To Sir, with Love

“What thing?” I scowl.

“You know. The thing where you start asking if I’ve met her parents, when she’s coming to New York to meet you guys, whether she wants a small intimate ceremony or if you should start looking for availabilities at St. Patrick’s…”

Lily nods and looks my way. “You do that. Alec and I started dating when you were nine, and the second time he came over, you showed him a picture you’d colored. Of my wedding dress.”

Alec leans forward and looks at me. “Really good drawing though.” He gives me a thumbs-up.

“And my actual wedding dress did end up looking startlingly like that picture,” Lily admits. “But the point is, you tend to get a little…”

“I’d call it aggressive fairy godmother,” Caleb says.

“Okay, but was I wrong?” I say. I waggle a finger between Alec and Lily. “They did end up getting married. And,” I say to Caleb, “I wasn’t pushy when you were dating Missy, because I knew she wasn’t the one. And Lily, just before you met Alec, that weird Dan asked you out, and did I not tell you not to bother?”

“You did.”

“And did you listen?”

“Again, you were nine.”

I lift my eyebrows, and she sighs. “No. I didn’t listen.”

“And what happened?”

“He took me to a party, then spent the night making out with his ex.”

I lift my palms. “I rest my case.”

Alec glances back at the laptop screen to Caleb. “So I’m guessing that’s a no on the new girl meeting your sisters?”

“Yeeeaaah, I’m going to go ahead and not freak her out by having Lily ask her credit score and Gracie mailing her pictures of wedding cakes.”

Lily looks at me. “Our sisterly qualities are so underappreciated.”

“Totally.” I look back at Caleb. “Can I at least see a picture of her? Is she pretty? Does she make you laugh? Can I call her sis? What color does she want her Christmas stocking to be?”

“Uh-oh,” Caleb says, “I hope my Wi-Fi doesn’t cut out on me. I just hate when my nightmares play all the way through to the end…”

“But—”

“Maybe we give poor Caleb a break and let Gracie explain why she’s called the family meeting?” Alec says.

Lily and Caleb both turn their attention toward me, expectant and a little curious. I don’t blame them. One of the painful self-realizations of the past few weeks is just how little of my own life I’ve initiated. I’m the Cooper sibling who sorts through and soothes others’ announcements and choices. That’s about to change.

I take a deep breath. “I think we should close the store.”

There’s a long moment of silence, followed by Lily’s “Seriously?” and Caleb’s “Wait, what?”

“Where is this coming from?” my sister asks. “All the effort we’ve put in, the new website, the cooking class—”

“You guys’ help was so appreciated,” I say. “And I’m glad we gave it a shot, I really am. But the store’s revenue is still pretty dismal. If we don’t choose to close it now, I expect we’ll be forced to a year from now. And a year from now we won’t have the offer from the Andrews Corporation on the table.”

“We don’t even know what that offer is,” Caleb says. “I thought we basically told them to go to hell.”

Another deep breath. “Actually, we do know the details of their offer. Sylvia’s still on retainer, and I had her get in touch with their attorney to learn the specifics. She came back and said that speaking as a lawyer and longtime friend of the family, if we want to close our doors, we can’t do it under better terms.”

“Is this about Sebastian Andrews?” Lily demands. “Oh my God! That’s why he was hanging around all the time. To wear you down so you’d stop seeing him as the enemy.”

“This isn’t about Sebastian. I haven’t seen him in weeks. Not since the cooking class.”

I don’t tell them that the fact that I haven’t heard from him has led me to the same conclusion Lily’s reached—that perhaps he was sticking around not because of any interest in me as a person, but to soften my perception of him so the offer on the table was no longer coming from an enemy, but… a friend?

If that was the case, he must have had a crisis of conscience, because he hasn’t been around the shop, and maybe that’s just as well. Maybe it’s the same reason I had Bubbles & More’s lawyer take care of all official correspondence. I may know in my heart that it’s the right path, but it doesn’t mean my heart doesn’t also hurt that I couldn’t make Bubbles work for the sake of my dad’s memory—that I couldn’t learn to love it like my parents did.

The whimsical part of me, the one that sings to pigeons, wants to keep my memories of Sebastian Andrews as far away from that pain as possible.