Chapter Seventeen
Willow was on her knees using the famous knee pads Tara had gifted her for her birthday but for the less pleasurable task of deep cleaning some baseboards.
Only the fact that they were her baseboard in her bar in her new waterfront property made it at all a tolerable exercise, but it was a pretty compelling reason. Especially anytime she stood up and saw the view and imagined the place full of shelves and tables and beanbags and people.
She struggled back into a standing position and wiped some dust from her pants.
She looked around. There was still a lot to do before she started interviewing that afternoon.
She’d considered asking Lily to help but between the wedding planning and the impending move for college, she was very slightly insufferable at the moment. Emily’s belly was getting so big now that she wouldn’t be much help with any of the manual labor so she was out too. Tara was working all day and so that left Willow all on her lonesome to have this place clean enough that somebody would want to work here even though it was devoid of furniture.
At least, it was physically devoid. All Willow had to do was stand in the middle of the empty space to see what it could — would — be. She liked the idea of keeping it aesthetically similar to the Sunnydale store, especially since Tara had made most of the design decisions there, but was planning to change the wood furnishings to match the inbuilt bar and other wood decorations — like her spotless baseboards.
The wood was dark but if it wasn’t, Willow was sure she would have seen her reflection in them. A buffing worthy of Ruth, who may have had her own messy style of book organization but always had the cleanest floors in the town.
Given that was Sunnydale, that was only a mild compliment, but still.
Willow looked up to the one fixture already in place — a copy of the portrait of Ruth on the highest beam in the building so she could look down on it all. She smiled and gave a respectful nod before going into the kitchen in the back where the old furniture was all stacked up.
To say Willow had gotten a deal on this place would be an understatement. Like the snow that would fall on the banks of the river outside the window come winter, everything had fallen together gently but in a very impactful way.
First, her foreknowledge of the downfall of Jonathan McFarland and accomplice wife Jennifer (currently languishing on house arrest as they awaited trial) had allowed her to approach the person she needed to to make the offer before any assets were frozen.
Second, just as Emmett had promised, that person (Tracy, whom Willow found delightful to deal with) was very eager to rip Jonathan off with very little recourse that could come back on her. She made sure the other investors got what they were due, gave herself a higher commission to offset any loss on her part, and pretty much wrapped the building up in a bow for Willow to take.
Thirdly, the restaurant that had been here previously, where Willow and Tara had come for their anniversary, was due to vacate so there weren’t even any messy tenant arrangements to be made. Willow even got all of the old stock like the furniture sitting in the kitchen and all of the appliances already fitted to code.
Lastly, and by no means leastly, Willow signed her annual contract with the FBI for their licensing of TARA except this time she got them to drop the exclusivity. It meant one less zero on the paycheck but also meant Willow could use it for commercial enterprises and she had a lot of ideas for how to integrate it into the store.
The first thing would be her wife’s sweet voice welcoming everybody on arrival.
In the kitchen, Willow started to drag some chairs into the main area so people would have someplace to sit when they arrived. The ‘people’ in question were the interviewees' Willow had put an open call out for so she could get some help quick on pulling this place together.
She set out ten chairs outside the office; five on either wall and shortly after, heard a gentle knock on the glass of the door.
By the time Willow got to the door to answer it a few seconds later, there were three people already there.
Emily walked along the river clutching her purse over her shoulder; nervously running her fingers up and down the strap.
It was a habit she developed when avoiding confrontation in the schoolyard but often did it just walking along the street as well; trying to hide herself from the gazes of anyone who was near.
It was a bit moot when her belly was so obviously swollen and making her stand out but old habits die hard.
As she walked, she spotted the building of the new store across the street. Willow had brought her and Lily and JJ and Kayden to show them it when they were all home for graduation and Emily had thought it was a great spot to be able to chill out with a book.
Emily was confused as to why there was a line outside what she knew to be an empty store, but then she recalled Willow talking that morning about doing interviews for the staff.
She crossed the street and quietly walked through the door, getting annoyed looks from the people in front as she did so.
She whispered an apology but was pretty quickly distracted by all of the people wandering around aimlessly inside. The few chairs were occupied and everyone else was leaning against walls or just sitting on the floor, waiting, pouring over what Emily realized were resumes.
She heard a door opening and watched as everybody’s attention turned to the sound like animals getting a whiff of prey.
“We’ll be in touch,” Willow said, shaking the hand of the person she was leaving the office with.
Emily quickly strode over.
“Momma.”
Willow blinked as she took in Emily. Willow's eyes were heavy and there were lines of exhaustion embedded on her face.
“Oh, Em,” Willow said, weakly reaching out to touch Emily’s arm, “It’s really nice of you to come, sweetie but way more people showed up than I intended and things are kind of crazy.”
Emily glanced back into the main store area and back at Willow.
“I’ll take care of it,” she said with the kind of confidence in her voice she didn’t often have, “Collect resumes and get a line going.”
Willow’s shoulders slumped gratefully.
“Thank you, Emily,” she said and tried to straighten up again to seem professional, “Err…who’s next?”
Everybody clambered toward Willow, who quickly just plucked a waving resume and brought that person inside.
She really, really wished she’d gone with a recruitment agency and not just posted an open call. She would definitely be going that route when she was searching for kitchen staff.
Fifty interviews and interviewees later, Willow waved goodbye to the last person and let her professional stature slump. Her hands went to her lower back and she just stretched for a moment.
When she opened her eyes, she was surprised.
The last timed she’d looked out, it was like a zoo but now there were chairs neatly sitting against all of the walls. There was some form of an intake table — a dining table of old — with stacks of resumes, name-tags, and pens (different colored to Willow’s delight), several jugs filled with water and cups and even a plate of cookies.
“Emily, thank you so much,” Willow said as she walked toward where Emily was gathering the cups in an old basin, “I don’t know what I would have done without you. Where did you get all of this stuff?”
“In the kitchen,” Emily answered, leaving the basin down for a moment, “And the supermarket two blocks over.”
Willow frowned.
“I hope you didn’t carry all of this.”
Emily shook her head.
“People were happy to carry their own chairs to have someplace to sit and everything else was light.”
Willow poured herself a cup of water as she glanced over the sign-up sheet Emily had started.
None stood out.
Even those who had chosen to write their details in green or red for that very reason.
While they were all pleasant people — apart from one guy who was entirely stoned the whole time, and even then he was still pleasant just completely inappropriate — Willow didn’t get the kind of passion she’d gotten when she hired Marla. Maybe it was too much to ask these days but she needed someone who she at least believed had read a book or two just for the sheer enjoyment of it. Who understood the kind of feeling Willow was trying to invoke in her customers.
The store name said it all — Bibliosima. Enjoyment from smelling good or old books. She needed someone who got that.
“Momma, there’s one more person to interview,” Emily pulled Willow out of her internal musings.
Willow looked around in alarm but nobody was there.
If they were in the bathroom, she really hoped Emily had bought toilet paper too.
She looked back to Emily expectantly, who swallowed deeply but kept her posture tall.
“Me.”
Willow slowly blinked.
“Not the manager obviously,” Emily added in quickly, “I know I don’t have the experience for that.”
Willow sat into a nearby chair and gestured for Emily to sit opposite. She did.
“I thought you were going to work for the community college.”
Emily struggled not to avert her gaze but it couldn’t help but fall downward.
“Nobody even looks at my resume once they see the belly.”
Willow nodded once evenly.
“And who’ll take care of…?”
“I can still get subsidized daycare as a student,” Emily’s head shot back up with renewed assurance, “I can get an associate's degree, part-time if I need to, and then move onto UB.”
Willow’s mouth moved about as she thought.
“And what are you planning on studying?”
Emily inhaled and exhaled slowly.
“I don’t know yet Momma,” she answered honestly, “But I love languages and I love books and I think I could do a really good job here. Do you know how many kids in my school read real books anymore? None. I was the only one ever in the library. Maybe if I’d had someplace like this…m-maybe I would have had more friends.”
Willow swallowed right in time with her heart clenching.
Emily wasn’t sure how to take her mother’s silence.
“Momma, if there’s someone better for the job, don’t hire me,” she said and glanced over to the side where she could see the room filling itself out as it would look in the future, “I always wished I could visit the store in Sunnydale whenever I wanted. Hide away in a beanbag. I’ll still be here all the time. I want the baby to grow up here. You can think about it.”
Emily started to stand and Willow stood with her.
“You can’t work the bar until you’re 18.”
Emily’s eyes lit up.
“I know,” she nodded quickly, “But I thought, what if you had a dedicated bartender? The Buffalo market is bigger and the clientele is younger. You could build a reputation for cocktails. I can still work as a server or cashier or…however I’m needed.”
Willow pursed her lips for a moment.
“You’re right, you don’t have the experience to be a manager,” she said eventually and both of them were gnawing on the corner of their lips in the exact same way, “How does assistant manager sound?”
Emily’s mouth slowly dropped.
“It sounds amazing.”
“How does being an assistant manager to your mother sound?” Willow arched an eyebrow and Emily’s eyes slowly widened as she registered what Willow was saying, “I need someone with the essence of Ruth. I’m realizing that that’s me. I want to run this place. Every day, not just on a quarterly basis or even on a monthly basis. And recruitment debacle aside, I know I can do it. I micro-managed poor Marla for long enough.”
Emily’s feet turned inward and she extended her hand.
“It’s nice to meet you, boss.”
Willow smiled softly. Even looking at Emily was still hard for her with the ‘situation’ so evident but she couldn’t deny she felt immense pleasure at the thought of running one of Ruth’s stores with her own daughter.
“Any other ideas for this place?”
Emily looked back over her shoulder where the view out to the water was.
“Have a canopy so people can sit out in the summer with a drink and a book. You could even make a unique focal point, like a hammock. Something that gets people talking.”
Willow smiled a little more.
This could really, really work out. It could also be really, really messy but something in her felt otherwise. She glanced over at the stack of resumes and lifted them up.
“We’ll need some other people to work on the floor. Anyone stand out?”
Emily came to stand beside Willow and looked on as she flicked through them.
“Um…Peter,” she stopped her at one particular resume, “He offered to carry the table when he saw me trying to do it. No one else did.”
“I will review Peter,” Willow replied, scanning his information quickly, “Oh, his middle name is Albus. At least he was raised by my kinda people.”
Emily nodded.
“And he’s studying creative writing.”
Willow frowned; she couldn’t place him in the sea of faces she’d seen that day.
“Remind me who I’m dealing with?”
Emily reached above herself
“He was tall,” she indicated his estimated height. “Blue eyes. Brown hair that fell into his eyes. Really chiseled jawline.”
She blushed but Willow wasn’t looking at her to catch it.
“Dreamy and steamy,” she replied firmly as she remembered, “Got it.”
“He has a dog named Sirius Bark,” Emily added shyly.
Willow’s head flew up with wide eyes.
“We’re hiring him immediately,” she said definitively, “Why didn’t he say any of that in the interview?”
Emily shrugged one shoulder easily.
“He probably thought it was unprofessional.”
“Well, we’ll have to beat that out of him,” Willow quipped and shook the papers again, “Give me one more.”
Emily thumbed through them all until she found another one to take out.
“Audrey,” she said with as assured a nod as Willow had ever seen her give, “She’s young. Lots of charisma. A single mom and she’s worked as a proofreader before. She does book reviews to get access to hard copies for her kids that she wouldn’t be able to afford otherwise. She’s working at a call center right now and would be so grateful to leave so I know she’d work hard.”
Willow slowly smiled at her daughter.
“I should have had you conduct the interviews,” she said honestly and bumped Emily’s shoulder, “That will be enough floor staff at least until…”
She trailed off and they both looked at Emily’s stomach. Emily put a hand there protectively and looked up slowly.
“H-How does that work?”
Willow let her hand fall onto Emily’s shoulder and gently caressed her daughter’s skin past the sleeve on her t-shirt with her thumb.
“You’re lucky that your Mom made me establish a very generous maternity package in the other store.”
Emily’s eyes softened.
“I think I’m lucky that Mom is…Mom.”
Willow let out a single chuckle.
“You and me both, kid.”
She moved her arm around Emily’s shoulders and tilted Emily’s head toward her to kiss.
“You and me both.”
Tara was relieved to hear the sound of the key in the door and walked out to it to greet the person coming inside.
“Sweetpea, there you are,” she hugged Emily, then held her at arm’s length, “I was expecting you home hours ago. What happened at college?”
“I don’t get a hug and a ‘sweetpea’?” Willow asked with a pout as she came in behind Emily.
Tara kissed Willow’s cheek and closed the door.
“S-Sorry, Mom,” Emily said, leaving her backpack by the door, “I, um, went to see the new store and stayed to help out.”
“And then we got ice-cream,” Willow added cheerily.
Tara arched an eyebrow.
“Before dinner?”
Willow and Emily shared a guilty look. Tara was grinning inside to see them hovered close like they used to be but she couldn’t very well let that show.
“Go wash up,” she directed Emily up the stairs, “Tell Lily and Emmett they need to wash up too.”
“Emmett is here?” Willow took a long step forward, her eyes skittish, “Upstairs? Alone?”
Tara’s brow furrowed in a strange look directed at Willow.
“He got the train up to help Lily pack for Julliard. He’s going to take some of it back for her.”
“That’s… decent of him,” Willow said evenly.
She made a step away but Tara caught her arm.
“Um, excuse me,” she said, pulling her toward the kitchen, “You’re not exempt from washing your hands either.”
Willow gave Tara a slow and purposeful eye roll.
“You know, we haven’t had a pandemic in years.”
“You know, germs don’t pay attention to calendars,” Tara replied as she kissed the top of Willow’s ear and pushed her gently toward the sink, “How did the interviews go?”
Willow made a face as she washed her hands under the faucet.
“Maybe not a pandemic-level disaster but definitely small-earthquake level. Nobody died but still leaves a mess.”
Tara deflated slightly.
“That bad?”
“Exhausting,” Willow replied and for a moment her eyes betrayed just that, “But it made me realize a lot.”
Tara perked up again.
“It did?”
Willow flicked the water from her fingertips and turned back to Tara.
“I don’t want there to be a manager for the store,” she said and exhaled a long breath, “ want to be the manager of the store.”
Tara’s hands cupped her mouth and then moved down over her heart.
“Oh, I was hoping you’d say that.”
Willow’s eyebrows lifted in surprise.
“You were?” she asked as those brows furrowed again quickly, “Why didn’t you say something?”
Tara wrapped her hands around both of Willow’s upper arms.
“It’s your baby. I wanted you to feel it was right.”
Willow’s face softened.
“I mean, that’s the whole point, right? To have something to do that I really love to fill my days,” she said softly, then winked, “Can’t stay home and bang you all day as much as I’d like.”
She rubbed Tara’s waist and leaned up for a soft, sweet kiss.
Tara nuzzled Willow’s nose gently, ignoring the 'bang' jibe.
“I’m so glad you’re going to take the job on.”
“I couldn't be so hands-off when the store is so close by. I'd drive another manager crazy,” Willow noted with a small laugh, “And Marla is sending one of her guys down to help with the opening. Emily picked out two great employees and I have feelers out for a good bartender and a good chef.”
Tara kissed Willow again.
“I’m so proud of you.”
Willow allowed herself to fall into a hug.
“Something else kinda big happened,” she said as she nestled inside Tara’s embrace, “I hired Emily as my assistant manager.”
Tara pulled away from Willow to look at her quizzically. Willow had a look of slight awe which was a delight to see.
“Tara, she was amazing. She organized everything and she has all these great ideas. I’m really excited about it.”
Tara’s eyes shone with hope.
“You understand…”
Willow cut Tara off with a nod.
“That I’m taking a risk, yes. But I really believe in her,” she said, gently pulling at the ends of Tara’s shirt, “And I don’t think she was having much luck elsewhere.”
Tara frowned.
“Oh, she never answered how things went at school.”
Willow lifted her thumb up and dropped it again.
“Thumbs up for being a student, thumbs down for being an employee.”
Tara nodded in understanding.
“Well, at least the most important thing succeeded.”
“Definitely,” Willow agreed.
They hugged again for a moment until there was the distinct sound of footsteps on the stairs.
“I hear the hungry hoofs of children,” Willow whispered with mock-terror.
“Mom, did you make extra garlic bread?” Lily screeched from the hall, “I need to carbo-load from all that packing.”
Tara quickly moved over to the ovens and used tongs to transfer all of the garlic bread into the waiting basket.
“Just as I promised,” she said as she held the basket out for Lily.
Lily took a slice and started to walk away. Tara called her back, exasperated.
“Take the whole basket, please.”
Lily did an exaggerated sigh and took the whole basket into the dining room.
“You know how I was nervous about her going off to college all on her own?” Willow asked with a fake chipper, “Totally ready for it. Can she go tomorrow?”
Tara put a hand on Willow’s upper arm and squeezed.
Together they got dinner on the table and even managed to get some food on their plates without getting stabbed by Lily’s fork.
After dinner, Willow spied Emmett ready to head back upstairs with Lily. She looked uneasy and leaned over to Tara.
“Are we really okay with him sleeping over?” she asked with a deep frown, “The last time was an emergency and I only partly trust that he didn’t sneak down or more likely, Lily sneaked up.”
Tara arched an eyebrow at Willow.
“Have you seriously not gotten the memo?”
Willow’s face slowly fell.
“There was a memo?” she asked in a small voice, “Why wasn't I CC’d?”
Tara clasped her arm over Willow’s shoulder.
“Willow, Emmett is gay.”
Willow’s eyes slowly widened. She pushed herself away from Tara and threw her arms up.
“Hallelujah!” she exclaimed and hurried out to wrap a surprised Emmett in a hug, “Stay over anytime. Do you need a copy of the agenda?”
Emmett looked alarmed but didn’t reject the hug.
“Umm… thanks.”
Willow started to move upstairs and Tara placed a gentle hand on Emmett’s back.
“Don't worry. She's been making that joke for years. Be glad she didn't mention a toaster oven.”
Willow’s head suddenly turned around.
“Hey does this mean Lily gets a toaster oven?” she asked, utterly delighted with both her jokes and the situation, “I won't have to buy her one for school!”
Lily looked at Tara with pained, derisive eyes.
“That’s your wife.”
Tara just smiled and watched Willow’s butt pounce away with a proud tilt of her chin.
“That’s my wife.”
Willow managing the store and Emily working with her is what I hoped for all along!
Willow is so cute!
I liked the little canon esteregg referencing Xander's "basement past". The end of this scene is also funny (even if I don't understand how Pierce managed to hit his own head with a glue gun and stuck it to the column).
However, no parent is perfect and it was kind of Lily's 'last hurrah' since she definitely won't be needing a car in the city. I sincerely hope in the future she makes enough money to afford a driver because the roads will be a safer place for it.
