Candy Flip

Chapter Four

Lucy couldn't help but fall in love with Emilia despite the fact that she was into drugs and hung around with a crowd that Lucy would scarcely find herself in.  Emilia's beautiful looks and quirky attitude made her easy to become friends with.  She had just turned eighteen and lived with her dad right beside Aunt Stacey's house.  Lucy explained how she hadn't seen her Aunt in years and that things were still a little awkward.

"I met your Aunt two years ago when I moved in with my dad in the neighborhood.  My Mom had just passed away and things were really rough," Emilia said as they stood outside the candy store after Aunt Stacey had returned with Subway sandwiches for them.  It didn't come as a surprise to Lucy when she learnt that Emilia was a smoker.  She took a drag of her cigarette and exhaled sharply, her blue eyes glazed over as she stared across the street, remembering.  "I wasn't ever close to my dad.  He drinks a lot and always did.  Even after my Mom got sick."

"You still don't have a relationship with him?" Lucy asked.

Emilia shook her head, chewing on her bottom lip.

"He became an isolated asshole during my Mom's last few weeks.  I was the one that took care of her while he sat downstairs in the living room with beer all around him and the TV blaring.  My Mom was my everything, but cancer's cancer and life is shit," Emilia said.

"Well, I never had a relationship with my dad either," Lucy said quietly as she stared at her feet.  "He left my Mom when I was about two years old."

"Men are pricks," Emilia groaned.  "That's something your Aunt and I agree on."

"Yeah, I doubt she'll ever get married," Lucy smirked.

Emilia laughed.  "You don't know?"

Lucy stared at Emilia in confusion and raised her eyebrows in question.  "Know what?"

Emilia gulped and glanced inside where Aunt Stacey stood at the cash, chatting to a customer in her bubbly voice.

"Your Aunt's high school sweetheart married another woman just because Stacey wanted to put their wedding on hold to open up Candy Flip," Emilia whispered.

Lucy's eyes widened.  Her Aunt had always said that she didn't need a man in her life so it was a shock to hear that she was once engaged.  Lucy was sure that her mother didn't even know about this.

"Who was he?" Lucy pressed on.

Emilia shrugged.  "Some guy that she was definitely in love with.  She told me they were engaged for like three years because she was working hard on opening the shop- busy with deeds and stuff.  Then he got fed up one day and left and she became a bitchy old whack job."

"I think she's always been a whack job," Lucy said uncertainly.  "She's been like this for as long as I remember."

"Like what?" Emilia grinned.

Lucy stared and couldn't help but smile, feeling guilty.  "Don't make me say it.  She's different to your regular thirty eight year old."

"What, because she's a colorful lady that's always baked?"

"So she does smoke weed?" Lucy gasped.

Emilia laughed again, throwing her dead cigarette down on the sidewalk and stepping on it with her sandal.

"She never told me she does, but I've been smoking weed since I was fourteen years old, and if she's not baked all the time then she's definitely got something wrong with her," she replied with a smile.

Lucy chuckled and shook her head, imagining her Aunt sitting in her pastel pink living room with a joint in one hand and an apple cider in the other.