Chapter 22
“Your cookies are a huge hit! I cannot thank you enough for making them early!” Louise gushed, taking the large box of cookies I’d just finished baking from my hands.
She said early like it was a couple of hours. Not a full week.
Yeah, because you were doing anything else other than sulking, I thought.
“I’m glad.” I really was. Louise begging me to bake for the café for today, giving me all of Saturday to make five hundred cookies because someone had screwed up on the marketing was a godsend.
It gave me something else to focus on other than the fact that, after giving me the best orgasm of my life, Ty had just…disappeared. No call even though he promised. No text. And worse, the text I sent him went unanswered, making me feel like an idiot.
“Come in,” Louise bade me. I’d rather eat glass than be around people, so I followed her, letting the chatter of customers, the smell of freshly brewed coffee, and the hints of cinnamon and sugar in the air welcome me.
Following her through the back kitchen and into the main part of the café, I saw the place was packed.
She’d no sooner put the box of the extra hundred cookies she’d begged me for down than it was pounced on by their servers and people lining up when they spied the delivery.
I hung awkwardly in the doorway, not really ready to handle that many people. Yeah, no. My feet turned and I hid back behind the partial wall, making sure there was lots of space for the servers to come in and out.
“It’s a lot.” Erik, the café’s head chef, put a steaming bowl of stew in the pass window beside me. The smile he gave me was so gentle and full of understanding that I felt myself relax minutely.
“I—I’m just not used to so many people.” And wasn’t that the truth? Hell, I did ninety percent of my shopping online just to avoid such a crowd.
Erik chuckled.
Louise appeared in the doorway, wringing her hands. I wouldn’t have thought much of it, except she zeroed in on me with a hopeful expression I didn’t like. “So…”
Nothing good started like that.
“We’ve—um…we’ve seemed to…Have I told you how amazing your cookies are?” Louise paired her hopeful expression with a slightly demented smile.
“No.”
Erik disappeared so fast I felt wind in a kitchen where there shouldn’t be.
“It’s just that, in their excitement, the girls”—she jerked her head at her twins, who were on counter duty—“might have oversold the cookie pickup for your cookies?”
Crap.
You can say no, Phoebe. You weren’t even supposed to bake this weekend for the café.
On my wrist, my watch buzzed, and my heart, the idiotic thing that still hadn’t learned, leapt only to crumble when the notification was an email.
“How many?” Maybe I’d just make enough for next weekend, too.
“Two hundred?”
My jaw dropped. “I don’t have enough chocolate for that.” I used a very specific brand of chocolate for the chips and chunks. Anything else wouldn’t do.
Louise’s smile grew even bigger until I was pretty sure I was seeing her wisdom teeth. “So…”
Ugh…here we go again.
“I might have ordered your chocolate and supplies in early. We have everything you need here.” She pointed to the large pantry lining the back wall.
“All right,” I caved. What else was I going to do? Stare at a phone that clearly wasn’t going to ring? “What time do they need to be back by?”
Louise gave me a look.
“How long?”
“In ninety minutes?” Louise eeked with a wince.
“That’s not enough time.” My double ovens were good, but they weren’t miracle workers.
“You can bake here.” Louise snagged an apron off the hook. Clearly, she thought I was someone who could stand being this close to a large group of people looking in at me. Apparently, living with me and learning about my little…disorder hadn’t driven home the limitations.
In my head, a note flashed. The newest one in a long line of them. This one more disturbing than the last and left on my car windshield. I was too exposed.
“I can’t.” I started backing away. Sweat popped out on my brow, and I instinctively reached to pull the collar of my turtleneck away from my throat so it wouldn’t choke me, only to remember why I had to wear it in the first place. “I’m so sorry, Lou—”
Backpedaling, I slammed into Erik. He grabbed my elbows firmly but gently, squeezing in a rhythm that my brain couldn’t follow, even though the panic inside me could.
“There’s a counter over in the back corner,” he said gently, moving so everyone else in the kitchen couldn’t see, right about the time I felt my eyes prick with tears and my cheeks burn in mortification.
If there was one thing I liked less than crowds, it was having people witness when my panic decided to be an asshole and take over my body.
“It’s nice and out of the way and close to the baking ovens you need,” Erik assured me, his hands continuing the squeeze thing Alex did. I planned on asking him later how he knew how to do that.
Louise snapped at the couple of sous-chefs in the kitchen, telling them the food wasn’t going to get itself into the customers’ mouths.
Erik showed me where I’d be working, not letting go of me until I was steady.
Louise appeared at my side. Quietly, she whispered, “I’m sorry, Phoebe. I didn’t mean to set you off.”
She looked so sad and it snapped me out of the lingering panic haze. I hated when anyone was upset, especially if I was the cause. “It’s okay. I need to do this.”
I did. I needed to find a way past this. Past…everything.
A few minutes later, I had my earbuds in, ensuring I couldn’t hear anyone, (okay, I wanted to work past my issues, but let’s not get too ahead of ourselves), and lost myself in the rhythm of measuring, whipping, rolling, and baking that quieted everything inside of me.
Mixing the dough, I watched the way the butter absorbed the sugar and egg. I needed to figure out what to do. What I should do. Tomorrow was Monday, and I’d need a plan.
A hand tapped me on the shoulder and I looked up, my eyes slightly unfocused. “Huh?”
Louise pulled an earbud out. “You’ve been going for three hours. Why don’t you take a break and join us out front? The crowd has dispersed a little, and everyone is in our booth.”
Three hours? I couldn’t believe I’d been here, around people, for three hours and I’d barely noticed. Score one for new Phoebe.
I didn’t agree to join Louise until I looked through the pass and found that, though there were still many customers in the dining area, there weren’t so many that I would feel like I was being suffocated.
I cleaned up, making my way out front, Louise promising to bring me a coffee and a sandwich. Yes, I noticed the slight hint in her voice. I was going to kill Wade for putting the idea in her head.
Making my way through the dining area, I got a big high-five from a kid in Lock’s class who stopped me to tell me proudly how he’d eaten three of my cookies and, if he did his homework, his mom would give him another.
Laughing with his mom for a minute, I made my way to the booth reserved for Cady-Jo, Louise, and Co.
Today, it wasn’t just occupied by Cady-Jo and Helen; there were newcomers there and one man who had me stumbling. Ty.
Helen rose. “Phoebe! Come and meet some old friends.”
At the sound of my name, Ty turned, his eyes briefly meeting mine. I thought for a split second that he looked happy to see me. Then he turned, his expression shuttered, and returned to the conversation he was having with the black-haired bombshell sitting far too close to him.
Any last vestige of hope I had about Friday night meaning something was ruthlessly stomped out.
Helen grabbed my arm, dragging me to the empty spot beside her. “Phoebe, let me introduce you to Octavia Spencer and her daughter, Olivia.”
Sliding into the vacant chair added to the booth because there wasn’t enough room for everyone in the curved seat, I smiled numbly. “It’s nice to meet you.”
Cady-Jo piped up. “Octavia went to high school with us, and Olivia and Ty went to school together.”
“That’s nice.” Don’t worry, I didn’t say it in that rude Mrs. Brown’s Boys way. I did think it was genuinely nice they’d all known each other so long, even if it did make me wish Alex was here and I was not.
Louise bustled over, sliding my coffee and a sandwich in front of me. Her arrival forced a little seating musical chairs, which then placed me directly across from Ty. He didn’t even look at me.
I wasn’t hungry anymore.
“Octavia was just telling us how she and her family are finally moving back to Maplehurst.” Helen snagged a cookie, one of mine, from the plate piled with them and other fare in the middle of the table.
“Oh? Where did you live before?” I tried to sound mildly curious when I was actually calculating the exact number of minutes I had to sit here watching Ty tilt his head toward the woman beaming up at him before I could make my escape without raising suspicion.
“New York City.” Octavia shuddered. “City life was not all it was cracked up to be. My husband, Oliver, got a job there, so we moved. Fortunately, a position opened up in Redding”—she named the town about a twenty-minute drive from here—“which means we can finally move back.”
“City life isn’t for the faint of heart,” I commiserated.
“You’re from Atlanta, right?” Olivia spoke to me for the first time, her expression cool. Not unfriendly. Not welcoming either.
“Sure am.” I took a sip of my coffee. Five minutes. I just had to last for five minutes. Unable to help myself, I sought Ty out only to find him staring out the window.
“Atlanta is just as bad as New York!” Octavia pounced, her black hair in a sleek bob swishing with the animated way she talked.
The woman was more city than small-town Southern, if you asked me. Her burnt-orange pantsuit paired with a cardigan and pearls around her neck, all of it accenting her tanned skin, screamed city.
“Is it, Ty?” Cady-Jo asked, picking up the crumpet on her plate, taking a bite.