Chapter 21
Katrina dragged a lime wedge around the rim of the glass, and then inserted a sprig of mint. “There. That looks pretty enough to have come right off the bar at Cuba Libre. Maybe that’s my new job. I could be a bartender.”
It was the seventh job possibility she’d come up with since arriving at Brooke’s apartment an hour ago. Amazingly, it was the best so far. “Hon, do you want to be a bartender, or do you want to own a bar? I need to know which idea balloon I’m popping.”
“Taste this. A perfect balance of tart and sweet. I’d be a great bartender. And of course I’d own the bar. The whole point is to run a business.”
The quickest way to shut down this flight of fancy was obvious. Brooke pointed at Katrina’s feet. “You wouldn’t be able to wear shoes that fabulous. They’d be ruined in one shift.”
“Oh.” Katrina looked down at her green leaf embroidered Manolo Blahniks with a frown. “I hadn’t factored that in. The perfect business is me owning it and still wearing fabulous shoes. That’s not too much to ask, is it?”
Chloe patted her arm. “Not at all. My ideal job is wearing yoga pants and hoodies every day. Which I do, as a professional letter writer. Summer, on the other hand, cares deeply about clothes, and thus owns a clothing boutique. Wardrobe requirements matter in career planning.”
“I thoroughly approve of your new friends,” Katrina said, lifting her glass in the air.
“Ditto,” Summer said, tossing her dark hair over her shoulders. “Anyone who pairs Manolos with denim shorts and a silk cami for a spa party? Definitely someone fashionable, quirky, and fun enough to hang with our group.”
Brooke beamed. She’d had misgivings about inviting so many people she knew so little about over to her weirdly decorated apartment. But meeting new people was integral to her plan for the next few months. The one where she got a new job doing God knows what and stayed busy enough not to mope, pout, and put on twenty pounds in depression ice cream once Logan jetted off to the latest and greatest disaster site.
Because leave he would.
It didn’t matter that she’d fallen in love with him. It didn’t even matter that she believed he’d fallen in love with her. A man didn’t go to all the trouble to make romantic gestures and spill his heart if he wasn’t already free-falling down the rabbit hole of love. No, Brooke suspected they were pretty equally crazy for each other. Friends turned lovers, turning into best friends. The perfect progression to the future for any other couple.
Just not for them.
Logan hadn’t played games. Hadn’t made false promises. No, he’d said from the start—guaranteed from the start—that he’d always prioritize his rescue missions over everything else. That he would not stay in D.C. long term. The ACSs made the District his touchstone, his anchor. But a ship didn’t sail with its anchor down.
So she’d quit her old job. Had no idea of what new one she wanted to try to land. And had to brace every time she turned on the morning news for the potential of an earthquake or landslide or hurricane that would signal Logan’s imminent departure.
“ ’Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” That was Tennyson’s stance on the subject. Brooke agreed for the time being. She just wasn’t so sure she’d agree two weeks or two months from now, once Logan was gone and her pitiful, flayed heart mourned his loss with every beat.
“Um, why do you want to be a bartender?” Madison’s roommate, Annabeth, carried the full tray of five glasses and a brimming pitcher expertly to the living room, without spilling a drop. Her big silver hoops caught the mid-afternoon sun and reflected it in shimmering spikes of light that glanced off the other women in the room. “Because I wait tables. Occasionally fill in behind the bar. And let me tell you, it isn’t a job I want to keep my whole life. Or even a job I’d keep if I could make the same money doing something else. Well, something else legal.”
Katrina wiped her hands on a dish towel. Tucked it into the wide belt on her sleeveless white tunic like a bartender might, frowned at the effect, and tossed it over her shoulder onto the counter. “I don’t necessarily want to tend bar. It’s more that I have no idea what I do want to do.”
Brooke nodded ruefully. She’d had her whole life planned out—until discovering that no matter how much she enjoyed it, that path no longer worked for her. That while she loved teaching, the responsibility of caring for those teenage lives was simply too overwhelming for her. The now what thoughts that haunted her day and night had to be twice as bad for Katrina, who hadn’t ever started off with a career she enjoyed.
“You really don’t have any idea? No passions or interests?” Chloe curled her shell-pink pedicured feet beneath her on the sofa. She wore a pink tank with a white mini and blended in perfectly with the room’s décor. Which made Brooke giggle a little inside.
Chloe was the most reserved of the strangers Madison had brought along to turn this into a party, but her quiet sweetness sort of hovered in the air around her like perfume. If she’d been on Brooke’s squad, she would’ve been labeled the heart of the group. A hugger. Quick to smile and even quicker to sympathize. Brooke looked forward to getting to know all of them better over the course of the afternoon. Because it was a safe bet she wouldn’t be hanging out nearly as much with her teacher friends anymore.
“No. Not other than to open my own business with the blood money my ex gave me to atone for his lying, cheating ways, and make it a brilliant success.”
Summer bared her teeth in a decidedly evil grin. Probably the same one she wore when thanking a man for buying her champagne and lobster but leaving him at the restaurant door because he was a self-absorbed jerk. And telling him so. “That’s both a very specific plan, and a very general one. I like it.”
“I do, too.” Katrina mirrored the evil grin. Which seemed out of place on her pretty, sweet face, which looked like she should be handing out lollipops at an amusement park. She was dressed in head-to-toe couture, but basically spread innocent joy at each turn. “The problem is that I’ve spent the last few months torturing poor Brooke here with every possible idea under the sun. She claims they all suck.”
“They do. I love you; I think you’re tenacious and smart and more than capable of running a successful business.” Because behind the innocent wideness of her baby blue eyes, for all the cover model perfection of her figure and willfully excessive jewels, Katrina had the calculating mind of a litigator and the nonstop energy of an entrepreneur. It’s what had served her so well in surgically removing her snake of a husband and his sycophantic friends from her life in a series of strategic moves that had her retaining all her assets, her pride, and her reputation. “But it can’t just be a dart that you throw at the idea board. It has to be something you care about. A way, you truly believe, that you can make a difference.”
“You’re idealistic,” Madison said, with an approving nod. “Like my new brother. No wonder you two are so great together.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that. Logan saves lives. My teaching doesn’t compare.”
Summer loaded her plate with a caprese skewer, two slices of bruschetta, and a spring roll. Which tickled Brooke to no end, because she needed friends who enjoyed food as much as she did. “It does. Life skills matter a ton. They make you independent. Confident. Competent, freeing you up to spend time on your work, or hobbies, or friends.”
“Well, thank you.” It seemed…weird…to accept accolades for a part of her life on which she’d just slammed the door. Especially weird because Brooke still felt exactly the same way. It was why she’d always taken such great satisfaction in teaching her classes. To lighten the mood, she joked, “But I can assure you that Logan and I don’t sit around talking about our idealism into the wee, small hours of the night.”
Madison gave an exaggerated wink. “I’ll bet you don’t sit around talking much at all.”
Awkward! At least, partially as awkward as Logan might get discussing their sex life with his sister. Not that he’d had that chance yet. But she’d have to warn him before his excursion with Madison next week that apparently no topics were off the table. Instead of responding, Brooke got up to retrieve the plate of lemon bars from the kitchen.
Chloe trailed her in, and picked up the other plate of powdered sugar–drenched Mexican wedding cookies. “You’re at that yummy start of a relationship, when you just want to climb all over each other twenty hours a day.”
“True—wait, why only twenty?”
“You need time to eat. Regroup and reenergize. And I don’t know about you, but I need time to stay up on my TBR pile of books. A girl can’t live on sex alone.”
“Trying to, however…that’s fun,” Madison said with another wink as she grabbed a cookie when Brooke rejoined them. The smug, knowing grin on her face was eerily similar to an expression Brooke had seen on Logan’s numerous times. Softer, prettier, but the same. Brooke wondered if that similarity would be painful, or a comfort, once Logan left?
Annabeth pointed at Chloe. “Speaking of the start of a relationship, yours is rolling into, what, month three of Griffin going crazy because you won’t wear his engagement ring? When are you going to put that boy out of his misery and propose?”
“I’ve got a plan. A plan that is dependent on the calendar of the U.S. Coast Guard, so it can’t be hurried along. But it’ll be worth the wait. Hopefully you’ll all be there to watch.”
Summer bounced on her seat and clapped her hands. “This sounds fun.”
Brooke, however, was stunned by the casual assumption. “You just met me today.”
“Yes, but you’re with Logan.” Chloe patted Brooke’s arm. “And you’re super nice and you cook like a dream, but mostly, you’re Logan’s, so that means you’re a part of this whole, crazy tight ACS family.”
As much as she didn’t like to think about it, Brooke really didn’t like saying it, but the truth couldn’t be ignored. “Logan will be leaving again. Sooner rather than later, undoubtedly.”
“So what?” Chloe asked with a shrug. “He’ll come back, won’t he? Especially with you to come back home to?”
Thus said the woman so steady and secure in her own relationship that a proposal was in the offing. Not everyone was so lucky. “I don’t know. We don’t talk about the future. Aside from the times he promised that he couldn’t give me one.”
You could’ve ridden a rhinoceros through the gaping silence in the room. Like dominoes falling, each woman’s head slowly turned to look at the woman next to her for some sort of signal as to what to say next.
“It’s fine. Really. I respect Logan for being up-front about it. Establishing low expectations keeps everyone from getting hurt.”
“Is that so? Did it work? Because you two are googly-eyed over each other. Just like Knox and me. And look where that got us.” Madison waggled her ring finger, sporting the easily three-carat canary diamond.
Brooke’s answer came out slowly. It was a big, messy package of Sarah’s suicide, giving up the career she adored, finding Logan and yet knowing she’d have to lose him again, as much as Madison discovering a previously unknown brother and Katrina rebooting her life and her heart from scratch. “Not everything in life goes according to plan.”
The silence came back again. It was almost a physical presence. A dark, sound-sucking phantom of the past few months sitting next to Chloe. For the last time, though.
That quiet, lonely darkness had engulfed Brooke for too many months. It had threatened to pull her under for good. Discovering Logan in Dominica, reconnecting with him—and connecting with him—had pulled her up into the light. Quitting her job, choosing no longer to carry the weight of responsibility of other people’s lives—be it perceived or real—had shown her the door to close on the darkness. And having friends over for the first time since Sarah’s death—aside from Katrina, who was more sister than friend—filling the place with laughter and positivity, gave Brooke the strength to plant her foot on the ass of that dark specter and boot him out the door for good. With a metaphorical slam of said door.
She’d fallen in love. What was more life-affirming, joy-embracing than that?
“I had a hard spring. And summer,” Brooke admitted. “My life derailed. No, worse than that. It stagnated. This is the first party I’ve thrown in longer than I want to admit. I appreciate it. I’m so grateful that you all took that leap of faith and let Madison drag you to the house of a woman she barely knows.”
Chloe smiled at her. “I told you, you’re one of us now. No matter what.”
“And you’re filling us with delicious snacks,” Annabeth pointed out.
“Today is a treat for us.” Summer poked a finger into the strawberry mask, sniffed it, and then dipped into the banana honey mask with a longer, appreciative inhale and closed her eyes. “You’ve made goopily wonderful face masks that will have us looking like we bathed in the blood of virgins.”
“Um, hopefully not.”
“No, that’s a good thing. Countess Elizabeth Báthory did it once a week to maintain her youthful glow.”
Huh. So the trendy boutique owner had a love of gory history. Maybe everyone in this group had hidden depths. “I’m going with the less politically incorrect avocado and salt scrub to create a glow. Remember, I used to do these in class. The school district frowns on sharing bodily fluids with your students.”
Annabeth topped off her mojito. “Why are you pampering us with your home spa savvy?”
“Well, quitting my job—or finally having them accept my resignation—this late in the summer left Roosevelt Prep in a bit of a lurch. I agreed to substitute teach the Family and Consumer Science class. For no more than one month, so I don’t get sucked into staying. I’d mentioned to Madison that I want to test all these”—Brooke waved her hand to encompass the mask mixtures for different skin types, as well as the polishes and foot baths she’d set out—“so I can do the moisturizing masks as a lesson plan for the first week. It’ll combat summer-scorched skin. At the same time, it’ll show them how to make a mask that costs twenty-five dollars at the salon for only two. And that will segue into a class on economics. How you pamper not just your body and spirit, but your bank account. That’s an important lesson for kids to learn, especially those from such a privileged background.”
Summer raised one perfectly arched eyebrow. “You don’t just teach them how to cook and sew?”
It was the same question Brooke fielded at every open house, at every cocktail party. Basically anytime her job came up. “No. Because this isn’t 1954. That’s why we changed the name from Home Ec to Family and Consumer Science. It’s a far larger curriculum. About preparing people for living on their own. More to the point, it prepares them to live without a safety net. That means taking care of yourself financially and physically and emotionally.”
“Now I’m wishing I’d taken your class. It sounds really useful,” Chloe said.
Annabeth snorted. “Heck, forget the high-schoolers. I know people our age who need to learn those life skills. Men and women equally. In this world of daily take-out and delivery everything, so many people don’t have a clue how to do things for themselves.”
Katrina popped up like a cork thumbed out of a Prosecco bottle. “That’s it.”
“That’s what?”
She threw out her arms like a game-show hostess revealing the showcase grand prize. “That’s my new business!”
Laughter burbled out of Summer. “Life Skills 101?”
“The name might need tweaking, but yes, essentially.”
It struck Brooke as just another one of Katrina’s crazy ideas thrown at the wall in an attempt to find something that would stick. Like well-cooked pasta. But her role as best friend demanded that she tease a few more details out, considering Katrina’s level of excitement. “I don’t get it.”
“Lots of adults never took Home Ec. They never learned the basics. Do you remember when David took the maid and the cook when he split? I had to call you to come over and help me with the wet laundry. I had no idea how long to cook it in the dryer.”
“Seriously?” Annabeth shot her a look that was half pity, half contempt. “A dryer’s not complicated.”
“Not to you, maybe. But I had visions running through my head of Michael Kors blouses dried out and shrunken to the size of doll clothes. And where do all the missing socks go? Is there a compartment in the dryer, like the filter in a swimming pool, that you need to clean out once a month to find them all?”
Madison pursed her nude-glossed lips. “No, but that’d sure explain a lot.”
Brooke set her glass on the coffee table and moved to the center of the room. “I know I’ve shot down all your other ideas, Katrina.”
“Yes. All fifty-three. I kept track so we could put the final number on a cake to celebrate the day my business does open.”
Only fifty-three? It felt like twice that number. “Anyway, I shot down the others because either they wouldn’t work, or they were too expensive. Or occasionally just dumb. But this…this is brilliant. This is gold-plated genius-level brainstorming.”
Annabeth’s hand shot up. “I still respectfully disagree. Are there really more than five people in D.C. who don’t know how to use a dryer?”
“Oh, yes. I could name twice that many before my next blink. Not just people going through divorces, either. Widowers. Business travelers who finally plant themselves and have no idea how to live without room service. Millennials who never learned how to do anything for themselves. But it isn’t just how to operate a washer/dryer. You could have a slew of different instructors. Someone to teach first aid, and self-defense, and a sex expert, a cook, and—ooh, Chloe, we could bring you in to teach them how to write a letter.”
“I’d be happy to pitch in.”
“This is exciting.” Katrina bounced twice more, then whirled to face Brooke. “Why aren’t you excited?”
The idea took root. It tangled itself deep into Brooke’s neurons and set them all to firing. “I’m so excited that I’m holding back while I try to be shrewd and work through all the possible reasons it won’t fly as a business. I can’t come up with any. I think you’ve done it, Katrina. You’ve found the business you should fund with all your revenge money. It’ll be a karmically wonderful use of it.”
“You don’t understand. It isn’t my business. It’d be our business.”
Funny how often people with scads of money forgot that the rest of the world…well, didn’t have it. “It sounds blissful. It sounds right up my alley. But I can’t possibly come up with even a quarter of the funds needed for a start-up like this.”
“Of course you can’t. Partnerships aren’t always about money. In this one, I’d bring the cash flow and marketing. You’d bring the experience.”
The denial came out in a rush. “I don’t have any experience teaching adults.” Because what Katrina offered was so big, so overwhelming. So much of an opportunity. Brooke didn’t want her ever to regret it, ever to question it for a moment. And she knew her friend well enough to know that this business was like freshly poured concrete. It was becoming more substantial with every passing second. Once set, there’d be no turning back.
“Are you kidding? Don’t get all modest. Who better to teach all these things than you? Getting away from teaching the pieces of Home Ec wasn’t why you quit. You just didn’t want to carry the responsibility of teen lives. To be crushed again. To carry blame that other, judgmental douche bags foist on you for zero appropriate reason.”
Katrina had always had her back. She had been the one to pick Brooke up from the hospital morgue, where she’d stayed with Sarah’s body until the girl’s parents had arrived. And the first thing Katrina had said in that cold room was You couldn’t have saved her. Which she’d then repeated every day. There had been times when Brooke had wondered if Katrina’s seemingly flighty and endless search for a business to run had started as an attempt just to lift Brooke’s spirits with silliness. Who knew it would end here, with the genesis of an idea that could change both of their lives for the better?
“I do love helping people learn things that will make their lives better. Easier.”
“If we teach adults, you get all the fun of doing that without any of the stress. These are people who already have their own lives. Who know where to go for advice, or for a shoulder to cry on. All you’d have to do is teach.”
“Oh!” Summer jumped up, too, in a swirl of pastel-striped skirts. “You could cater to high-end clientele and bigger groups. Brooke could go to client homes for one-on-ones to teach them laundry and cooking. That would prevent any potential embarrassment at being thirty or forty and not wanting to admit to a group that you don’t know at what point to spray the starch.”
Chloe took the idea baton and ran with it. “And then you could hold big classes in first aid and self-defense at your office. You could bring in a karate instructor on Tuesday nights.”
“It has a ton of potential.”
It did. It really did. Potential to help people. Potential to give Katrina a passion worth pouring her time and money into. Potential for Brooke to still make a difference in enriching lives.
She couldn’t wait to go tell Logan.