Chapter 28
Chapter Twenty-Eight
M y dinner with Joel left me untethered much like everything the Wallace brothers did. At the end of the night, he had driven me home, walked me to the door, then kissed the top of my hand before asking if he could take me out again. I couldn’t tell if it was charming or obnoxious. Either way, I had spent the night tossing and turning, thinking about the three men in my life. How the hell had my social situation gotten so crowded so quickly?
My stomach twisted in knots as my feet walked their familiar path toward the bakery. I didn’t want to deal with Jared. I hadn’t even wanted to deal with PotatoBake888 when I saw he had messaged me that morning. Instead, I had gotten dressed, made my coffee, and set off.
When I walked back into the kitchen, it was spotless and the intoxicating smell of something baking in the oven met me at the door. I found Jared in the back, wearing a t-shirt, shorts, flip flops, and an apron tied around his waist. If my father saw him like that, he would have kicked him right out of the kitchen without a second glance no matter what his last name was. Music played from a Bluetooth speaker on the metal counter near the door, blasting out “California Girls,” by Katy Perry. It instantly transported me back to the summer of 2010 when Cat, Lacy, and I were a carefree threesome of giggling ten-year-olds who spent our entire summer unsupervised at the beach, collecting seashells that we imagined we would paint and sell. We never had the fortitude to see that business venture, or any other, through to fruition, but it was the thought that counted.
“Big Katy Perry fan?” I asked.
Jared looked up from chopping fruit and smiled. “It’s my summer playlist,” he said.
+8963I nodded as I pulled an apron off the hook and tied it around my waist. I wasn’t dressed for the kitchen either. I’m sure crop tops were against the dress code, but if he was cooking, I planned on doing the same. It had been my intention yesterday to try out some recipes. Of course, that had gone hopelessly awry. It wouldn’t be easy to cook in a mostly demolished kitchen with an outdated cooktop, a small oven, not enough counter space, and a woefully understocked pantry, but I was determined to start some experiments so I could nail down my menu.
“So,” I said as I started pulling ingredients out of our makeshift pantry. “Where did you spend your childhood summers?” Avoidi ng talk of what he had said yesterday to Joel or my dinner.
He eyed me suspiciously, and I almost laughed. “You doing some recon?”
“I don’t see how on earth knowing where you spent your summers would help me win this contest. But now that you mention it, you know where I spent my summers, so it’s only fair,” I said. Even as I was defending myself from his ridiculous accusation, I couldn’t help but think of my conversation with his brother. Could I talk him into leaving? Would I? Was getting to know him the first step toward that end?
“I grew up in Allentown,” he said.
“Like the Billy Joel song?”
He laughed. “You know that song? I thought everyone outside of Allentown had forgotten about it.”
Living in a small beach town frequented by a diverse set of ages had introduced me to music I wouldn’t usually have heard. Besides, my mom went through a big Billy Joel resurgence when one of his songs was in 13 going on 30 . She played his albums on repeat when I was like four.
“Being a Billy Joel fan is a requirement of growing up in Allentown,” he said.
“Makes sense,” I said. “So was it everything the song promised?”
“And more,” he smirked.
I brought my ingredients to the workstation beside him, pulling out a cutting board to slice the day-old bread I had left out. Normally, I would have baked my bread fresh, but I wanted to test out a few flavors before I wasted my time. Although fresh-baked bread would probably be a great addition to the menu. It was something sorely missing in Cape Shore.
“Allentown was fine. I’m sure it wasn’t all that different from any other mid-sized metropolitan on the East Coast. It had its charm and its crowding and its history and its trends.”
“I wouldn’t really know,” I said.
“You grew up here?” He asked.
“Yep. We went on a few vacations here and there. Once to Disney and once to the city. And once we drove to DC for a distant relative's funeral, but I wouldn’t call that a vacation.”
“Why not?” he asked.
I turned to him with wide eyes before I realized he was joking.
“I assumed you were a monster, but wow,” I said.
“That’s me. Just a callous guy who doesn’t care about funerals,” he said with a shrug.
“So do you miss Allentown?”
“No,” he said. “It never felt like the right place for me.”
“Why not?” I asked.
He looked at me from the corner of his eye. “You really give a shit about my crap childhood?”
“Sure,” I said. I didn’t want to sound too eager or dismissive, but I was actually curious and not just to find a way to ruin his chances at winning.
“My family was poor. Old poor. Like Billy Joel crying about closed factories kind of poor,” he said, his hands still moved expertly, sliding the knife up and down along the cutting board, slicing the strawberries into little strips .
There was something … compelling about the way his large hands held the knife as the veins and muscles in his wrist flexed. What was I doing? I was supposed to be listening to this guy's sob story, not ogling his wrists. Besides, I didn’t like cooks, especially ones ruining my life.
“During my earliest memories,” he went on, “we lived in a tiny apartment with my extended family, everyone working odd jobs just to get by. Eventually, my dad worked his way up in a restaurant before saving enough money to buy his own, and thus the empire was created. It was a real rags-to-riches type thing that my father makes sure to push during every press interaction. But behind the scenes, our whole lives revolved around first the restaurant, then the business, then the brand, then the empire. I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but it can be stifling at times.”
His desire to do something outside of the box, like opening this place, was starting to make a little bit of sense. Hell, maybe that was some small part of the reason I wanted to have my own bakery as well. Maybe some part of me was sick of being nothing more than The Lobster Tail girl.
Something shifted over the next hour as we both focused on our work. The two of us in the kitchen doing what I loved best and what he was clearly very good at, turned into a well-oiled machine so far removed from the chaos of my parents' kitchen. No, not like a machine at all, actually. We were something more organic. No words were even necessary unlike the shouted “behind” that came in the Lobster Tail. We just glided effortlessly past each other in a rhythm that shouldn’t have been possible. The anxiety and worry I had and the competitio n that had spurred me on all fell away, replaced by a peace that, upon reflection, felt so foreign. Jared seemed different too. He was always casual and relaxed as if nothing really mattered, but now, he seemed both happy and engaged.
“Can’t Take My Eyes off You,” started on his Spotify playlist. It was the Lauren Hill version that always managed to reach into my soul and shift my perspective. Across the kitchen, Jared rummaged through the haphazard pantry shelves as he hummed to the song. I ignored him as I slowly started my creme anglaise over the one cooktop we used. Beside me, what looked like raspberry reduction bubbled slowly before Jared stepped beside me and scrapped in the innards of some fresh vanilla. I turned off my pot and moved to get a mesh strainer when Jared took my hand, spun me in a circle to the rhythm of the song, and released me on my way.
I stopped abruptly, smiling like an idiot, choosing to ignore him in the hopes that he wouldn’t see my dopey grin. I shook my head and continued on to grab a strainer. When I came back, he grabbed my free hand again, spun me before dropping me into a dip, as he sang along to the song.
“You’re just too good to be true, can’t take my eyes off of you,” he sang, sending a burning heat through my whole body and a light spinning quality through my head. He lifted me out of the dip, spun himself in a circle before moving along to do whatever the hell he had to do for his raspberry concoction. Leaving me in a puddle of confusion, dizziness, and maybe something else that I wasn’t willing to admit.
I would never, ever be willing to cop to that particular feeling. Was he ju st trying to throw me off my game? I didn’t want to overthink it all and ruin it. Ruin what I wasn’t entirely sure. The rivalry? The dancing? The fun? I wanted to live in that moment forever, but my brain wasn’t built for spontaneity. Sometimes I worried I wasn’t built for happy at all.