Page 9

RUMI

“That was weird.” I look up from the playmat I’m sitting on with Evee to find Ava walking into the back office, her hands on her hips as she shakes her head.

“Did you call Luke?” I ask from my spot, surrounded by baby books, stuffed animals, and other toys we keep here.

The back office is always spotless, thanks to Ava.

When the door is closed, it becomes a quiet haven amidst the bustling shop.

Shelves line the walls, each one neatly stocked with bags of coffee beans, containers of alternative milks, and extra supplies for the machines.

There’s a polished wooden desk sat against the far wall, clutter-free of course.

Behind the desk, we keep Evee’s play area—the only part of the neat office that is constantly turning into a mess—and a little foldable toddler sleeper for when she naps here.

“Yep,” she answers, sitting down at the desk chair and letting out a sigh.

“Apparently he was a friend of his brother’s.

” I pretend not to watch her move her laptop and her planner an inch to ensure they are straight and proper distance apart before she spins the chair around to face Evee and me.

The soft light filtering through the window casts a calm glow over her, making her waves look more orange than red.

“Was?” I ask as I watch Evee grow tired of the book she’s playing with.

I grab a stuffed bunny to put in front of her as Ava answers solemnly, “He was Bennett’s friend.”

I nod, knowing the story of my boss’ brother, and how he died in a fire almost two years ago. Hey Honey’s opened on his birthday, and Bennett’s go-to coffee order—a coffee with cream—is a permanent menu item we call The Ben.

“I’m surprised I’ve never seen him before,” I answer. The man who walked into the coffee shop no more than fifteen minutes ago was a walking, breathing contrast of a man, with his large frame and gruff voice but the softest eyes.

I definitely would have remembered seeing him.

“I didn’t realize it until he left, but I’ve seen him a few times. Today, he looked a little more,” she pauses, trying to think of the right word, “rugged. Like he’s been living off the land.”

“He did look like he could use a haircut,” I add with a chuckle.

“It hasn’t been since I worked next door at Lenny’s though,” she explains, talking about the bar next door owned by some of Luke and Annie’s friends. “The last time I saw him, I was still bartending there.”

“So he wasn’t around when Hey Honey’s opened?” I ask, wondering why Bennett’s friend wouldn’t be here for the opening of the shop dedicated to him.

“From what I remember hearing, he headed straight up north to his cabin after the funeral. Quit his job at the fire station, packed a bag, and went remote,” Ava answers with a shrug.

I nod my head in response as Evee reaches for the bunny in my hands, a two-toothed smile on her little face as she disregards the book she was holding for the stuffed animal. “Did Luke say anything else about him? Like why he’s back?”

“You seem almost as interested in him as he was in you,” Ava teases. I look up at her from my place on the play mat to find a smirk on her face, her freckles more prominent with the sunlight coming in through the window.

“He was not interested in me,” I reply, avoiding commenting on her statement of my interest in him and trying to deflect, but I feel heat in my cheeks.

“He so was,” Ava shoots back as she leans back in the desk chair. “He was looking at you like he wanted to swallow you whole.”

I let out a little scoff, looking down at Evee as she tries to untie the bows around the bunny’s ears. “You say that like it’s a good thing.”

“Come on, Rue. You need to let loose a little. Let a big, strong man like that take care of you.”

My jaw drops in feign astonishment. “How un-feminist of you, Ava. We don’t teach my daughter that she needs a man to take care of her.”

Ava laughs. “Not like that, silly. He could take care of you in many different ways,” she says with a raise of her brow. When I don’t say anything, she adds in an all too serious tone, “What I’m saying is you need to get laid.”

I bring a hand to my chest as if I’m scandalized by her words. “Ava Dolores Williams, you are going to be the death of me.”

She laughs even harder. “One, what did we say about throwing the middle name at me, Rumi Lillith Matthews?” I reach behind me and throw one of Evee’s stuffed animals at her.

“And two,” she continues, catching the stuffed cat before it hits her in the face, “we need to stop pretending that you are not the hottest, most sexiest MILF to ever walk this planet.”

My head drops to my hands, my face burning with embarrassment.

“And I know Mr. Caveman was thinking the same when he looked like he wanted to reach over the counter and throw you over his shoulder to take you to his cave where no other man could ever look at you again.”

“That’s it. You’ve killed me,” I mutter with my face still in my hands.

When I think back to how Jack was looking at me, my cheeks instantly feel even hotter. His eyes bored into me, and it made me feel like he was seeing me and only me—like no one else mattered.

“I’m just saying,” Ava sing-songs, and there is a hint of triumph in her voice, as if embarrassing me was her goal with this all along.

I look up to find that triumph written all over her face as she looks down at me from the desk chair.

I shake my head. “And I’m just saying, I don’t think that’s how he was looking at me.

” It’s the only answer I can come up with; the one that helps me ignore the fluttering in my stomach that should definitely not be there.

As if I have any business thinking about dating or sex when I have my daughter to think about.

Not to mention how my knee-jerk reaction to Jack’s attention was to shrink into myself and make myself smaller, not bask in it like maybe someone without the history I have would.

I don’t do well with attention, especially male attention, something my therapist and I work heavily on, and Jack’s attention was on nothing but me when he caught me holding in a laugh at him.

The last time I let myself give in to male attention, I ended up finding a man who was exactly like my father, as if I’m solely capable of attracting men who only feel stronger by hurting the women who love them.

Ava must know where my mind goes because her face takes on a look of concern.

She slides out of the chair, sitting down behind Evee, reaching toward me, and putting a hand on my knee.

“Rumi,” she starts, and I know where she’s going to go with this.

I can feel the emotion already clogging my throat.

“Not every guy is going to turn out like—” she pauses, bringing both her hands to cup Evee’s ears, “Trevor,” she mouths.

I can’t help the small smile that forms on my lips at her antics, as if Evee even knows who Trevor is or is old enough to recognize the name of her “sperm donor” as Ava usually calls him.

Evee keeps playing with her bunny as if nothing else exists in the world as Ava adds, “Or, your dad.”

“I know that,” I reply, reaching behind me to grab the basket of stuffed animals, knowing the bunny will only be entertaining to my 11-month-old for a few more minutes but also needing to do something with my hands. “But the last thing I need in my life right now is a man.”

After I got settled into our place and got the hang of the whole newborn thing, I started therapy, and something we often revisit is the night I left Trevor.

I promised myself and my daughter that Trevor would never hurt her, that no one would. And I knew that meant I couldn’t let anyone into her life that I wasn’t 100% sure wouldn’t turn into the monster my father and her father are.

In therapy, I’ve worked on building self-esteem, learned how to set boundaries, and practiced recognizing red flags, but I still don’t trust myself to see past the manipulation and charm that so many abusers hide behind.

“You know as well as I do how—” I pause, hating how quiet my voice gets when I talk about Trevor or my dad.

Aside from my therapist, Ava is the only person I’ve ever told about my past. And she gets it in ways no one ever will after finally leaving a toxic relationship with her emotionally abusive ex with the help of her own therapist. “How normal they seem at the beginning.”

Ava nods her head but doesn’t say anything, her way of urging me to continue, allowing our occasional role reversal of me being the talker and her being the listener.

“I can’t risk bringing someone into her life that will turn out to be just like him.” I look down at my daughter who, just like I predicted, got bored of her bunny and started pulling out every stuffed animal from the basket in my lap.

Trevor knew exactly how to make me emotionally depend on him when we met in college, and it happened so meticulously, so slowly, that I didn’t realize it.

He took little pieces from me—pieces I had just gotten back after leaving the hell of a house I grew up in—until massive parts of me were just gone.

“I know you, Rumi. I know how much you love Evee,” Ava replies, her eyes never leaving mine. “And because I know those things, I know you would never bring anyone into the life you built for you two that would bring her any harm.”

I nod, my eyes stinging with emotion as we both look down at Evee.

Her soft, round face framed by a fine layer of dark brown hair that curls ever so slightly at the ends, and her big, curious eyes—blue, just like mine—gleam with a mix of wonder and mischief as she pulls out a stuffed elephant from the basket.

“I know you are so proud to be her mom,” Ava continues, “but I also know that you deserve to be happy.”

“I am happy.”

“You need a life outside of Evee, me, this coffee shop, and our house.”

“I don’t need to date or have sex to be happy.”

“Well,” Ava starts, letting out a dry chuckle. “I would disagree on one of those two,” she starts, and I toss another stuffed animal at her. It hits her in the chest before it lands in her lap next to the stuffed cat. “Okay, okay. I digress.” She puts her hands up in a surrender.

I shake my head, both hating and loving how easily she can lighten a serious conversation.

“Seriously,” she continues, “to each their own. But come on, Rumi. You need to do more for you . Maybe you could start with making some friends?”

“I have you,” I point out, but my voice doesn’t have the confidence I want it to.

“Which I wouldn’t trade for the world,” she answers quickly before adding, “but there is so much to love about you—and Evee—and I’m not enough. You deserve people to love and who love you.”

I let out a sigh, taking in my best friend’s words.

At the time, I didn’t know how Trevor knew I would be the perfect victim, but I’ve learned from my therapist, Mariah, that abusers know how to exploit vulnerabilities like loneliness, and that’s exactly what Trevor found with me.

It’s not like I had “I’m so lonely” tattooed on my forehead, but there was something about how I carried myself that spoke to how lonely I truly was.

And I trusted him, more and more with each passing day. I didn’t realize he was subtly eroding my sense of worth, my sense of self, and distancing me from the few friends I started to make when I got to college.

It sounds silly, but it was truly as if one day I woke up and realized he was all I had.

And that’s when his mask melted away.

He started by criticizing everything about me: my appearance, the classes I was taking, the degree in creative writing I was pursuing. He knew exactly how to make me feel unworthy and inadequate, and I found myself doing anything I possibly could to make him happy.

As our relationship progressed, we moved in together and that’s when things turned physical.

It started with a push when I dropped the bag with eggs when we were bringing in groceries.

Then a grab around the arm when I wore jeans that were too tight, until it eventually was a slap across the face when I asked him why he smelled like another girl’s perfume.

And it only got worse from there.

“I’m not good at making friends,” I admit, embarrassed by the fact that I can’t name anyone besides Ava that I would consider a friend.

Not Reagan, the other barista. Not Ava’s friends from her women’s fiction book club whom I’ve met a few times when it’s her turn to host. Not even the girls I worked with at the restaurant in Minneapolis.

There’s only Ava.

“Like you said, I’m your friend,” Ava replies. “You made a friend in me, and you can do it again.”

I let out a groan. “Yeah, but do you really even count? We’re friends because my nurse—your younger sister —knew I didn’t have anyone else and apparently thought you’d take in a stray.”

Ava throws a stuffed animal back at me, tossing it over Evee’s head. “Enough of the excuses. You’re coming to Lenny’s with me tonight after the staff meeting.”

“What? No. What about Evee?” The monthly meeting we have at Hey Honey’s is always followed by a drink or two at Lenny’s, but I always politely decline the invite from Ava, Annie, or any of the others who join the meeting.

“She can come with us.”

“I have the opening shift tomorrow.”

“Don’t act like you don’t stay up reading your vampire smut books every night regardless of when the shop opens.”

“You said you wouldn’t call them that anymore!”

“I won’t if you come to Lenny’s. And talk to someone other than me,” she says. Then, before I can rebuttal, she adds, “or, you can join my book club.”

“Hell no. I refuse to read books without a guaranteed ‘happily ever after’.”

“Then it looks like you’re coming tonight.”

I hesitate before finally agreeing, knowing she’ll drag me there by the hair if she has to. Once Ava sets her mind to something, there’s no point in trying to go against it. “Fine.”

Ava lets out a little cheer, making Evee clap her hands even though her Auntie Ava is evil in ways she won’t understand until she’s older.

“I still can’t believe you read those and have never read Twilight .”

I groan. “We’re not having this argument again.”