One of the selling points of the cafe, when I’d pitched the idea to my parents, was to cut down on waste. Before the cafe, my mom would prepare three meals a day. The meals were normally served buffet style and at set times which meant that guests often missed or skipped meals and left us with a lot of leftovers. Those leftovers couldn’t be served to guests a second time, so we either ate the food or it was tossed. Now, most items were made to order or prepared and stored so they could be available over multiple days.
My mom opened the cafe at six in the morning and I took over at three in the afternoon. We closed the doors at nine on weekdays and eleven Friday through Sunday. During the slow times and after I closed up, I prepped everything for the next day – this included baking bread and pastries, dicing up vegetables, and basically doing anything that could be done ahead of time. It made it easy for Mom to serve breakfast and lunch with very little cooking typically.
The cafe was my life. I woke up and helped out with guests inside the B&B and then took over for my mom at the cafe. My dad manned the desk and took care of repairs and such. We also had Maria who cleaned the rooms and did the laundry. She worked part-time around her kid’s schedules. We also had Thad who manned the bar and acted as the inside waiter. Aisley B&B was a family affair and had been my home my entire life. Unfortunately, it didn’t allow for much else.
Letting out a sigh, I finished wiping off a table as I watched the last customer walk through the door. Love-hate. I couldn’t imagine myself anywhere else… Yet, I’d had dreams when I was in high school…
Shaking my head, I walked to the door and flipped the sign that hung on the door to ‘CLOSED’ and flipped the lock.
Turning to head to the table the customer had just vacated, I wiped it down and flipped the chairs upside down to sit on top. Thad would be sweeping and mopping after he restocked the bar.
Which meant it was time to prep.
Arriving in Cape Luella towards the end of the day, I looked around to see if anything had changed since I’d last visited – I knew what it really was, a diversion tactic to put off arriving at my parents’ vacation home. When I went off to college, it had been easy to push off my mother’s insistence that I join them at the summer house. It helped that I took classes even during the summer quarter as I finished a bachelor’s and master’s degree in half the time it normally would have taken.
Mother had lost interest in my life until my sister’s wedding. Now all of a sudden, she’s insistent that I get married. Letting out a sigh, I turned down the street which would lead me to the drive to the house. Not much had really changed in the seaside town. Cape Luella was one of those places that had been missed when tourist companies had bought up beach adjacent properties to drop hotels and other tourist attractions on. Everything in Cape Luella ran at its own pace.
Unconsciously, I pulled into a parking spot and looked up at the Aisley B&B. How many times had I sat outside of this building? I’d never been one to hang out with friends but when my mother drove me crazy enough, even I ditched my computers and went to the beach.
The first time I could remember seeing Naiva was when I was thirteen. She was a bit younger than myself – I think – I mean, I’d never actually had a conversation with the girl. From that first moment, something about her drew me. Going outside and down to the beach became something I did without being hounded by my mother to do something fun. Walking along the beach and searching – well pretending to search – for seashells became my summer past-time.
To this day, I’d never spoken to her. She’d become a dream, a fantasy of what I wanted. A hazy memory that no other woman had ever been able to tempt me to abandon. Instead of dating and finding someone to settle down with, I’d simply buried myself in first my studies and then building my business.
However, now I sat in my car outside of her home – at least I hoped she still lived at the B&B. The sign still bore the name ‘Aisley Bed & Breakfast’ so it was likely that her parents still owned the place.
A bang and soft curse drew my gaze to the side of the building. A small figure wearing a dark green polo over, khaki clam diggers, and a pair of navy canvas shoes walked into a circle of light created by a street light at the edge of the property. Straight light-brown hair was pulled back and held with a clip. A few strands had escaped and she brushed them away from her face as she glared down the street from where I was parked. Her shoulders slumped and she turned to head back the way she’d come.
Naiva Aisley had grown up and she was breathtaking. Curvy in all of the right ways… my jeans became tight and I groaned as I slammed my head back against the headrest of my car. Naiva was the only thing I’d ever wanted that I didn’t know how to get. Give me a screen full of computer code and I could decipher it and tell you exactly how to improve it but tell me to talk to my first crush – my only crush – and I broke out
