17. Karissa
Chapter seventeen
Karissa
Not a slow fade. Not a warning. It just stops. One second the heating element is glowing, the next it's dark and the temperature is dropping and I'm standing in my own kitchen watching two hundred dollars-worth of morning pastries go cold.
I check the breaker. Reset it. Check again.
Nothing.
I pull out my phone and call my repair guy, Danny, who picks up on the fourth ring sounding like he's still horizontal.
"Karissa." His voice is gravel and sleep. "It's not even 7:00 a.m."
"The oven's dead."
Silence. Then the sound of him sitting up. "Which one?"
"The Garland. The big one."
More silence. This is not a good silence. "I can't get there until Thursday."
"Thursday." I say it flat. "Danny. I have a Saturday wedding order. Four-tier cake, sixty individual tarts, and a full pastry spread for a hundred and twenty people. Thursday does not work."
"I've got two commercial jobs ahead of you—"
"I will pay you double your rate."
He pauses. "I can maybe do tomorrow afternoon."
"Tomorrow afternoon," I repeat. I do the math instantly and it lands like a fist. "Okay. Tomorrow afternoon."
I hang up and stand still in my kitchen.
The walk-in cooler is making a noise it didn't make yesterday. Low. Grinding. Like something working harder than it should.
I cross to it and press my ear against the door.
Yep. That's the compressor.
I open the cooler and cold air rolls out. Still cold, but not the right cold.
The thermometer on the wall reads forty-one degrees. It should read thirty-six.
Five degrees. That's the difference between fine and a health code violation. Between manageable and a four-thousand-dollar inventory loss if it climbs.
I pull out my phone again and open my banking app.
I could cover the compressor. Not comfortably, but I could. The arrangement money has been landing on schedule since November, and this is exactly the kind of hole it would fill.
That's the problem. It's arrangement money. The day I start patching my own kitchen with Noah's money is the day this place stops being mine.
I close the app before I can second-guess it. The decision was made before I opened it.
Marcus arrives at 7:15 a.m., takes one look at my face, and says nothing. He is the best employee I have ever had. He puts on his apron and starts on what he can with the countertop units, and we work around the dead oven in silence because there's nothing to say about it that helps.
Two hours later, I've rerouted the morning production.
It's slower, it's messier, and we're going to run out of croissants by noon.
I've called two other commercial kitchens to ask about rental time this week.
One doesn't call back. The other quotes me a number that would swallow whatever the wedding order clears.
My phone buzzes. It's Theo: Can I go to Eric's after school? He said it's okay.
I text back: Fine. Be home by 8:00 p.m.
Then I sit down in my back office for exactly three minutes, because that's all I can afford, and I think about the wedding order.
Mrs. Papadimitriou booked me eight months ago.
She's paid the deposit. The balance isn't due until delivery.
If I cancel, or worse, fail to deliver, I lose the balance and the deposit goes toward damages, and I lose her, and I lose every single guest at that wedding who might have become a customer.
I cannot cancel.
My phone buzzes.
It's Noah.
Theo texted me about the basketball camp registration. Said you've been distracted. Everything okay?
I stare at that for a second.
Theo texted Noah. Theo, who has apparently decided Noah Easton is his personal advisory board, texted the man I fake-engaged myself to and told him I'm distracted.
I type back: Everything's fine.
Three dots appear immediately.
Karissa.
Just my name. That's it. Like he already knows.
I set the phone down and go back to the kitchen.
***
Later in the afternoon, the cooler thermometer reads forty-three degrees. I've moved the most temperature-sensitive inventory to the small backup unit in the prep area. It's half the capacity. I've thrown out two sheet pans of cream-based fillings I can't risk.
That's gone. That money is gone.
I'm recalculating the weekend numbers on a notepad when the back door opens and Noah walks in.
He's in a suit. No tie. Top button undone. He takes in the kitchen: the countertop units running at capacity, the dark Garland, the backup cooler stuffed to the door.
"Hi," I say. "You don't have a meeting right now?"
"I moved it." He says it like that's nothing. Like moving a meeting to show up in my kitchen is just a normal decision a person makes. "What happened?"
"Oven's dead. Compressor's going in the walk-in." I cap my pen. "I have it handled."
He looks at the dark oven. Then at me. "When's the repair?"
"My guy Danny can do tomorrow afternoon."
"And the compressor?"
"Being looked at."
He's quiet for a beat. Taking in the room the way he takes in everything, completely, without any gap in attention.
"Let me call someone," he says. "I can have a commercial repair crew here within the hour."
"No."
"Karissa—"
"No." I keep my voice level. "I appreciate you coming, and I appreciate the thought, but this is my kitchen and I have a process."
"Your process involves a cooler running at appropriate temperatures. What's it reading now?"
I don't want to look. I look anyway.
Forty-five.
I close the door and turn back to him.
He doesn't say anything. He doesn't have to.
"Noah." I put my notepad down. "I know you can fix this with a phone call. I know you have people who have people who handle exactly this kind of thing. And I'm telling you, as clearly as I can. No."
"Why not."
I cross my arms. "Because it's mine." The words come out sharper than I planned. "This bakery is mine. The problems are mine. The solutions are mine. I'm not — I can't be the kind of person who calls in her—"
I stop.
"Her what?" His voice is careful. Low.
"Her arrangement."
He doesn't move. "I'm not offering because of the arrangement."
That lands somewhere it shouldn't. I feel it and I ignore it.
"It doesn't matter why you're offering." I pick up my notepad again, even though I'm not looking at it. "The answer is no. I've got this."
He looks at me for a long moment. The kitchen hums around us. The backup units, the small refrigerator, the city coming in through the vent above the prep station.
"Okay," he says finally.
"Okay?"
"You said no. I heard you." He glances around the kitchen once more, and I catch something in his expression before it settles again. Not frustration. Something else. Something that pulls at me.
He walks to the door, stops with his hand on the frame.
"Call Danny back and double whatever you offered him. I've used him before. Tell him it's for Easton Capital."
I open my mouth.
"Not my money," he says, before I can. "Your call. Your name. I'm just telling you what moves him."
He leaves.
I stand in my kitchen and breathe.
Then I look at the cooler, look at my notepad, and look at the door he just walked out of.
I pick up my phone and call Danny back.
"Triple," I say, when he picks up. "And I need you here tonight."
A pause. "How do you know triple works?"
"An annoying person told me."
***
Danny shows up at 8:00 p.m. The compressor is a belt replacement. Two hours, not four. By 10:00 p.m., the cooler reads thirty-seven degrees.
I sit on the back step when he leaves and let myself breathe for the first time all day.
My phone lights up. Noah.
Cooler?
I look at the screen for a second.
Fixed, I type back.
The three dots appear. Disappear. Appear again.
Good.
That's all.
I should put the phone down.
I type: How did you know Danny responds to money?
Everyone responds to the right number. You just have to know what number.
That's very you, I type back.
Is that a compliment?
I look at the back door of my bakery. At the light coming through the vent. At the city that's been trying to grind me down since I was twenty-one years old.
I don't know yet, I type.
I don't put the phone down for a long time after that.