“How do you do it?” I pretend to be dazed with wonder. “I’m going to have the best collection of…ugly going round!” I smile as I press a small button to switch it on. An evil-eyed bunny rabbit starts hopping maniacally across the silver bench, singing out of tune about hot cross buns. Laughter barrels out of us as we watch the demented toy.
“I think this may trump the shrilling turkey!” CeeCee hoots.
“You, my friend, just started another war.” I sidle up to Damon, and hug him loosely around his hips. “You know that, right?” My lips twitch with the urge to kiss him.
He drapes his arm over me and lands a kiss on the top of my head. “A war on…unique seasonal collectibles? That so? Well, before I leave you to attend to the customers who, by the looks, are waiting patiently on my stoop, there’s one thing you should know — seems there’s a teeny tiny fault with the hopping bunnies. The salesperson was basically giving them away. I mean, I just had to buy it at that bargain-basement price…”
I give him a playful shove. “Get on with it, what’s the fault?”
“It seems Peter Rabbit here doesn’t have an off switch. He can keep that joyful noise up all day long.”
“Joyful noise? That what you call it?” CeeCee says. “Sounds more like this bunny got his foot caught in a rabbit trap to me.”
“You can thank me later,” he says, edging towards the door while I pretend to lob the rabbit at him.
We watch him stride across the street; as usual our eyes are glued to his butt, which looks all sorts of perfect under a pair of tight denim jeans. His shirt lifts in the breeze and I see the tanned, smooth skin of his lower back. The memory of running my hand along his naked body makes me shiver. I shake the thought away, not wanting to look like some kind of love-struck idiot, my mouth hanging open, ogling him from the window. I pull myself together and gaze over at CeeCee, who’s uncharacteristically lost for words, staring at him too.
“Hmm, that fine-looking thing sure do know how to please a woman,” CeeCee says, as if she’s in a daze and we giggle. Every time she brings Damon into a conversation she calls him ‘that fine-looking thing’ which always reduces us to laughter.
“Yes, ma’am, he sure does,” I say sarcastically, holding my hands over my ears. “But I’ve got a bad feeling this bunny rabbit is about to have a tragic accident.”
She smirks. “It’s funny, I thought the very same thing.” CeeCee picks it up and studies the underside. “There must be an off switch. Surely he was only playin’.”
The cordless phone trills, making us jump. “I’ll take it in the office so I can hear. It’s probably that fine-looking thing calling to gloat,” I say, jogging to the back of the café to the small office.
Still smiling, I answer, “The Gingerbread Café, Lil speaking.” And wait for Damon’s velvety voice to talk back.
“Lily-Ella, it’s me.” It’s a velvety voice all right, but it’s not Damon’s. The way Joel rolls the Ls of my full name takes me back to my old life. Closing my eyes, I picture him, his thick black hair pushed back from his face while he rakes his fingers through it, a subconscious mannerism. I stiffen; it’s been months since we talked. And two years since we divorced. I make my voice businesslike. “How are you, Joel?”
“I’ve been better.” He lets out a short hollow laugh.
“So you got the boxes I sent?” The detritus of Joel’s life with me had been stashed around my house, things I stopped seeing because they’d been there for an age, but Damon noticed as soon as he moved in a few weeks back. A baseball glove in the hall closet, old clothes in the spare room, used car parts in the shed. Goes to show just how quick Joel upped and left. Damon didn’t say a word about it but I could see a shadow of doubt cross his face as he kept stumbling across Joel’s things so I decided it was high time I de-cluttered my old life.
“Yeah, I got them. None of it means anything ’cept the photos. Spent a whole night staring at them.”
“Don’t talk like that. They’re just pictures. Nothing more.”
I’d sent Joel half of our wedding pictures with the boxes, because it meant something back then, and there’s no point pretending it didn’t happen. When I divvied them up, I spent some time looking through them too, but all I felt was a sort of sadness that those two bright-eyed lovers staring back at me weren’t so suited after all.
He sighs. “Look, Lil, I know I made all kinds of mistakes, but I’m a changed man. Totally different from the one who left…”
“Stop, Joel. That sounds like a line.”
CeeCee calls out, “Well, is it Damon? Tell him I think I’ve figured out a way to stop it. Can’t barely hear it from the depths of the chest freezer…” Her cackle follows me into the office.
“Well, it’s coming from my heart, Lil,” Joel says, in a slightly offended tone.
“You did this, Joel. You made your choice, and it wasn’t me.”
Two years I pined for him after he walked out. Just after he managed to lose our house, and his car yard in one of his get-rich-quick schemes. He took a gamble with our finances and lost without breathing a word of it to me until it was too late. I struggled to keep the Gingerbread Café going, and held on through some truly bad times. But he didn’t care; our home was taken by the bank, and we were forced to rent a tiny cottage. He walked away without a backward glance, right into the arms of another woman. To think I waited for him for two years ready to forgive. I was a damn fool, and I’m sure as hell not going to make that mistake again.
“Look, baby, I know you’re with some other guy—”
“That’s none of your business!”
“So our history doesn’t count for anything? You can’t honestly say it wasn’t one helluva marriage before things went…pear-shaped.”
The saccharine timbre of his voice reminds me that he can’t be trusted. He’s a salesman through and through. CeeCee says he could sell fire to Satan if you gave him half a chance. “Pear-shaped? Is that what you call it?” It’s impossible to keep the sarcasm from my voice. “And you’re right, it was one helluva marriage, emphasis on the hell. I have to go.”
“Lil, can we meet? There’s something I really need to discuss with you.”
Exasperated, I exhale down the line. “I think we’ve discussed everything.”
“I’m out at Old Lou’s…”
I groan inwardly. Old Lou owns a big property on the outskirts of Ashford. It looks more like a junk yard than a place where someone lives. I lower my voice, “How long have you been here?”
“A couple of days. I was planning to go check out that new shop in town; you know the one, sells small goods…”
Damon’s shop. There’s an abrasiveness to Joel’s voice; he obviously knows all the details of my new relationship. I pinch the bridge of my nose as my head begins to ache. I wonder what he’s scheming in that great big melon head of his. One thing I know for sure is that it’s never black and white when it comes to Joel.
Maybe I can nip this in the bud before it blooms into trouble. “Stay away from that shop. I’ll give you ten minutes tonight, and that’s it, Joel. And you’re right, I am with someone else, so if it’s about reconciliation forget it.” I end the call so he can’t respond.
Worry gnaws at me. What’s he up to?
“Sugar plum?” CeeCee yells. “Are we doing these eggs or not?”
“Coming!” I put the phone back in the cradle on the desk and pray he doesn’t