Page 13 of Into the Mountains (Blue Grove Mountain #3)
CHAPTER TEN
CHARLOTTE
T oday is the day. I need coffee. Lots of coffee.
“So, where are you meeting?”
“At his house.”
Avery’s eyebrows raise repeatedly in a suggestive manner. “His house?”
“Okay, one,” I say, holding up one finger.
“Ethan is going to be there.” We move up in line and I will it to go faster.
Elias wanted to meet ridiculously early to start on plans for the clinic expansion and my coffee maker decided to sabotage my morning and break down at the precise time I was most desperate for caffeine.
I could have gone out to replace it, but that would have meant a detour to another store, then back home, then to Elias’s house.
Too many places so early in the morning.
So, naturally, I begged Avery to come with me to get coffee at Books & Beans .
Plus, she knows what Elias and Ethan like so I can get something for them too.
Not that I want to get Elias coffee for a gesture or anything, but I hate showing up empty handed to someone’s house.
Especially when they just moved in two days ago.
“And two,” I hold up a second finger. “Don’t even go there, okay? Because that’ll never happen. I told you the story.”
“You did, but—”
“No buts.” And thankfully there are none because it’s our turn to order. Avery orders her usual peppermint latte, and adds Elias and Ethan’s order.
Fran looks over at me, “You want your usual, dear?”
“Yes, but can you add another shot?”
Fran’s eyes widen in concern. “Are you sure? Your usual already has quite a bit of espresso in it. Adding another might cause a heart attack,” she jokes.
“Honestly, I’d take a heart attack right about n—ow!” Avery stomps on my foot hard enough to make me stop talking. Once Fran starts our drinks, we move away so the people behind us can order.
“What the fuck, Ave?”
“Charlotte, you’ve got to get out of your hole and learn more about the people in this town,” she whispers fiercely.
“Okay, but what does that have to do with you stomping on my foot? That seriously hurt. I think you broke one of my toes.”
She waves me off. “I did not. You’re just being dramatic. I wanted you to stop talking.”
“Yeah, I got that message, you bitch. You could have maybe just nudged me and said, stop talking.”
“Well, I needed you to shut up quicker.”
“You want to explain why?”
“Because her husband died of a heart attack.”
I swear to god, the number of times I hear died, dead, or death…or heart attack, I’m going to start taking shots. “Fuck.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, she started the joke.”
Avery just shrugs, “Yeah, but saying you wish for a heart attack is a little bit different.”
I hang my head back and let myself stare at the ceiling for a full minute until Fran calls our names for our drinks.
Avery thanks her as she takes the carrier and carefully transports it to the car. Before Fran turns away, I get her attention.
“I’m sorry, Fran.”
She genuinely looks confused. “For before. Joking about wishing for a heart attack. I didn’t know.”
I expect her to look sad or tear up, but instead she just chuckles. “Who would expect you to know, honey? It’s been a long time. Henry wouldn’t want me to still be sad. Hell, he didn’t want me to ever be sad about it.”
“Really?”
Propping her arms on the counter, she promptly ignores the rest of the line and lets her other employees tackle it. “He would always tell me that if he went first, I better not waste a second being sad. That I have too much life to live and love to give other people to be hung up on losing him.”
“Did you listen to him?”
“Oh, hell no.” We both laugh. I like her frankness. “At least, not at first. I allowed myself time to grieve. It’s good for the heart. And when I felt I was ready, I listened to him.”
“Are you happy that you did?”
Quiet, she tilts her head to the side as if contemplating her answer. “Sometimes, I wish I would have given myself more time. But there are days I feel it harder than others and on those days, I just let myself feel it.”
“And the next day?”
“I get back to it like he wanted me to.”
“So, you didn’t listen to him fully?”
“Life is all about balance, sweetheart.”
Coffees in hand, and one smoothie, I balance them with my bags swinging from my shoulders and manage to ring the doorbell.
After a few minutes of not hearing anything from inside I try to ring it again.
Nothing. I know I have the time right. I know because I remember grumbling about it when I couldn’t sleep last night at 3:00 a.m. and I was calculating how many hours I could get if I fell asleep right then.
It was four hours. But I didn’t fall asleep until 4:00 a.m., so I’m only running on three hours of sleep, hence the massive amount of espresso I’m about to consume.
There’s still no movement from inside so I decide to just kick the bottom of the door. The computer bag hanging from my shoulder, coffees in hand, and bags of materials currently digging into my forearm make it more difficult to move my arms. My foot seemed the easier option.
“Dad, Charlotte’s here!” I stifle a laugh at the fact that this kid is up so early on a Saturday morning.
I was always desperate for extra sleep on the weekends and if I couldn’t sleep, cartoons were always there to keep me company.
So I’m surprised again when Ethan answers the door and I am met with a quiet ambience of the house.
Even though they just moved a few days ago, I expected the bigger items to be connected.
Instead the T.V. is off to the side, surrounded by boxes labeled living room in black marker.
“And she brought coffee!” Remembering the kitten, I look down before I walk through the door so I don’t trip over her or accidentally allow her to escape through the door. Ethan notices and plucks Sable from the floor as she meows in protest.
“Thank god,” Elias groans. He’s in the kitchen straight ahead behind the island, a box opened on the counter with a few empty ones discarded on the floor. “I’ve been looking for the coffee maker for the past hour and I can’t find it. It was the last thing to be packed up and somehow it got buried.”
“Well, I forced Avery to come get coffee with me because I got no sleep as usual, and she insisted I get you a coffee. I brought Ethan a smoothie too. I hope that’s okay.”
“How’d you know what I like?” Ethan asks, lacing his voice with extra suspicion.
“Dwarf magic,” I joke.
“That’s not how dwarf magic works,” he says, seriously.
“You’ll have to explain it to me later after your grumpy old dad and I are done working.” His eyes light up at the idea.
“Really?” He sounds almost unsure that I meant it and to my surprise, I did mean it. I may have stayed away from that world for years, but it might be nice to ease my way back into it with a friend. Even if it’s a friend almost a fourth of my age.
“As long as it’s okay with your dad, then yeah. I’d love to.”
Elias walks over, grabbing one of the coffees. It’s mine, but I don’t warn him. Something tells me he isn’t the type of person to get five extra shots of espresso in his lattes and I want to see what happens when he takes a sip.
For research purposes, obviously.
“Honestly, the grumpy dad is okay with that. I have to run to the store later so I can stock the fridge for the week.”
Back it up, I agreed to hang with the kid, not babysit. I’m not good at babysitting. In fact, I’m probably the worst babysitter in existence and I have the horror stories to prove it. “Um, I don’t—”
“I know. You told me one of the stories on our third date before…well, you know. But Ethan is a pretty laid back kid. He just needs someone to hang with him for a bit.”
“Why doesn’t he just go with you?”
“He usually does, but he insisted he get to stay in the new house and make sure Sable was adjusting okay considering she’s been to two new environments in such a short period of time so I promised him I’d get him a babysitter.
” He raises his—my—coffee in a cheers and I have absolutely no regrets. “And now I have.”
He takes a sip and almost chokes on it, before he manages to swallow it down. “What in the actual hell is that?”
He starts digging into his pocket and pulls out a dollar bill. Without even looking away from my coffee, he reaches out his hand to Ethan who is already making his way toward us. He collects the dollar and shoves it into a jar on top of the island.
“That is my triple espresso hazelnut latte with two extra shots of espresso.”
“How has your heart not actually stopped from drinking that much coffee?”
“It’s not like I drink that much every day. But like I said before, I didn’t get much sleep. I need the extra boost. Especially if I have to spend the whole day in your presence.”
He smirks as I set the drink holder along with his coffee inside on the counter and set my stuff down on the floor. My muscles feel immediate relief from the weight of my bags. Sheesh, if that isn’t a sign to stop turning down Avery’s invitations to the gym, I don’t know what is.
I don’t wait for Elias to give me my coffee, instead taking it from his hand and taking a long sip and savoring the taste of the extra caffeine, mixed with the sweetness from the hazelnut.
Ethan bounds over and takes his peanut butter banana smoothie from the counter. “Thanks for the smoothie, Charlie!”
I do my best not to cringe at the nickname and I think I get away with it until I see Elias lift his eyebrows.
“The last time I called you Charlie, you practically bit my head off. In fact, I think if we lived a different life as animals and I was the prey, you wouldn’t have even hesitated to hunt me down and do exactly that.
” He takes a sip of his own coffee this time and lets out a soft mmmm sound. “Much better.”
“He gets a pass. Mostly because he’s not an asshole.”
“That’s $10 to the jar, Charlie!” Ethan’s voice echoes from the stairs as he makes his way up, not bothering to turn around.