The Other One

Chapter 15

I am so, so sorry this took so long. Literally a month for me to post.

I know I said this was going to be the last chapter, but this is what I have written and I thought it was a better place to end a chapter. Plus, you guys deserve an upload after all this time. So I've split the final chapter in half.

Chapter 16 will be the final chapter (I'm serious this time :P)

Masquerade ball comin' up next! :D

Read, Comment, Vote, Enjoy!

+Cake

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Lizzie stood with Kaylie in the line of a Tim Hortons. It was eleven in the morning and she wanted to grab her coffee and go find the perfect costume before having to go back to work at one, but there were so many people in front of them that it was making her fidgety. She scuffed the toe of her shoe on the ground and scowled through the window, trying to ignore Kaylie rolling her eyes beside her.

“Calm down, impatient one,” she said, poking her tongue out at Lizzie. “I bet you we’ll be out of here in ten minutes, and I already know where to get your dress.” Lizzie stared at her best friend, suddenly suspicious. Why was she mentioning buying her a dress? She knew very well Lizzie hated dresses. Too many bad experiences involving any clothing item with a skirt.

“I refuse to wear one of those,” Lizzie warned, eyes sharp. “You know how much I dislike them. Something bad always happens when I wear dresses, Kaylie.” Kaylie playfully shoved her and continued to grin.

“Trust me. This one is impossible to mess up. It’s perfect. Ooh, you’re gonna love it!” She squealed in excitement, earning them a few odd looks from other people in line. Lizzie huffed in resigned annoyance and turned back to the cashier, knowing that Kaylie’s mind was made up and it would be extremely difficult to change it.

When the line finally moved enough for Kaylie to buy her stuff, they ordered and quickly hopped back in the car, screeching out of the parking lot.

There was a very good reason why Lizzie preferred taking the bus to being driven anywhere by Kaylie.

Without her noticing, she’d whipped into a busy parking lot and zipped around the back of a building, too fast for Lizzie to see the name or appearance of the store. When they jerked awkwardly into a shady parking space in the back, Kaylie turned the car off abruptly and turned to grin at her friend. Lizzie gave her a wary look, curious as to what she wanted to say.

“Lizzie, you know how I’ve been real busy lately? Well, a lawyer contacted me about a month ago about my birth mother. She died and stuck me in her will.” Kaylie had been adopted when she was only a few months old, and had only met her birth parents once, unwillingly. She was completely happy with her adoptive parents; they were her real family, and that was all there was to it. Lizzie found it odd that her birth mother would write Kaylie into her will at all, and somewhat put-out that Kaylie hadn’t bothered to tell her all this before. “He said that my mother had owned this shop that she didn’t have the heart to sell, and she was givin’ it to me. I had no idea what to say. Like, whose parents give the child they abandoned at birth a store? I didn’t think he was serious, but then he gave me the papers to sign. I thought to myself, hey, this is somethin’ interestin’. I don’t want to work as a waitress for the rest of my life, may as well try it. So I signed the papers, and here we are.”

Lizzie was shocked. Kaylie owned a store? Like, all bills paid off, completely Kaylie-operated store?

The same Kaylie who’d been her best friend since high school, who was awful with numbers and was constantly in motion, never being able to hold a single permanent thing down besides her waitressing job , who shopped only exclusively in expensive designer stores and hated small shops, now owned her own small business?