Page 18 of Mixed Signals
Or Tuesday.
It’s Wednesday afternoon and I have yet to see even a hint of him. He’s missed two butter croissants and all of his promised free coffee.
I tell myself it’s fine. Our conversation over the weekend was purely hypothetical—two people who casually know each other killing time during a long drive back home. There’s no reason to be embarrassed that I spent all of Sunday turning the idea over and over again in my head, examining it from every angle while I drew up the bakery menu for the week. I don’t need to be ashamed that I sat there in my big, fluffy, lilac robe and entertained the idea of dating Caleb Alvarez in his quest to be better at wooing women.
Whatever that means.
I’m starting to think he meant it as a joke and that is—that isfine.More than. He doesn’t need to avoid the bakehouse. He doesn’t need to avoid me.
I fill my piping bag with icing and watch as the happy couple leaves the bakery, my wreath of peonies on the front door swinging lightly with their exit. It’s not disappointment that lodges firmly in the back of my throat—just a bad batch of coffee. I kept it too long on the warmer this morning and I didn’t bother to use the good beans from Ms. Beatrice.
He wouldn’t, though. Would he? Make a joke of it. I can’t imagine he would. He once stuttered his way through the duration of a town meeting after Ms. Beatrice accused him of cutting her off mid-sentence. He had been so embarrassed, his face was practically purple at the front of the room. I watched him fold the same piece of paper seven times. He never volunteered to lead a town meeting again.
No, he wasn’t making fun of me. Maybe he just got held up somewhere. Doing … something.
For three days in a row.
“Are you waiting for someone?”
Stella appears out of nowhere right in front of me. My entire body jolts and my elbow knocks my tray of cupcakes to the side. She helps me correct it, and then plucks a dried orange slice off the top of one that took a tumble. I roll my eyes and hand her the rest of it. The amount of food I lose to Stella and Beckett’s grazing is astounding.
“Where did you come from?”
“The back, Miss Jumpy. I was calling for you.” Stella carefully peels the paper liner away from the cupcake. “You keep looking at the door. Are you expecting a shipment? I didn’t see any paperwork.”
“What?”
“Who are you waiting for?”
I glance at the door again. I see nothing but trees out the front wall of windows, the branches thick and full and green. They press in on the floor-to-ceiling glass windows in the front, hiding the bakehouse almost entirely from view. I don’t see a single sign of a six-foot-three man with dimples for days.
Ugh.
“No. No, I’m not.” I compulsively squeeze my icing bag. “I am not. I am not waiting for anyone.”
Stella narrows her eyes at me, her mouth full of cupcake. “That was an enthusiastic denial.”
I bend at the waist to resume my icing, a perfect ring of white buttercream around the top of an orange sponge cake. I’m calling these little cuties Orange Crush. I’d like to crush one right into Stella’s face, if only to keep her from pestering me.
“It was not,” I mumble.
“You have checked the door twenty-one times since I got here. Which has been about three minutes.”
I narrow my eyes and keep my gaze firmly away from the door. My left eye twitches. “I have not.”
“You almost upended your Kitchen-Aid when I said hello.”
“You surprised me.”
“Hm.”
Stella has always been good at this. Waiting patiently for me to spill whatever is running circles in my mind. It became an art form to her in college, when we were both awkward girls trying to find our way into adulthood. We spent plenty of nights huddled together in our dorm’s common room, laughing about nothing and talking about everything. Making cake out of abox. When we graduated, I followed her back to the tiny town she grew up in, not ready to leave my best friend quite yet. I made some chocolate chip cookies for the firehouse bake sale and Stella got a manic gleam in her eyes as soon as she tasted them, exploding into a frenzy of Christmas tree farm-related business plans.
I’ve been here ever since.
Apparently, baking is an excellent use of a mathematics degree.
My hand wobbles and my perfect icing goes trailing down the side of the cupcake. I sigh, pluck it from the tray, and place it in front of Stella.
