Three Chances to Fall

CHAPTER 1

With a perpetually off-­key voice, I would never be a musical theater kid, but for the last three months, I’d been doing my best Wicked Witch impression: I’m melting!

Because summer in the South was nothing like on the East Coast. In fact, it felt like an entirely different planet. My aunt Becca had warned me, so I didn’t have anyone to blame but myself (and climate change). June, July, August, and most of September in New Orleans could be so beastly that Becca told me she went through not one, not two, but three shirts a day. I’d always thought she was kidding, but here we now were, in the final days of Virgo season, and I had finally learned a thing or two. My tank top clung to my slick skin while my bright turquoise bayou bliss T-shirt was safely stowed in my tote bag. I wasn’t going to sweat through my clothes before my shift began; if I did, I’d inevitably freeze from the air-­conditioning.

Again.

A breeze, I nearly begged Mother Nature as I turned right on the sidewalk. M-A-­G-­A-­Z-­I-­N-­E, read eight ceramic tiles, the blue letters perfectly matching the beautiful sky. Thankfully, the old-­as-­time trees provided some shade. Give me a three-­second breeze . . .

“Good morning, Miss Margot!” someone called, and I blinked to see a friend of Becca’s pushing a stroller toward me. Sarah. I’d babysat her children a couple times this summer.

“Hi, Miss Margy!” Sarah’s curly-­haired toddler sweetly echoed her. Mar-­gee. She hadn’t gotten the hang of my name yet.

“Hello!” I smiled. “Where are you two coming from?”

“Music class,” Sarah said. “Isn’t that right, Thea?”

An enthusiastic nod from the two-­year-­old. “I played the tambourine.”

We laughed, and then Sarah gestured behind her, to Magazine Street. “Fair warning, it’s a party back there.”

“Perfect,” I said. “Maybe we’ll net more than ten dollars today.”

“Ever the optimist,” Sarah remarked knowingly before Thea kicked her feet.

I picked up my pace once we’d waved goodbye, weaving between everyone in my path. Becca had said more than once that I walked like a Northerner, teasing me that I needed to slow down enough to at least catch a whiff of the roses. “I’ve got places to be and people to see!” I’d joked, even though, at the time, I knew next to no one in the city. That was what my dad used to say in defense of his own “purposeful stride.”

Feeling a slight twinge, I told myself to focus. I didn’t want to be late.

I was learning that the Big Easy had no shortage of places to be, and Magazine Street was one of them. I loved the cool mixture of historical charm and contemporary design. The street was six miles long, stretching from Uptown New Orleans through the Garden District all the way downtown, and I vowed to walk the entire strip one of these days. Souvenir shops were as numerous as Wawas back home, but there was also everything from vintage stores to locally owned boutiques and coffee shops to fun bars and fine restaurants. Bayou Bliss Frozen Yogurt was sandwiched between a modern home goods store and a high-­end shoe store whose niche was expensive espadrilles made from old silk scarves.

Unfortunately, frozen yogurt didn’t seem to tempt many of the stores’ shoppers . . . or many shoppers in general. Not when French Truck Coffee’s yellow storefront shined right across the street. An iced latte sounded much more refreshing, didn’t it?

I’d been working part-­time at Bayou Bliss for almost as long as I’d been here, about three months. While Becca had invited me to live with her, one of her conditions was that I get a job to keep me busy. None of my barista or waitressing applications had panned out (Why would they when I had zero experience?), and I worried I would recycle my entire paycheck if I worked at a boutique or a bookstore. Luckily, Bayou Bliss had hired me on the spot.

Although I didn’t really understand how they could afford to pay me. My coworker Lucy-­Cate was the lone soul in the shop when I pulled open the door, AC providing sweet relief from the heat. It was a Saturday, and even more tourists were in town than usual because of the upcoming film festival. But my friend was leaning against the counter, leisurely stirring her straw around in her cold brew while scrolling through her phone. There was no one to offer a gold cardboard cup to, no blockages in the coconut yogurt machine, and we pretended not to notice how congealed the brownie topping became after sitting out in its vat for a while. “Excuse me!” I said in a nasally voice, imitating my ex–­best friend’s mother. Lucy-­Cate wouldn’t get the reference, but it still brought me some petty joy. “Does anyone work here?”

“Oh, yes!” Lucy-­Cate’s head snapped up, curly blond bun bouncing as her cheeks quickly went from fair and freckled to pink and blotchy. “What can I—­?” She glared at me when we locked eyes. “Margot Adler,” she said, “I hate you.”

The back of my neck prickled, but I rolled my shoulders back, knowing there was nothing serious about her words. Lucy-­Cate Beauchamp didn’t have a mean bone in her body. We’d met back in June, on our first shift together.

I responded by dipping into a curtsy.

Smirking, she held up another cold brew from French Truck. “You’re the best.” I grinned. “I don’t deserve you.”

“You’re very sweet,” Lucy-­Cate said, then dramatically wrinkled her nose. “Just don’t hug me until after you change. You look a little sticky.”

“I’m actually a lot sticky,” I told her as I clocked in on the register before ducking into the back to strip off my sweaty tank top and pull on my T-shirt. The bell above Bayou Bliss’s door didn’t chime once, and Lucy-­Cate was back on her phone when I joined her at the counter. “Anything interesting happening?”

I suspected she was catching up on current events. Which, for Lucy-­Cate, meant browsing People’s Instagram.

Sure enough, Lucy-­Cate nodded. “John was spotted at Atchafalaya this morning.” She always spoke as if on a first-­name basis with celebrities; I did my best to keep up with her. But before I could mentally run through all the famous Johns, she added: “Someone on Instagram said, ‘Jim from The Office made himself the most insane Bloody Mary.’ ”

Krasinski, I realized. John Krasinski.

“Was Emily Blunt there, too?” I asked. Atchafalaya Restaurant was in the nearby Irish Channel, my aunt’s neighborhood, and was one of the best brunch spots in the city. Becca and her friends had a standing monthly reservation. I loved their shrimp and grits, and the toppings at their Bloody Mary bar were famous.

“The post didn’t mention her,” Lucy-­Cate said, her eyebrows knitting together in genuine concern. “But she had to be, right?”

“Maybe she had an obligation this morning,” I offered. Celebrities were far from uncommon in New Orleans, but the Big Easy Film Festival had brought a lot of stars to town. “I mean, they’re here for her movie.”

“Good point.” Lucy-­Cate sighed dreamily. “They’re such a cute couple, aren’t they?”

“One of the cutest.” My friend’s love of all things pop culture was endearing. Odds were, she was now imagining John Krasinski and Emily Blunt casually coming in for frozen yogurt. “What do you think John would order here?” I ventured.

Lucy-­Cate laughed. “He seems like a chocolate guy.”

“And Emily?”

“Something sophisticated.”

“Which would be . . . ?”

The bell above the door dinged before she could answer, and we both straightened up excitedly. Because we had a customer! A living, breathing customer!

Try two customers. A pair of older men snappily dressed in dark jeans and fun patterned button-­downs. “Ah, air-­conditioning!” the balding gentleman in paisley proclaimed, wiping sweat from his lined forehead.

“Ladies, I apologize.” The man wearing stripes flashed us a smile. “My husband and I signed up for a walking tour of the Garden District, and we’re supposed to rendezvous with our guide outside some place called ‘the Rink.’ Would you be able to point us in the right direction?”

I shot Lucy-­Cate a look that translated to Haven’t they heard of Google Maps? but she was oblivious, too busy bursting into song.

Not literally, but practically.

(If anyone had untapped theater kid energy, it was her.)

“Of course!” she exclaimed, and after detailing the best route to the specialty shopping center on Prytania Street (converted from a nineteenth-­century skating rink), she offered both men some water. Southern hospitality at its finest. “Where’re y’all from?”

“East Coast,” Stripes said. “New York.”

“Amazing.” Lucy-­Cate playfully nudged me. “Margot’s from Pennsylvania.”

“How funny!” Paisley sipped his water. “Are you closer to Pittsburgh or Philadelphia?”

“Forty-­five minutes outside Philly,” I said. “Bucks County.”

Stripes gasped. “We have a country house in New Hope! Have you been?”