Chapter Three
Bobbi
“Do you think we should make more croissants? Everyone who comes by seems to want them,” my apprentice Victor says.
Only four remain under the clear cover, even though we started baking more just a couple of weeks ago.
“They do seem to be flying off the shelves. So yeah, I guess so.” I smile.
He’s the only employee I have. He says he’s lucky to have met me, but I’m the fortunate one. He’s one of the hardest working and most honest people I know. I wouldn’t have been able to grow the business this much without him by my side.
His head is shaved smooth—says it’s cheaper to do it himself with a razor than see a barber—but given his thick black eyebrows, he’d probably have stunning hair if he let it grow out. And he has beautiful wide-set brown eyes that look at the world with earnestness and quiet pride.
Although the weather is warm, he’s in a long-sleeve shirt and slacks. I told him he could wear short-sleeve shirts, but he politely declined. He was sporting a black eye and busted lip and crouching under the awning of the bakery at five in the morning when I met him a year ago. I figured him for homeless or a runaway teen, and felt bad for him, especially since he was nothing but skin and bones. So I gave him a couple of Danishes from the day before that I’d saved for breakfast.
Instead of accepting them and disappearing, he asked me what he could do for payment because he wasn’t taking something he didn’t earn. So I told him he could take out the trash.
After that he kept coming by and I kept giving him the stuff from the day before for helping out with little chores. Two weeks later I just hired him outright and started to pay him enough money for a modest studio apartment and decent food to put some flesh on his bones. I had to when I inadvertently saw the cigarette burn scars on his forearms and realized he had nowhere safe to go. Everyone deserves a sanctuary.
The kid has his pride, so I’ve never let him know I noticed. We all have scars we’d rather hide from the world.
I check the time. It’s four, an hour before closing. I hand him a carefully packed box of cupcakes that I made while he was busy manning the cash register earlier this morning. I used pearlescent blue and white frosting—his favorite colors—and decorated them with modeling chocolate that I molded into a house, people and dogs. It’s my wish for him to one day find happiness and love with people who have his back. “Here.”
“What’s this for?”
“Happy nineteenth. Sorry, didn’t have the time to make a birthday cake for you, but there was that emergency custom engagement cake in the morning.”
His eyes widen, like he can’t believe anybody would bother. “How did you know?”
“You filled out the job application, remember?” It’s terrible that he has nobody to wish him a happy birthday. But then I didn’t either until I met TJ and his family. Mom always pretended birthdays didn’t matter, although she remembered Dad’s, and Dad was too busy doing important jobs for the government to remember anyone’s.
Noah wished you a happy birthday.
Yeah, and then bailed on me. Broke too many promises. I’m not going to include him among the special group of people I can count on.
Victor shakes his head. “Well…wow. Thanks.”
“I would’ve done the whole candle and song bit, but I didn’t want to force you into therapy. Good employees are hard to find.”
He grins. “This is fine.”
“You can take off an hour early. And here.” I shove a hundred-dollar bill into his hand. “Birthday bonus.”
“Oh, man.” He runs his free hand over his shaven head. “You already gave me a Thanksgiving bonus. Christmas one, too.”
“Those were for holidays, this is for your birthday. Just say thanks and enjoy the day.”
His eyes film over. It kills me how easily a little bit of kindness can overwhelm him. His parents have to be absolute shits. I wish them a fitting punishment of eternal diarrhea.
Tears will only embarrass him. Time to lighten the mood.
“You still have to come in on time on Monday, so don’t party too hard over the weekend.” The bakery is closed over the weekend because most of our business is from commuters in the area. And I do special orders on weekends—weddings and so on.
“Of course.” He laughs. “I’ll be here on time.”
I give him a hug. “Happy birthday. Hope all your wishes come true.”
He hugs me back hard. “They did when I met you. Thank you, Bobbi. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
“Aww. Now you’re going to make your big mean boss cry.”
I wave at him as he disappears into the employee area to get out of his Bobbi’s Sweet Things apron and take off. He’s beginning to smile more, like a kid his age should.
I run my hands lovingly along the counter. When I opened this place, I just dreamed of creating amazing baked goods and making people happy. But now it’s enabled me to make a difference in someone’s life. And I know it’s going to bring me even more joy and fulfillment.
I hear the little bell on the door tinkle. I lift my head with a smile…then freeze at the sight of Reggie Hopkins, Ms. Pain in the Ass herself, walking in. A third cousin once removed on my mom’s side of the family, she grew up in the same neighborhood as TJ. We went to high school together when my father left Mom and me in SoCal. The place the State Department sent him into was too unstable and dangerous to take us along.
Reggie did everything in her power to be my best friend in high school, mainly because she’s had a crush on TJ since forever, and he and I were tight from holiday dinners and a few vacations Mom had with her family. To him, I’d led a fascinating life in parts of the world he’d seen only on YouTube, and I found comfort in his steady nature. She meant to use me to get close to him, and I became friendly with her without understanding what she really wanted. When she realized that he would never like her, she accused me of poisoning him against her. She won’t accept that the real reason TJ dislikes her is because she’s an insufferable know-it-all who called his dog stupid and regarded every other woman around him as a competition for his affection.
TJ and I have moved on from our high school years—along with most of the other students—but not Reggie. She didn’t bother to come to my mom’s funeral and stopped by during the first week of my bakery opening to complain about how horrible my croissants were, then posted crappy reviews everywhere. Given that she’s a minor celebrity, it almost ruined my bakery before it could get started. Thankfully, Yuna’s husband Declan, who is a far bigger star, mentioned how much he loves our croissants and cupcakes, which dwarfed Reggie’s negative posts and bitching.
Now she’s apparently bleached her hair platinum and gotten lip injections that blew them up to four times their normal size. Her eyes are an unnaturally bright green with extra-large pupils, probably from cosmetic lenses. She might’ve done something with her chest as well—her cleavage is now Mariana Trench class. She’s in a hot pink maxi dress with a plunging neckline—of course—and the rest of the outfit is straining to keep her properly covered.
Her belly protrudes rather overtly. I hope this ugly dress isn’t maternity wear, but with Reggie, anything’s possible.
“No hello for your customer?” The grating nasal voice, unfortunately, hasn’t changed.
“Are you actually a customer?”
“I’m here to order a cake for my engagement party. So, yeah, I think I am.” She extends her left hand, chin held high like a queen expecting a lowly peasant to drop and kiss her ring. Sure enough, a huge rock blinks under the bakery lights. She puts her other hand over her belly. “My fiancé and I are expecting a baby, so we want to have a lavish engagement and wedding as soon as possible.”
A corner of her mouth lifts as she shares her plan. She knows I’ve always wanted a family.
“Congrats,” I say dryly, more for the pregnancy than the engagement. It isn’t the baby’s fault that his mom is a horrible human being. But this fiancé? Obviously a terrible judge of character.
“You’re invited to both, you know.”
“I am?”
“Of course. It’s important to experience these kinds of social events, if only vicariously.”
“Ah, I see. Yeah, no thanks.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t ask for anything too expensive,” she says, completely oblivious. Or maybe she just can’t believe I’d say no. “You know how to decorate an engagement cake, don’t you? Even though you aren’t engaged or anything?” She shakes her head. “What’s making your guy take so long, anyway? What’s his name again? Noam? Nolan?”
The girl can’t quit talking. She probably thinks she’s doing a fantastic job of throwing verbal jabs. I paste on my blandest smile. “Noah.”
He and she met when he took me to Jean-Georges for brunch. She was at the restaurant with her sugar daddy, a man literally old enough to be her grandfather. Her jaw slack, she ran her eyes over Noah, her face growing red as she catalogued his lean body, expensive clothes and stunning face.
“Is this a new client?” she asked, eyeing him like she’d like to strip off her clothes and jump him.
“No, I’m the boyfriend you’ve been hearing so many great things about,” Noah said with a grin before I could respond.
Her mouth parted, and she sucked in air. The vein on her forehead pulsed hard—but unfortunately didn’t pop.
“Right.” Reggie snaps her fingers. “Noah.”
“Can’t believe you forgot already. But I read somewhere that memory and recall require at least two brain cells. So, not your strong point.”
Her eyes narrow. “Maybe, but getting engaged is. Unlike some women, I’m not just fucked but kept.” She declares it with pride and triumph.
The attack slides into my heart like a well-honed knife. I fantasize briefly about shoving her smug face into a vat of butter cream I’ve got in the back, but no. That butter cream deserves better.
“Anyway, about the cake—”
“Talk to your baker.”
She stops, then lets out a grating laugh. “Uh, isn’t this a bakery? Aren’t you the baker?”
“I am the baker. Just not your baker.”
“What? I’m a customer! With good money!”
“Who left shitty reviews of my bakery everywhere.” For the baby’s sake, I hope her fiancé is smarter than Reggie.
“I’m giving you a chance to redeem yourself. You bake me the cake, and I won’t even charge you for the opportunity.” She positions her hand so I can’t miss the ring.
“Okay, are you seriously asking me to make you a cake—for free—so you can then decide if it’s good enough?”
She brightens. “Yes!”
“Reggie,” I say sweetly, “go fuck yourself.”
She lets out a loud gasp. “You bitch!”
“And then go fuck yourself again.”
The bell on the door tinkles.
“Oh, look. Here comes a real customer.” I turn away from her, then realize it’s just my landlord swaggering in.
The second Floyd crosses the threshold, he pulls out a stained hanky and places it over his pug nose. His white muscle tee stretches painfully around his short torso. Hair that should be on his head sprouts in black wiry tufts from his chest and back, and he has on his usual cowboy boots with the elevator heels. He claims they’re fashion items made with “genuine cowhide that costs thousands of dollars” from Texas.
If anything on him cost more than twenty bucks, I’ll give up my ovaries.
“Baby!” Reggie exclaims with the dramatic flair of a telenovela actress.
Baby?
She rushes to him, looping her arms around his. “Can you believe how rude my cousin is? She won’t make us an engagement cake!”
“That’s terrible, but at least she can’t poison me with gluten.” He sounds nasal through the handkerchief. I don’t know what that green-yellow patch on the wrinkled fabric is, but I hope it’s full of cooties.
“This is your fiancé? Floyd Baggett?”
Reggie turns to me. “Yes. And he’s valiantly fighting his allergy to win my heart.” She gives me a cloying smile. “That’s how much he wants me.”
Floyd takes her hand and kisses the back of it. “Anything for you, my love.”
Gag me with a dirty plunger. But at the same time, they do kind of suit each other. Like a praying mantis and a cockroach.
“This explains the fifty percent rent increase Angie wanted,” I mutter, recalling the unpleasant, awkward meeting with the property manager over the lease renewal. I should’ve just signed the five-year contract the property management wanted, but fear of failure stopped me from making the commitment. I straighten my spine, ready for a battle.
His dark eyes narrow in his round face. He loathes that I’m as tall as he is, even though I’m in flats and he’s in those boots. “Gluten tax, Bobbi. The existence of this bakery destroys the quality of life in the city. Not to mention the health of the people.”
“Has anybody tried to tax you for damaging their mental health?” My tone is drier than the bags of flour in my kitchen.
He blinks for a moment, then turns bright red. “How dare you!”
“Why you gotta be so mean? All we want is to be happy for our engagement,” Reggie whines.
Right, because newly engaged couples always go see people they’ve insulted to share their happiness. Happens all the time.
“Relax. Can’t you take a joke?” I give him a fake laugh, and he backs down a little. He told me more than once that if his mother hadn’t forced him to go into engineering, he could’ve been a taller, more handsome and funnier version of Danny DeVito. His mother was one of the nicest people I’ve ever met, and contempt stirs at his delusion and ingratitude to the woman. If it weren’t for her, he’d be unemployable and homeless. He certainly wouldn’t be in a position to come into my bakery and harass me. “Maybe you should lobby the city council if you want to ban bakeries.” Good luck. Probably a quarter of the council buys Danishes from my bakery every morning.
“Oh, I intend to. But meanwhile, I do what I can. You see the reaction I’m having because of gluten? I have to take so many precautions to even be near this place.” He indicates his belly. “Look at this! I used to have a six pack until you opened your bakery.” Reggie makes a sympathetic noise.
“You weren’t even here when I started Bobbi’s Sweet Things. You were in Denver, working at an engineering firm.” His mother was so proud of him finally becoming gainfully employed, rather than hopping from one get-rich-quick scheme to another, that she asked me to bake a set of special cookies for him. She was such a lovely woman, it’s astounding she ended up with a man-child like Floyd. The family lottery can be pretty shitty for some people.
Of course, the same can be said for the landlord lottery. If I’d known he’d be the one to inherit the building Bobbi’s Sweet Things is in, I would’ve thought twice before signing the lease, regardless of its fantastic location or his mother offering me the flexibility of committing for only one year rather than five.
“It’s the gluten in the air,” he insists. “It’s hurting me even now.” He waves a hand, then closes his eyes as though torn between unbearable pain and intolerable bliss.
He’s probably dying inside that he can’t eat anything in the bakery because of his “gluten allergy.” Who does he think he’s fooling? I saw him scarf down two burritos from a food truck just last month. Afterwards, I asked the guy manning the truck if they had gluten-free tortillas, and he looked at me like I was crazy.
It’s extremely tempting to put Floyd in a headlock and shove a cookie down his throat just to show him I know he’s a filthy lying roach. Except my cookies are rewards, not punishment.
He props an arm on the counter and leans closer. “But regardless of my struggle, my fiancée would love a vanilla chiffon cake with strawberries and white nama-cream frosting from your bakery. So you’re going to make it for her.”
“And if I don’t…?”
He stiffens like the possibility of rejection never entered his mind. “You will.”
I lean closer as well. “No, I won’t. I don’t have to do business with people who come here to insult me.”
“Oh, I get it. You’re jealous of Reggie, now that she and I are engaged.” A leer creeps over his face, and I resist the urge to shove it away. He thinks he’s this generation’s Casanova, despite all the evidence mirrors must provide. “The prototypical woman scorned. Devastated because I am now taken.”
“I’m really not that invested in your personal life.” Somehow, he’s gotten into his head that I harbor an unrequited love for him because I baked the custom cookies his mother ordered to celebrate his employment.
“But if you don’t make that cake, I won’t just raise the rent by fifty percent, I’ll kick you out as well.”
“If you kick me out, you won’t get any rent.”
“You could put in a comedy club, Floyd. It would be classier than this,” Reggie sneers, and I really want to smack her a few times. It takes talent to make me want to hit a pregnant woman.
“We need a cake big enough for a hundred guests. Something impressive and pretty,” Floyd says. “I expect it to be ready whenever we set the date!”
“So you’re expecting in two ways now. Hopefully a baby will satisfy you.”
“Ow, my back.” Reggie puts a hand at the small of her back with a small smirk at me. “Man, it isn’t easy carrying this child.”
“I told you you didn’t have to take care of the cake. Let’s get you home and comfortable,” Floyd says, running a soothing hand along her back. He turns to me with a snarl. “Make the damn cake or else, Bobbi!”
He escorts her out. Although he’s nobody’s idea of a great catch, part of me does feel sad and lonely. He’s a jerk, but even he knows how to treat a woman he’s having a relationship with.
Noah, on the other hand? He has a prettier package and an amazing ability to make me feel like the most special person in his life, but he doesn’t treat me like I mean anything.
I shake my head. Time to think about something more urgent and relevant to my life than an ex I haven’t seen or heard from in a year.
I really need to look for a new location with a saner landlord. But that feels like surrendering, and why should I have to relocate just because Floyd is an asinine pig? Besides, I’m not sure if I’m going to be able to find a spot as good as this. Relocation will also mean unexpected expenses.
I make a mental note to consult a lawyer. There’s no way what Floyd is doing is legal. Tenants must have some rights.
Breathe out. Relax. The nastiest part of the day is over. Friday can’t get any worse than a visit from those two. Besides, I have a date to look forward to later this evening. This guy I found on a dating app sounds promising. If even half of what he said is true, we’ll hit it off great. Reggie and Floyd are just a blip on the radar.
The door chimes. I paste on my friendliest smile, which instantly cracks.
Noah!
He saunters in, like all the broken promises aren’t still lying between us. What’s worse is that he’s even better looking now. Sadly, nobody has found him annoying enough to break his nose since last time I saw him—its bridge is still narrow and straight. His cheekbones are more prominent, probably from a bit of weight loss—and why do I have to notice that?—although his wide shoulders and thick chest fill out his pale gray T-shirt beautifully, and well-worn jeans hug his thighs perfectly, hinting at his lower body strength.
It’s infuriating that he’s wearing the same smile full of empty charm, and even more so because I’m noticing how gorgeous it is. I despise that he’s tall enough to tower over me, and his entire body somehow looks both large and lean at the same time. He should be a dork with a pencil neck and skinny arms. A wildlife photographer doesn’t need that height or that much muscle.
“Hi.” His tone is friendly. Charming even.
I can’t respond. I might crack under the weight of my fury and what he meant to me. He can’t possibly expect me to say anything friendly, and I’m not going to hint how much his last disappearing act gutted me.
Noah can stand in front of me all he wants. But in my heart, where it counts the most? He’s in my past. Forever.