Waterfront Café Read online

  Waterfront

  Café

  by

  Mia Malone

  Copyright © 2019 by Mia Malone

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  SHARING OR DOWNLOADING AN EBOOK WITHOUT PERMISSION IS EQUAL TO STEALING. SO PLEASE DON’T.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Books by Mia

  The Brothers series

  Gibson

  Padraig

  Joke

  Day

  Mac (released 2019)

  Waterfront series

  Waterfront Café

  Dear reader –

  This book is a bit different from the Brothers series, but if you write the same thing over and over, then doesn’t it just become... the same?

  So yeah, no one is particularly kinky in this one, there are no drug lords, and no one gets shot :)

  I hope you enjoy Brody and Marie’s story anyway, and if you do, then adding a review somewhere and telling your friends about the book is a huge help!

  I rely on the reader community to spread the word about my books as they see fit.

  The marketing budget I have is exactly zero, so ads from me won’t fill your social media flow or appear elsewhere.

  My thanks for any support will be to roll out my books at pre-order price 0.99$ (it will become 2.99$ on release day), and if I get an encouraging number of reviews and pre-orders, I will try my best move up the release dates to get the books out there sooner rather than never.

  Thank you for your support!

  XOXO/ Mia

  Chapter One

  I’m going to be a hippie

  Marie

  Since it seemed entirely inappropriate to look at small, pink houses far away from Minnesota when I was supposed to be working, I switched to stare at the spreadsheet one of my colleagues had sent me.

  The numbers were sorted in size.

  Large at the top and marked in red at the bottom where they had that pesky minus sign in front of them, indicating that the accounts weren’t doing too great.

  I didn’t care.

  When this realization hit me in full force, I decided that this was it. I’d planned what to do for some time, but that time was up. I’d just do it.

  Inhaling deeply, I changed to another program, clicked the small symbol that didn’t look like any machine known to mankind, and snagged a printout on my way to my boss’ office.

  “Brent,” I said quietly. “I quit.”

  Then I put my letter of resignation on his desk and pushed it toward him.

  “What the hell?” he muttered. “You got headhunted? Where are you going?”

  “No other job,” I said.

  “What the hell?” he repeated. “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to be a hippie. In Maine.”

  The look on his face should have told me what would come, but I felt nothing but an overwhelming sense of relief.

  This was it.

  My chance to... I didn’t know what, precisely. Laugh? Breathe? Live?

  And I would do all of that, goddamn it.

  My boss thought I was insane.

  “You're the best Account Manager I've ever had, Marie. You of all people should know that making a living as a freelance artist is not easy. Have you ever done anything like it?”

  I glanced at the framed originals for the company Christmas cards from the past ten years which decorated the wall in his office, wondered if he had even glanced at the signatures, and sighed.

  “Yes, Brent. I have.”

  “I wish you would reconsider.”

  I nodded and smiled and held my ground.

  My sister thought I had lost my mind too.

  “What!? Moving where? Why on earth would you want to move across the country to live with people you don’t know in a small town where they don’t even have a golf course?”

  I smiled and shared that since I didn't actually play golf, this would be less of an issue than one would think. Linda went on to talk about parties at the country club, which I detested, our circle of friends, which was mostly her circle and full of people whom I didn’t exactly detest but couldn’t say that I liked much either, and how would she manage without me? I smiled some more and held my ground with her too.

  And then my children arrived to spend the weekend with me.

  I hadn't seen them since Thanksgiving and had looked forward to having them with me. It would be exciting to share my plans, and since they had both moved away in the past couple of years, we'd have plenty to talk about.

  So, waving at my colleagues who still watched me with badly concealed bewilderment, I rushed home from work early to make sure I had time to cook something my son and daughter liked, and then they were there, barging through the door, throwing their jackets on the back of the couch.

  I got a quick hug from my daughter and a pat on the shoulder from Joey.

  “It’s so good to be back,” Amelia squealed. “Is dinner ready?”

  “Half an hour,” I said, and smiled.

  “Perfect,” she said. “I told Mellie and Andrea we'd meet up at eight, so I’ll go and get ready. I’ll have to leave right after we've eaten.”

  I should have asked her to come back and sit down, but I didn't and told myself she deserved to have a nice time with her girlfriends. Joey disappeared after dinner too, murmuring something about not seeing his friends in a while, and then they were both busy so the whole weekend disappeared in a whirlwind of activities.

  The three of us didn't spend any real time together until Sunday afternoon, but I smiled as they sat on the couch in front of me, sipping coffee and glancing at their watches.

  Inside I was furious.

  They were both attending colleges out of state, Joey since a year and a half, and Amelia since last summer, and I got that it was exciting. I remembered how happy I'd been to be on my own. I had loved my parents but living my own life had been like a dream.

  So, as the months rolled by and my children called and told me they were so very sorry, but they couldn't come home for the weekend as planned, I'd smiled and told them it was okay and asked if they perhaps could come for a visit another time.

  They had been home for Thanksgiving, and I’d barely seen Amelia. She’d been busy spending time with her group of high school girlfriends, and I’d smiled and said that it was okay also then. Joey had brought his girlfriend, and they had mostly stayed at home, on account of his girlfriend not liking Joey’s friends.

  I got the impression that Marlena didn't like much, and oh my God, I hated to admit it to myself, but she was so unbelievably dull. I discovered this pretty much immediately because she threw herself into a longwinded lecture about sixteenth-century literature which she apparently was interested in.

  Sixteenth ding-darned century literature. From friggin’ England.

  Hoping to God that Shakespeare was from the sixteenth century, I tried to make a joke about Hamlet's dysfunctional family. Marlena didn't even try to smile politely. She just stared impassively at me and threw herself into an elaborate lecture about the importance of Shakespeare's work in the development of internal drama. Or international drama. Intentional drama? Or something. I told her I knew very little about that topic, and she glanced at a book on my coffee table which had a man in a kilt and not much else on the cover. Then she
sneered.

  Sneered.

  In my face.

  Things went downhill from there, and I smiled a smile that was so fake it hurt my face while she shared in great detail how she was a vegetarian, played the flute and helped the elderly in her spare time. It seemed that some elderly people were more deserving than others, and it was those she helped. Since I probably wouldn’t come up to her standards for deserving anything, I fake-smiled some more and murmured that I needed to check on dinner.

  Joey had conveniently forgotten to share her food preferences, so the Thanksgiving meal I'd prepared was in no way appreciated, but I brushed off the bacon bits from the green beans which I would have told her if she asked, but she didn't. Instead, she shared quite haughtily that I made surprisingly good beans.

  Surprisingly? Did I look like a bean-nemesis or something?

  I smiled again and offered to share the recipe, which got me an explanation about how she preferred the one she already had.

  I felt a vague sense of relief when they went back to their respective colleges and tried to be positive. Amelia would spend more time at home with me over Christmas, and there was no way Joey would keep seeing that humorless creature.

  Then Joey called and said that he would go with Marlena to visit her parents over the holidays since they’d been with me for Thanksgiving, but I’d have a great time with Amelia.

  While I was still reeling from the news, Amelia called and shared that she’d been invited by a friend to their property in the Caribbean, they’d be there for two weeks, and she’d visit after the holidays instead. And that I’d have a great Christmas with Joey.

  I spent Christmas Day with my sister and her family, and when she mentioned for the fifth time how rewarding it was to have one's family gathered for the biggest holiday of the year, I murmured my thanks and went home.

  “Mom?”

  Joey's impatient voice jerked me out of my thoughts, and I focused on what I was about to share.

  “Yes?” I stalled, suddenly nervous.

  They’d be happy for me, but it was also a change. Not for them since they spend few weekends in their home town, but for me.

  “I want to beat the traffic, so if you had something...”

  “Of course,” I said, with another smile.

  Then I told them.

  “Mom!?” Amelia croaked, and there was a long silence. “You're selling the house?”

  “Yes.”

  I was indeed selling the house their father and I had bought twenty-five years earlier, and I had an offer to consider already. The real estate agent had told me that I could get a better one, but I wasn't sure if I wanted to wait for it. I would still make a very nice profit, something I wasn't planning to share with my kids because well, it frankly wasn't their business.

  “But what about me?” Amelia whined.

  What about her?

  “You will both have time to come here and pack up the things you want to bring to your places. I'll rent storage where you can put some things too if you want to,” I said, thinking that Amelia worried about great-aunt Bea's ugly china or some such thing.

  “Pick up my things?”

  Since I had already confirmed pretty clearly that I was indeed selling the home she'd grown up in, I'd stupidly assumed she understood that the new owners wouldn't be interested in the clothes and other things she'd left behind.

  “Yes,” I confirmed again.

  “But what will I do when I want to see my friends?”

  “You could stay with them?” I suggested, which I thought was reasonable.

  “But they’ll be staying with their parents!” she shrieked.

  “Whom you know,” I said placatingly. “I also know them, so I’ll talk to them. They won’t mind putting an extra bed in for you, or a mattress.”

  “I am not sleeping on a goddamned mattress on the floor.”

  “Okay,” I said. “You could book a room at one of the hotels?”

  She glared at me.

  “You’re leaving?” Joey asked, which I’d said I would, so I nodded mutely. “What about your grandkids?”

  I blinked slowly and stared at him.

  “Which grandkids?” I asked, which I thought was another reasonable question since I didn't actually have any grandkids that I knew about and hadn't expected to get any in the next ten or so years.

  “Well, my kids, when I have them. I want my children to get to know the town their father grew up in,” Joey muttered. “Learn about who I am, and all that. It won't be the same if we're staying in a hotel.”

  I swallowed and tried to ignore the fact that he hadn’t said anything about them getting to know me.

  “Okay,” I said, which was stupid, but I didn't know what else to say. “You could stay with your aunt,” I added, knowing that they didn't like my sister much and that this wasn't an option they'd go for.

  Joey suddenly narrowed his eyes, and his brows went up. He looked a little as if he needed glasses, but I decided it wasn't a good time to tell him that.

  “You’ll get a good price for the house,” he murmured.

  I looked mutely at him.

  “I'm asking Marlena to marry me,” Joey went on, and I had to clamp my jaws together so hard my teeth hurt.

  “What?” Amelia squealed. “That is so cute! Can I be a bridesmaid?”

  “Joey...” I said quietly.

  He was too young. They’d been together for six months. What the hell was the boy thinking?

  “I’m going to need help buying the ring she deserves, and the wedding will probably –”

  “If you can’t afford the ring you want to buy then you should perhaps wait?” I suggested.

  From there our discussion escalated into an argument where they accused me of being unhelpful, cheap, mean, selfish and a whole host of other things. I tried to stay calm and mostly succeeded.

  “This is not what Dad would have wanted you to do,” Amelia snapped.

  I stared at my daughter and wondered if she had lost her mind.

  “Your father and I were divorced,” I said.

  “No, you weren’t.”

  Okay, yes. She was technically right about that. Pete had died four days before our divorce was final, which put me in the weird position of being a widow and not a divorcee as I had expected. There was also the unfortunate way Pete had passed away to consider. I hadn't shared his idiocy widely, but both Amelia and Joey knew parts of it, so bringing him up as some kind of expert of what one should and shouldn't do was ridiculous.

  “If he'd died a week later Amelia and I would have gotten the money from his life insurance,” Joey said. “You should consider that.”

  “He's right,” Amelia agreed sourly. “You should.”

  I had put the money from their father’s life insurance into their college funds, which were locked so they couldn’t use the money for anything other than an education until they were twenty-five. Pete and I had agreed a long time ago that this was the right way to do it because we’d both been twenty and knew what easily could happen to a savings account at that age. Whatever remained when they had gotten a degree in anything of their choice or reached the desired age was theirs to spend as they pleased.

  And they both knew that this is where their father's life insurance had gone.

  “You should probably leave,” I said hoarsely, and added sarcastically, “If you want to beat the traffic, I mean.”

  It took less than fifteen minutes. Then they were gone, and I sat in my kitchen, watching the photos on the wall. We’d had so much fun.

  I loved them.

  But right then, I didn’t like them very much.

  I didn’t like myself very much either.

  Was I selfish? Should I stay, and spend the rest of my life dating people like boring-Ted or sleazy-Mark from the country club? Watch TV in the evenings and take up knitting? Hoping my kids would show up for a weekend every now and then?

&n
bsp; Hell no, I decided. I would not cave in.

  I'd held them when they cried and put Band-Aids on bleeding knees and elbows. I'd cooked for them, and cleaned their rooms, and washed their clothes. Helped them with homework. I had been a goddamned taxi-service for years. Their educations were paid for in full, and they'd have money after that to help with a down payment on a home, or whatever they wanted to do with it. I loved them, but I was fifty-two years old, and I'd done my job.

  This was my goddamned time.

  They’d come around.

  Then I picked up the phone and called the real estate agent.

  Brody

  “Two today’s specials and a lobster roll,” Brody Baker said and placed the plates in front of the elderly couple and their granddaughter. “Enjoy.”

  “Oh, we will,” the woman said. “You make such nice food, Brody.”

  “Thank you,” Brody said and went back behind the counter in his small establishment by the waterfront in the town where he'd grown up.

  Bakersville.

  He wondered for the millionth time since he moved back what the hell he was doing. Why was he shlepping plates full of boring food to locals who didn’t feel like making lunch when he’d spent his career as a chef in the finest restaurants in the country?

  Because you were going down, a small voice in his head whispered. Everything was a blur, and nothing was fun, and the world around you had turned into a gray fog. You couldn't sleep, and you had no life. You looked old, and you had the beginning of a fucking pot-belly. And then –

  He stopped his brain from hurling more memories at him and focused on ladling up lobster bisque, which was called lobster soup on a menu he hadn’t had the energy to update in the six months since he took over the restaurant from his uncle Jools.

  “Broody,” a voice crooned, and he felt his mouth twitch.

  “Mom,” he murmured. “What can I get you?”

  “If I had time I would have soup,” she declared and leaned on the counter.

  Brody glanced at her and knew that right there in front of him stood one of the reasons he was handing out plates to people sitting on ugly plastic chairs.