more worries in Carly’s mind. While it was thoughtful of Zev to send his brother to check on her, Beau wasn’t Zev. Her thoughts had taken hold of that fact and run with it. This was what their lives would be like for years to come, at least over the summers. Anything could happen. What if they decided to have children? How would that work? What if one of them got hurt or sick and Zev was thousands of miles away? What if Zev got sick or was bitten by a shark, and she was far away? Her heart raced as an even scarier thought trampled through her mind. What if there was a storm and Zev got lost at sea?
Holy crap. Anything could happen.
She was drowning in worry and struggling to keep her head above water, but at least Birdie and Quinn hadn’t seemed to notice.
By midafternoon the scent of smoke and melted plastic had dissipated and the flow of customers had eased, giving Carly a moment to catch her breath. If only her mind would stop aggravating her with new concerns about her and Zev’s future.
Quinn peeked in the front door and looked around the empty shop. “Can I please just put up a sign that says the fire wasn’t bad, nobody was hurt, and we’ll be open as usual? I feel like I’m spending all my time talking about the fire instead of chocolate.”
“Sorry,” Birdie said for the hundredth time.
She had been apologizing all day for the fire, but Carly blamed herself. She knew Birdie’s mind was on seventeen things at once, especially during the festival. If she’d been working instead of selfishly wanting to eke out every minute she could with Zev, maybe the fire could have been avoided.
“Birdie, please stop apologizing. It could have happened to any of us, and I should have been here with you,” Carly said. “But that’s a good idea about the sign.”
“I’ll make something pretty and fun and print it out,” Birdie offered. “Just give me fifteen minutes so I can finish restocking the chocolate-covered coffee beans first.”
“Great!” Quinn headed back outside.
“Carly, I have a great idea!” Birdie exclaimed. “We should have a fire sale. Retailers do it all the time.”
“I think they do that when they’re going bankrupt,” Carly said, making room in the display cabinet for another tray of brownies.
“Oh…” Birdie’s shoulders slumped, and in the next second her eyes lit up and she said, “Well, here’s another idea I’ve been thinking about. Next year we should hire college kids to give out samples down by the stage.” She set three bags of beans on the shelf and reached for more. “We’re hitting customers on the sidewalk, but there are tons of people who are at the festival just to listen to music and hang out on the green. They might not even know about the shop, and I have the perfect way to spread the word. You know how in the olden days candy girls walked around movie theaters with trays that hung from neck straps?”
“Do you mean at sporting events?”
“It’s pretty much the same thing. Maybe they were called cigarette girls back then, not candy girls. Anyway, if we get four or five people to sell our chocolates down by the green, we could probably make money and gain new customers. And as a bonus, we’d have a few young hotties to ogle.”
“I love your brain, Birdie. We would need trays that keep the chocolate cool.” Carly made a mental note to add the concept to her future ideas list for more serious consideration, which brought her mind to her and Zev’s one-day list. While they were watching the sunrise, they’d added a few things to the list, like attending a concert, cliff diving at Mahana Point, and snowboarding in Allure.
“I’ll look into it,” Birdie said as she went around the counter and pulled the company laptop out from under the register. “I’ll get started on the sign for Quinn.”
Carly closed the display cabinet thinking about that one-day list. If summer plans were so hard to figure out, how would she and Zev ever get to the rest of the things on their lists? They both wanted to spend time in Pleasant Hill for the holidays, and she couldn’t just take off a month from the shop to travel.
“You know, even if you paid fifteen dollars an hour, that’s only like two small sales,” Birdie said as she typed.