Damon walks to me and lands a soft kiss on my cheek. Woozy, that’s how I feel when he’s near me. I go jelly-legged and google-eyed, not my best look. It’s so easy to get lost staring at his face, his lips. I fight the urge to launch myself at him too. Who knew love could feel like this? A dreamy, intoxicating, passion-fest.
“Go on, open it,” he says.
Taking the proffered tube, I shake it gently. “Any guesses, Cee?”
“Can’t rightly say.” She smirks, and fiddles with her long pearly necklace.
“Oh, so you were in on this surprise?”
Her eyes widen, and she shakes her head. “No idea what you talking about.”
“No?” I say, amused. “You look a picture of innocence, Cee.” I upend the tube and prise out the contents. A roll of shiny bronze foil flashes under the lighting. Unwrapping a length, I see tiny brown gingerbread men with cute button noses and licorice-colored eyes smile up at me. “You two!” I say, not managing to stop the silly jump-clap dance I do when I’m excited. Under each gingerbread man it says in elegant miniature cursive: Easter at the Gingerbread Café.
“We thought your chocolate eggs would look mighty nice wrapped up in personalized foil,” Damon says, grinning. “And CeeCee suggested incorporating the gingerbread men.”
“This is going to be the prettiest chocolate Ashford has ever seen!” I immediately want to wrap up an egg to see what they’ll look like. It makes me giddy to think how far we’ve come. When I first opened the café, it was just me, a tray of gingerbread men, and a never-ending pot of percolated coffee.
We have big plans for Easter this year. We set to work, just over a month ago, making all sorts of chocolate eggs, from simple oval shapes, to large bunnies with long ears. The range was so popular we tried making other sorts of chocolates, like ganache-filled truffles, chocolate ginger fudge, and chocolate candied oranges, anything we could, to see if they’d work and there was a market for it. Not all of it’s fancy; mostly it’s just good quality sweets baked from scratch.
Sarah from the corner bookshop suggested we hold a chocolate festival over Easter. She thought it would be a great way to draw some new faces into Ashford. It’s such a small community and the last year has been tough for so many of the local businesses.
We had an impromptu meeting with the owners of the shops along our street, and decided a chocolate festival would be the perfect excuse to celebrate Easter, and give all our shops a boost. We’ve advertised in all the surrounding towns, and the response so far has been overwhelming. Out-of-towners have already begun to visit Ashford. Some come purely to stick their noses in, others to stock up on books, or hardware, not knowing Ashford has everything you need if you just look hard enough.
All the shopkeepers are excited to show their wares in the best light. Sarah has a famous author dropping by to do a reading at her bookshop. Damon has cheese-making classes and a cooking demo planned. The local hardware shop is involved; they’re going to do a sixty-minute session on how to build a basic cubby house for kids. Someone’s roped in a band to play folk music throughout the day. And the chocolate festival will be set up in the middle of the main road, so people can go between tables sampling chocolate in all its glorious forms, before heading into shops for the activities.
Sarah has been a driving force, helping print pamphlets and distributing them. She’s set up a Facebook page to help garner interest. Needless to say, she pops over most days to see what we’re concocting. We ply her full of chocolaty goodness, and watch her face for a reaction. Ginger is still a prominent fixture in some of our recipes, but it’s been fun molding, and sculpting chocolate into submission.
Damon lets out a long whistle, hauling my mind away from chocolate and back to him. He holds a finger up. “One more thing,” he says, and runs to the doorway to retrieve another package. It’s an odd shape and is wrapped haphazardly in newspaper.
As usual I forget to be delicate but figure it’s only newspaper as I tear it to shreds to see what’s underneath.
“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