Christmas at Fireside Cabins - Jenny Hale Page 0,41
name. Kind of weird if you ask me…”
“Is there a better name for a coffee shop than Coffee? Why does it have to be something else?” he challenged.
“You want to draw people in, give them a feeling.” She touched her fingers to her thumbs in the meditation stance, making him chuckle. The truth was, she did get a feeling whenever she was in there, and she thought they could convey it to others. Lila felt friendship and camaraderie, coziness and good cheer––even when he was in one of his foul moods.
“People will come if they want coffee.”
“What if you named it…” She stopped and faced him. “Theo’s Coffee? Make it more personal.”
He shook his head.
“Or more eclectic, like Dairy Coffee—we don’t do almond milk?”
He cracked a smile.
“You could call it Something Different! That’s a great name for your coffee house.” She gave him a big, cheesy grin. “Because the shop and its owner are definitely… different.”
“What’s wrong with the shop the way it is?”
“You actually want my opinion?” she asked.
“Not really, to be honest,” Theo replied.
“It needs character. People don’t want just coffee. If they did, they’d make it at home. They want the atmosphere. What are you offering them that they can’t get in their kitchens?”
“I’m plenty busy with just the coffee.” He started walking again, taking a path that led between two barren maple trees.
“Right, but it’s mostly to-go orders,” she said, keeping pace beside him. “What about creating a spot where the community can come and take a load off? You want to keep your customers coming back for more, give them something they can’t get anywhere else—you. And on the rare occasions when you allow me to see your personality, I have no doubt that if you let them in on who you are, your shop would be standing room only.”
“What if I like it the way it is?”
“Don’t you want everyone to know about your shop? Don’t you want people to—”
He froze, his jaw clenching. “No,” he clipped. Then he pulled ahead of her, his feet crunching on the frozen grass, his strides too big to keep up with. Confused, she jogged to catch up with him, but that only seemed to make him speed up more.
“What did I say?”
“Nothing,” he said, shutting her down, but she wasn’t budging.
“You’re right,” she said straight back to him. “I said nothing wrong. You work in retail, but you don’t want to talk to anybody. You sell a product, but you don’t take time to market it or provide everything the customer needs.”
“Look, there’s a reason I am the way I am, and nothing you say is going to change it.”
“Tell me the reason then,” she demanded.
“Something happened…” He snapped his mouth shut, turning his gaze toward the tree line as he clomped away from her.
“You can’t just stay closed off forever.”
“Says who? You? Because you know what I’ve dealt with? You know what it’s like to have to create a different life for yourself, whether you wanted it or not? I don’t think you do.”
When they got to the porch of Eleanor’s house, Lila was out of breath and still wondering what had just happened between them. Theo stomped up the stairs and she stopped him just as he knocked on the door.
“What in the world is the matter?”
“You don’t get it at all! And you don’t need to. Just butt out.”
She flinched, needing a minute to get her bearings again. “Something is clearly eating at you, and you can’t possibly go through life like this. You’ll never survive it.”
He turned away from her, but she stepped in front of him.
“My parents died,” she said. “I don’t have a single person apart from those three girls I walked into your shop with who gives a hoot about me, and I don’t love my job or even know what I want to do in life, but never have I let any of it eat at me until I treated others the way you’re treating me right now. Whatever happened to you isn’t who you are, and I pray that you figure that out sooner rather than later, because in the meantime, you’re wasting a whole lot of precious moments.”
Eleanor opened the door, slicing through the moment. “Oh, hello,” she said cautiously, when she registered that Theo was at her door.
“Hi, Ms. Finely,” he said calmly, having clearly worked to get himself together. “I just wanted to come by with Lila to tell you that I’m sorry if I