Chapter 7
Seven
As summer approaches, the days grow longer.
The calm between day and night has always been my favorite, but today, on a Thursday evening, it signals the end of multiple soccer games, meaning the bakery is about to be swarmed with kids in uniforms and their parents wanting ice cream and various other sugary treats.
The park across the street has six fields, so there are a bunch of games going on.
Kalani’s sister’s soccer game ended an hour ago, so she already popped in to say hi.
We’ve had a steady influx of people as parents wait for their kids’ game to end, so I was too busy running around to talk to her or anyone else.
As I’m wiping down some tables near the end of the night, a large group of young girls come in, all ten or eleven years old, wearing matching pink soccer jerseys.
They’re loud and excited, and from their laughter and cheers, it’s clear they’ve won their first soccer match of the season.
I’m sure they won against the blue team, because there were some girls in here just a few minutes ago talking about how they lost to the pink team.
One of the older girls was even talking about how the pink team’s coach was “hot.” I grimace as I picture Kalani’s sister’s soccer coach, a balding man in his fifties who spends the entire game blowing his whistle and yelling until the veins bulge in his forehead.
I sincerely hope a bunch of preteens weren’t talking about a coach like him.
Kids usually go straight for ice cream over baked goods, so I take my position behind the ice cream counter and wait for them.
“Hi!” says a girl with blond braids. “We won tonight!”
“Congratulations,” I say to the entire team, who crowd around the ice cream counter looking at all the flavors and getting their sweaty handprints all over the glass.
I’ve always had a thing about handprints on glass; they drive me crazy.
When I first started working here at thirteen years old, I’d clean the glass the second the customer left the store.
I’m still obsessed with handprints, but now I wait for them to accumulate a bit before I clean, especially during soccer season when kids can’t order anything without smudging their sweat all over the glass.
Even armed with the knowledge that I can clean the display when they leave, it still makes me shiver when the entire pink team presses their hands and noses against the glass.
“Our coach said he’s buying us all a scoop of ice cream to celebrate the first win,” the blond girl says.
“That’s very nice of him,” I reply, though I don’t see an adult with the group of kids. “Where is he?”
During busy times, we don’t start scooping ice cream until they’ve paid for it.
Once, a new girl scooped ice cream for two soccer teams before realizing no one was going to pay for it, and kids were just ordering ice cream and walking out, assuming it was free.
Now we charge before we scoop during soccer nights.
Jay walks into the bakery, his eyes meeting mine instantly. I resist the urge to groan. Why is he stalking me?
“Hey, Princess,” he says, cutting through the group of kids.
His face brings back fresh memories of our terrible date, and that’s the last thing I need right now considering I’m going on another blind date tomorrow.
“You can’t just cut in front of a bunch of kids, Jay,” I tell him, gesturing to the group of girls. But none of them are glaring at him for jumping the line. In fact, they’re looking at him with . . . adoration?
“Coach Jay, I want rocky road,” the same girl says, tugging on his hand.
“Not a problem, Celeste. Let me pay this grumpy lady first,” he says, gesturing at me.
My surprise is overshadowed by my annoyance, and my frown deepens. “I’m not a grumpy lady,” I say in a tone that does make me sound like a grumpy lady, which amuses him and makes the girls giggle.
He follows me to the cash register while the girls poke at the glass and call out what flavors they want to one another. I force my eyes not to track their fingerprints.
“What’s a grade A jerk like you doing coaching a girls’ soccer team?” I ask him as he pulls out his wallet.
I can’t picture it. This is the boy who wears a permanent smirk and enjoys taunting people, specifically me.
I imagined him kicking puppies or stealing candy from babies in his spare time, not coaching a girls’ soccer team and buying them all ice cream.
But here he is, and not a single girl looks like she hates him.
He points to one girl at the end. “My sister, Niyah, loves soccer. This is the first year she’s on the same team as her friends. Her coach was in an accident and had to quit, and their team would’ve been split up between different teams, so I stepped in.”
He’s coaching a soccer team for his sister?
He cares that she would’ve been separated from her friends?
None of this new information meshes with what I know about the tall guy standing in front of me.
Niyah spots us looking at her and smiles shyly, then joins in the discussion with her friends.
She’s a cute girl. Her dark hair is braided away from her face with her tight curls left natural in a short bun at the top of her head.
She’s taller than most of the other girls, but she’s still super short compared to Jay.
I squint at him. “Who are you and what have you done with the jerk I know?”
“You’re so dramatic. I’ll get twenty cones, please.”
I punch in the code and take the bills from his hand while eyeing him suspiciously. Stepping in as coach, buying ice cream for the entire team, and saying please? Who is this Jay?
“So, are your panties black today?” he asks casually.
There he is.
I scoff, not even offended at this point. “They are.” My yoga pants are black, so obviously my thong is too.
His smile is teasing and secretive. “It’s fun knowing what color your panties are.”
“Too bad you’ll never get to see them,” I say, handing him his change.
“Have your friends paid someone to go on another blind date with you yet?” he asks. He doesn’t say it meanly; instead, he’s entertained. My current situation amuses him. Apparently, everything about me does.
My eyes narrow at him. “Technically, they never paid anyone, since you received nothing for showing up.”
“Except the satisfaction of annoying you,” he replies.
“Yes. Except that.”
He leans against the counter. “Are you going on another date or what?”
“Yes, tomorrow. Why do you care so much?” I ask as I put on a pair of latex gloves.
“I’m curious.” He shrugs. “Plus, your friend made it sound like you were really desperate for a boyfriend when she bribed me to take you out.”
I’m going to kill Kalani.
“I’m not desperate for a boyfriend,” I explain. “I agreed to be set up because Kalani and Emi think I’m annoying tagging along on their dates and being a fifth wheel.” And to throw Kalani off about my crush on Emmett. “And I’m living a little.”
He raises an eyebrow. “A fifth wheel?”
“Yeah. Like a third wheel, but there’s another couple. Two couples, then me. It’s basic math.”
“I understand the math—I received the math award two years in a row.” He waves me off, straightening up from the counter.
Before the shock can sink in that Jay—Jay!
—is so smart he got the highest grade in math two years in a row, he says, “She’s setting you up so you’re not fifth wheeling their dates anymore? ”
I don’t understand why I’m telling him any of this. I count out ice-cream cones. “Exactly.”
He ponders this for a second. “And because you’re in love with Kalani’s boyfriend, right?”
“Exa—wait. No.” I was too distracted counting, and we were having such a civil conversation, I forgot who I was talking to for a second. “Again, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Uh-huh. Still denying the obvious, I see.”
Deciding the best tactic is to ignore him, I turn to the excited kids, who are growing impatient while we bicker. “Okay, girls! If you know what you want, line up here.”
One by one, the girls give me their order and I hand them their ice cream. Out of habit, my eyes flick to the glass every time they tap on it to point at their ice cream.
Niyah orders last. “I’ll have chocolate, please. That’s my favorite.”
She thanks me when I hand her the cone, then skips away to an outside table with her friends. She seems very sweet. It’s a mystery how she and Jay are related.
“That was the last cone,” I tell Jay, who’s the last person standing in front of me and didn’t get any ice cream. “Did you miscount when you ordered?”
He shakes his head. “No. I don’t like ice cream.”
With a calculated look at me, he lifts his hand and slowly wipes it on the glass, dragging it from the top to the bottom. My eye twitches, and his smile widens. He is such a jerk, a jerk who notices way too much.
“See ya, Princess,” he says, turning to leave.
“And you think I’m the weird one,” I call out to him as he chuckles and exits the bakery, joining his team at the picnic table. Who doesn’t like ice cream? People who can’t be trusted, that’s who.
As I watch through the window, Niyah shifts over on the bench to make room for Jay.
He smiles at her, and I zero in on the chocolate cone in her hand.
Jay’s last visit to the bakery comes to mind, and so do his words when I smeared chocolate ice cream all over his shirt.
I groan as I connect the dots, and even though Jay deserved it, guilt nibbles at my stomach.
Outside, Jay hands a girl a napkin, and another girl high-fives him.
His smile is wide and genuine, and I realize I’m scowling.
There’s more than meets the eye with Jay, and that upsets me. I liked it better when I thought of him as that jerk who threatened to throw me off the cliff and has an intimate knowledge of my panty colors.
Jay and I make eye contact through the window, and he winks at me. If I could get away with flipping him off, I would. Instead, I grab the glass cleaner and paper towels, walk around to the other side of the counter, and take my anger out by vigorously wiping the handprints away.