3. Kylie
KYLIE
I stood outside The Starred Skillet holding my tote bag full of ingredients and tools like it was going to save me from fainting on the sidewalk. It was more likely to slow me down if I decided to run, but that wasn’t going to happen.
I was doing this. I was baking a cake for a client. A client who’d paid me money.
Things were moving fast, but at least they were moving. I was in an actual, real, grown-up contract with my actual, real, grown-up signature on it. And now that I was standing outside the commercial kitchen I paid actual, real money to use, I had to be a grown-up and do the damn thing.
I pushed the door open before I could talk myself into turning around and walked inside.
"There she is." Magda came around the front counter with a set of keys jingling in her hand. Her whole face was warm and inviting, settling some of the churning in my tummy. "You ready to dive into your kitchen?"
"So ready." My voice came out higher than I’d meant it to, but I told myself it was excitement and not terror. But that was a teeny bit of a lie. "I've been ready since like five this morning."
"Five, huh." She led me through a hallway to a huge room with multiple kitchen stations. I stopped for a second and just took it all in. It was impressive. There was more stainless steel than I’d ever seen and every surface was sparkling clean.
"Ya know, you got lucky with this last opening.
Somebody asked to reserve that exact station right after you signed. "
"Wait, really?" I looked at the kitchen manager and smiled. “I guess this was meant to be.”
"I guess it was." She stopped in front of a station near the back and set the keys down on the counter. "And here it is… Enjoy."
I looked at the space in front of me and my breath caught in my lungs.
My station wasn't huge, but it didn't need to be. There was so much more counter space than my kitchen at home and a double oven that Magda promised held its temperature within a single degree. I couldn’t even imagine what that was like. I took my time inspecting the rack of various pots and pans and the proofing drawer built into the wall like something straight out of a cooking show. My oven at home was never right, so I’d probably have to make some adjustments to my timing while I learned to use the equipment.
"This is all mine?" I put my hand flat on the counter like I needed to check it was real. “No one else will use it while I’m here?”
"It’s all yours, dear. As long as the rent clears, no one will bother you." Magda chuckled and then put her hand on my shoulder on her way past me. "Holler if you need anything. I stay up front most of the day."
The reminder of the rent brought back those butterflies.
For a second, I had to do the math in my head that I'd been doing for three days straight. I’d received two more orders since Isla's, both off the back of Poppy's post. Between the three of them, I'd already made more money than I usually cleared in a month making coffee at The Bean Box. An entire month. From a few cakes.
My brain was still struggling to accept that I was a business owner, but it seemed to be happening with or without my brain on board.
At first, I thought the Venmo notifications that had been piling up on my phone were a mistake. A scammer trying to get access to my bank account or something like that. But then the money stayed, and it was…real.
Real money for my creations.
I almost texted Isla back to tell her the price was too high and I couldn't possibly take that much money for something I loved doing. But then more people were willing to pay double what Isla paid, so maybe it wasn’t too much.
I was glad I hadn't sent that text. Poppy would've killed me for underselling myself.
It didn't feel real, but the contract was signed and the kitchen was just sitting there, waiting for me to actually use it.
So I did.
I unpacked my bag of ingredients and lined up all my tools before I turned on my favorite playlist on my phone.
I didn’t put in earbuds in case someone needed me or an alarm was going off, but I kept the volume low.
I wanted it just loud enough for me to hear without interrupting any other tenants in the area.
I started on a baby shower cake because it was due in just a few days and I wanted to practice with the oven.
It needed to be mint green and cream and very tall, which was always tricky for me.
The client wanted a French buttercream, and that meant it would take a few tries to get the color just right, so I started there, whipping the egg yolks and getting sugar and water into a saucepan.
Not worrying about burners failing or whether I had enough available to do everything at once was such a luxury after years of being under-equipped.
I felt like a kid on Christmas morning.
The counter alone made me giddy. I had room to lay out my dry ingredients without anything touching, and I could actually walk around my workspace without doing the little sideways shuffle I did at home between the counter and the fridge.
I was basically grinning at my kitchen like a total weirdo, and I didn't even care.
Once I had the batter in the oven, I started to feel more confident in the space.
My frosting was the perfect texture, and I had a few different shades of green drying to see which I liked best. I had some time to kill before I had to clean up, and I had enough ingredients left to make a pound cake, so I started working on that.
I’d either give it to one of the girls or bring it to work the next day to share with the staff.
Our cakes were delicious, but I was adding fresh vanilla bean, and that was a little different from what we sold at The Bean Box.
The hours passed quickly, but I was completely in the zone. And more productive than I’d ever been at home. Having the dedicated time to just bake allowed me to focus without getting distracted by cartoons or my phone or anything else.
I was so locked in on what I was doing that I didn’t even notice anyone else around me. There was a vague sense of others coming and going, but I didn’t even look up until I heard a frustrated swear word come out of the kitchen across from me, and I stopped mid rosette.
There was a man who also looked right at me as if checking to see if I’d heard.
I glanced away not to intrude but immediately did a double take. I knew him. It took my mind a second to catalogue the dark hair and firm jaw and smile that I was used to seeing every day at work.
It was Jordan. The coffee guy I’d been low-key obsessing over for weeks. The same one who came in every time I was working and had stayed for hours just yesterday. He was in the station across from me, looking at me with a guilty smile.
What was he doing in my kitchen? Well, not my kitchen, obviously. But he was one of the renters I hadn't noticed before. And he was clearly an impressive cook if the number of pots and ingredients at his station was any indicator.
I stood there frozen with a spatula in my hand and jaw gaping open like an idiot.
My heart was pounding in my chest, and it took a second for me to catch my breath. It didn’t make sense, but it was the same thing that happened every time he walked into The Bean Box and smiled at me like I was worth smiling at.
All I did was remember his order, but he seemed happy about it every time. Of course, I tried not to read anything into it. He was a nice person who was polite to me because I was polite to him. It was just a common courtesy.
Besides, he was way out of my league. Not only was he too hot for me, but he was also too sweet to be a Daddy. Too shy to be dominant. But that didn’t stop me from wondering what it would be like if he were to call me his baby girl and hold me in his arms.
But there was no register or power dynamic between us now.
I wasn’t a barista, and he wasn’t a customer. We were equals. Just two people renting commercial kitchen space to work on our… what was he making, anyway? I couldn’t tell from where I was standing, but now that I was paying attention, it smelled delicious on his side of the kitchen.
I glanced down at my station with the batter bowls I was about to wash and considered what the right next move would be. I could either pretend I didn’t recognize him or go say hi.
I looked up and saw that he’d also turned away and was picking up the pots he’d dropped.
I bit back a smile and started washing, except every few seconds, I had to glance in his direction. And every time I did, I saw that he was looking in my direction.
He totally recognized me, and there was no way I could pretend he didn’t.
But that still didn’t answer my question about what I needed to do next.