A Taste of Vanilla (Rule Breakers #1)

Chapter 1

one

. . .

Suzy Homemaker Would Have Blocked Him

HALSTON

“Do you think Suzy Homemaker ever got cheated on?”

Oliver doesn't look up from the pint glass he’s drying. This is his first mistake. The second is sighing like I had asked him to define the meaning of life instead of simply engaging in a very normal, very important, and very alcohol-assisted philosophical discussion.

“Suzy Homemaker,” he says, “is not a real person.”

I lift one finger from where I’m currently slumped over his bar, because pointing feels necessary in this moment and quite frankly, standing feels just a bit dangerous. “That was not the question.”

“It should have been.”

“The question was whether she got cheated on.”

“The answer remains the same. She’s fictional.”

“Exactly.” I slap my hand on the bar top, and the regret is immediate. The bar in Saints & Sinners has very old wood, and my palm now has very new feelings. “Fictional women have better odds.”

Oliver finally looks at me.

He has the kind of face that always looks like it has been designed for disappointment.

Not in an unattractive way. Unfortunately for him, Oliver is handsome.

Moody, dark-haired, sharp-jawed, and broad enough to look useful in an emergency and yet emotionally unavailable enough to make half of the people who come into his bar attempt to fix him.

They never do.

Oliver was born grumpy. Since high school, I’ve always imagined him as a newborn, glaring at a nurse for holding him incorrectly.

Kind of like the way he’s glaring at me now, except baby-like.

“You’re drunk,” he says with a grimace.

“I am grieving.”

“You are grieving loudly.”

“I have always had volume,” I argue. And it’s true. Oliver, Marley and I spent way too many lunches in the library getting yelled at because I couldn’t keep my voice down.

“I know. The walls know. The man by the dartboard knows.”

The man by the dartboard raises his beer without looking over.

I point to him. “He supports women.”

Oliver glares. “He has no idea what we’re even talking about.”

“What an ally.”

Oliver sets the pint glass down and reaches for another one, because apparently he intends to dry every clean glass in the city of Baltimore before he says something emotionally useful.

Which is fine. I have never required Oliver to be emotionally useful on command. He was practically useful. Dryly useful. Useful in the way a crowbar is useful.

The man would pry you out of a burning car and then tell you your scream was pitchy and gave him a headache.

Saints & Sinners is dim, warm, and moody in the way old Baltimore bars are.

Dark wood, exposed brick, brass lights, scuffed floors, and a long mirror behind the bar that makes everyone look just a little prettier but also a little more doomed.

The front windows are fogged at the corners from the humid summer night, and the neon sign above the whiskey shelves with the Oliver-coded phrase, “Repent later, Tip now,” buzzes like it holds everyone’s sins and they’re begging to be let free.

Next door, my bakery is dark.

Bitter Bloom.

My little kingdom of espresso, butter, sugar, banana-vanilla muffins, emotionally unstable latte specials, and one chalkboard menu that Oliver claims is an assault on typography.

I can see the side door from where I sit. The one that connects his back hallway to the alley between our businesses. Oliver tends to keep the door open to the kitchen with the hopes that no stranger wanders down the alley and decides to scare him.

My shop is closed for the night, the ovens cooling. The pastry cases are empty, and the counters are wiped down, because even in a full emotional collapse, I do not leave buttercream frosting to crust on stainless steel.

I have standards. Not romantic standards, apparently. But sanitation standards.

“Suzy Homemaker,” I continue, because Oliver has failed to participate and therefore has forced me to carry the conversation alone, “would have had matching canisters.”

Oliver blinks. “What?”

“On the counter. Flour, sugar, coffee. Maybe something unsettling.” I think for a moment. “Like lentils.”

“Why are lentils unsettling?”

I shrug. “They imply preparedness.”

“Preparedness is not unsettling.”

“It is when it comes from a woman with a perfect husband and a pantry label maker.”

Oliver pinches the bridge of his nose.

I take a sip of the drink he made me twenty minutes ago after taking away the drink I actually wanted. It’s mostly soda water with lime and what I suspect is a ceremonial amount of vodka. He called it a cocktail, but I call it a betrayal with bubbles.

But I’m sad, so I drink it in an attempt to not think about the fact that a week ago, I had been engaged.

One week. Seven days.

An entire lifetime if you measured time by just how many times you almost text a man who had ruined you before remembering that you have self-respect, and two best friends. One of which just so happens to be a bar owner who has no problem locking your phone in a jar of maraschino cherries.

My phone is currently behind the bar in an empty rocks glass with a cocktail napkin draped over it like a body at a crime scene. Oliver even labeled it BAD IDEA in Sharpie. He even underlined it. Twice. With aggression.

“I could have been more like that,” I say with a sigh.

Oliver’s gaze cuts back to mine. “Like what?” His body coils like he’s expecting me to say something stupid.

“Organized.”

“You own a bakery,” he deadpans.

“That’s different.”

“How?”

“My bakery is organized because it has to be. My personal life is more of an experimental jazz piece.”

He leans against the bar. “Jazz has structure, Halston.”

I throw my hands up. “Okay, well my personal life is more like a raccoon falling down an elevator shaft.”

“There it is.”

I ignore him. “Maybe I should have had the canisters. Maybe Grant wanted canisters.”

Oliver’s expression goes flat.

Grant’s name has that effect now. Like it enters the room and takes all the air out.

Oliver turns, grabs a basket of fries from the pass window, and sets them in front of me. “I’m not discussing the pantry preferences of the human boat shoe.”

I frown. “He didn’t wear boat shoes.”

“He wore boat shoe energy. That counts.”

He’s got a point. Grant Whitaker had been handsome in a very specific way.

An expensive haircut. Good teeth and a good family.

Good manners as long as there was an audience.

He looked like he belonged leaning against a marble kitchen island in a white linen shirt while telling someone named Tinsley about interest rates.

He had not, however, looked like the kind of man who would cheat on me with his secretary. In hindsight, that was probably because I had been looking at him wrong.

Cheaters do not walk around with warning labels.

They have nice watches and remember your mother’s birthday.

They kiss your forehead at charity dinners and say things like, “You’re so much, Hals,” but yet somehow they make it sound affectionate until one day you realize they had been filing complaints in the shape of compliments for years.

I drag a fry through ketchup and stare at it. “Do you think some women are easier to love?”

Oliver stops moving. Not dramatically. Oliver never does much dramatically, unless you count the way he once unplugged his own jukebox because someone played country music twice in a row.

But he stops wiping the bar. Stops reaching for the next glass. Stops pretending this conversation is the most ridiculous thing he’s ever heard.

“No,” he says.

I look up. “That was fast.”

“It was a stupid question.” Okay, never mind.

I smile, but it feels like a stab. “You always say that when I ask something sad.”

“Because you disguise sad things as stupid questions.”

“That feels like a criticism of my creative process.”

“It is.”

I look down at my fry, watching it go limp between my fingers. Relatable.

“I’m serious.”

“So am I,” he grunts.

“Maybe I was too much.”

Oliver’s jaw tightens.

The bar moves around us. Glasses clink, someone laughs loudly near the dartboard, and a song I vaguely recognize hums over the speakers, not emo enough for my current state but not country, which means Oliver valued our lives just a little.

In the back corner, three Baltimore Vipers players occupy a high-top table like large, athletic golden retrievers who have been given money and no instructions.

They’d come in after a game, still damp-haired and loud, wearing simple clothes that have small Viper logos on them.

Small enough that if someone were to think they know them, it would give them away, yet not big enough to appear vain.

Each one has an air of smug exhaustion of men who get paid obscene amounts of money to hit things with sticks.

Baltimore loves the Vipers.

Oliver hates this.

Not because they’re rude. They’re actually really great tippers, and only one of them has broken a glass so far, which, by Saints & Sinners standards, practically qualifies them for sainthood.

Oliver simply does not like sports. Any sport. He considers the citywide enthusiasm for the Cobras and Vipers a personal inconvenience.

One of the players calls from the corner, “Hey Oliver, can you put the highlights on?”

Oliver doesn’t look away from me. “No,” he says flatly.

The player groans. “Come on, man. It’s a sports bar.” He rolls his eyes.

Oliver’s eyes narrow, and he finally turns his head, murder in his posture. “This is a bar that sports people keep entering against my wishes.”

His teammates laugh as the player clutches his chest like he’s having a heart attack. “You wound me.”

“You’ll survive.”

“You know, other bars are happy when we come in.”

“Then go there,” Oliver mutters.

“You’d miss us!”

His lips thin. “I’d recover.”

I lift my glass. “I’d miss you!”

“Thank you, Halston,” the player says with a dazzling smile.

Oliver points at him with a towel. “Do not encourage her. She’s emotionally unstable and keeps trying to make themed pastry decisions.”

“They like my Vipers turnovers,” I say.

“They were bright orange.”

I shrug. “They were spirited.”