Coastal [h.s]

twenty five

ONE YEAR AGO//OCTOBER

~MAGGIE~

The fluorescent lights, shiny white speckled floor, the squeaky sounds of carts that need to be retired, that feeling of walking into Target brings me a sense of calm rivaled only by the sea. I'd be lying if I said UCSD having a Target on campus wasn't a big pull for me going to school there.

After a long week at the cafe a Target trip was exactly what I needed.

It was my first week on my own without Sabrina. Well, she was still there, kind of. All summer she had been training me to be the manager and owner of Coastal. It was very hard work, quite honestly much harder than I had expected, but I loved every second of it. This week she decided to be on standby, she had nothing going on except packing up her apartment so she could come in if I ever needed anything but I was able to make it through the entire week without any help at all.

Any help from Sabrina, that was. We had some new hires at the cafe, two freshman girls at UCSD and my favorite new employee, Caroline. At the beginning of the semester she had asked if she could pick up some shifts to make a little extra money. I hired her on sight, knowing that I would need someone like her around if I was going to be running the place. She had been such a huge help, it was amazing. Although I had kind of been avoiding her for the past week or so for... obvious reasons.

My dad had been calling me constantly to check in and make sure everything was going well, and every time I couldn't help but talk for hours about everything I had been doing. He told me he heard my mom in my voice when I talked about the cafe. Heard her passion, her vibrancy, her love.

As I moved through the dollar section, combing over the products, and convincing myself I didn't need every pumpkin shaped dish or ghost covered pair of socks, my phone began to buzz in my pocket.

"What's up Mr. Irish Man?" I giggled into the phone as I answered it.

"There's my favorite ginger! Just wanted to call and say hi, I feel like we haven't caught up in ages"

"I know I'm sorry I've been so busy with work and you've been busy being grossly in love," I dragged out the end of my sentence in a toddler-like voice, poking fun at him and Brooklyn.

"Ha ha, very funny, I didn't realize you hated love so much? I thought you had some budding romance of your own," I could hear him raising his eyebrows and smirking as he spoke.

"Well since you asked, Harry and I may or may not have gone on a date la-"

"WHAT?!" he screamed through the phone, "how come you didn't text me right away you idiot?! I was just talking about you sneaking off at my wedding which you still haven't told me about and now you drop this bomb?"

"Okay calm it down sir, we just... I just... I've been processing," I paused in front of the fall scented candles, picked up one labeled 'cashmere vanilla' and sniffed it. It smelled like him.