CHAPTER 21
Zoe
The morning after sleeping with Dylan, I waited. I never want to let that phrase become something commonplace, so let me try again. The morning after sleeping with Dylan, arguably the hottest man to ever cross my line of sight… the morning after that, I was back in the bakery, merrily tending to all that needing tending.
Well, as merry as I could be, given that we were unable to stock about half our usual supplies. Luckily, half the income was from coffee and muffin regulars, those heading to their work, and the coffee machine was in fine shape, and we had all the tools needed to make muffins.
But coffee and muffins weren’t my passion. I preferred a tangy lemon tart, or a vanilla crème brûlée. Any old schmuck could make coffee and muffins. I was a pastry artist, or at least a highly skilled, professional baker. I opened my own shop to have freedom to play around with different confections, and here I was essentially running a Dunkin’ Donuts. Although, at the moment, we didn’t have the equipment to even make donuts.
I needed to focus my energy on something I could handle — the fifty cakes. Don’t think I forgot about them. Sure, the robbery set me back, and it was possible I wouldn’t be able to make all fifty, but I figured I could deliver at least half. Though, upon reflection, that meant I’d also have to return half the fees to the company, and I wasn’t quite prepared to do that.
So that morning, Kelly and I were chugging away on all cylinders. Or I was, at least. She was in charge of the counter, and somehow managed to make the easy task of delivering pastries and hot drinks an arduous undertaking. The shop had reopened, indicated by a sign that brightly proclaimed, ‘Come in!’ The window was still boarded up, but I would cross that bridge when I had the cash flow.
Meanwhile, I was in the back, covered in flour and splattered milk, when I heard a customer enter and make her way up to Kelly. Setting down the spoon, I shifted my ears so that I could catch the whole interaction.
“Yo, what do you want,” Kelly said.
To be clear, she didn’t ask, there was no upward lilt at the end of the sentence. God, this girl had terrible customer service skills.
“Coffee and muffin please,” the faceless woman replied.
Yeah, that checked out. All Kelly had to do was pour the coffee and put the muffin in a bag. Surely she could handle that.
“Coffee machine’s broken,” Kelly replied.
Uh, it most certainly was not. I quickly dusted off my whitened arms and scrambled outside to catch the customer before she could leave. The woman raised her brows at my ghostly white hue, but held her tongue.
“Ma’am,” I said quickly, “so sorry about that, Kelly here is new. The machine’s working fine.” I shot Kelly a death glare. “It just needs to be refilled, which might take some effort, but falls under the job description.”
Kelly huffed and rolled her eyes, replying, “Oh yeah, right. My bad.”
A few minutes later, we — no, I — had sorted the customer out, and she left, happily noshing on her blueberry muffin. I immediately turned to Kelly, and fired off, “What the fuck was that?”
“Oops.”
“Are you serious? I pay you a fair wage with reasonable hours. What’s the problem?”
Kelly shrugged nonchalantly. “Nothing, I just figure there may not be a bakery here in a few weeks to work at it.”
My mouth dropped open. This girl sure had a lot of nerve to talk to her boss that way. When I was apprenticing at a pastry shop, if I ever had the gall to speak to the head chef like that, I would’ve been dragged out by my toque blanche.
But I couldn’t afford to hire someone else. Most everybody in town had a stable job that they wouldn’t leave for part time, day hours. Fallow Springs was the sort of place where you started a job at sixteen and retired from it at sixty-five. In fact, Kelly was already running a little late in ‘finding her calling.’
More importantly, going through the whole hiring process would take me ages, and with the cake order looming over my head, I wasn’t going to risk it. I didn’t even have the money to hire the two on-call boys to help complete the orders. Looked like it was going to be just me and useless Kelly trying to save the bakery. The thought didn’t exactly fill me with hope.
I spent the remainder of the day slaving away over my prep station. My arms grew tired from hand-whisking the batter, which I was forced to do given that my machine-operated mixer had been stolen. The time passed fairly quickly since I allowed myself to imagine Dylan fucking me. The faint screams of the previous night echoed in my head, the way he shouted my name and I his. I imagined the whisk was his cock, and in turn beat the batter like Dylan’s pleasure depended on it.
Soon, it was closing time. My reverie was interrupted by Kelly calling out, “It’s six, I’m done, bye.”
I looked at the clock on my phone. Six to the exact second. I almost laughed bitterly aloud when I realized I was delighted that she’d even stayed until then, usually, she left early on some excuse.
No sooner had she slammed the door, then it reopened again. From my secluded position behind a tall partition in the back, I called to the apparent customer.
“Sorry, we just closed!”
“It’s me, doofus.”
I recognized Mina’s voice, and laid down my work, rushing to greet her in the dining area. She was bundled in a balaclava that obscured her face, and woolen hat with a pom-pom on top.
“Hey girl, my bad,” I said. “Let me just clean up my stuff.”
She nodded — or I think she did, it was hard to tell through all the layers — and I scurried back to my station to put away all the cake prep. Thank God the burglar had foregone stealing the fridge, or I would’ve been truly up a creek without a paddle.
I packed up all my sundry baking items and cleaned my station meticulously. As evidenced by my home, I wasn’t particularly tidy, but I’d been trained with the rigor of a French pastry student, which meant I scrubbed my surroundings until they downright gleamed.
Once finished with that, I moved to the sink, finally able to wash the powder off my arms. I bathed them as though I were a surgeon, making sure to run my fingers over each twist and turn of my appendages. The whole process took me nearly twenty minutes, and when I reemerged into the main area, I looked around guiltily to make sure Mina hadn’t left.
But no, sure enough, she was sitting right where I’d left her, albeit minus all the winter gear and with a coffee in her hand. Exhausted and sweaty from my work, I peeled off my sweater, leaving only a thin tank to shield me from the weather. Mina gave me a once-over with those eyes that missed nothing.
“Sorry about that,” I said in between pants. “It was a messy day.”
“You had sex,” she responded casually.
“How the hell did you know that?”
“Bite mark. Upper left-hand corner of your neck.”
I thought I’d been joking about her scrupulous eyes, but evidently, I was pretty close to the mark.
“Uh, yeah,” I said weakly. “Guess I did.”
She lit up with the excitement I’d come to recognize in the gossipy church ladies.
“With who?” she asked anxiously. I knew the answer she wanted, and luckily, I had it.
“Although I am flattered you think I might be able to score with any man in town, I think you know who.”
“You didn’t? Was it Officer Robertson?”
“With Dylan. The hot cop.”
She gave a gratifying shriek, and her hands flew to her mouth.
“Oh my God, no way,” she cried. “No fucking way!”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Where? When? How? What position?”
I laughed and held up my hands. “Whoa, slow down there.”
“Literally give me every single detail.” She crossed her arms, indicating that she wouldn’t move until she got the entire story.
I was happy to oblige for the most part. I recounted the relevant details at O’Reilly’s to her, pausing every now and then to allow her space to gasp and ooh and ah. By the time I wrapped up, she was almost rolling on the floor with sheer glee.
“Pretty neat, huh?” I asked, downplaying how totally fucking awesome we both knew it was.
She scoffed and raised her eyes skyward, as if searching for the strength to not smack me.
“Um, yeah, pretty fucking neat,” she managed to reply.
“Okay, okay,” I said, tired of hearing myself talk for so long. “What about you? How was your day?”
The giddiness left her and a frown took its place.
“Hey,” I continued, gesturing to said frown. “Is something wrong?”
“Um—” she broke off. I waited with bated breath. Mina rarely frowned. Scowled, sure, especially at Kelly, and occasionally feigned dramatic anger, but it was unusual for her to frown and really mean it. My concern mounted with every passing second.
“Well,” she said finally, “I’ve got some… not great news.”
“What is it?” My heart tightened in my chest.
“You know Bruce?”
Of course I knew Bruce. He owned about half of Main Street and controlled my lease.
“What about him?” I asked through the lump in my throat.
“Apparently, and this is just what I heard over at Hal’s Pizzeria, apparently Bruce is gonna be hiking up the rent. You should get a letter any day now about it, if it’s the real deal and not just some idle gossip.”
I froze. Maybe the entire world around me froze. Or I was moving through it, slow-motion, like trying to swim through gelatin. It was wrong, all wrong, every single part of it.
“What did you say?” I croaked, knowing full well what she’d said.
Mina laid a sympathetic hand over mine, which rested on the small round table.
“The rent. It’s getting hiked up,” she repeated. “You’ll hear more about it soon, I think.”
“But I won’t be able to keep the bakery open.”
She grimaced, and opened her mouth, as if to speak, and shut it again. We both knew it was true.
Before the robbery, I’d been making my rent checks on a razor’s edge as I’d had so many up-front expenses with the move. I was looking forward to a little extra cash, but it was going to be going to the rent instead. I’d been frustrated, but there at least seemed to be a light at the end of the tunnel. Now, with all my equipment gone, a lousy employee and a court date in my near future… there was just no way to make it all work.
I’d have to close up shop. Maybe find work elsewhere, though that seemed unlikely. And any other job I would find wouldn’t be baking-related. I’d probably end up in retail, or maybe even working at one of the oil refineries. My stomach flipped. I would’ve wasted my time and my money in Fallow Springs. If the bakery closed, I’d have to move back to New York, return a failure, and bide my time in some shitty tourist pastry shop before I could even begin to think about moving up the ladder.
Involuntarily, I thought of Dylan. Leaving here would mean leaving him too. The threat of parting brought tears to my eyes.
“Oh, hey now,” Mina said. “Don’t cry, it’s gonna be okay, we’ll figure out some way to keep Zoe’s Cakes and Bakes open for business.”
She’d misinterpreted my tears, but I couldn’t find it in my heart to tell her that, against all odds, I wasn’t crying for my business. I was crying for a man.