Life Is Sweet Read online

  “No! Not at all.” The doorbell jingled again and I wanted to screech. “Okay yes please help me,” I blurted. “And never tell anyone I asked you to help me.”

  “I really don’t mind. You look like you need a hand.”

  I gestured for her to hold the bag. “Please hold this up to the spout so the jellybeans don’t go anywhere while I go call for help.”

  She took the bag, giving me a look that hovered between discomfort and laughter, and I booked it back to the counter to grab my phone, called Alexa, and it went to voicemail.

  Of course it did. I made sure to laugh instead of cry. Life is sweet, I told myself. I sent her a text telling her to call me and tell me how to fix the jellybean handle, but I had no clue how long it might have taken her to get back to me.

  Maybe having two employees had its drawbacks.

  I hustled with the phone back to the dispenser, where I took the bag back, flushed and blurting, “Thank you, thank you for saving my life—”

  And then the other customer who had come in was standing at the register, looking around impatiently for an attendant. Of course. The one time people who came in actually bought something—

  Without saying a word, the woman took the bag again, and I shouted thanks on my whole way back to the register, where I rang up the customer at the speed of sound and told them to have the most amazing day of their lives as I handed them the receipt, and back to take the bag back.

  “I am so sorry,” I said, my face burning.

  “Did you get your help on the line?” she said.

  “No, actually, I did not. But that’s fine! I’m Kayla Spencer, and life is sweet.”

  She stared at me. Ugh. The worst part of her staring was that she was pretty. I hated getting judged by attractive women. I could see up close she had gray eyes, flecked with lighter color towards the edges of her iris, and there was a way the light danced in them while she was looking at me.

  “All right, Kayla,” she said. “Very… pleased to make your acquaintance. Hey, why don’t you just…”

  She reached behind the spout and pulled something, and I felt some of the weight lessen. Tentatively, I pulled the bag away, and aside from dumping out what was in the tube already, it stopped pouring.

  “Oh my god you fixed it,” I said. “You’re a genius.”

  Her eyes flicked back to the machine. “There was a switch back there that said ‘stop flow.’”

  “Oh.” I felt my cheeks burn. “Yeah, that’s a pretty good bet to stop the flow, huh?”

  “Guess so. Seems to have… stopped the flow.”

  We stared at each other. Eventually, I looked down at my bag of butter popcorn jellybeans, and I offered them.

  “Do you want some jellybeans?”

  Chapter 3

  Melissa

  I looked at the jellybeans, speckled yellow and white, and back up at Kayla, the woman who seemed to be turned up to a hundred twenty percent and stuck there. She was adorable, with light skin and pink blush, bright glitter eyeshadow making her eyes pop out to such a radiant blue it looked like she was wearing color contacts, and she had fluffy cotton candy hair with a fluffy white hat with fluffy white ears. Between that and the pink-and-white striped uniform with a polka-dot flared skirt and patterned tights, she was a… statement piece.

  Was I supposed to just take all the jellybeans? There were kind of a lot. “I don’t really eat candy,” I said, what I thought was a neutral compromise until her face fell.

  “You don’t eat candy? Oh, that’s so sad. And lonely. What are you here for, then?”

  Lonely? Was candy her friend or something? I scratched the back of my head and said, “I’m buying a present for my sister…”

  “Oh!” She lit up. “Oh, that’s the sweetest thing. Is this a regular thing?”

  I shook my head. “It’s a baby shower, so… for her sake, I hope it’s not a regular thing.”

  “Oh my gosh you’re going to have a little nephew! Or a niece! Or something! That is special. Let me show you all the biggest statement pieces. Oh yeah, what’s your name?”

  My name? Was that standard protocol for a candy shop? I’d never been in one before. I wasn’t expecting it to be so… colorful. Nor the attendant. “Melissa,” I said after the pause.

  “Melissa. That’s such a pretty name. What’s your favorite color?”

  “My favorite—what? I don’t think I have a favorite color.”

  She looked at me like I’d just murdered her child and then kicked the body around. “Oh my god you have to have a favorite color. How can you not have a favorite color?”

  “I don’t…” I fumbled with words. This was unusually difficult for me, someone who was a master negotiator in the boardroom. “Why do you even want to know?”

  “It’s the most important thing to know about someone after their name! Life is colorful, how are you just expecting to go through life without a favorite color?”

  I felt like I was in trouble and I didn’t know why. “I’ve done just fine so far, actually.”

  “But what color bedsheets do you get? What color curtains do you put up? What color stickers do you put on your toaster? Oh my goodness no one’s ever just said they don’t have a favorite color before.”

  “I use white sheets and they work just fine. And there are no stickers on my toaster.”

  “White sheets!” She went as white as my sheets. “How do you get excited going to bed with white sheets?”

  “I don’t think going to bed is usually a matter of excitement—”

  “I’m sure it’s not when you have white sheets!”

  I had no clue why I was arguing about this. Worse than that, I had no clue why I was enjoying arguing about this. “I really don’t spend enough time looking at my sheets to justify that.”

  “Well, maybe you’d spend more time looking at them if they weren’t white! C’mon, let’s go pick a favorite color.”

  I squinted. “Pick a—”

  She had the jellybeans set down on the counter and thrust a roll of candy dots that had just come from nowhere into my hands the next second. “Ta-da! Try each color and tell me which is the tastiest.”

  “I told you, I don’t eat candy.”

  “It’s free candy. But not in a creepy way. C’mon, they’re candy dots, they’re, like, this big,” she said, squeezing two fingers together.

  I resigned. I could at least buy them for my sister if they were good.

  I tried a blue one, and honestly, it tasted like sugar. I tried a green one, and it tasted the exact same. I frowned.

  “Kayla, these are all the same flavor.”

  “Of course,” she said, beaming. “But the color makes each one special.”

  I couldn’t believe this woman was real. “I… don’t think it does, Kayla. They taste the same.”

  “Keep going until you find one that speaks to you.”

  I tried a yellow one, and lo and behold, it tasted the same. “They’re not saying much.”

  “Keep putting candy in your mouth, Melissa!”

  I had a weird thought while I was being force-fed candy dots by a living color palette.

  This was probably my most genuine human interaction outside work in months. A year?

  I stopped once the thought hit me, an empty feeling like regret coming into me. Kayla’s eyes lit up.

  “Oh! It’s speaking to you! The orange one is speaking to you! That’s it! You found your favorite color!”

  It had not been a candy dot whispering into my mind, thankfully. But I wasn’t going to tell Kayla no, I just got emotional thinking you’re the closest thing I have to a friend now that you yelled at me about my favorite color.

  “I was just thinking about something,” I said. “But you know? Fine. Orange is nice. That can be my favorite color.”

  Kayla did a little dance, and I found myself brought to a new level of disbelief. A dance. For my favorite color. “Oh my gosh. I’m so proud. I got to witness the birth of a favorite colo
r. It’s a great choice, Melissa. Hold on, let me get you a sticker.”

  “A sticker?” I said, but before I could say anything else, she tore an orange heart off a sticker sheet, grabbed a marker and put down MELISSA on it before handing it to me.

  “Here,” she said. “To celebrate your new favorite color.”

  I stared. “Are you upselling me a sticker?”

  “No, I just give everyone a sticker in their favorite color. That’s why I ask. But you are extra-special, because I got to argue with you about it.”

  I guessed I was flattered. I mean, on some level I kind of still wanted to argue with her. I didn’t know what had gotten into me. Maybe it was just the way she scrunched up her round face, a little pink flush across her slight nose. “Well, I’ll treasure the sticker. Maybe I’ll put it on my toaster.”

  “That’s a great idea, Melissa. Now, let’s get your sister some candy. What’s her name?”

  “Trisha,” I said. “And her favorite color is blue.”

  She threw her head back and laughed, and it caught me off guard how clear and pure a sound it was. “You’re learning! You have to come back, you know? It won’t be any fun if I can’t sell more candy to you.”

  I was glad at least I wasn’t the only one enjoying this bizarre encounter. But still, I had zero reason in my day-to-day life to visit a candy shop. “We’ll see,” I said, a nice non-answer. “Let’s get Trisha some candy.”

  ∞∞∞

  John, who was a well-built guy I probably would have thought was attractive if I were into men, leaned over to me and said, “Something happen? Never thought I’d see the day you of all people would be late.”

  I felt a flush of self-consciousness, and I tried to keep my eyes on the meeting room projector screen rather than look at him. “My personal life is getting a little… busier. My sister’s having her baby soon.”

  That was a generous way to frame I got stuck in a candy shop arguing over my favorite color. Still, John just looked at me with wide eyes.

  “Melissa, I didn’t even know you had a sister.”

  My heart sank.

  I’d never even told him I had a sister. That didn’t reflect well on my relationship with him or my sister. “Oh. Yeah, I have a sister. She’s younger. Twenty-five. Due late November.”

  “Congratulations to you both,” he said. “Can’t believe how much I’m out of the loop with you. You don’t have a husband somewhere, do you?”

  Christ. I hoped he was joking and not that I’d screwed up on that fundamental a level. “Nope. Don’t plan on that ever.”

  He gave me a quizzical look. “What, you don’t want to get married?”

  Oh my god. I’d never mentioned I was a lesbian, either. Did I ever tell Rebecca? I didn’t know. Literally all our conversations were small talk.

  I sighed. I couldn’t tell him now or he’d really be mad I’d kept it a secret, even if it had been accidental. “Let’s focus on work,” I said, one of my top ten lines in life, and he accepted it.

  The meeting went fine. It was another meeting, a bunch of talking about things I either already knew, didn’t care about, or the majority of the time, both. It went so long I had to hustle when I got back to my office to make up for lost time, and when the clock hit 5, I found myself staying just a little longer to finish up everything that had been on my plate—except that when I stayed just a little longer to finish up, a few other things came up too, and so before long I was leaving well after ten.

  I felt like I wasn’t in my own body as I walked back downstairs, out into the night and grabbed my car. I wasn’t really myself anymore, I was starting to realize. I was just a machine who existed to do my job, and the person inside had left a long time ago.

  I got home feeling depressed, but for whatever reason, I managed to feel a little better when I saw the sticker on my toaster.

  It was orange. And that was a pretty nice color.

  I had some missed messages from my sister, asking some questions. I took a seat at my table, sending a few texts—always curt, just answering the question and leaving it—and stared at the big bag of candy I’d bought.

  That probably wasn’t a good enough present for a shower. I mean, I was pretty sure in the first place you were supposed to buy things to help them with the baby. So what? Was I supposed to buy a crib? What if someone else at the shower bought them a crib? This was a stupid concept.

  Maybe I’d buy diapers. Except I wondered if everyone else at the shower would be having the same line of thought, and also buy diapers.

  I wasn’t any good at this. I needed someone to talk to, but I didn’t have anyone. John hadn’t even known I had a sister. Rebecca? I didn’t want to find out if she knew or not.

  Life was not sweet. I was tired of this.

  Chapter 4

  Kayla

  The shop was empty today. It was Wednesday, so what were you expecting? A reasonable person would buy candy to reward themselves for getting over the hump day, but it seemed no one in this city was reasonable.

  I snacked on butter popcorn jellybeans, the bag Melissa had refused. Because apparently she just didn’t eat candy and didn’t have a favorite color. I had to wonder what kind of amazingly depressing life that was.

  White bedsheets. White!

  When a customer came in, I got up to help them, enthusing about the absolute best stuff we had. I knew I was supposed to be upselling, but I just really wanted above all else to make sure people ate the absolute best candy. And they usually seemed to like it, although I don’t know how much of them smiling along was awkward peer pressure when a person appeared on top of you smiling her face off.

  They were just finishing up when the doorbell jingled again, and my stomach dropped when it was Jacob again, striding in through the door and pushing it closed behind him.

  The way he pushed the door shut sent a shudder through my body, taking me back to when he’d held the door shut in front of me, looking at me, challenging me to do anything. When I was trapped.

  “Kayla,” he said, walking across the store to me as the other customer left. He looked at me with those intense dark eyes, and half of my body told me to run and the other half just froze. “Is it just you today?”

  I tried to look away. “Jacob, what can I get you? This is my business and I’m working, you know.”

  “Kayla, you need to come back. I know you’re headstrong, but you can’t just throw everything away for… for… this,” he said, gesturing around at the store.

  I closed my eyes. It was all I could do to break eye contact with him. “Jacob, my life is happy now. Everything is going just the way it’s supposed to. I’m having fun running a business I love—”

  “You have no future like this, Kayla. You know I’m telling you the truth. You had everything before. Your father told me the same thing. You didn’t have any reason to run away, and he knows he was wrong to react the way he did. I’m here to bring you back. You can tell me about why you decided to run away.”

  I shook my head. The panic bobbing in my throat was starting to send tears into my eyes. “Jacob, I’m happy here. If you’re not here as a customer, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

  He leaned over the counter and I shrank back, my body panicking at the sight of him looming over me, just like—just like—

  “I’m not leaving, Kayla. Come back to me. This doesn’t have to be over.”

  I heard the door jingle, and my heart leapt into my throat when I saw—of all people, it was Melissa again.

  I’d really owe her a big apology. First dealing with the jellybeans and now Jacob, I might as well have just hired her.

  I jumped up from behind the counter and just about ran over to where Melissa was standing, looking at me like I was doing something wrong, and I called, “Melissa! You’re back. I missed you. What took you so long getting here?”

  I threw my arms out for a hug and she looked at me like I was even weirder than she’d thought. I had my back turned to Jaco
b, so I whispered, “Please just play along, please please please.”

  Her eyes flicked almost imperceptibly up to Jacob and back to me, and in an instant, her expression shifted like she was seeing a long-lost friend. “Kayla,” she said, pulling me into a crushing hug. “Sorry to keep you waiting. I hit every red on the way over here.”

  I barely dared breathe out again now. She squeezed me into her chest and my nose flooded with the scent of her clothes, still smelling like laundry detergent.

  Melissa was good. She was really good. Although she probably wasn’t going to like what I actually needed out of her.

  I whispered into her ear and said, “Melissa, I know this doesn’t make any sense, but I need you to pretend to be my girlfriend for like one second.”

  She stiffened, and before she could say anything, I heard Jacob stomp over to us, and Melissa let go. My heart was racing, but I just kept repeating in my head life is sweet, I’m going to do great.

  “Melissa,” I said breathlessly, turning to Jacob, where he shot me a dark look. “This is Jacob, my, uh, my ex-boyfriend. And Jacob, this is Melissa, she’s, uh…”

  Melissa reached a hand across my back and put it on my shoulder, pulling me in closer to her side. “Her girlfriend,” she said, and my heart jumped out of my chest. “I’m her girlfriend. It’s great to meet you, Jacob.”

  My head was just a chorus of thank god, thank god, thank god. I didn’t think I’d ever find a way to repay Melissa for this. Jacob looked over the two of us with a scowl and said, “Your… girlfriend.”

  “That’s right,” I said. “We met here at the candy store—the jellybean dispenser was broken, it was the wildest thing, she helped me out—and over the time since then we just kept seeing each other, and, you know, things just happened from there. It’s great. I wouldn’t trade her for the world.”

  I put my hand on Melissa’s waist, still feeling self-conscious. I was pretty sure this was not the correct way to treat a customer.

  “Kayla, are you…” Jacob shook his head. “I don’t get it. Why would you leave everything for this? You can come back. Everything will be waiting just where you left off. We can have it all.”