Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
RACHEL
“ H ow are your parents doing?” Fire Chief Adkins asks as he shows Jae and I where to put our purses inside the station’s break room. “They’re on that world cruise, right?”
I force myself to smile, my stomach somersaulting its way up my torso. Why am I nervous? It’s just pancakes.
It’s not just pancakes, and you know it.
Okay, shut up. Not helping.
“Um, they’re great,” I say when I remember he’s waiting for a response. “Having a blast.” According to Mom, at least. I don’t think I’ve actually spoken to Dad. He usually lets her do the talking for both of them.
“Gotta say, I was a little surprised when I heard you wanted to volunteer for this,” he continues. “But it’s much appreciated.”
I give Jae a side-long glance, who conveniently takes that moment to look anywhere but at me.
“I enjoy giving back to the community,” I lie. I mean, it’s not really a lie. But the fire station would be my last choice to volunteer at.
And only because of…
I crash into someone as I round the corner out of the break room, knocking into a hard wall of muscle and warm, cedar scent.
“Rachel.”
There’s surprise and awe and confusion all jumbled together in Nick’s voice as he sets me away from him, and I hastily step back, ignoring the tingles that run down my arms as his fingertips drop from my shoulders.
“Found you another cook,” the fire chief says, gesturing to me. “Makes sense to put a professional baker on griddle duty, right?”
“Right,” I say weakly, avoiding Nick’s eye as he openly stares at me.
“You’re helping?” Nick asks.
I nod, confused by his apparent confusion. Wasn’t he expecting me?
“And Jae, was it?” the fire chief asks Jae.
She nods, smiling brightly.
“I’m going to put you in charge of bussing tables and restocking supplies. Think you can handle that?”
“Yes, sir.” She gives a salute, which the chief smiles fondly at. I’m sure if I did that, it’d come off as sarcastic.
“All right.” The chief claps his hands. “Henry’s taking tickets and Mark and Miguel are giving station tours. Jamal and Daniel are on duty today. Jae, let me show you where the supplies are. Nick, you can show Rachel where you’ll be making the food.”
Before Jae is guided away, she mouths to me, You okay?
I nod, even though I’m not, and watch as she’s led out of sight.
Which leaves me and Nick alone in the hallway.
“What are you doing here?” he asks bluntly.
I finally look at him, and his eyes widen.
“I mean, you’re welcome here,” he backtracks. “Obviously. I’m surprised, is all.”
Which is completely reasonable on his end. I’m half-surprised I’m here, too. That I didn’t call Jae this morning and feign being sick. She would’ve understood and lied to cover my ass.
But I hate breaking promises.
“Can you show me where I’ll make the pancakes?” I ask, instead of answering his question. Telling him the only I’m reason I’m here is because Jae signed me up seems… cruel.
“Yeah, this way.”
The fire station isn’t big enough to hold an event like this inside, so they have long folding tables with checkered tablecloths set up outside on the driveway and lawn. The bay is empty, and there’s a table with two electric griddles on it, plugged into an extension cord.
“How many people are coming?” I ask.
He scratches at his clean-shaven jaw. “I think Henry said thirty-five people bought tickets in advance. He usually sells some more at the door, too.”
And they have two griddles?
“Where are the ingredients?”
He lifts a bag from underneath the table. Inside are a few family-size boxes of baking mix and a gallon of water.
You’ve got to be kidding me.
I must be showing too much on my face because he winces. “Is it sacrilegious to use a mix?”
I can’t help the small smile that crosses my lips. “To a baker, kind of. But it’s fine. I’ll make it work.” I root around in the bag. “Is there cooking spray? Butter? Something to coat the griddles?”
He looks apologetic. “This is all Henry gave me.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose. “Okay. The chief said there’d be another cook?”
“Oh. Me.”
Yep. That sounds about right with how my luck is going today.
“What are the other volunteers doing?”
“I think you and your friend are it. We don’t usually get help for these kinds of things.”
Oh, so there wasn’t actually a signup. Jae took it upon herself to make it a thing.
I check my watch. Fifteen minutes until the breakfast starts. This is turning out like one of my stress dreams.
“Does the fire station have a kitchen?”
He nods, leading me back inside. It’s more like a kitchenette with how small it is, but I ask him to pull every mixing bowl, measuring cup, whisk, or spatula he can find while I raid the cabinets looking for anything else that might be useful.
I’m grateful to find a can of cooking spray, as well as a container of ground cinnamon among a random assortment of other spices. I wish there was vanilla extract, but there’s none to be found.
“All right, let’s go.”
I have him mix up the first batch according to the directions on the back of the box and tell him to sprinkle in some of the cinnamon.
“Do you put cinnamon in everything you bake?” he asks, putting it in and whisking away the lumps.
“What?” I ask, half-distracted as I heat the griddles and find two spatulas in the mess of baking equipment we gathered.
“It was in the cookies, too.”
“Oh, no. But it does give a little something special to a plain mix like this.”
“Well, I trust you. You’re the expert.”
I have a brief flashback to a rare Saturday morning I’d had off from the bakery, when Kyle had wanted to make breakfast for us—pancakes, to be exact.
I’d looked over the recipe he was using, pointing out that the author likely made a typo, putting a measurement in tablespoons instead of teaspoons.
He’d scoffed and told me just because I worked at my parents’ bakery didn’t mean I was some baking prodigy and it was awfully pretentious of me to assume I knew a recipe better than the creator.
I’d stepped back and let him follow it, unsurprised when the pancakes turned out awful, tasting soapy from too much baking soda. He’d then blamed me, saying I should have fixed it.
And here Nick is, taking my advice without a second thought. Admitting I’m an expert in my field. He’d never questioned me when making the cookies, either.
I shake my head. That was weird. Why am I comparing Nick to Kyle?
When the oil’s heated on the griddles, I pour the batter. Ideally, I’d let it rest longer to give the gluten time to relax, but the breakfast starts in only five minutes and we have nothing made.
I look around and two other guys are still setting up folding chairs at the tables and Jae is just now bringing out syrup to put at a station next to us.
Are all their fundraisers this rushed?
Handing Nick a spatula, I say, “You’re in charge of this griddle, okay?”
He nods hesitantly, then tries flipping the first pancake. It hasn’t been cooking long enough, though, so it slides off, straight onto the ground in front of us.
The tops of his cheekbones turn red as he stares down at it.
This morning is going to hell in a handbasket.
At the bakery, I strive for perfection. But here…
The chairs are haphazardly put at the tables, some pushed in, some not. The wind blows a tablecloth clear away. The first of the breakfasters are arriving, a boy screaming at the top of his lungs that he hates pancakes. And there’s batter on my right shoe.
“Nick,” I say gently. “Have you ever made pancakes?”
He takes a deep breath, not looking at me. “I may or may not have no clue what I’m doing.”
I take a deep breath, too.
This isn’t perfection. Not even close. And that’s going to have to be good enough.
“Okay, wait about two minutes until there are bubbles throughout the pancake. Then fit as much of the spatula under it as you can, flip it, and cook for another minute. Don’t press the pancake down with the spatula because it’ll make them more dense.
And don’t over mix the batter because it’ll make the pancakes tougher. ”
He nods, processing everything I’ve just told him.
The first family comes through the line and I turn on my customer service persona, smiling and telling them it’ll be another minute until their pancakes are ready.
The boy, maybe three or four years old, stares at me grumpily from his mother’s arms. “I don’t like pancakes,” he announces to me.
Lovely.
“What if we made you a special Mickey Mouse one?” I ask, praying that it works.
He purses his lips, considering it. “No.”
“You love Mickey Mouse,” his mom tells him, with an air of desperation. “Oh, look. It’s Mister Nick. He’s the one who brought the fire engine to story time the other week, remember?”
The child’s face transforms into one of delight as he turns in his mother’s arms and spots Nick.
“I bet Mister Nick loves Mickey Mouse pancakes, right?”
“They’re my favorite,” Nick responds, not a trace of a lie in his voice. “Rachel here makes the best Mickey Mouse pancakes in the world.”
The boy nods eagerly. “I’ll have one.”
Thank God.
I flip over the pancakes on my griddle and make room at the bottom to make a special one, carefully pouring the batter and adding two smaller circles at the top to make ears. “It’ll take a couple of minutes.”
“No problem. We’ll wait to the side here.”
I plate up the pancakes that are ready and mix a new batch of batter while the boy talks excitedly to Nick about fire engines. Nick listens to him patiently and answers his questions, even when they’re all variations of the same thing.
When it’s ready, I hand Nick the special pancake for him to give to the kid, sensing it’ll go over better that way. Nick offers him a high five and the boy puts his whole body into it, then waves as his mother leads him away to the tables.
“Thank Goodness for Mister Nick,” I murmur.
He rubs the back of his neck, looking down. “The kids like it when I bring the engine over to the library.”
The growing line moves forward and I hand a plate of pancakes to Mrs. Foster, who runs the flower shop.
“Do you do that often?”
“About once a month.”
That’s cute. “Do you read the stories?”
He shakes his head quickly. “I let Mrs. Klassen do that.”
“She still does the story times?” She was doing that when we were kids.
“Yep. She told me she’s never going to retire. They’ll have to carry her kicking and screaming from the library.”
I laugh, imagining that. The woman’s maybe a hundred pounds sopping wet, barely over five feet tall. But I know she’d give them hell anyway.
And speaking of, the woman herself joins the line to get pancakes, smiling affectionately at Nick. “Hi, dear. How are you?”
“I’m good,” he answers. “How about you?”
“Oh, I’m fine. The kids are asking when you’ll be back. Do you think you can spare some time for us?”
“Yeah, of course. I’ll send you my days off later today.”
Wow. He’s not even on the clock when he does that?
“And Rachel.” She smiles at me. “How’d you like that book I recommended? The one—”
“Oh, it was great,” I interrupt. I’d asked her about any good romances the last time I was at the library, and the one she’d given me was way spicier than I expected. Not that I’m complaining, but it was still surprising coming from her. “I read the rest of the series, too.”
There’s a twinkle in her eye. Maybe she read them, too. “I’m glad you enjoyed it. I have a whole list if you want more.”
I keep my smile to myself. I had no idea Mrs. Klassen was into that kind of stuff.
“What was the book?” Nick asks when she moves on.
“Oh, I don’t remember the name of it,” I lie. I don’t need him looking it up and judging me. Kyle always thought it was the height of comedy to make fun of my books.
We continue serving the growing line, but we run into one snag.
Nick can’t flip a pancake to save his life. I ended up flipping his griddle for him during the last batch when he was talking to the boy, and when he tries this time, one ends up on the floor and another folds in half before I stop him, not wanting to waste any more.
“Don’t use your whole hand to flip,” I tell him. “It’s more of a quick flick of the wrist. Like this.” I demonstrate.
He watches me, but takes too long when he tries, and his pancake ends up half on another uncooked one.
“Fuck,” he mumbles, frustrated.
“Here.” I hesitate for a second, holding my hand out until it hovers over his. “Can I show you?”
“Yeah.”
I put my hand over his, ignoring the flare of… something in the pit of my stomach, and guide him through the act. I let go afterward, resisting the urge to wipe my hand on my non-existent apron the way I do when I’m at the bakery. As if I could wipe the imprint of him off of me.
“Thanks,” he says as he does the next one like I showed him. “Guess no one’s ever taught me that before.”
A warm, fuzzy feeling steals over me for a moment before I shake it off and focus on the work. We fall into an easy rhythm as the line keeps moving, most people taking their pancakes and leaving, but a few linger to talk. Not to me, though.
To Nick.
Ingrid, who we both went to school with and now teaches at the high school, thanks him for talking to her students during the Great American Teach-in last semester.
Mrs. Montour heaps praise on him for rescuing her Yorkie stuck in a sewer drain recently.
Mr. Dunn, who I haven’t seen in years and has to be pushing ninety, thanks Nick for replacing a smoke detector in his home.
I’m quiet during each interaction, watching him out of the corner of my eye. He ducks his head, almost seeming embarrassed at their gratitude. A lot of other people would milk the flattery.
But not him. Interesting.
Pretty soon, the end is in sight, newcomers trickling in at a much slower rate now. This next batch might be our last.
I oil the griddles and look up as the little boy from earlier calls out, “Bye, Mister Nick.” He waves his hand frantically to get his attention.
Nick waves back. “Bye, Ryder.”
I smile, something about it endearing. “You were great with him.”
He shrugs. “Kids are like anyone else. They want someone to listen to them and be interested in what they’re saying.”
“Well, not every adult realizes that. No wonder you’re a hit at story time.”
I glance over at him, finding his cheeks red again. That’s the second time he’s blushed.
“Rachel.”
Everything in me freezes, except for my heart, which begins beating painfully in my chest.
It’s Kyle.