7. Chapter Seven - Lexie
Lexie
“What are you doing, smiling at your phone like that?” Bailey teases me as he sidles up to the counter, putting elbows on it and resting his chin on his propped-up hands.
“Nothing,” I say and quickly school my face, sliding my phone into the little pocket of my apron. “Nothing at all. Saw a funny meme.”
“Show it to me.” He raises his eyebrow at me, knowing very well that I’m full of shit. That’s the downside to becoming friends with coworkers. Once they can read you, there’s endless teasing material and you can’t exactly escape at work. I shake my head at him, trying to take this game a little further.
“You wouldn't find it funny.”
“That's because you're not looking at one.” He points at me with his index finger, moving it in circles. “You're lying to me, Lexie. How dare you?”
“No such thing.” I turn around and pretend to straighten up the utensils, finally letting my grin break free again where he can’t see it. “It’s not a lie. I was looking at a meme.”
He doesn’t have to know that Jackson was the one who sent it to me though. An answer to me snapping a pic of his face plastered to the side of a bus, asking ‘This you?’ because I felt awkward knowing who he was, but him not knowing that I knew who he was. All he’d answered was a gif of a child breaking into a cheeky grin, but holy hell, am I glad that’s an elephant out of the room.
I’d imagined this conversation would be a lot more dramatic, if I’m being honest. And I’m pretty sure so did Bailey, because he’s spent the last few days making up very dramatic scenarios about how that conversation would go.
But Bailey can apparently read me even better than I give him credit for.
“Look at you, girl, out of one relationship and already talking to the next man.”
“We're just friends,” I point out. There’s no use lying to Bailey, but I really don’t like how he’s making it sound.
“I knew it.” He grins at me, then gets off the counter and does a little ‘I knew it’ dance in front of it. Thank God we’re already closed for the day, because if our customers saw this sad attempt at an interpretive dance, they’d either run for the hills or propose putting Bailey into one of those inflatable dancing men, which I doubt he’d appreciate.
“So, how did you get his number again?”
“I already told you that three times.” I roll my eyes at him and hide a yawn behind my hand. It was a rough day. The weather is changing to autumn and the drop in temperatures is making me super loopy and tired. “It’s not a goddamn bedtime story.”
“Aw, please, mom,” he begs playfully and my eyes scan the counter for something small and light to throw at him. Sadly, I come up empty. “I’ll be a good boy.”
“No, you won’t.” I roll my eyes at him. “Good thing Jackson is coming over for his ‘Thank you’ breakfast Alan offered him, way before you even move your behind out of bed.”
“Ooh, it’s a first date.” Bailey wiggles his eyebrows. “And if I wanted to, I could move my pretty behind out of bed to stalk, just so you know.”
Finally, I reach for one of the pastries, break off a little piece, and throw it at his head.
“Ouch.” He rubs the spot where it hit him, his face contorted in an overly shocked expression. But the corners of his mouth betray him as they twitch upwards while he tries to contain his laugh.
“Don’t pretend that hurt,” I scold him and throw a second one for good measure. He catches it this time though. “Get it out of your head, Bailey. It’s been like two weeks since I broke up with Derek. Jackson might be hot,” and kind and he makes me feel save, although I leave that part out of my rant, “but I am most definitely not jumping into the next relationship this soon.”
I roll my shoulders, then reach behind my head to loosen the ribbon of my apron, a sigh rolling from my lips when I pull the strap in my neck over my head to put it aside.
“I can’t believe it’s only been two weeks since Olivia turned up here.”
“Already been two weeks,” Bailey points out and starts pacing the length of the bakery, hands locked behind his back like the pensioners I see watching construction work all the time.
Alan has already gone home—it appears he caught Bailey’s cold—so once more, it’s my turn to close up shop. At least today, Bailey’s here. He doesn’t look quite fit again, or maybe that’s just him milking all the pity he can get for still having a light sniffle.
“He’s here again, by the way.” Bailey nods toward the front door, and I groan when I see the back of Derek’s head and the jacket I bought him for his birthday last year as he sits on the steps, facing away from the bakery.
“I don’t get it,” I tell Bailey as I stare at the back of his head, just willing him to go away. “I mean, clearly, I didn’t mean all that much to him since he had a whole other relationship going on with Olivia. Why is now the time he’s fighting for it and not when he first considered cheating?”
“I don’t know.” Bailey shrugs and follows my gaze. “I’ve never cheated. I have no idea how cheaters think.”
“You’re a man, though,” I point out, making him look at me with narrow eyes, then shaking his head.
“Don’t you dare put me and him in the same category.”
I raise my hands defensively. He looks really angry. “I’m sorry. I know. Sorry, sorry.” Thankfully, his eyes soften. “I know you’re not the same just because you two have a dick. I just wish he’d leave me alone.”
I breathe a deep sigh and lean my back against the wall, lightly tapping the back of my head against it.
I’m trying to heal from this whole ordeal. I really am. But whenever I think the wound is slowly closing up, Derek appears, and it just feels like he’s stabbing me with a dagger yet again, ripping open the injury, stabbing it a few more times and pouring salt in for good measure.
“Do you think talking to him might help?” Bailey asks curiously.
“Help who?” I ask him and swallow past the lump forming in my throat. “Because I don’t see what talking to him would change for me.”
“I mean, you could tell him how much he hurt you. Maybe it will make you feel better.”
“And then what?” I raise my eyebrow at him, waiting for him to bestow me with his wisdom.
“He could apologize.” I bite my lip to keep from laughing. It’s way too late for an apology. There were countless opportunities for him to come clean and apologize and he didn’t take a single one of them.
“The thing is, Bailey, an apology is not going to take back the hurt he caused.” I clear my throat before I continue. “It doesn’t fix the past two years. And it doesn’t fix me leaving my whole life behind so he could have regular dates with his side chick.” I take a deep breath and consider my next words. “I don’t need an apology. Frankly, I don’t want one. Because, in the end, it’s only going to be for his conscience. The fact that he keeps turning up where I am, despite me asking him over and over not to, has nothing to do with any kind of consideration for what I want.”
“You’re right,” Bailey says and shrugs. “I hadn’t considered that. But maybe he didn’t either.”
“Why do you make excuses for him now?” I ask him but he doesn’t have an answer for that. “It’s not my job anymore to think for him, you know?” I shake my head at him. “And I don’t need to justify myself. I told him to leave me alone, yet he keeps ignoring it and continues to hurt me.” I throw my apron on a chair in the corner and reach back to loosen the claw clip holding my hair together.
“I just can’t deal with this today,” I add, and to my annoyance, I realize that tears are forming in my eyes again. “I’m sorry, Bailey. The whole thing is just really still shaking me up.”
I turn to leave when I suddenly freeze in my steps. “Fuck.”
The one trump card I hold is that Derek doesn’t know where I live now. And if he continues to show up at my work, who tells me he’s not pulling the same thing once he knows where I live?
That would complicate everything. I can’t exactly have Alan or Bailey with me in the apartment all the damn time. And I’m not in the mood to deal with Derek maltreating my doorbell until I let him in.
As usual, Bailey manages to read my thoughts and gently pulls me back to the store by my elbow.
“Come on. We’ll close up and then I can do the whole macho bit where I tell him to leave you alone, and we can take a quick walk around the block to pretend you live elsewhere.”
“Thank you, Bailey,” I say and return behind the counter to clean up in record time. My eyelids already feel heavy, and I can’t wait to go to bed.
Where I might be watching one of Jackson’s movies to fall asleep, but that’s definitely not a fact I’ll ever put anywhere near Bailey.
I shoot Jackson a quick message to knock on the door once he’s here before I put my phone away and bury my arms in dough up to my elbows. It’s certainly not one of my favorite parts of the job. Frankly, I hate the feeling of squishy yeast dough in my hands or anywhere else, really, but I can’t exactly pull the whole thing out of our mixer otherwise.
Alan looks a lot better today, the bags under his eyes less pronounced and the color back in his cheeks. He might not be back to a hundred percent, but he’s thrown on a mask and his gloves and is working the oven while I prepare our pastries.
How quickly it has turned into autumn.
One moment, I was lamenting my early summer morning strolls, enjoying the cool mornings before suffering in thirty-five degree heat in the afternoon, and the next day it had already gotten so cold that I was thankful for our ovens running the whole day at full blast.
With a relieved sigh, I throw the formed bread in the oven, then shuck off the gloves that go up to my upper arms, exchange them for regular ones and get to decorating some autumn-themed cupcakes.
Then I hear a soft knock at the door.
“Got a visitor?” Alan asks, and I can’t help but shoot him a grin before quickly schooling my face.
“Jackson wanted to come in for that breakfast we promised,” I tell Alan, and he gives me a gruff nod.
“Get him one from the back,” he says with a wink, and I chuckle. As if I haven’t done that from the beginning.
“Will do.”
In addition to the coffee machine for clients in the front, we have a smaller one in the back for the sole purpose of trying out different kinds of beans. After all, we need to try out everything we can to provide our customers with the best coffee possible—or at least, that’s Alan’s excuse.
In reality, this is where the ‘good’ stuff is.
But as I round the corner from our kitchen to the bakery, I freeze in my tracks, annoyance flaring up in me when I see who’s at the door.
It’s not Jackson.
Once again, it’s Derek.
Before I know it, I’m at the front door, unlocking it, tearing it open so abruptly it makes the glass rattle and storm at Derek.
"What the fuck do you think you’re doing?" My voice is so loud it seems to echo across the whole street as I stomp down the stairs, making him stumble backwards with the force I’m walking towards him. "How many more times do I need to tell you to leave me the fuck alone before you finally get it? Is that really such a hard concept to grasp?"
"I…" he starts, but I don’t let him speak. I’ve listened to his ‘woe is me’ act enough by now, every fucking morning he’s turned up here, and now it’s my time to talk.
"Because it’s not much harder to grasp than the concept of monogamy. But, sorry, you didn’t even manage that," I shout at him.
His confident demeanor slips, and he continues to walk backwards, trying to get away from me. But I’m not done. Oh, I’m so far from done.
"Let me spell it out for you, Derek. It’s over. I have zero—absolutely zero—interest in ever seeing you again. No words that could come out of your stupid mouth could be something I’d want to hear. We are done. I am done. Your face fucking repulses me."
"But we were…" he tries again, and once more, I don’t let him talk.
"And now you keep turning up here! After fucking wasting years of my life. After making me move halfway across the world so you could be with your side chick while I lamented the fact we never saw each other after I moved here just so we could be together. So how fucking dare you turn up again and again, not letting me heal in peace?
"You fucking broke me, Derek. And I’m trying to put the pieces back together, but you can’t get a fucking grip on yourself and keep turning up, holding onto something that vanished the very second I realized you were cheating. In that moment, I lost every ounce of respect I had for you. And you keep digging the knife deeper by coming here, probably only to ease your conscience because you know you’re a fucking piece of shit. Spoiler alert: you are a fucking piece of shit.
"I am never going to forgive you. So don’t come here looking for forgiveness. Don’t come here looking for closure because I don’t fucking owe you any. So I am telling you this for the last time: leave me the fuck alone."
By now, we’re two houses down from the bakery, me storming at him while he still walks backward, hands raised in a defensive gesture and trying to get a word in.
"I mean it, Derek. Leave me the fuck alone. Because I’m reaching my limit. And while I don’t know myself to be a violent person, I’ve also never been cheated on or felt a betrayal this deep," I hiss at him, and he finally seems to get it.
For a moment, we come to a standstill, me breathing heavily, trying to catch my breath from that outburst, and him mouth agape, speechless. Finally, he nods and without a word, he turns around and walks, no, runs away.
I watch him leave, arms crossed in front of my chest, until he rounds the corner and is finally out of sight.
"Thank fucking God," I mutter and stretch my neck. Fuck, I feel amazing. The fear in his eyes was almost worth embarrassing myself for.
"Wow, you’re a firecracker," a familiar voice suddenly says behind me, and I turn around with a startle.
"Holy fuck, you scared me," I groan, clutching my shirt right above my rapidly beating heart when I see Jackson. "Wow. This is so embarrassing. I’m sorry you had to see me like that."
I force myself to take a deep breath and roll my shoulders in an attempt to relax. "I promise you, I have a very normal temper. He just crossed a few too many boundaries recently."
"Oh no, no," he quickly assures me with a grin. "Frankly, this was magnificent to watch. Made me want to stand on the side of the road with pom-poms and cheer for you."
"Maybe next time," I say as we slowly start walking back to the bakery and shake my head. Derek might have gotten the message for now, but I have the impression this is far from over.
Alan is standing in the doorway, looking at me with concern. Only when I give him a slight nod does he go back inside to continue preparations for the day.
"Now," I face Jackson, feeling the embarrassed heat slowly draining from my cheeks, "can I finally get you that breakfast?"