11. Karissa
Chapter eleven
Karissa
I know because I'm watching the clock, counting down to close, already calculating how many of the lemon bars I can freeze versus mark down for tomorrow's case.
I'm not watching the door.
So, when Marcus says, "Uh, Karissa?" in the voice he uses when something has gone sideways, I look up expecting a problem.
Noah Easton is standing in my bakery in dark jeans and a grey quarter-zip that has never once seen the inside of a dry cleaner bag.
No suit. No assistant. No reason.
"We don't have a scheduled appearance," I say.
"I know."
He looks around the café the way he looks at everything, taking inventory. The mismatched chairs. The chalkboard menu Marcus keeps redoing in his weird cursive. The photo wall I put up last year, Brooklyn bridges and candid shots of regulars who've been coming since my first week.
He lands on the photo wall longer than everything else.
"You're here because—" I start.
"I was in the neighborhood."
I stare at him. "You live in a penthouse in Tribeca."
"Brooklyn has streets."
This man.
I set down my dish towel. "We close in forty minutes."
"I know that too."
He doesn't sit at the counter. He finds a small table near the window, the one that wobbles if you put too much weight on the left side and sits with his coffee like he's done it before. Like he belongs here.
He doesn't belong here.
I tell myself that twice while I finish the closing side work.
It's a Tuesday. The last two customers leave by 4:40 p.m. Marcus starts stacking chairs.
That's when Theo walks in.
He's still in his school hoodie, backpack slung off one shoulder, earbuds in, already talking before he's fully through the door. "Please tell me there are lemon bars left because Jordan ate my lunch again and I have been surviving on spite since noon—"
He stops.
Pulls one earbud out.
Looks at Noah.
Looks at me.
Looks at Noah again with the slow, assessing focus of a sixteen-year-old who has been waiting his entire life for this exact moment.
"Oh," Theo says. "So, this is him."
"Theo—"
"The billionaire." He drops his backpack on the nearest chair. "You're shorter than I thought you'd be."
Noah is six-two.
I close my eyes for exactly one second.
"Theo," I say. "That's—"
"I'm just saying. The photos online make you look—" Theo tilts his head. "No. You're the same. You're just in the bakery, so it's weird."
Noah looks at him for a long moment. "You must be the brother."
"Theo Linford." He extends a hand like he's introducing himself at a job interview, which is worse. "I've heard about you."
"Theo."
"What? It's a greeting." He shakes Noah's hand with total confidence. "She doesn't talk about you, which means she talks about you constantly, just only in her head."
I am going to sell him.
"That's not—" I start.
"She rearranged the small plates display twice last week. She never rearranges anything. Something was in her head."
Noah's expression does something unexpected.
He almost smiles.
Not the controlled half-turn he does in photos or the tight acknowledgment he uses in meetings. Something smaller and more real, pulled out before he could decide to put it away.
"She rearranged the plates," he says.
"Both times." Theo is deeply, visibly delighted with himself. "Can I have a lemon bar?"
Theo sits at the counter with two lemon bars and proceeds to interrogate Noah like a financial journalist with no filter and nothing to lose.
I stay behind the counter pretending to do paperwork.
I'm doing zero paperwork.
"Do you like numbers," Theo is asking, "or is it just a thing you're good at?"
"Both," Noah says.
"That's rare. Most people are one or the other." Theo takes a bite. "Karissa's like that with the baking. She doesn't just like it, she understands it. Like, structurally."
"I know."
Theo looks at him. "She told you that?"
"She didn't have to."
My pen has stopped moving.
Theo nods slowly like this was the right answer, which apparently it was, because his whole posture shifts from interrogating to something more like deciding.
"She works too hard," Theo says.
"Theo—"
"I'm telling him things that are true." He doesn't look at me. "She hasn't taken a full day off since January. She wakes up at 4:30 every morning and she always says she's fine and she almost never is."
The bakery is quiet.
Noah is looking at me now.
I don't look back.
"She's also the reason I'm still in school and not completely feral," Theo adds, "so you should know that before you—" He waves a hand. "Whatever you're doing."
"Noted," Noah says.
It's one word. But something in the way he says it.
Theo eats the rest of his lemon bar and declares himself satisfied, grabs his backpack, and vanishes upstairs with the unbothered energy of someone who has absolutely no idea what he just did.
Marcus leaves at 5:15 p.m.
It's just us.
I'm restocking the pastry case for tomorrow because it gives me something to do with my hands.
"You didn't have to stay," I say.
"I know."
I slide a tray into the bottom rack. "He embarrasses me constantly."
"He loves you."
"That doesn't mean—"
"He said you haven't taken a day off since January." Noah's voice is level. Not accusing. Just present. "Is that true?"
"It's a bakery. The bread doesn't take days off."
"Karissa."
I stop.
He says my name in this space. My space, my kitchen smell, my handwriting on the specials board. It comes out different from every other time he's said it.
"I'm fine," I say.
"That's what Theo said you'd say."
I turn around. Noah is leaning against the counter on the other side of the case, arms crossed, watching me with an expression I haven't seen on him before. Unguarded. Unhurried.
Like he has nowhere else to be.
Like being here is exactly where he decided to go.
We eat at the counter.
I heat up the leftover mushroom flatbread that was never going to survive until morning and cut the end of a sourdough loaf I'd been saving, and Noah eats all of it without commentary or complaint or the particular performance of a man deciding to enjoy something.
He just eats.
We talk about Theo's school project, which becomes a conversation about education, and then Noah is telling me, without making anything of it, that he was the first person in his family to finish university.
I didn't know that.
"You built the fund from nothing," I say.
"Not nothing. Seventy thousand in seed money and fifteen years of not sleeping."
"Where'd the seventy come from?"
"Three investors who thought I was either very smart or very crazy." A pause. "I was both."
I'm looking at him.
He's looking at the counter, and I notice, the way you notice weather changing, that neither of us has moved our stool an inch closer, and neither of us has moved it back.
"Theo's going to be fine," Noah says, after a moment. "In case you're carrying that."
"I always carry that."
"I know." He glances up. "He's sharp. He's got your instincts. He'll land."
My throat does something inconvenient.
"That's—" I clear it. "Thank you."
The kitchen light hums.
The street outside has gone from amber to dark.
Noah stands to clear the plates and I don't stop him, which is strange because I stop everyone, and when he comes back from the sink he doesn't go back to his stool. He stops in front of me, close enough that I have to look up.
Neither of us moves for a second that goes on too long to be nothing.
His eyes drop to my mouth. Just once. Just barely. Then back up, like he caught himself doing it.
I don't step back.
I should step back.
"It's late," I say, and my voice comes out lower than I mean it to.
"It is."
"You should probably—"
He doesn't let me finish. He doesn't need to. We both know exactly what I was about to tell him to do, and neither of us wants it.
"Do you want to stay longer?"
The question is quiet. Low. Entirely without strategy.
He's not asking about the arrangement.
He's not asking because it's useful.
He's asking because he wants me to say yes, and for the first time since I signed that contract, I have absolutely no idea what I'm going to say.