Chapter 14
fourteen
. . .
A Mistake You Can Schedule Your Way Out Of
WARREN
She’s still at the bakery at 11:47 p.m.
The bakery has been closed for five hours. The chairs are stacked on top of the tables, the pastry case is empty, and the lights out front have been dimmed to a soft glow.
The sidewalks are dark except for the spill of streetlight outside Saints & Sinners. Every few minutes, I hear Oliver moving around on the other side of the wall, shutting down the bar with the same quiet irritation he applies to everything else.
The problem is Halston.
She’s in the kitchen alone, wearing an oversized sweatshirt that keeps sliding off one shoulder, with flour on her cheek, her hair twisted into a knot that looks like it’s losing an argument with gravity, and the expression of a woman trying to outrun pain by baking through it.
That’s not how that works.
I stand at the doorway between Oliver’s bar and the prep kitchen, hiding the production clipboard I told myself I was only returning.
I was lying.
The clipboard isn’t why I’m here. Sure, I wanted to go over production and what we could have adjusted if a day like today happened again.
But Halston is the reason I’m here.
She doesn’t notice me at first. Music plays low from the speaker near the sink. Something with electric guitars and a man screaming about whether someone’s husband knows. Halston hums under her breath while she stirs a bowl of glaze, her movements quick and a little uneven.
There are so many things on the table. Too many things.
Three trays of scones. Two bowls of cookie dough. Tart shells. A lemon curd. A saucepan of syrup cooling from the stove. Notes tucked into the shelf.
She becomes less organized the more scared she is.
When she’s happy, her chaos has orbit. It’s instinct. It moves around people and around joy. When she’s afraid and hurting, the orbit breaks. Ideas scatter everywhere, and she tries enough things that failure cannot find a single target.
“You should be upstairs,” I say.
She jumps, the spatula clattering against the side of the bowl, one hand flying to her chest. “Warren!” She points the spatula at me, a line of glaze sliding down the handle toward her wrist. “You can’t just stand silently in doorways at midnight.”
“I spoke.”
“After lurking.”
“This isn’t lurking.”
“You were doing that emotionally repressed gargoyle thing you do.”
I shake my head. “I don’t even know what that means.”
“Oliver does it too, but with a little more judgment and less thigh.”
I stop, and her eyes widen.
The music keeps playing, and the kitchen feels like it’s shrinking.
She turns back to the table. “Forget I said that.”
I don’t think I can. “No.”
“Warren.”
She mutters something under her breath that sounds an awful lot like German spreadsheet vampire.
I step in and place the clipboard on the table, and her gaze drops to it.
“No.”
“You haven’t even looked at it. It’s just a revised prep structure.”
“That sounds horrible.”
“It accounts for current demand, Agatha’s reduced reliability, your flares, the spike for the Legacy Latte, and the Vipers’ late-night test menu.”
She stares at me. “Do you hear yourself when you talk?”
“Always.”
“Do you think it’s normal?”
“No.”
She stops for half a second, and then shakes her head. “I don’t need a revised schedule tonight.”
“You’re making days’ worth of product at midnight.”
“I’m innovating.”
“You’re running.”
The spatula stills, and her shoulders stiffen. She sets it down slowly. “I’m working.”
“You’re trying to outwork the review and your body, Hal.”
She turns. The warmth is gone, but her cheeks are red. Angry.
“Don’t say ‘the review’ like it was some tiny little thing.”
“It isn’t tiny.”
“No,” she says, her voice hitting the walls sharp enough to suck the air from it.
“It’s my name attached to a man’s disappointment.
The same man whose son cheated on me for who knows how long.
The son who I walked in on fucking his secretary after working all night to make him something he’d find worthy, Warren.
It’s customers coming in and looking at my chalkboard-like whimsy may...
” She pauses, throwing her hands up. “I don’t know.
Lower their property value. It’s vendors emailing me with concerning language and people asking for an old menu because it’s more digestible. ”
Her voice shakes at the end, her chin tilting.
“You can’t fix that by making six new items before morning,” I say.
“I’m not trying to fix it.”
“You are.”
“I’m trying to remind people why they like Bitter Bloom before that man convinces them not to.”
“You don’t need all these things to do that.”
“What do I need, Warren?” She steps toward me, her hands spread, glaze on one thumb, flour dusting her black leggings. “A list? A laminated flow chart? Should I organize my soul by prep time and yield?”
“That’s not what I said.”
“No, but it’s what you mean.” She gestures to the clipboard. “You keep acting like if you can make my bakery neat enough, none of the messy parts will matter.”
“That isn’t true.”
“You hate the messy parts.”
“I hate inefficiency.”
“And I’m inefficient.”
She freezes the second she says the words, as if she’s handed me something lethal. The words hang between us.
I go still.
“No,” I say.
She laughs once, brittle and humorless. “Come on.”
I shake my head. “No.”
“You make lists about production, Warren.”
“Your chaos is not the same thing as the things that can be changed, Halston. Production can be optimized for the benefit of everyone, including you. You’re allowed to be you.”
Her eyes search my face as her body relaxes. “I feel like you don’t miss anything.”
“That’s not true.”
“What do you miss?”
There are so many ways to answer.
I missed out on Marley growing up because I was too busy keeping the bills paid and the house quiet.
I miss the days when I didn’t have an impossible load of responsibilities on my shoulders, and the days when leaving was a habit instead of a solution.
I really miss when control felt like safety, before Halston stood in front of me and made every controlled thing in me feel fragile.
I miss the way she moaned before she even knew my name.
I don’t say any of that.
Her mouth twists, and something in her expression shutters. “That’s what I thought,” she says as she turns back to the glaze.
I look at the prep table. The bowls, the trays, the notes. The frantic evidence of her fear. Anger moves through me, but not at her.
At Barrett Whitaker.
At Grant Whitaker.
At every polished person who touched her brightness, took what served them, then called the rest too much when they were done.
My voice comes out too blunt. “You’re making the review control you.”
Her eyes flash. “No, I’m not.”
“You’re going to exhaust yourself.”
“And I can do that if I want to.”
“No.”
The kitchen goes quiet.
“No?”
I hold her gaze because I know looking away now will make things worse.
“I didn’t mean—”
“It’s what you said.”
I exhale softly. “Halston.”
“No, don’t Halston me in your scary bread voice.”
“My what?”
“Your voice when you think you’re right.”
“I am right.”
Her laugh is furious.
“You’re in pain, Halston.”
“I’m always in pain, Warren!”
The words stop me.
“It’s just a matter of how fucking much.”
Her hands curl at her sides, the sweatshirt slipping farther off her shoulder and exposing the thin strap and delicate skin beneath. I look at her face, and only her face.
“I’m always negotiating with something,” she argues.
“Pain. Money. Customers. Vendors. My body. My ex. His family. My own stupid brain telling me that maybe I was only successful because Barrett Whitaker decided to pat me on the head in print. So when I’m standing in my kitchen at midnight making glaze, maybe it isn’t efficient, but it’s mine. ”
Mine.
I grew up with very little that belonged to me.
Space didn’t. Quiet didn’t. Money certainly didn’t.
My time stopped belonging to me once Marley needed more than our father could give.
My choices didn’t, not really. Not if I wanted my sister safe.
Not if I wanted food in our house. Not if I wanted the lights to stay on.
I lower my voice. “I know it’s yours.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“Because sometimes it feels like you’re looking for the parts you can fix until there’s nothing left that looks like me.”
I close my eyes, letting myself feel it.
I hate myself for causing her to think that.
“I don’t want less of you in here,” I say.
She looks away.
“I mean it.”
“You say my schedule is a crime. And my storage. And my specials create demand spikes that I can’t account for.”
“But none of that means less of you.”
I step closer, and the air shifts again. The fight changes shape. The anger stays, but heat rises, familiar and unwelcome. Her cheeks are pink, her eyes bright and angry, and her mouth trembles.
Her sweatshirt is still off her shoulder.
Her voice drops. “Do you want less of me?”
My hand flexes at my side.
The correct answer is simple. No.
The full answer is dangerous. No, because I want all of you.
No. I want you loud and furious and flour-dusted and laughing in a bar full of athletes I don’t care about.
I want your ridiculous drinks and your crooked labels and your lipstick-scribbled production notes.
I want to know what it looks like when you believe praise for the first time.
I want you in every system I build until leaving Maryland feels like walking out of my own skin.
“No” is all I say.
She steps closer.
I don’t remember closing the rest of the distance, but I must have. The prep table is behind her, the clipboard to my left. The music has changed, and Halston looks up at me.
I don’t move.
I can’t be the one to move.
“Warren,” she says.
I break.
I put my hand to the side of her face and kiss her.
For a second, she goes still. So still that fear cuts through me and I stop.
But she grabs the front of my shirt and pulls me closer.
It’s not a gentle kiss.
It should be. If I were better, it would be.