8. Adrian
Adrian
Most Mondays were necessary evils, days no one looked forward to but everyone dealt with.
The Monday after the Saturday in which a certain vet and I had exchanged texts had a very different feel to it, like the morning after a really good meal when you’re not hungry yet but were already looking forward to the next one.
Ignoring the device, I went back to the dough and told myself to focus.
The dough, to its credit, did not comment.
By five-thirty, I had shaped two trays of pan sobao, one batch of conchas, and started on the empanada dough.
I had only picked up my phone four times.
Dona Carmen arrived at six.
She looked at me and looked at the phone and looked back at me.
“Good morning,” I said.
“Buenos días, mi pequeno,” she said as she tied her apron.
Dona Carmen and I had an understanding about early mornings—they belonged to our work, not conversation. Anything that needed saying could wait until the first trays were out of the oven and the coffee had done what coffee was supposed to do.
Still, I couldn’t help the grin at her calling me her “baby boy” despite her being my abuela’s age and us being about as related as Mofongo was to a duck. Still, her affection was as welcome as the smell of the baking bread.
I picked up my phone and typed a new message to Puck’s Dad.
Me: I’ve been thinking about what you said about the bread vs. shoe theft debate, and I think you’re wrong about the logical endpoint argument because—
I backspaced until the message was blank.
That was too long, too much like I’d been obsessing over it, which I had, but that was different from leading with it on a Monday morning.
My thumbs moved again.
Me: Mofongo destroyed one of my throw pillows last night. Sending you the bill.
Then I deleted that, too.
It was fine as far as texts go, but it felt like I was using the dog as a buffer, which Benji had specifically told me not to do. Benji was insufferable but rarely wrong. He was, after all, happily snuggled with his own veterinary surgeon, proof modern miracles exist.
I typed a new message.
Me: The pan sobao turned out well this morning.
I stared at that for a full ten seconds, then deleted it because I was a grown-ass man, and I was not going to text a veterinarian about bread at six-fifteen on a Monday morning.
Who does that?
I tossed the phone on the counter. The clatter was loud enough to grab Dona Carmen’s attention. She looked up, brows bunching, but said nothing.
“I’m not doing anything,” I said far more defensively than her non-reply warranted.
“I know.”
“I’m just thinking.”
“Mm-hm.”
“The dough is ready to go in.”
“I can see that,” she said.
I put the trays in the oven, set the timer, washed my hands, and picked up my phone one more time.
Me: Hey.
I stared at it.
It was the most honest thing I’d tried to send all morning, which was either a good sign or a sign that I needed more sleep. Possibly both.
I hit SEND before I could delete it, then put the phone face down on the shelf and went back to the empanada dough. I told myself I was not going to check it for at least twenty minutes.
I checked it in four.
Nothing yet.
Which was fine.
It was perfectly fine.
Normal even.
People took time returning messages and texts and letters and carrier pigeon notes.
Those took even longer, being all medieval and shit.
Did they still use pigeons for messages?
I wondered. It felt like they did because at the six-minute mark, there was still no reply, so a pigeon must’ve been involved. It was just science.
Then my rational brain decided to play.
It was six-twenty in the morning.
Normal people were asleep.
Veterinarians were probably asleep.
Only bakers, military dudes and dudettes, and the extremely anxious were awake at this hour. I was only one of those things.
Probably.
I was elbow-deep in empanada dough when my phone finally dinged.
I got flour on the screen retrieving it, which I wiped on my apron before reading, smearing the flour across the glass instead of removing it.
Puck’s Dad: Hey yourself. You’re up early.
I grinned at my phone like an idiot.
Me: I’m always up early. Baker, remember?
Puck’s Dad: Right. I knew that. How’s the bread. Does talking to me make your loaf rise?
I nearly dropped the phone.
Had he just made a . . . no . . . surely not.
He was talking about bread.
Not my . . . I couldn’t stop blushing. I could feel it. Heat crawled up my neck into my cheeks like tiny fingers with long nails and itty-bitty, pointy teeth.
Fingers don’t have teeth.
That was weird.
Never mind.
I looked at the timer on the oven.
Me: Twelve minutes from finding out. How’s your felonious ferret?
Puck’s Dad: Felonious ferret? That’s pretty good. He’s currently asleep in my left shoe. I discovered this when I tried to put it on.
Me: Is he okay?
Puck’s Dad: He’s fine. The shoe is morally compromised, though. I’m wearing my backup shoes.
Me: You have backup shoes in case your ferret makes your other shoes feel uncomfortable?
Puck’s Dad: I have a ferret. You develop contingency plans.
I laughed out loud, right there in the kitchen.
Dona Carmen looked up, one dramatic brow arched almost to her hairline, which was challenging because her hairline had receded beyond the normal bounds of a human forehead.
“It’s nothing,” I said, waving my hand in the air before realizing I was actually waving my phone. “Just a funny TikTok.”
She went from brow arch to squint. Then she looked at my face. Then she went back to her work with a smirk on her lips and the serene confidence of a woman who already knew what she needed to know.
The timer went off.
I checked the pan sobao. It was perfect, so of course I sent a photo to Brendan—just the tray fresh from the oven, golden and exactly right—with no caption.
He responded in forty seconds.
Puck’s Dad: That looks really good. It’s like I can smell it through the screen.
Me: It is incredibly good. You should try it sometime.
There was a pause, longer than his prior pauses.
Puck’s Dad: Yeah, I should.
I put the phone down and stood there for a second with the warm kitchen around me and the smell of the bread and the feeling of a conversation that had just said a whole lot without saying much of anything.
I swear, I did not do a happy dance in which flour flew off my apron in a cloud like Pig-Pen.
Dona Carmen cleared her throat.
“The empanada dough,” she said, pointing at the counter with her re-arched brow that I suddenly realized was more of a secret weapon than an expression.
“Right,” I said. “Yes. On it.”
I went back to the empanada dough but didn’t stop smiling.
Tuesday was busy enough that I only checked my phone twice before noon, which felt like personal growth.
A private dance booking came through for a Thursday corporate event that I agreed to and immediately regretted, because corporate events had an energy that required a specific kind of professional patience, and my patience was finite.
I texted Brendan about it at 1 p.m. while eating lunch on the panadería steps, Mofongo sitting on my foot in his new favorite position. Dona Carmen didn’t love that I brought a puppy into the shop but couldn’t resist the urge to cuddle him every chance she got.
Me: I just agreed to dance at a corporate event Thursday. I think I made a mistake.
Puck’s Dad: What kind of corporate event?
Me: The kind where men in khakis cheer for quarterly targets. It’s contemporary dance, not the bar kind, and there will be three others dancing the routine, too. still . . .
Puck’s Dad: That does sound challenging.
Me: I danced for fifteen drunk bachelorettes and a man named Dennis. I can handle khakis.
Puck’s Dad: Dennis seems to come up a lot.
Me: Dennis had a transformative evening. He tipped forty dollars.
Puck’s Dad: Sounds like a man who needed exactly what he got.
I looked at that for a second, at the simple accuracy of it.
Me: That’s exactly what it was.
Mofongo, impatient with my phone focus, put both front paws on my knee and stared at me until I put it away and gave him the attention he required, which was all of it, always and immediately.
“Demanding little shit, aren’t you?”
He licked my knee.
“That’s not a refutation.”
He sneezed.
On Wednesday, my mother called. She called at noon, not 4 a.m., which was unusual. I was at the market two blocks from the panadería, and I answered on the second ring the way I always did.
“Mijo.”
“Mamá. Everything okay?”
“Everything is fine. I just felt like calling.” Her voice had the warm quality it always had. “How are you?”
“Good. Busy. I got a puppy.”
“A puppy?” A brief pause. “What kind?”
“Beagle mix. His name is Mofongo.”
Her laugh was a sudden burst, a heated blanket wrapping around my whole being.
“Mofongo,” she said. “Your abuela must love that.”
“She cried,” I said. “The good kind.”
“That sounds like her.” A pause. “Send me a photo.”
“I will.”
We talked for twenty minutes about her neighborhood, the weather, and a cousin’s wedding coming up in the spring.
The conversation had the comfortable shape of all our conversations.
It was warm on the surface, careful underneath, and, sadly, never quite arriving at the thing that lived below the surface.
When we hung up, I stood in the market aisle for a moment with my hand still on my phone.
The thing below the surface was always there.
It had been there since I was eight years old.
The surface had been built carefully over it, brick by brick, through good years and panadería mornings and Abuela’s kitchen and dancing. All of it was real, all of it was good, all of it was true.
And all of it was built on top of something that had never quite been resolved.
I noticed, standing in that market aisle, that I suddenly wanted to tell Brendan about the call.
Not about the thing below the surface—he wasn’t ready for all that, and honestly, I wasn’t ready for it either.
Besides, we’d spoken twice in person and a handful of times by text, and it was not the right moment for something with that weight.
Still, I wanted to tell him about the call, about my mother’s laugh, about the fact that she’d asked for a photo of Mofongo, and that I was going to send it. I wanted to tell him that the call felt like something, even if I couldn’t fully say what.
I didn’t text him.
But I knew I wanted to.
I sent my mother a photo of Mofongo instead, the one where his ears were doing their most dramatic work.
She sent back three heart emojis, which was the most digital communication I’d ever received from her.
Frankly, I was shocked she knew where to find emojis, which somehow made them even more special.
I stood in the market aisle and looked at three small hearts from a woman three islands away and felt something complicated and familiar move through my chest. Then I bought cilantro, went home, made dinner, and let Mofongo eat a piece of chicken he wasn’t supposed to have while I told him about my day.
“She has my laugh, my mother.”
He put his head on my foot.
“Yeah, I know.”