Page 6 of Saved By Noel
Pops scoffs. “Not till I’m bedridden on my dying day would I stoop to eating breakfast in bed. A man’s gotta get up and go in the morning, start the day’s work with the sun.”
His statement, although delivered with bluster, sobers me. I can’t imagine what it must be like to have your body betray you, to slowly stop obeying your commands to do what you’ve always done. I should swing by daily for the next couple of weeks, come up with something to have Pops do that will let him know he’s still competent and needed.
This town is losing too much right now—we can’t afford to lose Pops.
Chapter six
Clara
“White chocolate raspberry mocha and matcha latte for Clara!”
I make my way to the counter to claim my drinks. “Thank you!” I chirp to the barista as I hand Madison her latte. It’s 1:00 p.m., well past my typical 10:00 a.m. coffee cutoff time. Even decaf after that point in the day somehow keeps me awake at night. But desperate times call for desperate measures.
And these are desperate times.
Madison and I have spent all of this beautiful October Saturday shopping to outfit my new writing cabin. Or,almostmine.
Dawn submitted my offer on the cabin in Noel. Although it was under asking price, the all-cash offer with no contingencies must have been appealing enough to the sellers to accept. The inspection didn’t turn up anything alarming, and we officially close in two weeks.
It’s exhilarating and terrifying and every other extreme emotion all at once. More than anything, I can’t wait to sit in the sunroom, enjoying the peaceful scenery. And hopefully, startwriting. I’m taking the Friday of closing day off work so I can spend a long weekend there. Maybe I’ll even work remotely on Monday to extend the time.
But first, I need to buy a chair to sit in. And a bed. And couch, and table, and dishes, and linens, and all the other things you need for a functional living space.
Luckily for me, Madison is a thrifting queen. Unluckily for me, thrifting royalty apparently comes by way of patience and digging through multiple stores. I’m more of a one-stop-superstore type of shopper. But if I want to have leftover funds to slowly add my personal style to the cabin, I need to lean thrifty.
After the first four secondhand stores, we’ve purchased most of the furniture and kitchen supplies I need. We grabbed gourmet grilled cheeses from a food truck outside of the last location, then dropped off our first load of purchases at my parents’ house. Dad is being generous enough to lend us his truck for the day, in addition to temporarily storing my new belongings in their garage.
Now, we’re caffeine refueling before hitting up the next place on Madison’s list. “The holy grail of thrifting,” she called it, which makes me wonder why we didn’t head there first.
I’m encouraged by our progress, but I still haven’t found the two pieces of furniture I’m most excited about: an overstuffed chair and a writing desk. Possibly because I’m being rather picky about finding therightchair and desk. But they’re the two central features of the cabin in my mind, so I think my choosiness is merited.
Taking a long drink of mocha before starting the truck, I already know I’m going to regret this decision when I’m lying wide awake in bed tonight. Madison gives me directions, and fifteen minutes later, we pull into the parking lot of a giant flea market. As we walk up to the front doors, my attention is sidetracked to the store next door—a plant shop.
“Oooo, let’s stop here first,” I say, irresistibly drawn to the chlorophyll like a spider mite to an alocasia.
“Nu-uh, I knew this would happen,” Madison chides as she steers me toward the thrift store. “This is precisely why we didn’t come here first. I knew you’d detour to plant world and never come out.”
I pout, sticking out my lower lip. “You’re so bossy.”
“Cabin shopping first.”
“But plants can also count as cabin shopping. I have a whole sunroom waiting to be filled with plants, Mads.”
She’s undeterred, quite literally dragging me through the front doors of the sprawling secondhand store. I take another fortifying drink of my mocha and follow Madison into the kitchen aisles, searching for a set of dishes.
“Look at these, Clara! They’re perfect!” she says, holding up plates painted with herbs. Mads places them in my hands as she digs around the shelf, pulling out matching bowls and coffee mugs. “Someone must have dropped off an entire set! This is incredible!”
My excitement matches hers this time, because the dishes really are adorable. We add every piece to my cart, double checking the surrounding shelves to make sure we’ve found them all. “I’m going to get you a good discount on those for taking the whole set, just you watch,” Madison preens.
We make our way to the furniture section, and I stop dead in my tracks. The door to heaven opens and a ray of light shines down on the perfect chair and writing desk placed right next to each other. The chair is sage green with a high back and curved arms—the perfect seat to curl up in. The desk is beautifully distressed wood, wide but not deep, with a thin drawer. Ideal for functionality without taking up too much space in the room.
“I told you this was the holy grail,” Madison says with a beaming smile. She tosses her hair and brushes off her shoulderin a gloating sort of way. There will be no living with her after this. Good thing I don’t live with her.
“You’re right, you’re right, Queen Madison,” I acquiesce, checking the price tags. A furrow forms between my eyebrows at the higher-than-thrifty numbers on the tags, but Madison simply makes a loudpfffftsound.
“Please, like I’m going to let you pay full price. I didn’t earn the ‘Queen of Thrifting’ title without elite bargaining skills,” she says.
Thirty minutes later, we’re supervising employees loading my new chair and writing desk into the truck bed. Madison convinced the owner to knock a third off the total price. I reward her by spending a mere thirty minutes wandering the plant store before purchasing a beautiful Ficus Tineke.
