Page 11 of Sweet Tooth
Inside the daycare, at the sight of a nice red firetruck, Parker grew more amenable. “Bye Mommy.”
Crouching down, I gave him a kiss on the cheek and a big hug. “Bye Parker. Love you.”
Back on the road, I checked my phone to see that I was five minutes late to open up already. Luckily, people typically weren’t buying hand-made chocolates at eight in the morning, but I still wanted to keep a reliable schedule.
Falling for Chocolates was my business, my second baby, my dream. And I was not going to half-ass it, even if I had a mischievous four-year-old to tangle with.
Of course, Parker was my priority, when it came down to it. But I was doing this for him too. With my lack of experience, the best job I could get was at a call centre or waiting tables. While Falling for Chocolates wasn’t exactly making me roll in cash either, it was still early on and I could at least choose my own schedule. And I made enough to pay the bills and keep Parker warm and fed.
As I hurried into the back entrance, I mentally weighed the pros of hiring extra help to open up for the mornings when I’d be late versus just setting a later opening time. I decided to do some research on that to see what time similar businesses were opening.
Soon as I got inside and changed the ‘Closed’ sign on the door to ‘Open’, the phone rang.
“Hello,” I said. “Falling for Chocolates, how may I-”
“I said B!” a voice shrieked.
“Uh…” I recoiled.
“The chocolates you custom-made me,” the voice shrilled on over the phone. “A hundred for Bobby’s birthday – I SAID B!”
“You mean the dark chocolate ones?” I moved over to my computer to pull up the file. “On the online order form you completed, it has D filled in for what letter you wanted.”
A pause, in which I thought maybe, just maybe, the customer wasn’t going to be an entitled asshole. But today was not that day.
“I said B!” she squawked again. “His name isn’t Dobby – it’s Bobby! What am I supposed to be with a hundred D chocolates?”
At this point you can shove them up your ass. “I’m really sorry about that, ma’am,” I said, through gritted teeth. “If you’ll just bring them in, I can add a line…”
“No, then they’ll be ugly Bs!”
“I’ll make new chocolates then,” I said, straining to keep the sarcasm out of my voice. “They’ll be ready for you by this afternoon.”
There went my plans for doing inventory….
“Good,” the voice shrilled, then, muttering something that sounded suspiciously like, “I said B,” she hung up.
I glared at my phone. The customer is always an asshole, I reminded myself cheerfully. My way of dealing with dick customers, which, thankfully, only made up about a quarter of my clientele.
Most of my customers were kind, generous, and sweet. There was Miss Mildrew who, like clockwork, always got ten pink chocolates for her best friend at the end of the month and sent me handwritten ‘thank you’ notes. By now, I had a ton of regulars who were like friends too, some who stopped by after work every so often, others who seemingly had an endless supply of events and people they needed chocolate made for.
And one day in the hopefully not-too-distant future, when I had a few years under my belt, I could afford to kindly but firmly tell the asshole customers to screw off.
But not yet I couldn’t. My Google business page only had ten reviews so far and all of them were good. I couldn’t afford to piss anyone off..
I set to my task with a vengeance. Making a hundred chocolates in one day was going to be no small feat. The D-order had taken me two days to complete, and now I had less than half that time to do the same this time around.
As I rushed around the back getting all the ingredients in order, the door jingled.
It was a woman whose triangular face and fur coat I recognized. “Mrs. Edison, nice to see you. How can I help you today?”
“Well, yes,” she said, bobbing her tightly-curled head. “Well I’m trying to decide between your chocolate pretzels and, well, what are those gooey things called?”
“Chocolate pudding cakes,” I said, as the door jingled again.
“Two of those then, yes!” she said.
“Two chocolate pudding cakes, coming right up,” I said, using tongs to transfer them to a paper bag.
“I’ll be with you in a moment, sir,” I said, seeing the expensive shoes of the man who’d just come in through the dessert glass.
“No rush,” an oddly familiar voice replied.
“Here you go,” I told Mrs. Edison, pausing.
My gaze snuck to the man and I froze. One look and I knew. Zane.
The realization of it sliced through me.
His face was thinner, his eyes different somehow. He was wearing clothes I never thought I’d seen him in and yet, it was him. I’d have known him anywhere.
