Chapter 16 Shaun
Shaun
I park up in front of the café and switch off the engine.
Alright, here we go. Just a normal shift on a normal day. Got to keep telling myself that, because the alternative is telling Freddie I came three times thinking about him last night, something I absolutely cannot do, even if it’s one hundred percent the truth.
Thrice might seem excessive, but the first time happened so embarrassingly fast I had to double-check it wasn’t a fluke. And the third time was… well, simply because I wanted to.
It felt amazing.
Did it help? In a way, yes, but in a lot of other ways, no. No, it did not.
The one upside is now I know, unequivocally, that I’m attracted to him, sexually speaking. The downside is, well, everything else that comes with that. I don’t know what to do. For now, pretending nothing’s different around Freddie is my only option.
Should be easy.
I unlock the front door of the café and step inside.
With a shiver, I hang up my coat and glance at the clock on the wall.
Apart from reminding me it’s “always time for a coffee,” it lets me know it’s five minutes to six.
To my surprise, I’m not tired at all. On the contrary, I flew out of bed so fast this morning I accidentally catapulted Jester into the bedside table.
I haven’t been this excited to come to work since the day we opened.
Could it have something to do with a full morning of baking with a certain someone—
There’s a knock on the door and I wheel around to see Freddie waving at me, his nose pink from the cold.
“It’s open!” I call, pointing moronically at the door handle like he’s never used one before.
Freddie slips inside, the usual sparkling grin plastered across his face despite this ungodly hour. He must be tired; pale purple bags stain the skin underneath his eyes. Somehow, inexplicably, he makes it work.
“Morning!” he says, shutting the door behind him. He pulls off his jacket and, as ever, he’s wearing precious little underneath it. The neck of his sweater is fully unzipped, showing off a wedge of his smooth chest. With all my strength, I avert my gaze.
“How was your evening?” Freddie asks, hanging his jacket on the coat rack. “Get up to anything nice?”
“Nope!” I say, a little too loudly. I force a smile. “Just chilled out, binged a couple of shows. How was the rest of your shift? The place looks—” I glance around, “—spotless, actually. Wow, good job.”
Freddie winks, making my heart leap as usual. “Anna’s got high standards. She made me hoover twice!”
I grimace. “Yeah, sorry about that. I should have warned you. Anna’s brilliant, but she’s also a little bit terrifying.”
Freddie chuckles. “Nah, she’s alright. To be fair, I missed like a billion crumbs the first time.”
“There are always more crumbs,” I say, gravely. “Just be glad we’re not a French patisserie! I did work experience in one once and the crumbs the croissants made, you wouldn’t believe. Hundreds of them, and they get everywhere. Down every crack. You’d clean for hours and still be finding them.”
Freddie smiles, politely.
For god’s sake, Shaun! Stop talking about cracks! I clear my throat and gesture towards the kitchen.
“Ready to bake?”
Freddie nods.
“Bring it on!”
Half an hour later, Freddie’s keeping an eye on the sponges rising in the oven while I scarf down a dry piece of unsold cake for breakfast. Baking is so much easier with two.
Even with Freddie’s inexperience in the kitchen, we’re way ahead of schedule.
In the corner are four metal bowls of icing I whipped up as I talked Freddie through making the cake batter.
Normally, I’d be rushing to make them in time but it’s not even half past six and we’re flying.
We make a pretty good team, Freddie and I.
“I think they’re done,” Freddie says, stepping aside from the oven so I can see.
I hop off the counter and take a peek at the perfectly golden domes baking inside it.
“I think you’re right,” I concur. “Good eye!”
Freddie looks pleased with himself as he puts on a pair of oven gloves.
Steam billows out in thick plumes as he opens the oven door. Once it clears, he delicately takes out each sponge and sets them on the countertop. Once all six have been safely removed, he turns to me like a curious puppy.
“Now what?”
“They have to cool before we decorate them, or else the icing will melt right off,” I explain. “In the meantime, how would you feel about having a go at the brownies?”
Freddie gives me a weary thumbs-up. His eyes are watering and I realise he’s fighting back a yawn. I stand up straight, duty calling.
“Right, I’ll make you a coffee while you start. The recipe is on the wall.”
He shakes his head. “Oh no, you don’t have to—”
Freddie loses his fight with the yawn, covering his mouth with the back of his hand. I put down my half-eaten piece of cake.
“Nonsense. Caffeine is the only cure for the early shift. Start weighing and breaking up the chocolate and I’ll make us some medicine.”
Before he can object, I sweep out of the kitchen and set to work making us two cortados with long-pulled double shots and just a smidge of milk—if this doesn’t wake him up, nothing will.
I return to the kitchen a few minutes later, cortados in hand. “Coffee to the rescue!”
“Thank you,” he says, turning his back before taking a sip.
“Good?”
“Fantastic!” He sets the cortado down and I notice it’s still almost full. Maybe it’s too strong for him? I take a sip of mine. It tastes nice, but I’m a bad point of reference—I’d drink coffee pitch black and thick as treacle without batting an eye.
Freddie finishes breaking the chocolate into a plastic bowl and sticks it in the microwave on a low heat. Without any prompting, he starts weighing out flour. All feelings aside, I’m oddly proud of him.
“So, have you always baked?” Freddie asks as he sieves the flour. I realise I’ve been staring at the back of his neck as he works and turn my attention back to my breakfast cake.
“No actually, I only started baking at uni. My flatmate and I were on the rugby team and one day he let slip that I made good cakes. I brought some muffins for them next practice, one thing led to another, and I ended up baking for them every week. We had a kitty and everyone put in a few quid each practice for ingredients—” I break off, feeling like I’m talking too much again, but Freddie’s turned around to face me now, an open bag of caster sugar in his hands.
If he’s uninterested, he’s hiding it well.
“After that, I never really stopped. I practiced a lot, watched YouTube videos, and now here. Humble beginnings, but who knows, maybe one day I’ll be Paul Hollywood. ”
Freddie raises an eyebrow. “Who?”
I gasp. “From Bake Off!”
He shrugs. “Never seen it.”
“You’ve never watched Bake Off? Tsk tsk tsk,” I hover a forkful of cake in front of my mouth. “What kind of a homosexual are you?”
I blurt it out before I can stop myself. Mortified, I’m about to apologise when Freddie looks me dead in the eye and says: “A power top, normally.”
I gasp mid-mouthful, inhaling the cake like a hoover on carpet mode. It hits my tonsils and before I know it, I’m violently choking on cake crumbs.
“Oh shit, are you okay?” Freddie asks, his expression shifting to one of genuine concern.
My face grows hot. I can’t speak. I’m making noises I’ve never made before, like the frantic wheezing of a beached orca. Shit, is this how I die?
Freddie steps forward and gives me a firm slap on the back, dislodging the killer cake in an instant. It goes all the way down and I take a long, rattling breath, my eyes streaming.
Well, that was embarrassing as hell, but at least I’m still alive.
After a fit of coughs and a gulp of water, I decide to brush over Freddie’s sex preferences and my subsequent near-death experience.
“Sorry about that! Where was I?”
Freddie chuckles and goes back to weighing sugar. “Um… Phil Hollywood?”
“Paul.” I correct him, taking another sip. “He knows everything there is to know about baking.”
“And you don’t?”
I shake my head. “Not even close, but I want to one day. I want to be so good that when people tell their friends about the best cake they ever had, they talk about my café. They’ll say ‘Shaun at Cream and Sugar makes the best cake in the world. You haven’t lived until you’ve tried it.
’ I want my passion to speak for itself. ”
Freddie sets the bag of sugar down and turns around again, leaning on the counter with the heels of his palms.
“Well, I’m sure you don’t need to model yourself after a celebrity to do that, no matter how talented they are.”
I eye him up and down. “Says you, walking around like a hipster Kurt Cobain!”
Freddie frowns. “Who?”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
His face breaks into that devilish grin. “Duh.”
Freddie pushes himself off the counter and takes a step towards me, and another. Time slows down. A tingling starts in my fingers and spreads through my veins like wildfire. What’s he doing? He can’t be about to—oh shit, he’s way too close!
I straighten up, my cheeks burning as he lifts a hand. My heart’s pounding so hard, there’s no way he can’t hear it.
“Freddie?”
Freddie’s eyelids flutter. Slowly, his lips part into a salacious grin.
“I need the cocoa powder. It’s on the shelf behind you.”
I follow the invisible line from his fingers to tub of cocoa powder behind my head.
“Oh!” I exclaim, slapping myself on the forehead. “You want the… Right. Of course.”
Humiliation pours through me like petrol as I pass Freddie the tub, igniting my burning skin into an inferno.
Fuck, I’m such an idiot!
Freddie takes the cocoa powder and starts weighing it out. Meanwhile, my soul is being pulled apart. Suddenly I’m aware the lights in here are way too bright. The appliances buzz with electricity, too loud to tune out. My world is falling off its axis.
Too late. Here it comes. Abort, abort, abort.