6. Noah
CHAPTER SIX
NOAH
Things to Remember
Ican’t stop thinking about her.
It’s impossible to stop thinking about how she’s doing. I’m sure G is happily living her life now that she’s free, and she’ll never give me another thought. But I can’t get her out of my mind.
It’s infuriating if anything. I am usually really good about not letting my job follow me home after a shift.
Not even that time where the man had a heart attack in the elevator and I, being the person on the other end of the button’s call, had to call 911 when I realized he’d collapsed and was unresponsive.
I never found out if that man was okay or alive after all was said and done, and I still didn’t let it consume my every thought like this.
So, what was different about this? My entire weekend off is spent wishing I was at work, able to check in on the elevator of the building she was in, the account and address committed to memory even if I tried to forget it.
This is when I know it’s gotten out of hand, who the hell would ever want to go into work on their days off in hopes of seeing someone who may not even live in the building she got stuck in?
I end up going to my sister's place. Trying to outrun my nagging brain, I decided the best distraction would be to see my family, hang out with my brother-in-law, kick back, and not think about it.
“Noah?” my sister Sienna says as she opens the door, surprised to see me.
I step into her house like I live there, and I take her into a hug so fierce she laughs and stumbles.
I hold her still, hand protective over the baby bump hitting my ribs in the hug.
She pulls away with a curious face, still confused as to my unannounced arrival.
I didn’t exactly tell them I was going to make the journey across town to their west-end home, but now that I am here, she can’t turn me away.
She doesn’t ask the reason for my showing up, welcomes me in and ushers me to the kitchen where… oh my god.
“What’s this?” I ask, gesturing to the cookie bomb in question that’s exploded all over her kitchen.
Plate after plate of cookies lines each of the white marble kitchen counters and fills the solid oak table she inherited as a housewarming gift when she and her husband Ricardo moved out.
“This is called pregnancy cravings and the inability to know when to stop. Every time I made a new batch, I’d get a new craving for a different type.”
“I see that. What are these monstrosities?” I reach for a puck-sized cookie, the dough a bright red with white chips inside and something drizzled over the top. She blushes while taking the cookie out of my hand, then takes a bite.
“It’s my favourite of the batches. Red velvet, cream cheese icing, white chocolate chips.”
“Cookies are not meant to be that vibrant, Sienna,” I tease her and take another cookie from the same plate, inspecting it once more before taking a small bite.
Damn. I hate to admit it, but these cookies are ridiculously good.
My sister was studying to be a professional pastry chef when she met Ricardo.
My parents were so proud of her knowing their daughter was at one of the top schools in the world, learning the best techniques from the best teachers.
You couldn’t help but notice the slight disappointment in their eyes when she decided her career was going to go on the back burner for a family.
Sure, they were excited to be grandparents for the first time, just as I am excited to be the cool uncle, no– the best uncle (and only uncle) but it hurt them to know that Sienna was not continuing to pursue the job she had dreamed of since she was five.
‘I got a new dream’, I remember her saying. She had told them about the baby first to soften the blow that followed, but ‘Hey, I’m no longer attending the school you soaked all your money into for me to be a pastry chef but here’s a grand baby’ would not have been my first approach.
So yes, in the beginning it was tense. But now that my parents have learned how to hide their disappointment by buying baby items, things are mostly okay again.
They still talk to Sienna every day and, since Sienna hasn’t been working, our mother never fails to stop in for unexpected visits.
Although, unlike my visits—where we have fun, and we shoot the shit—my mother’s visits are no doubt stressful.
She’s never been that kind of mom that lets go when her babies move out of her house. She hovers, and she silently judges.
“Have you given any more thought to my idea?” I ask Sienna as she rummages through her fridge, pulling out various kinds of milk.
She holds them up for me to decide between almond milk or regular, I point to the vanilla almond box in her left hand.
She crinkles her nose at the very thought of drinking it, and yet she pours a glass for me and a regular glass for herself.
She dips her cookie in her glass and takes a large bite, humming a happy tune as she eats it.
“What exactly was the idea again?” she asks with a mouthful of cookie. That would be a no, then.
“A pop-up bakery. There’s that old house downtown that I think lets you lease for days at a time. We could do a couple pop-ups, I’d handle everything business for you and all you’d have to do is… well, this.” I gesture to the room of cookies.
“I don’t know, Noah.” She sighs, tucking her hair behind her ear contemplatively.
“I mean, think about it, that’s all I’m saying.
If we draw enough attention, maybe you could bake-to-order while at home, and if you ever feel like coming back to work, we can go in on a permanent bakery together.
I’ll do the business side, and you work on the production side.
You can even give me your recipe for chocolate croissants, and I promise I will try not to burn them. ”
“I will not be sharing that recipe with anyone. It’s a trade secret.” She mockingly glares at me, but then her face relaxes and she pushes her hair away again.
That right there is her tell; she has a terrible poker face.
She twirls the blond wave around her finger, her lips pursed, and she leans more on the left than her right leg, twisting the right foot in a circular pattern.
“Rico has been telling me that I am going crazy in the house…” Her voice is distant, like she’s thinking out loud as if that will somehow help her decide.
“You don’t have to give me an answer right away. But if you were thinking about your first order, I will pay you double for a batch of croissants to take home.”
“I made you two last week.” She frowns.
I laugh, patting my mostly flat stomach. She rolls her eyes when I tell her, “How do you think I keep my figure up?”
“Ugh. I hate that you’re so…” She gestures up and down at me, as if to explain my body to me.
She huffs, eats another cookie—a mint chocolate chip one this time—and I follow suit.
“And it's like, without even trying too. It’s infuriating. But it’s okay, one day your forty-year-old self is going to hate you for it,” she sing-songs.
She turns away, headed to her baking cabinet in the corner of her illustrious kitchen.
It’s her happy place. All marble counters, sunny, robin’s egg blue walls with white accents, and black appliances to tie it all together.
No normal person has two oven ranges, but Sienna does, and she puts them to good use.
From where I sit, I see her pulling sugar, butter, flour, among other things.
The makings of the croissants as requested, as if we aren’t surrounded by an impossible amount of sweet treats already.
She turns on the music, a soft lull of a piano cover of a pop song I can’t place.
I watch in fascination as she precisely measures and pours, then stirs and kneads; makes magic at her fingertips.
I won’t give up on convincing Sienna that the pop-up bakery is a good idea.
If I can show her that she will be supported, that people will love what she creates even if she didn’t graduate from a fancy pastry school, maybe then Sienna would consider the full business idea with me seriously.
If she did, I would be getting away from a job that doesn't do anything but pays the bills and I could help my sister live both of her dreams, being a mom and showing her love for people through her sweet treats.
“So!” She breaks my thoughts and I blink away the daze, watching her work deftly on the dough.
“So?”
“What brought you here unexpectedly? Not that the visit isn’t welcomed, of course, but usually you at least text me to tell me you’re coming.”
Just like that, the haze of distraction that I worked very hard to build up while here dissipates. My mind instantly goes back to work, to that elevator, to that conversation and that girl.
“Oh, it’s nothing.”
I pick at the hangnail on my thumb anxiously, and maybe that’s my tell, because Sienna stops folding and kneading the dough as she waits for me to spit it out.
Eyebrows raised, eyes narrowed, head tilted, she’s like a suspicious mom accusing her child of something she already knows they’ve done, and I can’t help but smile at the thought of Sienna being just that someday.
I sigh. “There was… a thing, at work. It’s been on my mind lately. ”
She nods at this, knowing I can’t divulge the information regarding the people I talk to and the places I answer for. She goes back to her baking, and I go back to the hangnail. We sit in comfortable silence until she shatters it. “So who is she?”
“What? I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I deflect. How the hell did she know?
She scoffs. “Oh please, Noah. I’ve seen you as a lovesick high school boy, and chasing your crush around the playground at recess. You’re not fooling me. But, if you’re not ready to talk about it, then make yourself useful and pass me the chilled butter from the fridge.”
I get the damn butter because damn it, I am useful. I distract myself by watching my sister fold pastry dough with ease, and I definitely do not think about the girl in the elevator. Absolutely not.