Chapter 10 #2
I’m here temporarily, I remind myself. I’m here to help Marley help Halston. She asked, I came. That’s the pattern. When Marley needs something, I come. When the situation is stable, I go.
I don’t have a job here. Not officially, anyway. I don’t have a home. I don’t have plans.
There’s no reason to stay in Baltimore beyond my sister and a bakery owner who has flour all over her and a talent for taking the weirdest ideas known to man and turning them into drinks.
Halston sets a plate of pastries in front of three Viper players and crosses her arms, her chin tilting up. “Feedback. Go.”
One player with a dark beard bites into the pillowy dough and makes a sound I know will piss off Oliver. “This is stupid good,” he moans.
“Stupid is not feedback,” Halston says stiffly.
“Crunchy outside with a soft inside? Spicy but not, like, knocking me on my ass hot.”
She nods. “Good.”
Another player dips his pastry into the sauce and points at it. “This needs to come in bottles.”
Halston gasps, her hands gripping the side of the table. “Yes!”
Oliver points to the player from across the room. “Can you guys stop giving her ideas?” Under his breath, he says, “For fucks sake.”
Marley smirks. “I think sauce bottles would be cute. Maybe make them tiny. One for each pastry.”
Oliver’s fist hits the bar. “You’re banned from strategy sessions.”
Grabbing a cocktail napkin, Halston writes something down with a glittery pink pen. Before I can stop myself, I step closer. “What are you writing?”
“Sinners Sauce,” she replies.
I wince, scratching the back of my head. “I’m not sure I like that name.”
Her beautiful eyes meet mine in a questioning glance. “What do you mean? Can you come up with something better?”
I think about it for a moment, biting my cheek.
“What about Sweet Heat?” a Viper asks.
Halston turns toward him, and it almost feels like the room goes quiet.
She points. “That.”
Oliver groans.
The name isn’t terrible. It’s clear, short, and slightly memorable, and it’s better than something directly related to Oliver’s bar that would be harder to sell elsewhere.
She looks to me.
“It works,” I tell her with a nod.
She smiles. One of those huge ones that lights up the entire room. “Really?”
I nod once.
“Thank you.”
I look away before I do something I’ll regret.
For the next hour, the bar becomes Halston’s experiment.
She’s turned Oliver’s bar into an extension of Bitter Bloom through force and personality alone.
And maybe a little pastry. She pairs Victory Twists with Oliver’s dry cider even though he claims pairing is “wine behavior.” She renames his basic whiskey sour The Ninth-Inning Sour until he threatens to remove citrus from the building, and she convinces two Vipers to taste-test three versions of a late-night cookie skillet and asks them to rate it by “would you eat this after a devastating loss,” “would you eat this after a normal loss,” and “would you eat shirtless in celebration.”
I don’t have the heart to tell her that they’re all good. I don’t think she cares.
She finally stops near the end of the night when Oliver threatens to sue her. Meanwhile, Marley excitedly shows Halston how much engagement the bar’s social media is getting.
I stand at the end of the bar and watch it all unfold silently, almost wishing I could get in on the action myself.
There’s value in observation. At least, that’s what I keep telling myself.
Halston is testing product-market fit in real time.
Sure, it’s informal. It’s also a bit louder than I’m used to.
There are so many names being flung about and absolutely zero cost analysis.
But she’s reading customers faster than anyone I’ve ever met.
She studies their faces and mannerisms as they take a bite.
She adjusts her language based on who she’s speaking to.
With players, she’s bold and teasing. Even a little flirty.
With the women at the front of the bar, she’s conspiratorial.
With the older man at the end of the bar who doesn’t like spicy food, she breaks off the least seasoned edge of a twist and tells him he is “safe from personality.”
He ends up buying two. She’s not even selling them.
I’ve always been told to be stoic. Not to show emotion. To treat baking as an art and take it seriously. But I don’t think I ever considered that serious could be fun.
The people around Halston love her because of her energy. Because she’s what some people apparently consider “too much.”
Too much.
I’ve heard her use that phrase about herself a few times now. Once indirectly, and once when she was tired and thought no one was listening.
But watching her tonight makes me realize that someone made her believe that her abundance was a flaw. Someone looked at this—her filling a bar with warmth, sugar, noise, care, and love—and called it inconvenient.
The man is an idiot.
My hand tightens around my coffee cup.
Marley appears next to me. “She’s good, right?”
I look at my sister. Her phone is lowered, and her eyes are soft as she watches her friend hop from table to table.
“Yes,” I say simply.
Marley watches Halston hand a plate of cookies to a Vipers player and threaten him with permanent banishment if his feedback is only “awesome.”
“She thinks too much.”
I keep silent.
Marley’s mouth twists. “Grant’s to blame for that. Over time...” She pauses and sighs. “He let it out little by little. Just little cuts—comments about her branding. Her clothes. Her laugh. Everything. By the end, she was apologizing before she was even wrong.”
I feel the anger move through me.
“What did you know about her?” Marley asks. Her lips thin before she adds, “You know, before.”
“Before?”
“Before you slept with her.” Her voice is calm, but I can tell she’s still unhappy with me.
“Nothing.”
Her jaw tightens, and I sigh.
“I knew she was upset and that she had been hurt badly. I knew that the bartender had been worried about her, and I knew that she wanted what happened to happen.”
I look back at Halston as Marley takes it in.
“Was she okay?” she asks softly after a while.
I don’t answer.
I wanted to give her what she wanted. There was something about her that just made me want to hand my whole life over. If she asked me for my life force, I’d have given it to her. My heart in her basket of fries. I didn’t even know her name.
But I also knew that her laugh was loud because it was trying to carry the grief out of her body.
I knew she joked when something hurt too much to name.
I knew she wanted to feel wanted but not to be handled like some broken thing.
I knew she watched my mouth when she thought I wouldn’t notice and lifted her chin when she felt vulnerable.
I knew enough about her that I would have given her everything she wanted for as long as she wanted it.
“No,” I say quietly.
“But it was her choice?”
I nod.
Marley exhales. “I’m mad,” she says simply, crossing her arms tightly over her chest.
“I know.”