3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

A certain feistiness rises inside. I debate whether to tell Fifi we won't be able to get the dress she wants and lose the sale or swallow my pride and wish the happy couple a lifetime of bliss.

Only Finn and Fifi don't seem happy at all. He flinches when she touches him, scowls at her when she's not looking, and eyes the door as if he'd rather be anywhere but here.

Okay, message received, Finny Finn. Sheesh.

But still, Finn and Fifi, seriously?

I'm guessing his family has something to do with this match, which wouldn't surprise me because they will go to any lengths, and I literally mean any, to hold on to their wealth.

Yes, they're the same Bartons who turned the Fletchers into the police for the financial scheme. But the family feud goes back further than that to when Finn's father and mine were in college, competing for the same title in their rowing club. Oars were broken. Possibly a ceramic lawn ornament too. The disagreement followed them across the country and into this tiny coastal town.

But I fell for the enemy and I fell hard.

I should've known better because he won't even acknowledge me now. I steal one more glance, but there is no recognition in his steely eyes. Not even the faintest glimmer.

The secret smolder he reserved just for me—at least that's what I always told myself—is nowhere to be seen.

He acts like he doesn't know me, but if Fifi puts up this much of a stink about opening my shop on time, I imagine if she catches so much of a whiff of her fiancé saying hello to an old friend from high school, she'll go atomic.

I expect her to storm out and give me a poor review online, but she continues to browse the gowns as if subconsciously realizing it's brutally painful for me to be in the same room as Mr. High School Heartbreaker—and for him to act like I don't exist.

While Fifi picks apart the bridal selection, I strike up a conversation, er, nervously babble because that's what I've always done when around Finn.

Seventh-grade Egypt study project? I held him hostage by the lockers, presenting all my findings on Cleopatra and Antony's love affair. Ninth grade spirit day? I not-so-accidentally cornered him and did the full song and dance review for homecoming. Eleventh-grade debate tournament? I complimented his speech for a full ten minutes.

But then things clicked during our senior year. Obviously, he doesn't care. But that doesn't stop my scattered chatter. "Planning weddings these days is such a big endeavor. Are you going classic or following trends? I hear some couples are using big cats like lions as ring bearers."

This gets Fifi's attention. "Who is? Where?"

I flip open a magazine on the glass coffee table to an article. Fifi devours it with rapt envy. Although I didn't mean to come off catty, now I can't help myself because I see she's afflicted with the same condition I used to have.

Nothing was ever enough.

Having everything, including Mr. High School Heartbreaker disappear from my life on the same day, puts "things" into perspective, as in they're not quite as important as I'd believed.

"There won't be any wild animals at the wedding," Finn says flatly.

"Also, woodland mud marriages as performative art." I show Fifi another article with a full-page glossy spread of the bride and groom throwing mud at each other.

She gasps, whether in dismay (me, when I first learned about it) or with a case of the gimmes (I'm not sure).

"That has to be a joke," Finn says without humor.

"I've heard of one couple doing a survival island competition where the one to endure all the challenges—" I'm not sure where I was going with that since I made it up on the spot.

I think Fifi would survive breaking a nail and going without food for a while, but I don't think she'd withstand mosquitos. A pesky fly would send her over the edge.

"No, way," Finn wears a ghost of a smile—the closest thing I've seen to a grin since he came in—as if he intuits my angle: make this morning amusing for myself so I too don't go over the edge.

But I also want to get him to break character, come out of denial, or otherwise acknowledge me, but my hands are sweaty and if my nervous babbling continues, I'm likely to say something I'll regret.

Something like, I've had a crush on you since you moved to Palisade Shores in sixth grade, and kissing you at our high school graduation was the greatest and worst day of my life .

When they finally leave with the dress—yes, I gave in—I could wipe my tears with chiffon, but I'll make lace out of lemons while I wait for Mr. Perfect. He'll be nothing like my lifelong crush. Nuh-uh. Nope. No siree.

Mr. Perfect will have blue eyes and thick lashes.

Trim brown hair with a little curl at the top.

A chiseled jawline and be athletically fit but not gym guy fit.

He'll enjoy the beach, Kung Fu movies, and theater.

Be super smart and be able to calculate multifactor equations in his head.

Speaking of, he'll look great in a suit and walk with confidence.

He'll also have a secret smoldering smile that's mine all mine.

Who am I kidding? I'll forevermore compare everyone to Finn-flipping-Barton.

Fan-freaking-tastic.

I wave my hand in front of my face because today has been a doozy. The only thing that would make me feel better is chocolate. Or someone appearing in my life that's not Finn.

However, I don't expect to meet any single guys here at my bridal shop for obvious reasons. When it became clear that I was destitute, I lost all my old friends, which means a lot of weekend evenings at home, alone, in my hammock. Thankfully, I have Shelly.

After locking up the shop at the end of the day, the sun dips toward the water at my back as I turn inland, my shadow long and my spirits low.

The solution: chocolate, of course.

Once home, I get out the mixing bowl and ingredients, ready to make a chocolate cake. It's a custom recipe after multiple fails that came out too dry, flat, and claggy. In other words, it's moist, springy, and melts in the mouth. It's a triple chocolate solution to all life's problems. I call it TLC for short, as in Tender Loving Chocolate.

When my life took a sharp turn, and I entered beauty school, I had the audacious idea that I'd become a wedding planner. I could focus on hair and makeup, but I wanted a handle on the ins and outs of the entire industry, so I learned to bake cakes, specifically the TLC. I also had a part-time job as a florist and, of course, made use of my sewing skills.

The one piece of business advice my father gave me was that the manager or owner of a company should be able to do every job under the umbrella. In my case, with wedding planning, that included everything from vending to décor to fine foods. He probably ought to have brushed up on accounting.

While the cake bakes, I head outside to the hammock. Aunt Valerina had an extensive Regency romance collection and I've been reading A Perchance Dalliance with the Rogue . It's about an heiress who loses everything and falls in with a stony duke who has a bad reputation.

Seems relatively fitting, minus the romance with the male lead. That part of my story didn't get a happy ending. I'm afraid I've already reached The End and I'm not even thirty yet.

My bookmark is one of the courtesy invitations I received to an old friend's wedding. They know I can't afford to fly to their luxury destination fetes. I'm the last one in my former circle to tie the knot. Ironic that I operate a bridal boutique. It was only a matter of time before one of them came in for a fitting. The last person I expected it to be was Mr. High School Heartbreaker and Fifi.

As dusk fades into night and the little solar lights pop on, the crickets come out to play. The scent of warm chocolate baking filters through the open window. For a moment, I feel at peace, forgetting all about Finn and his fiancée. Then a cymbal crash and a sharp jolt of feedback from an electric guitar blare from nearby.

Within seconds, the singer for the band, Serious Joke, screeches into the microphone about diamonds in the dark or something. I can't quite decipher the lyrics.

She must have her own Mr. High School Heartbreaker.

I forgot Serious Joke practices on Friday nights. I head inside, closing the door behind me. The cake is about done, anyway. As it cools, I get a text from Shelly.

Shelly: I was supposed to meet Petunia tonight, but he bailed. Should I forget about him?

Me: Instead of Palisade Shores, we should dub this town Lonely Hearts Harbor. I just made some TLC in a pan. Do you want to come over?

Shelly lives with Pinky only a few streets east. She's been learning to skateboard, so she's here in less than five minutes.

"It smells so good," she shouts from the doorway.

"If only the live music weren't so loud," I holler back.

"I can hear them at my place, too. Pinky said she's taking a neighborhood collection to raise funds to get them a soundproof practice space."

"Maybe toss in some music lessons, too."

We both laugh and go to the living room on the other side of the house where the sound fades to a muted rancor.

I serve us each a piece of cake, and Shelly is quiet for a long moment, then says, "This. Is. So. Good."

"Thanks."

"No, seriously. You're in the wrong business. Become a baker and make my wedding cake."

I tell her about my wedding planner dreams, then say, "I'll probably stick with Valerina's Bridal, but I'm wondering if I should change the name. My aunt wanted me to make the business mine. I've been brainstorming. What do you think of ‘Cuts and Stitches?'"

Shelly stabs the air with her fork. "Sounds violent."

"I mean, cuts and stitches like sewing."

She shakes her head as if that's a solid pass.

"Another one was ‘A Sixpence in Your Shoe.'" I explain that the phrase was part of the original, Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue , tradition.

"That's cool, but a little obscure. Kind of like Petunia."

"You mean scarce?"

"Yeah. I thought I wanted to talk about it, but again, I think I need to take my mind off him and stop picking apart every little thing he says—talking about surfboard fins, incoming swell?—"

"That's not obscure in this town."

"Or things he does like cancel plans."

"That's not cool anywhere. I'm sorry."

Shelly's shrug lifts toward the frown on her face.

"If humor would help, my high school crush stopped in the shop today with his fiancée. Let's just say my day started in Struggle City and I detoured directly into Awkwardburg. I told them all about marriage trends." I recount them now.

"Oof. Was she nice, though? In instances like that, you just want the couple to be happy, you know?"

"Totally, but it was hard to say. For one, she seemed quite a bit older. Actually, it was hard to tell Fifi's age because she had ‘work' done."

Shelly coughs out a laugh. "Fifi?"

"Yeah, Fifi and Finn. Can you believe that? The weird thing was, he didn't even acknowledge me."

"Ouch. That's harsh."

"I'm going to be honest, our re-cute?—"

"Say what?" Shelly asks.

"Like a meet-cute, but since we'd already met, it's a re-cute. Anyway, there was nothing cute about it. What's the opposite of cute? Homely? I felt about as cute as an overcooked ravioli."

Shelly spurts another laugh. "This was just what I needed."

Not wanting to think about how I nearly tripped and dribbled on and on about silly wedding trends, I say, "Anyway, is it wrong that I still felt a spark? Well, a one-way spark, which is fitting since he broke my teenage heart. Finn was my first crush. My first everything. But whenever I'm around him I clam up. If I manage to drool out a few words they're jumbled up like I just emerged from oral surgery. I'm never sure where to look. Where to put my hands. How to walk..."

"Oh so cringy but also super relatable. In high school, my crush told me all about his crush. News flash: it wasn't me."

"So much cringe."

"That's not even the worst part. When I was pining, I'd scroll his social media feed and of course, I accidentally liked old photos like a total creeper."

"All the cringe."

We laugh off our most cringe-credible moments.

"I have to accept the fact that Finn isn't the sweet guy he used to be. He's changed. Turned harder and super arrogant." Then again, I guess I'm not the same as I used to be either.

"I was hoping Petunia would be consistent. Sometimes he knows I'm alive, other times not."

"I guess we're just two people who see the potential underneath."

"Or did we only ever see what we hoped was there?" Shelly says with a sigh.

"The good parts...or the crumbs." I pick up one from my plate and pop it in my mouth.

She licks her fork. "That was an amazing cake. If you could mass produce it and sell it, you could make a chocolate fortune."

"I'll take the chocolate. Skip the fortune. Been there, done that. I'm not saying I'm ungrateful, but I like a simpler life. Don't get me wrong, being able to pay the bills and having enough left over to buy a coffee float is awesome. But I don't think I'd go back to my old life."

"How about we trade?"

"If only."

Then Shelly bounces in her seat. "How about we have a hot girl summer?"

My smile brightens at the idea. "Yes, I'm all in."

For the next hour, we orchestrate this plan, including lots of beach days to slay.

"We need to go bathing suit shopping."

"I want a floppy hat," Shelly says, miming running her fingers along the brim.

I strike a pose. "I'm a sunglasses girl."

"We definitely need pedicures. Ooh. And exfoliation."

"We'll go on dates with handsome men with romantic accents."

"And treat ourselves like queens." Shelly throws her hands up in the air.

I lengthen my spine. "We'll be super confident too. I should ask Fifi where to get more of that."

Our laughter is so loud and consistent, the raucous band next door and my disappointing re-cute fade.

Shelly says, "Let's find out where their wedding is. If it's at Prism Point Resort, we can crash it and parade you around so Finn knows what he's missing."

"I could never."

She taps on her phone. "I'm looking for the announcement. I want to know more about someone who gets away with the name Fifi ."

"I'll confess that I've always liked the name, but my cousin Fifi is really sweet. Nothing like Finn's fiancée."

Shelly goes still. "Wait. Is Finn a nickname? Is his real name Iver Barton?"

"No, Iver is his father." I roll my eyes. "He has beady eyes, is greedy, and sleazy. The opposite of Finn. Or at least the Finn I thought I knew."

"Well, it looks like Fifi is marrying him."

"But Iver is already?—"

She gasps. "This will be wife number six." She double gasps. "Oh, my goodness, Bea." Shelly jumps onto the couch and turns in a circle holding her phone aloft.

"What? Ants? Spiders? Please don't tell me it's a centipede."

She drops down and pulls me to her side, then reads from the article. "‘They say you can have health or wealth. Not both. But it looks like Iver Barton's son, Finn, is defying the odds. Sources say the family kept quiet about the skiing accident in Switzerland, resulting in Finn's hospitalization with multiple injuries and a case of amnesia. Now that he's returned to the public eye, he's slated to take over Imperial Enterprises when his father retires, suggesting his memory is restored.' Maybe that's why he didn't remember you."

My blood runs cold but then boils over. "Wait. It said he recovered."

"This is a blog post. Pure speculation. Maybe he didn't fully recover his memories."

"Finn has amnesia?" I whisper. Hope rises inside, not because he lost his memory, but because he might get it back.

"I'm cross-referencing." Shelly reads a few more articles and then goes still. "It says, ‘With Imperial Enterprises main competition, Fletcher Dynasty Properties out of the game, it looks like the only way is up for junior.' Isn't your last name Fletcher?"

"Yep. His family ruined mine. But this changes everything."

"Which part?" Shelly asks, aghast.

"That he doesn't remember me because, well, he doesn't remember me." I feel like bouncing on the couch too.

My mother always said there were only two types of people in this world: givers and takers. I also learned there are leavers. My friends left when my family fell... Finn too.

But it turns out that there are also returners.

Fifi's comment about a resort, Finn taking over the family business, and having amnesia connect like dots on a grid, forming a plan in my mind.