Page 1 of The Hampton Beach Café 2
ONE
The ache in her back was hardly new. It was usually from personal trainer-led sweat sessions or standing all day in five-inch heels at some business conference or another––not from lugging a hundred bags of coffee, flour, and other deceptively heavy foodstuffs up the stairs and into storage rooms.
It was just as painful and significantly less glamorous, but somehow it was thrilling. Everything she had done here was so completely opposite to her life in LA. She’d moved from advising major multinational companies, directing risk management projects across the globe, and schmoozing million and even billionaire clients to debating the merits of having both raw sugar and white sugar available on the tables, if it was cute or cringe to have vintage books on display, and schmoozing her high-school bully turned local councilor.
I should stretch more, though,she thought as she finally made it to the top of the stairs with the latest load of supplies. Alex had found her a food locker and lugged it up there himself––a good thing, too, because there was no way on this side of Montana she was getting involved with the behemoth thing. It was sturdy enough to keep all the shelf-stable ingredients dry and cool without needing to run a walk-in fridge or air-conditioned pantry.Sometimes the old ways are the best ways,Alex had said when he finally got it in place.
The third bedroom had once belonged to Alex's mom and dad, and he thought they'd like the idea of it being the epicenter of all the baking and coffee production for the new café. The decision to bake their own goods from scratch was worrying Frances. She had never been much of a cook, and considering this needed to make members of the public happy...
Giving herself a little shake, Frances re-focused her attention on organizing the food locker. The heaviest stuff was definitely going on the bottom, she decided.
Bending over almost double to push the large metal canisters of flour to one side, she bent one knee slightly to help relieve the tension growing in her lower back. She rocked slowly over to the other side as she straightened that knee and bent the other. She rested her hands on the closest canister and leaned onto the stretch, there were a few things she missed about Los Angeles, and she hated to admit that yoga was one of them.
The only thing she hated more than admitting that she missed the incredible offering of yoga classes California had to offer was that she felt the need to hate it at all––there was something deeply sad about how she felt like she had to scorn things LA girls supposedly did. Straightening both her knees to feel the stretch in her hamstrings, she twisted slightly to one side and looked up to the ceiling.
She could vividly remember the rolling eyes and borderline inappropriate jokes that her male colleagues made––even her ex-husband––if she mentioned going to yoga, and it prickled her anger. She had spent so long putting up with their adolescent humor that she had almost forgotten it ever annoyed her. She had learned to deal with it, of course, and did whatever she could to keep it quiet. Shifting her weight to the other arm, she swapped directions, wondering if her younger female colleagues had heard her dismissal about Yoga Girls and the LA Yoga Scene.
That made her grimace. The last thing she wanted would be to pass on the shame she felt over enjoying things to the next generation of women in business. Frances decided that when she went back to LA, it would be different. She would be different, lead the way she wanted to lead…
“Are you...stuck?” Alex's voice broke her concentration and startled her at the same time.
Yelping in surprise, she stood up straight and spun to face him. The simultaneous movement threw her off balance, and somehow, she managed to catch herself on the door of the food locker and plop herself down hard on the canister she had been using as a stretching block.
“Alex, I swear you just aged me twenty years!” Frances exclaimed, placing her hand over her heart.
“Well, you don't look like you've aged a day, so it can't have been that harrowing,” he replied with a grin. “Are you ok, though?”
As he stepped towards her, she noticed the mischievous smile on his face, and she rolled her eyes. “Obviously. You, however, just landed yourself in heavy stuff shoving duty.”
Frances stood and directed him on what to do to organize the food pantry. The thing was big enough to stock the entire restaurant full of stuff, she reckoned––they would have plenty of room.
“How is the kitchen reshuffle going?” she asked, hearing a clang and a particularly emphatic curse word from downstairs.
Alex shrugged his shoulders and kept arranging the different bags of coffee.
“What's that supposed to mean?” she asked, suddenly worried.
With a sigh, he turned to her. “Well, working with Lucinda is…well…challenging.”
Frances cocked her head to one side. “Challenging? She's one of the best business coaches in the country.”
Her old friend scoffed. “Yeah that she might be, but her idea of kitchen ergonomics and design is better suited to video games than hospitality.”
“Ah...Well, yes, she can be...”
“Challenging,” they said together.
Her phone beeped loudly at her from her pocket, and she glared at the screen disbelievingly.
“You gotta go?” Alex asked.
Frances groaned. “Yes, third meeting in a week with the Queen Wasp herself.”
He straightened. “Isn't it Queen Bee?”
“Hah…” she replied, pulling her sweater over her head, “…bees are delightful creatures who only sting when threatened. Kennedy Pine would chase you from one end of town to the other just to sting you.”
“Huh,” Alex said. “I just remember her being rude, mostly.”
