Page 58 of September

“Any hot dates up there in northern Louisiana?”

“In a town I’ve never heard of? No, not likely. I’ll be in the stores and then in my hotel room, eating whatever fast food they have up there and probably staining more shirts.”

“Do you want to talk while you’re there?”

“I figured we would because of–”

“Carly. Yeah, I know. I meant just talk, though. I’ll obviously keep you updated on her because that’s my job, but I was hoping we could talk aboutnotCarly, too.”

“We don’t always talk about her.”

“I know. But I liked getting to know you more last night at Myra’s. I was hoping we could do more talking like that.”

Juliet smiled at her, gave Gwen a slow nod, and replied, “I’d like that.”

“FaceTime? You know, so that you can see Carly, too, and not at all because you might be in a see-through shirt with no bra on.”

Juliet laughed and said, “Odds are, if the food is messy, I’ll make a mess.”

“That’s kind of cute,” Gwen said with a smile.

“It is? My klutziness is cute?”

Gwen nodded and replied, “Definitely.”

Juliet sighed and said, “I want to stay and keep talking now, but I have to go.”

Gwen took a quick sip of her coffee and went to stand.

“You can stay. Finish your coffee. You’ve got a key.”

“No, I’ll walk you out. You can say goodbye to Carly at the car, like last time. Then, I’ll walk her and take her with me.”

“Did you drive? I’ll get the food and stuff ready.”

“Yeah, my car’s out front, parked next to yours, actually,” Gwen said.

“Okay. Well, let’s go, then. Come on, Carly.”

Carly jumped off the sofa at the sound of her name, and they walked to the kitchen, where Juliet packed a bag and handed it to Gwen. Then, Gwen watched Juliet say goodbye to her dog for the second time in as many weeks and drive off, leaving them both standing there, wishing she hadn’t left at all.

“Your mom is really pretty,” Gwen said to Carly. “And really… just, like, everything else, too, you know?”

Carly looked up at her but didn’t seem to grasp what Gwen was saying.

“Okay. Let’s walk first, and then we’ll head home.”

She walked Carly around the block to let her go to the bathroom and drove her home, where she put Carly’s stuff away and prepared to leave again to get her morning walkers. Her phone buzzed in her pocket just as she got to her door after putting Carly back on her leash. She pulled her phone out and smiled.

Juliet Francis: I’ll be done by five. Want to talk at six? I’ll have food. You can have food as well, and we can FaceTime while we eat dinner together.

Gwen Benedetti: That sounds good to me.

CHAPTER 17

After two long days, the long drive back would’ve normally taken its toll on Juliet, but instead, she was surprisingly chipper. Well, it wasn’tmuchof a surprise. She was chipper because she had talked to Gwen every day for at least a few hours. They’d chatted the night she arrived over FaceTime, and Juliet hadn’t gotten to sleep until well after one in the morning. She hadn’t laughed that much in a very long time, though. They had talked again on her second night, but this time, the call was a little shorter since she needed to get some real sleep before her drive home. They’d said goodnight to one another both nights, and Juliet had liked having someone to say goodnight to again. She’d also been sad immediately after hanging up because she hadn’t been falling asleep next to Gwen, or anyone else, for that matter. She hadn’t even had Carly to sleep next to her. She’d been alone and on a work trip.

The retraining had gone well. The staff had been having issues with waste, tossing out espresso drinks because they’d make them wrong, and customers would return them or ask for the drink to be made correctly. Juliet had discovered one employee who wasn’t the best listener in the world, one who wasn’t great at the register and wasn’t charging properly for extra syrups and extra shots of espresso, and another who was always coming up short on their cash register. The policy wasclear, though: three short drawers in a month meant a write-up, and another one after that the following month meant termination, so she’d talked to the manager about letting go of that roaster. Training wasn’t always teaching people how to make drinks and serve sandwiches with a smile. It was part detective work, too, and then problem solving once she had diagnosed the issue or multiple issues. She liked that part of the job enough, but it was often exhausting.