11. Leah
11
Leah
“ W
as that Cooper?” Andrea asks, her eyes on the glass entrance of our shop.
“Yep.” I rein in my smirk. I’m sorry, but Cooper Bailey getting beaten up by a baby and a toddler all while handing over his credit card to me is the best thing that’s happened to me all week.
I take it back—I’m not sorry at all.
Andrea huffs. “Why didn’t you ask him for help?” The worry wrinkles spread across her forehead, reminding me of what awaits me back inside the kitchen.
I blink back into reality and peer over at my best friend. “Cooper Bailey doesn’t help people. He ruins people’s proms. He gets their boyfriend to break up with them publicly. He ensures that every jerk in school creates a mean meme about them just to add insult to injury.”
“Cooper didn’t tell anyone to make memes of you. They did that on their own.” My friend gives me a pointed stare. I really dislike Andrea’s logic right now. Like a lot. Like maybe we should break up .
Kidding. I refuse to lose Andrea to stupid Cooper Bailey. “He might as well have.”
Andrea puffs out her cheeks. “Move on, girl.”
“It was traumatic,” I tell her.
“I believe you.” She lifts her arm, waving a white sheet of paper in the air. “Getting sued by your ex because you stole the name of your new business from his podcast is even more traumatic.” Andrea tilts her head and stares me down, hitting me with a huge mental slap to the face.
She opened my summons.
“ Hey , did you open up my very private, very legal summons complaint?” My heart stops—no time to be angry with the bestie. “Wait! Stole the shop name? I didn’t steal anything.”
Andrea’s eyes widen. “Duh. But that’s what it says.”
“Andrea!”
“Yep, PJ—Mr. Puke Joker himself—is suing us for the name Sweet Swirls. It’s the name of his podcast.” She holds the sheet of paper out to me.
“ Our podcast!” I spout, snatching the paper away from her. “Or at least, it used to be.”
“You had a podcast?” Cricket says. “That’s lame. And kind of cool. But mostly lame.”
“Don’t say lame,” Andrea scolds Cricket, though she’s still looking at me.
“Andrea,” I say, “you know where that name came from.” My eyes sting with tears I refuse to shed as I glance up at the poster-size photo of Abuelo and I baking together.
“I know,” she says, her tone soft.
I voice my thought, anyway. Maybe for Cricket zoning out beside us. Maybe for Arnold who sits at my one and only table–no doubt listening in. “My abuelo always called my cinnamon rolls ‘sweet swirls’. They were his favorite. I came up with that name, and when PJ and I broke up, we split certain things. He got the podcast, he got Bites and Bubbles, he got my Greenco rolling pin.” I peer at my friend. “And I got you.”
“I was never in the running for that Patronizing Jerk. I was always yours.”
“He can’t have my shop name, Andrea. He can’t!” I pull in a breath, but it catches in my throat, and my eyes, dry and stinging, fill with liquid. “It’s Abuelo’s.”
“I know,” she says, running her palm up and down my upper arm. “Which is why we need Cooper.”
I t’s a new day, but I am singing the same tune: I do not need Cooper Bailey, attorney at law.
I do not. Despite two phone calls and thirty-seven text messages from Andrea telling me otherwise. I just need Preston Jasper Booker to stop being a schmuck.
Cricket is running the shop front, which is scary for all the pecan roll-loving customers, and I’m baking in the back. Err —I’m supposed to be baking.
With dried dough-crusted fingers, I type on my phone.
Me: You’re suing me? Suing? Really, PJ?
PJ: It’s nothing personal.
Me: It’s completely personal. You know where that name came from. We recorded an entire episode on the name and how it came about.
“You know!” I shout into the air. “You pigheaded jack?—”
“Everything okay in here?” Cricket says, poking her head into the kitchen.
I swallow and drop my phone into my apron pocket. “Yes! Fine,” I bark. “Why?”
“Someone is asking for you,” Cricket says.
“Again?” I growl. “Who?”
Cricket lifts one shoulder. “I wouldn’t know. The Universe refuses to tell me.”
I sigh, my chest aching with built-up stress and worry and a sleepless night. “Fine,” I say, pushing past her and through the kitchen door. As long as it’s not— “Cooper Bailey? Again?” I swivel my head and give Cricket a death glare. “You said you didn’t know who it was.”
“I don’t know him.”
“Right, but he’s the same person that asked for me yesterday. And the day before.”
“Oh, that’s what you meant?” She shakes her pink head of hair. “Geez, Leah, I can’t read minds.” Her brows pinch. “Or what if I can? I’m not surprised at all that you said that.”
“Whatever.” I drop my head to the side and sigh. “There’s a pan in the back that needs to go into the oven. Can you read my mind now?”
Cricket smiles. “I can.” She nods and chuckles. “I really can.” She heads into the back to put her least favorite kind of cinnamon rolls into our tunnel oven. Probably to purposely burn them!
I step farther into the front, where Cooper—and only Cooper—waits for me. My jaw clenches and I set both hands on my hips. “No children today?”
Cooper’s in a gray button-up shirt that hugs the contours of that broad chest. He jams his hands into the pockets of his navy slacks, free of any wrinkles or creases—just like his easy life. “Not today. Alice is in school, and Lulabelle and York are home with their dad. Coco’s working, but Jude’s off?—”
“Is there a point to this story?” Okay—it’s rude. And sure, you probably shouldn’t be rude to your most consistent customer. But since when do Cooper Bailey and I chitchat? He’s been in my shop three days in a row, and I’m starting to wonder why.
“Not a story. Just why my nieces and nephew aren’t with me today.” He pulls one hand from his pocket and runs it through his hair.
Is he trying to show off his biceps? I think he is. My eyes connect like a magnet to the muscle bulging in his arm. I wrinkle my nose and completely ignore the somersault inside my stomach.
“Leah, do you think we could ever be…” He rocks on his heels. “I don’t know, friends, maybe?”
Friends? Is he kidding? That tight shirt, big biceped man must be joking. Because Leah and Cooper and friends don’t even fit into the same sentence. Which is another reason why I’m right and Andrea’s wrong. We don’t need Cooper, we need something… what? Who? I don’t know. But it’s not him.
My eyes turn to slits. My head fills with memes from high school, made just for me. One of my shocked face, Cooper’s back, and word bubbles that read: Do you think I’m sexy? Another photo of me, tears streaming, arms dangling as Rob Barker breaks my heart in front of all our peers, the caption reading, Breaking news. Leah Bradford is not sexy.
I hear voices of pretentious sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds telling me I’d never be good enough for Cooper Bailey. Little did they know, I neither wanted Cooper nor was I ever wanted by Cooper Bailey.
I pause, my head full of the past.
“Uh… yeah, I’m gonna pass,” I say. “Now, did you want a roll or not?” It’s been a good selling morning, but not nearly as good as Sunday morning. If he’s going to be here, he better have money to spend.
My shop door opens and a huffing and puffing Arnold rushes inside. “I’d appreciate,” he wheezes, bent over, hands on his thighs, “if we—if we could come up with a set time.”
“Excuse me?” Cooper says, looking back at the man.
“You know, a schedule for when you’ll be in each day.” Arnold shakes his head like Cooper Bailey is really putting him out—I know the feeling.
Cooper, tall, handsome, and always confident, deflates. It’s a slight change. Still, I see it. “Sure, Arnold. What do you want today?” I never realized what a pushover Cooper Bailey is. Or maybe he’s still trying to impress the room. Ha! That ship has sailed, bud.
Arnold’s bushy salt-and-pepper brows furrow as if this is a ridiculous question.
“Right.” Cooper turns back to me. “Three pecan rolls.”
I wrap up two for Cooper and one for Arnold, and send those men on their way.
I cross my arms over my chest and watch as Cooper crosses the street. I watch until he turns the corner and I can’t see him anymore.
Why does he keep coming in? Why in the world would he ask to be my friend? Or even care? And why hasn’t time cursed the man with moles on his face—hairy ones?
“He’s hot,” Cricket says, startling me from behind.
My hand flattens to my chest and my heart attempts to jump from my body. “ Cricket ! What are you doing out here?”
“Same as you. Watching that hottie walk away. No wonder you ask him to ask for you every time he comes in. ”
“I’m not watching him. And I don’t tell him to ask for me, Cricket!”
She studies me for two whole seconds. “You look like you’re watching him.”
“Well, I’m not!” I spin on my heels and start for the kitchen—away from Cricket and away from the corner Cooper just disappeared behind.