Chapter 26 Avery
AVERY
Beck taught me how to make croissants, giving me a piece of buttered dough to roll into thin layers, one on top of the other, and explaining that the key to flaky pastry lay in rolling it out fast and keeping the butter cold.
I was never going to be as good at baking as Beck — my dough looked sloppy and inelegant next to his neat square — but it was fun to learn. It was also surprisingly relaxing. There was something almost meditative about the repetitive motion: roll out the dough, fold, roll again, fold.
I tapped out once Beck put the croissants in the oven and spent the next hour with Malcolm, who danced around the bakery as he worked to a playlist he’d labeled Bakery Beats and called me “girl” like we were old friends.
We ordered lunch from Field & Fork and ate at one of the tables during the bakery’s afternoon lull while Malcolm and Beck answered my questions about the bakery: whether it was profitable (modestly), which seasons were busiest (spring, fall, right before Christmas), and whether there was any competition (nothing in town, although there was a bakery ten miles away in Carleton).
By the time we finished lunch, customers had started filing in: teenagers after school, moms picking up cookies and cupcakes for their kids’ afternoon activities, and the occasional older person who seemed as interested in a chat as they were a cookie.
I learned how to work the register and by four p.m. I was moving easily around Malcolm in the front while Beck came in and out from the kitchen to replenish the case.
It was a kind of dance, Malcolm and I taking turns plating croissants or wrapping cupcakes in the Golden Crumb pastry boxes as Beck dipped and dodged around us with sheets of scrumptious scones, cookies, and pastries.
I enjoyed it more than I expected, and I was surprised when I realized it was almost five p.m. when the bakery emptied out.
Beck high-fived Malcolm, then me. “Good job, team!”
“You handled that like a pro,” Malcolm told me.
“Thanks. It was fun.” I spent a lot of time in front of a computer for my job at Livable Cities — looking up contracts and building plans, researching local environmental regulations, digging through title records — but I’d always enjoyed the community meetings and meet and greets best.
Working at the Golden Crumb was a kind of community building too. Most of our customers were locals, something I realized when Beck and Malcolm greeted them by name, asked about their families or jobs or medical problems.
And I already knew some of them too. Lyle had come in, Cleopatra sitting regally in her stroller, and Clara had picked up a box of cookies she’d ordered for the Blackwell Garden Club.
Rosie had stopped in to place an order for the Common Ground the next morning — she apologized again for the incident with Mayor Biscuit — and Bastien had picked up a whole strawberry champagne cake for a bachelorette party that had taken up residence at the inn.
“You know what?” Beck asked. “I think we deserve ice cream.”
“Ice cream?” I was pretty sure I was going to get diabetes if I stayed in Blackwell Hollow much longer.
“It was our first time working as a team and we killed it!” Beck said. “My treat. The only thing is…” He glanced at the doors leading to the kitchen. “I have two cherry pies in the oven.”
“I need to start closing out the register,” Malcolm said.
“I guess… I can go?” I’d seen the Sugar Pine Creamery next to the bakery but hadn’t had a chance to check it out.
“Great idea.” Malcolm moved behind the register. “I’ll take a strawberry shortcake sundae.”
“I’ll do a double-fudge brownie sundae,” Beck said. “Extra sprinkles. Just tell Lena to put it on the bakery’s tab.”
“We have a tab at the ice cream store?”
Beck furrowed his brow, like a tab at the ice cream store was an obvious necessity. “Well… yeah.”
Of course we did.
“Be right back.” I was learning to accept all of Blackwell Hollow’s idiosyncrasies.
And if Beck said it was time for ice cream after dishing out a metric sugar-ton of pastries, then gosh darn it, it was time for ice cream.