Chapter One
Before I took over Tea Tide, I imagined running a tea shop by the ocean would be like something out of a Hallmark movie. I’d wear dainty outfits with Peter Pan collars. Customers would wave on their way in and greet me by name. My doting boyfriend would interrupt the morning rush to plant a quick kiss on my cheek at the register, and he’d marvel at how fast my confections were selling.
I definitely wouldn’t be wearing the same pilly leggings and flour-stained apron for the third day in a row as a wide-eyed stranger walks up to the counter and demands, “Are you Crying Girl?”
I glance down at the display case, searching for my last shred of dignity. Nope. It’s just rows of unsold scones.
When I look back up, the customer’s phone lens is inches from my face.
“I’m obsessed with Business Savvy,” she gushes. “I can’t believe you dated Griffin Hapler! He’s so cute.”
This girl is in high school, maybe college. Harmless compared to the sea of local reporters and bloggers that have been slinking in here ever since my ex-boyfriend turned me into a meme. A few weeks ago I was June Hart, owner of Tea Tide and connoisseur of cliché break-up playlists. Now I am either Crying Girl or Griffin’s Ex, both of which were trending on Twitter the night after I got dumped on national television.
It’s been a rough month.
“Will you do the crying face?” the girl pleads.
This is the part where that last shred of dignity would have kicked in. In its absence, I shoot back, “Will you buy a scone?”
“Um…”
She deliberates, eyes raking over today’s bake with such lack of interest that I might just do the crying face free of charge.
“Ooh, what’s the special?” she asks.
I follow her eyes to the little pink sign in the display case that says SPECIAL OF THE DAY, which I must have put in by accident in my sleep-deprived state.
“It sold out,” I lie. “Plain scone or chocolate chip?”
She leans in, lifting her phone again. “And you’ll do the face?”
And I won’t shove you back out onto the boardwalk and sic the seagulls on you, I want to say back. But that’s just the mortal humiliation and simmering rage talking. They’re not nearly as loud as the desperation to make some damn money today.
This mission is abruptly thwarted by Sana, who looks up from her laptop and says, “Take that picture and I will throw your phone so far into the ocean you’ll start getting texts from Poseidon.”
The girl lets out a squeak of surprise. Sana narrows her eyes at her from the corner table, tossing her signature high ponytail behind her shoulder like a whip and emitting such pure, unbridled “don’t fuck with my best friend” energy that I almost let out a squeak of my own.
The girl mutters something that might be an apology or a prayer before turning on her heels, the merry jingle of Tea Tide’s front door echoing in her wake.
I sink my elbows into the counter, resting my cheeks on my fists. “You owe me three unsold-scone dollars,” I say flatly.
Sana raises her eyebrows. “And you owe me a giant thank-you for protecting you from another bottom-feeder looking for TikTok clout.”
Unfortunately, that thank-you won’t help keep Tea Tide’s lights on. As much as I hate the stream of busybodies who have come in here to peer at me like I’m an animal in the Disgraced Internet Meme Zoo, they have helped boost sales. And Poseidon knows I need them.
Thoroughly distracted from her draft of “Four Mantras People with Irritable Bowel Syndrome Swear By,” Sana sinks back in her chair and levels me with a smug look.
“I could make all your problems go away, you know.”
I let out a disapproving hum, eyeing the rest of the shop. A few students from the local university, a tourist family with matching Old Navy sandals, a Wi-Fi freeloader sitting at the table outside who decidedly has not purchased anything. Not exactly the turnout I was hoping for today. The other downside of strangers mobbing the place the past few weeks is that it seems to have scared off my regulars—people who come in here to read or relax in the cozy quiet. I hope they’ll start coming back now that the coast is moderately clear.
“Just give me the word. I’ll go viral with an article telling your side of the story like that,” Sana says, snapping for emphasis, “and the whole world will know what a douche Griffin is, you’ll get your revenge, and I’ll get out of the digestive health journalism trenches and finally start working for Fizzle full-time.”
“Griffin’s not a douche,” I say quietly, mindful of the Old Navys and their little ears.
Sana lets out a derisive laugh. “And I’m not a perilously broke freelance writer. Oh, wait.”
I pull a fresh rag out from under the register to wipe down the front tables, making myself look busy. Otherwise, Sana will go on another one of her ten-point lectures on why I need to stop being civil with Griffin and pull a Carrie Underwood by digging the keys into the side of his pretty little souped-up Trek mountain bike. The conversation always goes the same way: I tell her it’s complicated, she asks what’s complicated about Griffin cheating on me and turning me into a laughingstock, I tell her he wasn’t just my boyfriend but my best friend, and she threatens to hurl tea at me for disrespecting the institution of best friendship, rinse, repeat.
“The whole Crying Girl thing has practically blown over anyway,” I tell her. “You’ll have to find another story.”
Knowing Sana, she won’t have much trouble. The two of us met digitally long before we met in real life, since we were always freelancing for the same outlets a few years back. I was just out to make a buck while I was traveling, but Sana’s always had a keen eye for meaningful stories and a sharp wit for telling them—before her last gig went belly-up, she was pitching and covering everything from deep dives into how fan culture has shifted with social media to essays on mental health stigma in Asian American communities to satire about the consequences of low-rise jeans constantly threatening to come back into style.
But now that she has her eyes set on Fizzle, a buzzy pop culture site with a tight-knit staff of diverse, ridiculously talented writers, she doesn’t want to write a story. She keeps insisting she needs the story. The one so topical, well researched, and potentially viral that it won’t just get her a headline with them, but a staff position.
In other words, something more profound than her best friend’s meme-ification.
“I’d find a great one if you would just give me Levi Saw’s number,” says Sana.
“Shaw.” I correct her without thinking.
Shit. Her eyes are gleaming when I hazard a glance back at her. She’s been dropping his name to try to get a reaction out of me ever since last week, when his breakup went every bit as viral as mine.
“Just admit that you know him,” says Sana, eyes triumphant.
I turn before my face can give more of me away than my big mouth just did.
“Enough to know that he’s a snob and a recluse, and will have even less interest in talking to a journalist than I do,” I tell her coolly.
The freeloader at the outside table bristles at my voice carrying through the open window. Good. Maybe he’ll take the hint and mount his fancy laptop somewhere else for the morning. Sana Chen is the only freelancer allowed to mooch around here.
“For a place that sells tea, you’re awfully reluctant to spill any of it,” Sana grumbles.
I tap her chair with my foot as I pass her. “And you’re awfully reluctant to pay for it.”
Sana smiles innocently into the mug of vanilla almond tea held up to her lips. “Seriously, though. Levi Shaw is from Benson Beach, so you must have gone to the same high school. What are the odds you and a classmate would both go viral for absurdly public breakups within the same month of each other?”
The pang in my chest is an old reflex, reluctant but ready. There was a time when I couldn’t help but feel shades of whatever Levi felt as if it belonged to me, too. I hadn’t felt the pang in a while, but it resurfaced the moment I saw the headlines about Levi’s fiancée running off with an action movie star and each time his name has been dragged into the press since. I guess even a decade of us barely speaking doesn’t undo something buried that deep.
One among many reasons I’ve avoided getting in touch with him as diligently as he’s avoided me. We’re too busy dealing with our own messes to think too hard about each other’s.
“Careful,” I tell her. “It might be contagious. You could be next.”
“I hope so. Being a self-actualized single woman is nice and all, but god, am I bored.”
The front door jingles again, and in comes Mateo in full Professorial Mode, his lanky frame all decked out in slim-fitting khakis and a smart sweater-vest. I’m about to start brewing his usual Earl Grey when I notice his eyes are wide with panic behind his glasses.
“What did the youths do to you?” I ask in mild alarm. This is the first week he’s teaching as an actual history professor and not a teaching assistant. I’d say that’s why he’s dressing like he just fell out of a modern Sherlock Holmes adaptation, but I’ve known Mateo since we were ten and can safely say he’s been dressing like that his whole life.
But he shakes his head, the short curls above his freshly shorn undercut also shaking with it.
“Nancy,” he warns me once he gets to the register.
My stomach curdles. Sana leaps to attention. “This is not a drill, folks,” she says, clapping to motivate us. “Landlord incoming.”
I dive for the scone display, but Sana has already beaten me to it, expertly pulling on disposable gloves and scooping half our stock into a basket with the efficiency of someone hiding their tracks in a crime scene. She disappears into the back of the shop just in time for Nancy Richards to round the corner, clad in her usual summer uniform of a loud floral sundress, an ancient pair of orthotic sandals, and the same bright blue sunglasses she’s had since I was a little girl. A deceptively unintimidating figure for someone who happens to own half the boardwalk and holds Tea Tide’s future in her heavily bejeweled hands.
“Good morning, Junebug,” she says, using my parents’ nickname for me that stuck with all their friends. She pulls me into a trademark hug so tight and unrelenting it almost squeezes the panic right out of me. “Let’s sit.”
I follow her to one of the seafoam-green round tables, settling into a pink cushioned chair with flowers painted on the legs. She sits opposite me, giving the shop a discerning sweep. I follow her gaze across the pastel furniture, the floral wallpaper, the mismatched, vintage teacups in customers’ hands and hanging on hooks on the walls. I spent so much time helping Annie choose this décor that it feels less like Nancy is looking at the shop and more like she’s peering back in time.
“Slow day,” Nancy observes.
“You just missed the big morning rush.” I gesture at the display case like a badly rehearsed kid in a fourth-grade play. “Nearly cleared us out.”
Nancy settles deeper into her seat with a wry smile. “Including whoever’s outside with the cup from Beachy Bean?”
I clench my other hand under the table. As nice as the owners of the boardwalk’s coffee shop are, the day they opened their doors last year, they might as well have held up a banner that said GOOD FUCKING LUCK, TEA TIDE. I may not be able to avenge myself, but the instant Nancy leaves, the guy outside chugging his latte is toast.
“I’m glad you’re here,” I say, the words coming out in an embarrassed rush. “I was going to drop by later. We’ve made enough now to pay back the last few months.”
Nancy’s smile is kind, but I know I’m in for it when she lowers her usual booming voice and says, “I appreciate that. I do. But I know most of that came from that whole incident with Griffin, and that kind of income isn’t sustainable. I’m still worried about renewing Tea Tide’s lease.”
I resist the urge to tear up. It’s business. It shouldn’t be personal. But in a town as small and tight-knit as Benson Beach, everything is personal. It’s why Nancy didn’t kick me out of this place six months ago when I started coming up short on rent—she knows what Tea Tide means to me. To the entire town. My older sister Annie was the one who opened it, and in the two years since her death, Tea Tide’s tiny shop front is the one concrete thing that makes it feel like she isn’t fully gone.
I stare at a little nick in the table. I love this place—not just for what it is, but what it could be. But every single day I wake up terrified that I’m failing it, and by extension, failing her.
“I thought we talked about shaking things up in here,” Nancy muses. “It just feels a little stuffy is all. Not like a boardwalk shop, you know?”
Of course I do. I’m the one who puts on Annie’s old Vitamin C String Quartet playlist every day and keeps up the beach-meets-Bridgerton vibe she so carefully curated, one tasteful light fixture and watercolor print at a time. It is a little jarring, maybe, coming off the sandy beach into a Jane Austen novel, but it was Annie’s vision, and I’ve done my best to stick with it.
Nancy sits up a little straighter. “Remember how people used to love those wild scones Annie came up with?”
My eyes cut to the SPECIAL OF THE DAY sign still sitting on the counter where I left it. I don’t just remember all those “wild scones”—the Cliff Jump, the Tornado Chaser, the Skinny Dipper. I lived them. That was my favorite way of staying in touch with Annie all those years I was backpacking with Griffin. I’d go on some harebrained, death-defying adventure, turn it into a scone creation, and Annie would bring it to life and somehow make them sell out every time.
Now that I’m not out having any adventures and Annie’s not here to talk to about them, the idea of keeping it up without her is just one more shift that feels wrong.
“I could try something like that,” I hedge. “Or add some rotating sandwiches to the high tea menu, or open up more slots for birthday parties.”
Only when Nancy starts shaking her head do I realize the scones weren’t a suggestion to help but a reminder that I didn’t take her up on it. “There’s only a month left on this lease, hon. I don’t think that’s enough time to turn things around.”
Shit. Okay. We are not having the usual “get your rent to me on time” conversation. We are having the full “I’m taking back this space because you never got your act together” death blow. All at once I feel like I’m floundering, treading in the same water I was before but somehow out of my depth.
“What if I fronted the first three months of rent? Like another deposit?” I ask, not even bothering to hide the desperation in my voice. “I can get that to you in a month.”
How, I’m not entirely sure, but that’s what Craigslist and extra kidneys are for.
After a moment, Nancy nods carefully. “I’ll consider it. But I’d like to see real changes around here. I’d like to see Tea Tide really embedded in the community. Maybe reach out to some other small business owners in the area, spin some ideas.” She tilts her chin at me. “If we do end up renewing this lease, I don’t want to be having this same conversation later.”
“Right. Of course.” I know better than to argue. I strongly suspect she’s already been cutting me a deal on the rent as it is. “Thank you. I won’t let you down.”
She reaches out and gives my arm a hearty pat. “We’ll talk again soon. Now go tell Sana she can put those scones back. I want a chocolate chip for the road.”
Copyright © 2024 by Emma Lord
