Josh wasn’t blind and he wasn’t an idiot. He knew that Audrey had a crush on him. And as much as he’d love to do something about that, he couldn’t. Not only because he was scared to risk their friendship, but also because she deserved better than him. She deserved someone who didn’t have the demons he had. She deserved someone who could give her the world. A man who could give her a family, like Matt and Amy had.
He wasn’t that man.
And more than anything, he wanted Audrey to be happy. Even if it killed him to see her with someone else. Which he thought there was a pretty good chance it would.
For the past eight years, he’d waited for that shoe to drop. But as far as he’d known, she hadn’t dated anyone since she’d lived in Hope Falls. She’d told him about a boyfriend she’d had in high school named Chris, but other than that, she didn’t really talk about guys with him.
This damn singles week was probably going to mean an influx of men. Men who would be an idiot not to see how amazing Audrey was. He knew that she wasn’t going to stay single forever, but he was going to cherish the time he had with her until she did find her prince charming.
After making sure Nonna was up and running again, he walked back into the kitchen.
“Okay, you should be all good to watch your shows.”
Nonna had become obsessed with reality television over the past few years. Her favorites were The Bachelor, the Housewives franchise, and the Kardashians. He had no clue what she found entertaining about the reality shows, but she loved them. She always had them on at the shop and thanks to streaming services she had them playing on a constant loop at her house.
It reminded him of when he was growing up and she watched soap operas: Days of our Lives, General Hospital, The Young and the Restless’ and The Bold and the Beautiful. All of them. She used to record the episodes on VHS tapes so she could re-watch them later. He guessed the reality shows were just updated soap operas.
“Sit. Sit.” She waved her hand towel at him. “I feed you.”
Josh’s back was killing him and since Nonna refused to let him upgrade her dining set, the wooden chairs absolutely wrecked his back. She didn’t know that, of course. If she did, she’d probably let him buy her a new dining set.
Knowing that he couldn’t refuse his grandmother’s cooking, Josh sucked it up and sat down. What was excruciating pain in comparison to a good home-cooked meal with his number one lady? It was definitely a fair trade off.
5
“Birth control?” Audrey repeated what her sister Ava had just said as she wrote the specials of the day on the board. It was barely six in the morning and even though Audrey had been up for an hour and a half, she still wasn’t firing on all cylinders.
She’d had a dream about Josh last night. A very sexy dream that she wished she’d never woken up from. But her damn alarm had interrupted things just when they were getting good.
“Yeah.” Ava nodded. “Jenna’s going to talk to her today.”
Jenna was Blake’s mom. She and Ava’s fiancé Asher had been divorced for quite a few years, and she’d even remarried. But unfortunately, her second marriage hadn’t worked out either. So, she was newly single. And was apparently going to be speaking to their teenage daughter about going on birth control.
Ava continued, “Blake says that nothing is happening with her and Noah, but they’ve been together for a while now. And they’re teenagers.”
Noah Barnes was such a good kid. Well, a good teenager. He was a good student, a star athlete, and worked two part-time jobs. When Asher and Blake had moved here last summer Blake hadn’t been happy about the move. Thankfully, she made friends and met Noah and that had eased the transition. The two teens had been pretty much inseparable for over six months.
A funny side note to that story was that Asher and Blake had coincidentally moved to Hope Falls the exact same day Ava got left at the alter and decided to stay in Hope Falls.
It wasn’t a coincidence, it was fate, Audrey heard her mother’s voice in her head.
Maybe it was fate. If that was the case, Audrey wanted to put in a formal request for fate to start working on her behalf with Josh.
“Mom put me on birth control when I was Blake’s age, since Ian and I had already been together for two years.” Ava said as she hopped down from the counter where she’d been sitting while Audrey got things ready to open.
“Yeah, me too.” Their mom had put her on birth control after she’d gotten a steady boyfriend in high school and she’d been right around Blake’s age. “I just can’t believe that Asher is okay with all of this.” Audrey said as she hung up the board displaying the specials.
“He’s not. Not really. What father wants to think about their fourteen-year-old daughter going on birth control. But Jenna made some good points. One of which was that he had been sexually active at that age. Which she knows because they were together then. She also reemphasized that it’s just a talk. That’s all. Jenna’s not putting her on anything. She just wants Blake to know that if that’s something she wants, then Jenna will support her. Not like Mom who didn’t really give us a choice because she wanted us—"
“Us to have choices in our future,” Audrey finished their mom’s mantra in chorus with her sister.
That was what their mom would always say was the reason any of them should be on the pill, so they could have choices in their future. Looking back and thinking about how young their mom was when she was left to be a single parent to four girls under the age of five, it made sense.
“Thanks for this.” Ava held up her iced caramel latte with two shots of espresso. “I have back-to-back clients all day and I’m going to need it.”
Ava gave Audrey a hug and headed out of the coffee shop. As Audrey looked around, she couldn’t help but be proud of what she saw.
When she’d envisioned opening up a coffee shop in her mom’s honor, this was exactly what she saw. Her mother loved Old Hollywood, which was why all of the girls were named after starlets from that era. Grace’s namesake was Grace Kelly. Ava’s was Ava Gardner. Vivien’s was Vivien Leigh. And Audrey had been named after Audrey Hepburn. All of their middle names were Christmas themed, which was another one of Cora Wells’ obsessions.
Black and white portraits of each one of the girls’ namesakes hung on the walls, along with James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, Bette Davis, and Cary Grant, who were some of her mom’s other favorites. The décor had a vintage Hollywood theme, there was a large black chandelier hanging in the center of the room, there were a half dozen bistro tables arranged throughout the room, a farm table on one side, and two oversized couches with coffee tables in front of them lined the opposite wall.
As she wiped down the counter and got ready for the morning rush, the conversation she’d just had with her sister replayed in her head. She had two takeaways from it. One, she was so proud of Asher, Jenna, and Ava for the way that the three of them were co-parenting. They truly put Blake first. And second, teenagers in this town were getting more action than she was.
Audrey was a virgin, which had never bothered her before she turned thirty. She honestly hadn’t really thought about it that much before then.