Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
Willa
The problem with being good at my new job is that I forget all about my other one.
Which means on Friday, I find myself pulling an all-nighter, baking and decorating cookies the moment they’re cool enough. This is not how I like to do things—last minute, rushed. It’s also not my favorite to be awake past midnight. I don’t turn into a pumpkin or a Gremlin, but it’s close.
My feet keep going numb, and I’m not doing the best job with my flooding because I keep making my icing too thin. I’ve remade it two times but keep ending up with the same consistency, somehow. Rather than simply filling in the outlined sections, it’s literally flooding over the edges of the cookies.
At least Sophie will have no shortage of samples. I could also probably sell them to Bellamy—he doesn’t care about how pretty they are.
“They’re never going to dry.” I say this out loud, because one o’clock in the morning is apparently the time of night when my thoughts need to be vocalized.
Or I’m just trying anything at all to stay awake. Coffee is no longer helping. There’s a certain point at which caffeine reaches max levels and bottoms out. I might as well be drinking water. Each time I take a sip, it’s like the warm liquid is giving me a pitying pat on the back, saying There, there, child instead of the caffeine zinging into my bloodstream like the jolt of electricity I need.
To be clear, I’m still drinking it, nursing the same pot of coffee I made at eight o’clock. Right after a text from my client came in saying how excited she was to see the cookies.
Actually, what she said was that she was excited and then she asked for a sneak peek. I was forced to lie and tell her the cookies were already packaged.
Which would have been true—had I not forgotten to make them in the first place. What makes it all worse is that this is someone I know from high school. Angie and I have always been more acquaintances than friends, barely keeping in touch via social media. I was surprised when she reached out via the contact form. The message was filled with exclamation points and emojis and a few mentions of supposedly shared high school events I had no memory of.
I’m not sure if she actually remembered us as friends more than I did or if she was angling for a discount, but I gave her twenty percent off. And agreed to stay for a little while when I dropped the cookies off before the party.
The latter concession hurt more than the discount, which definitely hurt. I’m such a pushover.
The only saving grace to this order is that it’s relatively simple. It’s a mermaid themed birthday party, one of my most popular birthday packages. I could practically scallop mermaid tails in my sleep.
Honestly? That’s almost what I’m doing. If this were last month’s order of incredibly detailed flowers for a garden club that required true-to-life colors and details, I wouldn’t have been able to manage. Right now, my eyes are blurred with sleep and my hands have the slightest tremble of exhaustion.
I’m mid-yawn when the swinging kitchen door flies open. My yawn becomes a shriek as Archer strides into the kitchen with the force and intent of someone coming to object at a wedding.
I don’t realize I’ve squeezed a fist around the piping bag until Archer says my name sharply, his laser eyes dragging my gaze down to the counter in front of me, where there’s now a whole pile of icing like a big turquoise turd.
Groaning, I drop the bag and spin to the sink, washing my hands before the food coloring stains my fingers.
“You can’t just burst into rooms like that!” I practically yell. “Now I have to make a third batch of royal icing.”
“I’m … sorry?” His words are hesitant, like apologies are a new-fangled invention to him.
I dry my hands on a dish towel and turn to face him. He’s still in a suit—because of course he is—but he’s lost the jacket and tie and is just wearing a light blue button-down tucked into black slacks. I wonder if this is Archer Gaines’s version of business casual. Or pajamas. The thought almost makes me burst into hysterical laughter.
“Do you sleep in a suit, boss?”
His brow furrows as he glances down at himself. “What? I—no.”
Before my thoughts can devolve into imagining Archer in low-slung pajama pants and no shirt—too late!—I ask, “What has you barging into the kitchen in the middle of the night?”
“Couldn’t sleep. What has you decorating cookies in the middle of the night?”
I slide a spatula under the pile of icing, lift it, and unceremoniously dump it in the trash. “I forgot an order,” I mutter. “I’m sure it’s hard to imagine since that big Ivy League-educated brain of yours probably never forgets things, but we can’t all be so lucky.”
As I pull out an unopened bag of confectioner’s sugar and the meringue powder, Archer leans a hip against the counter, staring down at the cookies I’ve finished.
The good news is I’m a little over halfway done. The bad news is that I still have a dozen cookies to ice. And then I have to hope they dry so I can package them. If I had a dehydrator, I could use that, but it’s not exactly in the budget. I can use the oven at a super low temperature if I need to, which I suspect I will. I hate doing that because I don’t want the consistency of the cookies to change. I’m also always afraid I’ll fall asleep and burn them.
“I keep lists,” Archer says, and I glance over at him, noting for the first time how tired he looks.
“What?”
“I forget things all the time. I have to keep lists. Then, I share them with Bellamy so he can remind me in case the list isn’t enough.” He lifts a shoulder in a half shrug. “My ‘big, Ivy League-educated brain’ isn’t much help.”
“So, you’re not a suit-wearing robot. Good to know.” His face pinches a little at my words, and I wonder if I hit a nerve somehow. I don’t have time to delve into it. “Well, it’s been fun catching up, but I’ve got to make more icing.”
“Do you need help?”
The only person I’ve ever legitimately let help me prepare an order—and only in desperation—was Sophie. She turned out to be less useful in baking than I am in gardening. I had to remake an entire batch of cookies after she somehow mistakenly used salt instead of sugar.
“But how?” I remember shouting at her. We were lucky a cookie broke and Sophie took a bite. They didn’t look like they were made with salt instead of sugar. I can’t imagine what would have happened if I had iced and then delivered them. “How?!”
“I don’t know!” Sophie shouted back. “I do flowers, not flour!”
That still didn’t explain it. I mean, sure—table salt and sugar are both small white crystals. But I had them in labeled glass containers with lids. It feels like an impossible mistake to make.
So, I’m not exactly eager to let anyone else help. Besides, baking cookies is something most people—besides Sophie, obviously—can do, as long as they follow a recipe. The problem is that I’m at the decorating stage. Learning how to pipe, flood, and then decorate with royal icing isn’t something a person can just learn and do.
Judith’s words from our session earlier in the week return: Could you be partners?
“You can help keep me awake.” Yawning again drives the point home.
“Okay,” Archer says. “How?”
I point to a stool Sophie often inhabits if she’s down here when I’m working. “Sit,” I order. “Talk to me.”
I like bossing him around. It’s the best kind of turning of the tables, even if I’m sure it doesn’t elicit the same kind of reaction in him as it does in me.
But he does obey, fussing with the stool a little—probably trying to get it up to what I suspect are impossibly high stool standards—before he sits.
“Here—wear this.” I snag the same pink frilly apron off the counter. Tonight, I was too stressed to even put one on. It’s too late for me now.
“Is this really necessary?” Archer asks.
I smile. “No. But do it anyway.”
“Do I get to call you boss now?”
“Do you want to call me boss?” I ask. This is the weirdest flirting I’ve ever done, but it also has more impact on me than anything I can remember.
Archer’s blue-gray eyes stay fixed on mine, only disappearing as he drops the apron over his head. “I think I prefer calling you Willa the Person.”
So do I.
“What else can I do?” He’s already managed to tie the apron strings in back, probably faster than I would have. It’s hard to remember how to tie a bow when you’re standing close to a man who fills out a suit like Archer does.
He looks surprisingly eager for instructions, given that it’s after one in the morning and we’re in a commercial kitchen. I decide to push him a little, emboldened by middle-of-the-night magic.
“Put your right arm in,” I tell him.
He looks down at the apron. “Put my right arm in what?”
“In,” I snap, holding my arm straight out in front of me to demonstrate.
Archer mirrors my movement, slowly holding out his arm as he raises a brow. “Okay, and?”
I am barely keeping in what I know will be an avalanche of laughter once it releases. “Put your right arm out.”
Before he can ask what out means, I throw my arm straight behind me.
After a moment of hesitation, Archer does the same.
“Now, put your right arm in, and shake it all about.”
Archer doesn’t copy me as I flail my arm around. Instead, he drops his hand to his lap and squints at me.
“Are you … okay?” he asks.
It’s the sincerity in his voice that tips me over the edge, and down I go, tumbling into hysterical, honking laughter that has me bent over at the waist. I clutch my cramping stomach, gasping for breath.
“Willa?” he says, and now tears are running down my cheeks, which ache from the size of the smile on my face.
I straighten so suddenly that little sparkles dance across my vision for a moment. Swiping my fingertips at the wetness underneath my eyes, I grin at Archer.
“Thank you,” I tell him.
He shifts, his gaze bouncing around the room, everywhere but at me. “You’re welcome?”
It’s only when my laughter subsides that I realize how distinctly uncomfortable he looks. It’s an incongruous display of self-conscious discomfort from a man whose entire personality otherwise screams with excessive confidence.
“What are you thanking me for? And what was that?”
I freeze, realization slapping me like a rogue wave. “Do you …” I swallow, the question suddenly sounding so stupid. Archer’s gaze returns to mine, briefly, then flits away. He looks like he’s wishing for a hole to open up in the floor and drop him into one of the circles of Dante’s Inferno. “Do you know what ‘The Hokey Pokey’ is?”
I wince as I ask. Because it seems like such a stupid question. Who doesn’t know “The Hokey Pokey”? But I’m also wincing because if he doesn’t, it makes me feel like some kind of monster for making a joke he doesn’t understand.
“No.” Archer shakes his head, still not looking at me, and I squeeze my eyes closed, pinching the bridge of my nose.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “It’s really dumb. Just a kid’s dance that people do at birthday parties.”
A thought strikes me and almost makes me shudder with a strange kind of sadness. With the snippets Archer has told me about his childhood, would he have attended birthday parties? Has he been inside a skating rink and laced up the ugly brown roller skates with split laces and orange wheels?
Of course he hasn’t.
And it’s only because I want to climb inside of his embarrassment alongside him that I do what I do next.
I start to sing in the warbly, off-key voice I’ve been not-so blessed with. “You put your right hand in, you put your right hand out. You put your right hand in, and you shake it all about.”
My Hokey Pokey moves are almost as bad as my voice, because singing and dancing at the same time is well beyond my skill set. But I continue. This is my penance for pointing out what should be a shared cultural experience that Archer has been left out of, thanks to his upbringing.
“You do The Hokey Pokey and you turn yourself around—that’s what it’s all a-bout!” I shimmy in a circle as I sing, hips swaying not to the rhythm, but I do manage to pull off the lifting of one knee to clap under it as I sing the last part.
When I’m finished, Archer is completely motionless on his stool. I’m not sure he’s breathing.
I feel both stupid and weirdly energized. Because even though I looked like a fool, I think I was successful in my quest to ease Archer’s discomfort. Now, he doesn’t look embarrassed, just a little shell-shocked.
“I’m not a singer. Or a dancer,” I say. “Obviously.”
He says nothing.
A flush rises in my cheeks. “Right. Well, that was … something.”
I turn my back and start in on the royal icing, which I really should have made already. If I ever want to sleep, that is.
At this point, I’m not sure I’ll ever sleep again. Instead, I’ll be haunted by the memory of this moment, humiliation getting me in a chokehold. I’d give up my expensive mixer to make Archer shift into boss mode and order me to do something. Even if that something was repeating my performance. Which I hope to never do again.
“The Hokey Pokey” is now dead to me.
“I guess they don’t do it at billionaire birthday parties,” I mutter.
I measure out the powdered sugar and meringue powder, then add the vanilla and almond extracts, the familiar smell a comfort when I’m feeling so distinctly uncomfortable.
“I never went to a birthday party,” Archer says. “At least, not one intended for children.”
I keep my focus on the mixer because I’m not sure I can look at Archer in the face without crying. Or doing something even stupider like crossing the room to throw my arms around him in a hug he probably doesn’t want. Even if it’s what he might need .
“Even my own weren’t for me,” he continues. “They were an excuse for my dad to expand his social circles and display his wealth. I was the only child in attendance.”
I may not know Archer well, but I am absolutely certain he wouldn’t want even a trace of anything resembling pity. This makes it hard for me to respond. The urge to hug him now reaches a level so intense that my entire body feels like it’s collapsing in on itself.
This is the only explanation for why I turn on the stand mixer before adding water or putting on the protective plastic cover, which I rarely use because it annoys me trying to wrestle it on top of the mixer. A cloud of vanilla and almond scented powdered sugar envelops me, and I immediately turn off the mixer and step back and sneeze violently six times in a row.
A lot of people talk or joke about peaking in high school. I think I just did the opposite—I bottomed out at twenty-six years old at one thirty-seven a.m. in The Serendipity’s kitchen.
I move to the sink and toss cold water on my face, wiping away the powdered sugar and discreetly scrubbing at my nose. Just in case the sneezing knocked anything loose. My mother hates the word booger more than any curse word in existence, so I grew up forced to use the word motto, a term Mom and her childhood best friend made up. The only way I can sink lower is if Archer sees me with a motto hanging out of my nose.
Sufficiently assured my face is as fine as it’s going to get given the current set of circumstances, I turn and catch Archer smiling.
No—it’s not a smile. It is a full-on grin .
The sight throws me. Not just because this version of Archer is almost as attractive as the frowning boss one. But because he looks almost boyish .
This , I think, is how young Archer would have smiled at a birthday party where kids did The Hokey Pokey .
“You should come with me tomorrow,” I blurt.
His smile disappears, but I think it’s more because I’m looking directly at him and not because of my words. “Come with you where?”
“To the party. I have to drop these off tomorrow. I can’t promise there will be The Hokey Pokey, but…” I don’t know how to end this sentence. “There might be juice boxes?”
Archer swallows, a movement I normally wouldn’t notice, except right now I feel like I’m hyper aware of every single detail about him. It must be the lack of sleep. I rub my eyes.
“You want me to come to a child’s birthday party tomorrow.” He’s repeating, not asking a question. “With you.”
I’ll choose not to be offended by the last part. One thing I’ve learned after spending time with Archer is that there is rarely subtext with him. He is blunt and simple, which at times makes him harder to understand. He usually doesn’t mean the kinds of loaded things other people would when they say something like with you . But he’ll also say unguarded, too honest things most people would hold back.
With a teasing smile, I say, “Think about it. You can cross it off your bucket list and never again have to say you haven’t been to a real backyard birthday party.” I dramatically roll my eyes. “I mean, embarrassing.”
My risky choice pays off. Archer’s eyes are on me again. “Fine. But there had better be juice boxes.” He pauses. “What is a juice box?”
I laugh. “You’ll see. And if they don’t have them, I’ll take you out after to get one.”
“Deal.”
I swear, he looked like he wanted to say, It’s a date . Or maybe I wanted him to say that? Do I want to go on a date with Archer Gaines?
Does he want to go on one with me?
“Now I need you to do something for me,” I tell him.
“What do you want, Willa the Person?” he asks, and I’m tempted to ask for something ridiculous like a yacht or a rare diamond. Just to see his response.
Instead, I say, “Just talk to me. Tell me more about these non-child birthday parties or what you were like in college—oh my gosh, did you ever order pizza after midnight like a normal person? Or tell me about your dating history—since now you know some of mine. I’d be fascinated to know about the kinds of women you’ve dated.”
I didn’t mean to ask the last one. Even if it makes my cheeks flush.
“Strike that last question from the record please. Sorry.”
“I’m not sorry,” Archer counters. “I’ll tell you my dating history if you tell me yours.”
“Um. Okay.”
Archer shifts, moving his stool a little closer to me and then settling again. “Fair warning: my dating resume is short and uneventful.”
Why does this make me so happy? It really, really does.
His eyes catch mine. “So far,” he adds, his intense blue-gray eyes issuing what seems like a challenge.
And this makes me even happier.