Because Viv had been absent so much, Audrey had hired two part-time employees, both of whom were amazing. Manny was a retired sumo wrestler who was the barista equivalent of a master sommelier. He loved finding new blends of coffee beans to combine and create rich, unique, and flavorful concoctions.
And then there was Carly. Carly had over eight piercings on her face alone, including her lip, eyebrows, nose, and dimples. Her hair was always a colorful expression of whatever mood she was in. One day it might be pink, the next jet black, the next gray. She’d shaved it off completely once and had rocked a mohawk for a few months. She was a hard worker and brought a vibrancy to the coffee shop.
“This event is going to start on the seventh of February and go right through the week, culminating with the Valentine’s Day Festival down at the Riverside Recreation Area. I can see from your faces that everyone is excited about this plan. I can’t take credit for it. This is the brainchild of Miss Vivien Wells and Nonna Bianchi. They will both be spearheading this project so all questions and or concerns should be directed toward them.”
Audrey whipped her head, turning to look at her sister who was staring up at Sue Ann with a grin on her face. Viv had not said anything about this. Apparently, trips weren’t the only things she was keeping close to her vest.
* * *
Josh Bianchi turnedhis head when Sue Ann announced Nonna’s name.
“Nonna?” He spoke in a hushed tone. “Why would you—”
His grandmother kept her head facing forward but she cut her eyes toward him and gave him The Look: capital T, capital L. It was the look that he’d been getting since he was three years old. Maybe even before then, but the first memory he had of The Look was when he’d scooted Nonna’s kitchen chair over to the counter to try and get a cookie from the ceramic frog shaped cookie jar she kept beside the bread box. Nonna walked into the kitchen and literally caught him with his hand in the cookie jar. She hadn’t said a word. She didn’t need to. One look and even at the tender age of three, he’d removed his hand, stepped down from the chair and pushed it back into place.
Thirty-three years later The Look had not lost any of its potency. Josh returned his attention to Sue Ann Perkins.
Sue Ann moved on to other topics while his mind was like a needle skipping on a record. It was stuck on trying to puzzle out why in the hell Nonna had volunteered for a project of this magnitude. She was ninety-two years old, lived on her own and still came in every day to work.
When was she going to slow down?
For the past five years or so, he’d been trying to convince her of two things. One, to stop coming into the auto shop he owned and operated every day and just enjoy her life. And two, to move into Golden Years Senior Living. She adamantly refused both. Her response to cutting back her hours at the shop was always, “When you stop, you die.” And when he brought up the senior citizens home, she said, “People move out of there in a body bag, you want me in a body bag?”
Nonna knew exactly what to say to shut him up. But that didn’t mean he stopped worrying about her. She lived in a two-bedroom cottage alone. It was only a block from the auto shop, but he still lived in constant fear that something would happen and he wouldn’t know about it. He’d even bought her a lifeline alert, but he found it in the trash less than a week after he’d gifted it to her.
To say that Nonna was stubborn, was like saying that Mt. Everest was a little hill. No one and nothing stopped that woman from doing exactly what she wanted to do. So as much as he’d like to think Viv was the driving force on this project of theirs, he knew better. He wouldn’t be surprised if Nonna was the one who’d convinced Viv to do it.
He still didn’t quite understand the duo’s friendship, but there was no denying it existed. From what he had observed the two had bonded over their mutual love of hair, Taylor Swift, getting their nails done, reality television shows and the fact that neither of them had a filter. They both said exactly what they were thinking when they were thinking it, consequences be damned. Nonna always said that Viv reminded her of herself as a young woman, which was both terrifying and somewhat amusing.
He did appreciate that Viv cared about his grandmother and spent time with her. He wasn’t exactly thrilled that the duo frequented JT’s for drinks on Friday and Saturday nights, or that they’d gone to a male review show in Lake Tahoe, or that the two of them had gotten matching heart tattoos during Spring Break last year. But hey, if that’s what floated his ninety-two-year-old grandmother’s boat, who was he to judge?
Viv wasn’t the only Wells sister that had taken a special interest in Nonna. No one was as sweet and generous to his grandmother as Audrey Wells. She was a lot quieter and behind the scenes about her affection where Viv was in your face and flashy, but that spoke more to who they were as people than anything else.
Audrey always remembered when Nonna’s doctors’ appointments were and she made sure to have drinks and treats ready for them before they made the ninety-mile one-way trip to see her heart specialist in San Francisco. When Nonna had hip surgery six years ago, Audrey had brought her puzzles, magazines, and other things to keep her occupied while she was recovering. She’d even put together a dinner train, so Nonna would have homemade meals since she couldn’t cook.
Audrey had even learned how to make samsades and sfogliatellawhich are Greek and Italian pastries that Nonna’s parents used to make for her. She did that just so Nonna would feel taken care of like when she was a child.
Josh’s great-grandfather was of Italian descent and his great-grandmother was Greek. Nonna had inherited all the passion and fire from both her parents’ lineage. Even at ninety-two the woman was a force to be reckoned with.
She had grown up in Italy but spent her summers in Greece. She and Josh’s grandfather had been married when she was barely twenty, and they’d emigrated to the States when Nonna was in her early thirties. When she moved here, she was pregnant with Josh’s father and neither she nor Josh’s grandfather, who sadly passed away before Josh was born, knew how to speak English. Josh had always been so impressed that they’d moved to a country where they didn’t know anyone and learned a completely new language in their thirties. He couldn’t imagine doing the same thing in his.
As the meeting came to a close Sue Ann opened the floor for questions and Mr. Reed, who owned the local bookstore Read Between the Lines in downtown Hope Falls, lifted his hand. “For this singles week thing, I’d like to do a reading event at the bookstore. Maybe get an author who has written a book on dating to come for a signing.”
“That sounds great!” Sue Ann smiled before calling on Mr. Brooks who owned Two Scoops ice cream parlor.
He asked, “Is there going to be a group promotion for downtown vendors?”
“I think we should do some sort of discount system that increases with each place you visit. Maybe some sort of punch card or something,” Jim Grady who owned the bowling alley suggested.
Sue Ann held up her hands. “Like I said, you’ll have to speak to Nonna and Viv about all of that. This is their baby.”
Everyone seemed excited about Nonna and Viv’s “baby” but Josh was still in shock that his grandmother hadn’t mentioned a word to him about it. She told him what she planned on cooking for dinner next Tuesday and what color she was going to change her nails to before she went and got them done. If she was going to change laundry detergents. And how many times she got up in the night to use the restroom. But this she hadn’t said a word about. It made zero sense.
He looked over at Audrey, and as if she sensed him looking, she turned in her seat and looked right at him. When their eyes met, hers widened as if to say, can you believe this?
He knew exactly what her expression meant. They didn’t need words to communicate. The corners of his mouth tilted up in a private smile as he shook his head.
Over the past eight years he and Audrey had grown…close. It was strange but their relationship was simultaneously not close enough and too close. He loved Audrey. She was the most important person in his life besides Nonna. And he would do anything for her, including keeping the feelings he had for her to himself.