by Amy Daws
Kate exhales heavily. “Dean, I’m not even going to address the fact that you’re thirty-one to that girl’s twenty because I write romance for a living, and I’d be a fool to say that an age gap can’t be super-hot. But that girl had nothing going on upstairs. She thought Ebola was a country.”
I cringe as I recall her arguing fervently with Josh, the doctor, on that particular subject. He had to get out his phone and show her that Ebola was a virus, and even then, she got out her own phone to pull up a map. It was seriously uncomfortable.
“I didn’t realize there was an IQ prerequisite in order to hang out with all of you,” I reply flippantly, knowing I sound more childish than the child sleeping next to me.
Lynsey gets a sad look on her face and glances at sleeping Julianna. “Are you even happy with the women you’re dating, though? You don’t seem happy. You seem…bored.”
“What does it matter?” I snap, seriously wishing I was anywhere but here. “It’s not like I’m marrying these girls.”
I glance out the window at the people milling around Pearl Street, dining and shopping. Kate, Lyns, and I used to own this town. We’d be down here multiple nights a week having so many laughs our stomachs would be sore the next day.
Now, things have changed.
They’ve changed.
They aren’t the fun and wild girls I used to pull pranks on. I miss dropping into Tire Depot to give Kate shit about writing sex scenes in a waiting room. I miss buying Lynsey overpriced charcuterie boards and watching her clumsy ass trip in front of guys. The past year has started to feel…lonely. Which is not something I cope with very well.
Case in point: Lala.
Kate’s eyes find mine again. “We’re worried about you, Dean. The girls you’re dating keep getting younger and younger, and none of them have any substance. You’re floundering, man,” Kate adds, her voice taking on a serious tone I do not like. “This is a peen-tervention.”
“A what? Jesus, would you listen to yourself? I don’t need a peen-tervention…which, by the way, is not a thing. You two don’t need to worry about me.” I mindlessly brush away the scattered remains of our croinuts. “Business has never been better. My hedge fund company is up and running now, and I have six solid investors from Max’s referrals. Plus, I’m investing in Norah’s Denver bakery, which I know will be great. I’m at the top of my game.”
“We’re not talking about your professional life, Dean,” Kate says, her eyes bending with sympathy. “You’ve always been great with your work. We’re talking about your peen.”
What the fuck is going on here? Kate’s my funny friend. She’s the one who doesn’t take life seriously and threatens nut punches. Why is she looking at me like I have a terminal illness right now while calling my dick a peen? How many croinuts did she eat?
She licks her lips and leans across the table. “I just feel like ever since Lynsey had the baby and I got engaged, you’ve been hooking up with girls who are nowhere near your level. You’re a self-taught genius, Dean. You’re attractive, charismatic—”
“Generous,” Lynsey adds with a sad smile that instantly transports me to the days she was pregnant and living with me before Josh was allowed in the picture.
It’s crazy to think how different my life is with these two in it. They are literal pains in my ass seven days a week, but even when they’re annoying the shit out of me, I have a soft spot for them both. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for them.
They’re kind of like the siblings I never had.
If having inappropriate thoughts about your sisters was okay.
Which obviously…it’s not.
“Are you and your peen depressed maybe?” Kate asks with a sadness to her eyes that is at odds with her ridiculous words.
“God, my peen is not depressed.” I adjust my glasses and exhale heavily while briefly wondering if a plastic fork could impale me enough to have to leave for the emergency room. “I’ll just quit bringing dates around. Problem solved.”
“That’s not what we want,” Kate replies with a shake of her head. “I’d just like to see you with a girl who you could actually have a conversation with. We have a lot of events coming up with the wedding, and I’d die of shock if you had someone beside you who wasn’t a throwaway girl. Lynsey and I have been brainstorming about who we could set your peen up with, haven’t we, Lynsey?”
I roll my eyes as they start rambling names and turn my attention back to Norah, who’s a lot more fun to watch than these two whack jobs trying to set my dick up on a blind date.
My brows furrow when I see Norah’s abandoned her croinut decorating and is now deep in a conversation with an older woman at the end of the counter. The woman gesticulates wildly, and my body tightens at the cornered look on Norah’s face.
Norah suddenly rips off her bandana and shakes her head, her blond hair wild around her face. The woman tries to show her something on her phone, and Norah jerks away and refuses to look at it. When the woman tries again, Norah lets out an exasperated noise and turns to storm out of the bakery through the back exit.
“I want grandbabies, Norah. Not Cronuts!” my mother chastises in a tight, crisp voice while delicately fingering her short, silver hair gelled into spikes. I glance around at my customers to see if anyone has overheard this madness, and to my horror, Dean is staring at me… arguing…in my bakery…with my mother. She steps into my sightline, her nostrils flared. “I’ve been planning this thirty-fifth wedding anniversary party for weeks, and it would mean a lot to see you with a man before I’m dead in the ground.”
“Mom, I make croinuts, not Cronuts,” I correct, ignoring her comment about her untimely demise because Elaine Donahue is as fit as a fiddle. Honestly, I think she could beat me in a 5K race right this second. She’s one of those power-walking, essential-oil-smearing, herbal-tea-drinking fifty-somethings who manage to make silver hair and yoga pants look unbelievably stylish. She’s practically a Jamie Lee Curtis clone with shredded triceps to prove it—it’s no wonder she still has never sampled any of my baked goods.
Don’t get me wrong, she’s not an unsupportive momster. She buys a box of croinuts for my dad’s law office every week, but perish the thought she’d ever taste her daughter’s creations and lose her twenty percent body fat.
I exhale heavily, and despite myself, I decide to educate her on my business I’ve worked a decade perfecting. “Cronuts have been done before. They’re trademarked and take hours to make. Mine are called croinuts. They’re still a donut-croissant hybrid, but my recipe only requires twenty minutes from dough to dish. My patented recipe alone is worth a pretty penny. That, coupled with the fun concept of customers taking a number to place their order, makes Rise and Shine a fun, original idea for a bakery. Business has gone up three hundred percent since I started the number machine. On average, we sell five hundred croinuts per day. It’s fun. It’s unique. And it’s why I’m opening a second location and getting ready to launch a national franchise. My business is a big deal, Mother.” I exhale heavily, feeling like I just hammered her with my business portfolio, but the look on her face makes me realize it’s fallen on deaf ears.
“Croinuts, Cronuts. Potato, potahto,” she scoffs, waving me off like I’m talking about the weather. “Just let Nathaniel be your date to our anniversary party on Friday. He’ll look so nice in the photos, and my Rusty Hinges aqua aerobics group can finally stop asking me if you’re seeing somebody.” She leans in and lowers her voice to add, “Nathaniel’s teeth look so much better after he got those adult braces. Let me show you.”
She reaches in her purse for her phone, and I immediately back up, pulling off my bandana and shaking my hair out. I’m normally very anal about the cleanliness of my bakery and require a hair net or head wrap on my employees at all times. But my mother shoving a childhood acquaintance in my face like he’s her last great hope to be a grandmother has me losing my damn mind.
Nathaniel is the son of my parents’ best friends, and the four of
them have been trying to push the two of us together since we were teenagers. When Nate went off to college on the West Coast, I thought I’d seen the last of him. But for weeks, my mother has been talking about his return to Boulder to take over his father’s CPA business, and it’s like she can hear wedding bells even though I haven’t seen the man in a decade.
“You could do a lot worse, pumpkin.” My mother attempts to shove her phone in my face again, and before I spew my anger all over her and make a scene in front of my customers, I turn on my heel and storm down the back hallway to the rear exit.
Most of my conversations with my mother go like this. She meddles and tries to matchmake me until I explode, then she leaves. My father calls and guilts me into apologizing, and the pattern starts all over when another man she thinks would be perfect for me pops up. This has repeated since the moment I was old enough to start procreating appropriately.
The warm September air hits my face as I burst into the back alley. I really wish my mother could have had more children. She could then spread out her matchmaking, or at least, I’d have someone to commiserate with. But all she focuses on these days is my love life. It’s like she has my fertility clock set on her Apple watch or something. But Nate? God, I cannot go on a date with Nate. I haven’t seen him since we were teens, and well…we parted on pretty awkward terms.
My eyes land on the dumpsters behind the door, and my temper spikes even higher. “Rachael told me Zander cleaned up back here,” I growl under my breath and shove my bandana into my pocket as I bend over to collect the overflowing garbage. Rachael is my right-hand at the bakery, and both she and Zander know very well about my policy: the back of our business looks as good as our front—alley included.
I hear the door open behind me, and without looking back, I state through clenched teeth, “Mom…I’m not looking at that picture of Nate. I don’t care how good his teeth look now.” I toss an empty cream carton into the trash that smells so putrid my stomach churns.
“Who the fuck is Nate, and do I need to kick his ass?” a deep voice asks, and my stomach twirls all over again for a very different reason. I slowly turn around to see Dean standing in the alley, looking all…Dean-like.
“What are you doing back here?” I ask, my voice still breathy with adrenaline as I take in his appearance more fully.
He smirks and props himself along the rustic brick wall, looking like a damn J. Crew model. Dean’s one of those annoying fashionable guys who manage to make the metro-style look masculine. His glossy chocolate-brown hair and perfectly trimmed beard are always flawless. He usually comes into the bakery wearing crazy tight slacks and slick blazers with a unique dress shirt underneath. But today, he’s sporting a more casual look of designer (and super-tight) jeans cuffed over expensive-looking leather boots, and a fitted button-down without a single wrinkle. He looks hot.
Damn him.
He gestures toward the bakery with a sheepish look on his face. “You looked like you were getting ready to assault a senior citizen back there.” He holds his hands up in surrender. “I don’t usually make a habit of kicking asses of women with gray hair, but I could probably handle this ‘perfect teeth guy.’”
I roll my eyes and attempt to straighten my hair because I must look like a lunatic compared to his perfectly put-together self. “That was my mother making my life miserable. It’s kind of her specialty.”
Dean winces behind his dark-framed glasses. “I have one of those mothers myself. They can be a pain sometimes.”
“To say the least,” I murmur under my breath.
Dean crosses his arms over his broad chest and narrows his cocoa eyes at me. “I’m a great listener if you want to talk about it. I don’t know if that’s something Luke Danes would do for Lorelai Gilmore, but it’s something Dean Moser does with his friends quite regularly.”
I huff out a laugh as I stare back at him, waiting for the punchline—but I see he’s serious right now, which is…surprising. “Are we close enough to commiserate about family drama?”
He tilts his head and squints his eyes at the bright sunlight overhead. “I’d say we’ve been on the friend track for a while now, so I vote yes.”
I shake my head at that notion. Dean has been coming into my bakery for years with his computer and Clark Kent glasses to do whatever the hell he does on that laptop of his. Our interactions had been pretty surface level until my franchise developer, Max, officially introduced us sometime last year. Max told me his good friend Dean was a stock market savant with a new hedge fund company, and he was looking to diversify his wealth. And because I was looking for a financial backer to help start my second bakery in Denver, Dean was the perfect person for me to get to know better.
Now, Dean Moser is officially a silent investor in Rise and Shine Bakery-Denver. And ever since we signed on the dotted line, Dean’s been happily chatting my ear off at the bakery nearly every single week. His flirting is far from silent, but I’ve watched Dean in the bakery enough to know that’s just how he communicates with his friends. And I’d be lying if I didn’t say he was easy on the eyes and our exchanges every week gave a little extra pep to my step.
Regardless of our growing friendship, business relationship, or innocent flirting, Dean’s investment is crucial. Max says once we get my second location off the ground, I’ll have the cash flow to launch my franchise plan and go national and possibly, international—a pipe dream goal.
Goals. I have goals. Goals my mother cannot seem to understand. “Friends or not, you don’t need to hear about my problems, Dean.”
“I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t want to know.”
My brows lift. “But you’re an investor in my franchise.”
“Silent investor,” Dean corrects.
“Still an investor. It would be unprofessional to talk about this.”
“Come on, Norah,” Dean groans and runs a hand through his hair. “You were on my party bus last year and watched me chug an IPA beer and give Kate a Magic Mike lap dance. I’d say our professional boundaries are irrelevant at this point.”
“Who gets a party bus when you turn thirty, by the way?” I reply with a laugh. Seriously, I turned thirty and let myself binge Netflix for the day like a winner. When Max dragged me onto that bus to get to know Dean, I was beginning to have serious doubts about who I was thinking about going into business with.
Dean shoots me a dirty smile. “Boys who never want to grow up.”
I exhale heavily. “And this is the person who can help me with my momma drama?”
He licks his lips and tips his head to the side. “Most people solve their problems by simply voicing them out loud. So maybe just view me as a sounding board.”
“You want me to voice what’s going on?”
“Yeah…why not?”
“Because I’m in a dirty alley with a man who too often voices all of his thoughts…most of which are dirty.”
“You make a good point,” Dean replies with a wink. “But I promise, I’m not thinking anything sexual right now. You’re a nun in my eyes…so just say it. You’ll feel better.”
My head is shaking back and forth, but before I can stop myself, I exhale the heaviness in my chest and start talking. “My mother wants me to bring Nate to their thirty-fifth wedding anniversary party in a couple of days, and I’d rather eat the curdled cream out of the bottom of that carton I just tossed than give her the satisfaction of dating the man she’s wanted me to be with since I was a teenager.”
With a slow nod, Dean gestures for me to continue.
“Honestly, she makes me crazy. All she cares about is my love life and becoming a grandmother. She’s never taken an interest in my bakery or my career aspirations. She’s never remotely cared what I’m passionate about. All she cares about are her expectations for me. Expectations I am clearly not living up to.”
“So, is this Nate guy really that bad?”
I cringe and shake out my shoulders. “It doesn’t matter. I haven’t seen hi
m in years. The truth is, I don’t want to take him as a date because I don’t want to date anybody. I don’t care about my love life or getting married or having babies. I want to birth bakeries, Dean. Lots and lots of bakeries with lots and lots of croinuts. And I want my franchise to blow up so much that I can live in Paris for a while and come up with a brand-new recipe while sampling other people’s baked goods and get a really fat ass that my mother would hate.”
Dean’s deep laughter breaks through my ranting. “I think you’d look fantastic with a fat ass.”
“So do I,” I reply excitedly, just picturing myself walking the streets of France with a fresh croissant in my pie hole. “I just need her to get off my back until the Denver location is open. I can’t handle the stress of that and her. It’s too much. There’s going to be bloodshed.”
Dean nods thoughtfully as he ponders my predicament. “Don’t hate me, but why not just take this Nate guy to the anniversary party? Surely, he’s not going to think you’ll want to marry him afterward. Take him to that one event and then ghost him. Your mother wouldn’t have to know.”
I shake my head. “Oh, she’d know. Nate’s parents are my parents’ best friends. They’ll talk. Then my mother will secretly invite him over for dinner without telling me and then invite me over with an obnoxious surprise and a patronizing smile. I’ll be miserable because my mother will make passive-aggressive comments about why I never called him after the party, and then I will lose my temper, flip the table, and accidentally catch the house on fire.”
“I’m gonna go out on a limb and say you might be a bit of a pessimist,” Dean deadpans.
I narrow my eyes at him. “You give my mother an inch, and she’ll take 5K. I can’t take Nate to their party. It’s asking for drama, and I have enough of that with the Denver bakery right now.”
