.
What was on the other side of the antique store interested her the most, though she hadn’t ventured over yet.
She was still debating whether she would at all.
Heads & Tails, the seafood restaurant, was exactly where her father had said it would be.
She’d missed it a few days ago on her run, like she would have missed it today, had it not been close to eleven a.m., when it opened.
When she’d searched Rock Harbor seafood on her phone this morning, it was the first result that came up, along with hundreds of glowing reviews and photos snapped in front of the very Instagrammable interior brick wall with a coastal motif.
There was already a line of people standing in front of Sips, queuing for another twenty feet to get to the Heads & Tails entrance.
“Am I interrupting something?” Becca stood next to Elle’s table, an amused look on her face. Elle had been so focused on looking out the window toward the line of people that she’d completely missed Becca’s arrival.
Becca was wearing her work uniform, black pants and a black shirt, like she’d been the other day, and her blonde, unruly hair was tied up in a ponytail again. There was a small sparkly purple unicorn sticker above her right breast, which Elle eyed.
Following her stare, Becca spotted the sticker and quickly plucked it off her shirt. “Courtesy of Zoe during our ride to her grandparents’ house.”
“She has good taste, I’ll give her that.” Elle smiled and gestured for her to sit down. “I was looking at the line for Heads & Tails.”
Becca nodded, knowingly, meeting Elle’s eyes with her own dark blue ones. Becca had never been one to back down from hard truths. “How’s everything going with the restaurant?”
Elle shut her laptop and stood up. “I’ll grab us coffees and then regale you with the whole tale. Iced?”
“With–”
“A pump of vanilla,” Elle finished easily, an unexpected smile blooming on her face when Becca nodded. Things had always been so easy with Becca. She missed that. Missed her .
It took a few minutes, given a small line had formed leading up to the pristine white service counter, but soon, Elle was back with the iced coffee she handed to Becca and another one for herself.
“You first. How’s life?” Elle asked before Becca could turn the attention back to her.
She didn’t know how many more chances they’d have to catch up like this before Elle was gone again.
Long days of meetings. Travel to client sites.
Subsisting on takeout. She scrunched up her face.
None of those things sounded appealing, especially right now.
Becca sipped her coffee and considered the questions thoughtfully. “Life is… steady.”
“Is steady good?” Elle clarified, taking a sip of her own drink.
“Steady is predictable, and with a five-year-old, I’m grateful for it.” Honestly, Elle could use a little more steady in her life, especially these days. “So how about you? What brings you back to Rock Harbor?” She caught Becca’s inquisitive stare, her fingers plucking absently at her straw.
It didn’t feel fair to dump all of her baggage on Becca, when they weren’t those people to one another anymore.
But maybe she should let Becca make that decision for herself.
“Do you want the ‘two people who once knew one another casually meeting up for coffee version’ or the ‘old friends who pick up like no time has passed’ version.”
“I’m offended you’d even ask.” Becca said the words as a joke, but Elle could hear the genuine hurt in her voice.
“I just don’t want to trauma dump my last few years on you,” Elle hedged, still trying to give Becca an out but growing more desperate to talk about her life by the second. There was really no one these days who she could be completely honest with. Including herself.
She took a deep breath and decided to just go for it.
“Grant and I broke up a few years ago. Right around when I was accepted into my MBA program.” Elle didn’t love confessing that to Becca, but if she got around to what was happening in her present day life, being single was an important facet of that.
And, Becca had never liked Grant. The fabric of their friendship had already started to fray, and it was just easier to use being busy as an excuse to avoid admitting that she’d been taken for a ride she’d willingly signed up for.
“I heard that,” Becca said sympathetically. “And I guess he’s with Chelsea now? I’ve seen them around town during the summer.”
Small towns. Ugh. Everyone knew everyone, at least the locals.
Elle, Chelsea, and Grant had all gone to high school together and then college, though for Elle, being accepted into Walker College on a tennis scholarship had been a dream come true, and the culmination of years of work.
Grant and Chelsea had been legacies, with their 3.
0 high school GPAs and large family donations to pad their applications.
And nothing about the two of them doing whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted, had really changed.
“You could say that. I went over to his apartment to celebrate being accepted to my MBA program, and Chelsea was there. She couldn’t see me in the hallway, and she must have thought that I was the delivery person.
So she asked her babe , Grant, to make sure they’d remembered the sweet and sour sauce. ”
Becca’s mouth dropped open. “Your boyfriend was cheating with your roommate? Brutal.”
“I moved out of the apartment with Chelsea as soon as I could, obviously. I found a random person who, luckily, was sane,” Elle added.
She didn’t mention that given her three years of living with Chelsea in an exorbitantly expensive downtown apartment, she’d had almost zero financial padding to show for her years of work .
“I hear that’s always a gamble. I live with strangers every day of my life, but so far so good,” Becca said wryly.
Elle smiled back. “Megan and I had two very solid years together of being respectful to one another but never becoming friends. I travelled a lot for work, anyway. She let me know about a month ago that her boyfriend was going to be moving in, and they wanted the place to themselves.”
Becca slapped her hand down on the table. “The hits just keep comin’.”
“On the same day I was laid off.”
“ Oof. ” She watched it play out in real time, how Becca’s features shifted from teasing to genuine sympathy for Elle. She leaned back in her chair and crossed her legs. “I’m really sorry to hear all of that, Elle.”
Elle knew that life wasn’t fair. She knew that things didn’t always work out the way she wanted them to, even if she did everything right. Had no false ideations that life was always sunshine and roses. But everything all at once was a bit much, even for her.
“So I came home about a week ago, only to find out that my dad didn’t tell me about a minor heart surgery scheduled for next week and that thanks to the new seafood restaurant, the restaurant is struggling.”
They sighed deeply at the same time, before their stares met, and they both smiled. Still in tune, even after all these years.
Becca lifted a dubious eyebrow, then. “‘Minor heart surgery feels like a real oxymoron’.”
“Thank you!” Elle bellowed, loud enough it attracted a few curious stares.
She was on a roll now, and it felt so good to be talking to Becca again.
“So, Cam’s going to work the chowder fest this weekend because the doctor hadn’t thought the stress would be good for my dad so close to his surgery, and–”
Becca threw her hands up. “Wait. Wait . Cam? As in Cam Devers?” She knew Becca wasn’t going to stop when she saw the look on her friend’s face. She was praying, but she knew. “As in ‘ Cam, better than a pearl in a clam ? That Cam?”
Elle hid her face in her hands. “I cannot believe you remember that.”
“Only because pearls aren’t in clams,” Becca retorted in between puffs of laughter.
“I was taking poetic license!” Elle defended.
As far as she’d been concerned, it had been one of the crowning literary achievements of her ten-year-old self.
She’d worked on that poem for days, hiding away in her bedroom to get the prose just right, like she’d been writing a manifesto of her undying infatuation about Cam that needed to live on forever.
At the time, it had felt like the most important thing she’d ever done.
Becca’s stare grew curious. “What’s he doing back in town? To help your parents? Did you two coordinate this or something?” At least she was done bringing up one of Elle’s most mortifying memories, something that only an almost-lifelong friend could achieve with ease.
“Apparently, we both had the great idea to hang out at Wyatt’s for the two weeks that he’s away coaching football camp.”