21. Chapter 21
twenty-one
I was tempted to stay in there forever. Claim the two-stall restroom as my new cave, gorge myself on salmon, and hibernate like a bear for the rest of eternity. Or until Max left. Whichever happened first.
The Powers That Be had another plan in mind, since Cendy appeared behind me as I splashed water over my face only minutes after I’d left the table.
I yelped in surprise, my hand flying to my chest to keep my heart from slingshotting itself out of Earth’s atmosphere. Between her and Max, I’d never make it to my thirtieth birthday alive.
“ Crumb cakes , Cendy, you scared me,” I chided, a smile creeping at the corners of my mouth at the ridiculous turn the evening had taken.
Images of an ambulance showing up and wheeling me out on a stretcher after Cendy sent me into cardiac arrest came to mind. Honestly, that would still be less embarrassing than facing Max again after my pelican audition.
“Sorry,” she apologized with a sympathetic grimace. “I wasn’t sure how else to talk to you before you left.”
“You speak English,” I mumbled dumbly. No wonder she’d looked confused when I tried Italian on them—she’d understood everything else perfectly fine. “Why did Max tell me you don’t speak English?”
She chuckled, her voice throaty and richly accented. “Because as far as he knows, I don’t. His Spanish grammar is horrible. He needs all the practice he can get.”
I snorted, unsure how to feel about being privy to this secret. The list of Max’s shortcomings just grew a little longer. Unfortunately, my affection for him only grew stronger.
“You’re the neighbor who made the cupcakes, right?” Cendy asked, casting a cautious look toward the two empty stalls.
I furrowed my brow. “Yeah. At least, I assume so? How do you know about those?”
“Max brought some to share with us.” She rubbed her swollen abdomen. “My cravings have been really bad. The cupcakes helped, but now they’re my new craving.”
“Oh.” I shook away my surprise. Of course Max shared the cupcakes. The man probably hid angel wings under his shirts.
“Could I order some?” Cendy asked, her dark eyes hopeful and bright. “I looked at all the bakeries in town and none of them had what I wanted.”
“Uh, yeah.” I nodded vigorously as her words sunk in. “Yeah, I’d love to make some more for you.”
She liked my baking so much she wanted more.
Like all the customers who’d asked about the treats of the day.
These small wins felt like pinpricks of hope shining through the ink that had stained my confidence since the Besserman disaster.
And after spending most of my day researching ADHD, the possibility of opening a bakery without crashing and burning immediately felt dangerously close to achievable.
Maybe I could do it after all. Maybe I wasn’t destined for failure or unqualified or entirely out of my depths.
“Bless you,” she breathed, smiling in relief. “Could I get a dozen of the same kind, then? For next week?”
“Of course.”
We ironed out the details of when and where to deliver them. It felt like an out-of-body experience, making business transactions in the bathroom. Kind of inherently shady, but instead of dealing anything illegal, I was building an empire of sugar. Dekker Piper: the kingpin with a rolling pin.
I snickered at my obvious genius, waving off Cendy’s questioning look.
“How much do I owe you?” she asked, digging through her pockets and scrounging together the bills she’d collected as tips for the day.
I thrust my hands out in what I hoped was the universal sign for stop .
I wasn’t known for my business sense, but taking money from a pregnant woman working on her feet all day seemed too far for even the greediest moguls.
“Nothing. You don’t owe me a cent. You’re basically Max’s only family in the city.
Just keep being his home away from home, and we’re even Steven. ”
“Even Steven?” she whispered, her brow furrowing as she tested out the strange phrase.
“No debts between us,” I explained, smiling.
She pursed her lips like she was going to argue but ultimately relented with a sigh. “You’re too generous, mi cielo. Thank you.”
She turned to waddle away but paused before opening the door. A mischievous twinkle lit her eyes. “You’re good for him. He’s never brought a girl here before, but you… you’re a good one. He’s happier with you.”
My eyebrows shot up in time with the heat flooding my system. “ Happier ? I didn’t think that was possible when it came to Max.”
“Me neither.” She chuckled. “But it’s true. You two will have beautiful babies with beautiful curly hair.” She gestured around her head in the same way she’d done earlier when talking to Max.
The implication behind it sent my stomach tumbling. “Oh, no, we’re not—”
“I’m never wrong about these things, mi reina . Never.” Her no-nonsense look evaporated in seconds when she smiled. “See you on Monday.”
And with that, she disappeared.
I stood stupidly in front of the sink for another minute, the various emotions coursing through me making my head spin. Did that really just happen?
I returned to our table in a trance-like state. Cendy, already taking another table’s orders, didn’t even look in my direction. Like our bathroom dealings never happened.
Life of carb smuggling, here I come.
Max leaned back as I sat, his shoulders relaxing as he smiled. “Did you remember how to socialize? Because I thought you were doing just fine before.”
“What?” I stared blankly at him until the humiliation from making him feed me returned. “Oh. Uh, only time will tell. I’m not convinced I’ve known how to socialize properly a day in my life.”
He laughed at my joke, but it carried more truth than I wanted to admit.
After reading experiences from women who’d been diagnosed with ADHD—as I’d spent a concerning amount of the day doing—I felt…
seen . They’d put into words what I’d experienced my whole life without knowing it wasn’t universal.
I’d felt for a long time that the world wasn’t built for me.
Or perhaps I wasn’t built for the world. I just never knew why until now.
It wasn’t until Max parked outside our building after dinner that I dared breach the subject that had been weighing so heavily on my mind and soul since last night.
“Max,” I started, stopping him before he got out to open my door, “I have a question, and it might seem really weird and random, but I’m hoping you just expect that from me at this point.”
He chuckled and angled to face me better over the car’s center console. “You keep me on my toes, that’s for sure. Ask away, Chef. I’m ready.”
I flashed a grateful smile before it died unnaturally fast. I settled on toying with my purse strap to channel my nervous energy, the bag now most of a quart baggie lighter since pawning some cookies off on Cendy and her husband.
“Have you ever felt like you’re trying to swim with one arm tied behind your back while everyone else speeds past you using half as much effort? ”
He hummed thoughtfully, his forehead creasing as his brows pulled together.
After a few agonizing heart beats, he shrugged.
“I needed speech therapy as a kid. For a while it felt like I had to work twice as hard to be understood than everyone else, but it got easier the more I worked at it.” He cocked his head to the side. “Why do you ask?”
“No reason,” I mumbled. Then, after reconsidering, “Actually, that’s a lie. I just haven’t talked to anyone about this and I’m still not sure how I feel.”
He propped an elbow on the console and rested his head on his hand. “Well, if you want to confide in me, I’m a decent listener. And if not, we can just sit here and eat the rest of those cookies you brought.”
I snorted and pulled the baggie out of my purse. “Pretty hard to refuse an offer like that.”
Despite my words, I let the baggie rest on the center console unopened. It took a minute to sift through the hurricane in my head before I could form anything coherent. Max sat patiently, the corner of his mouth curving upward in a faint smile.
I fidgeted with a loose curl, alternating between winding it around my finger and giving it a nervous tug.
“I’ve been doing some research lately and…
I think I might have ADHD. And before you get the wrong idea like I did at first, it isn’t just ‘oh, look, a squirrel!’ and all that.
Though I can get distracted easily. But that’s beside the point. ”
He nodded, his face a perfect mask of interest without judgment. How on earth he’d mastered that, I had no idea.
“The point is, it’s severe enough that it impacts my day-to-day life.
A lot. But especially managing things in my life.
” Like the business side of owning a bakery, for one, but it didn’t stop there.
“All the necessary but boring stuff I need to do to be a functional adult, sometimes it feels like shoving my hand onto a hot stove just to do them. Like, if you tried to do that right now, your brain would stop you, right? Because you’re about to hurt yourself, and you know it’ll hurt.
Except most of these are just normal tasks, and I still can’t do them until deadlines, or some other stress makes me do them. ”
“That sounds really difficult,” Max murmured, his eyebrows pulling together.
His empathy, his lack of judgment or a simple “just do the things, it’s not that hard” nearly broke the dam on my tear ducts wide open. I didn’t have to justify myself. Cut myself open just to prove I bleed red.
“It is,” I whispered, and scrunched my eyes shut until I got a handle on my overflowing emotions again.
“Anyway, I’ve been considering trying to get officially diagnosed so I can get treated for it.
Which should be a no-brainer, right? If it affects my life so much, obviously I should do something about it. ”