by Ellen Mint
“The muffin,” Brandy said, bringing both relief and a strange regret to him. She crossed her arms, her curvy hip jutting out so that an edge of skin appeared above her low-slung jeans. “I don’t believe a word you say when it comes to baked goods.”
“Here.” He yanked open the bag to reveal not one but two apple crumb muffins just for her. Brandy slipped her hand inside, her mouth open in shock. She raised one to her lips and took a big bite.
“Hm, after all this time, and anticipation and years of denial,” she said through thoughtful chewing, “I thought it’d be better.”
Marty gulped, his legs shifting like a skittish horse. Real shame when that thing you wanted for years doesn’t live up to the hype. Not that he’d know anything about that.
The jingle of Brandy’s keys was enough of a distraction from his horny shame spiral. She slipped one into the deadlock, causing an ice floe jam in Marty’s brain.
“Wait,” he said, worried that she was going to leave some strange man in her apartment just to keep him from knowing.
“What?” She pocketed her keys.
“Don’t you want to…isn’t there some…you forgot in your place?”
As her face knit in an afghan of confusion, it struck him. There wasn’t any guy inside. He’d gotten worked up over nothing. Instant relief turned his grimace into a bright smile while Brandy kept staring.
“I could get my bike, if you don’t want to give me a lift back after work,” she said.
“No, no,” he said, his chest swelling and a tune building in his step. The urge to dance rose through his legs but Marty kept it tamped down. “I’d be more than happy to bring you home.” Unlike random Tinder guy DudeBroseph25. Ha!
Just as he was about to give in to his euphoria and spin in a circle, he froze. “Ah, wait, I was meeting Janeth after my shift.”
Brandy didn’t sigh, or shout at him for dashing her hopes of a free ride in an instant. She simply ate the last of the muffin, dropped the paper into the bag and unlocked her door to fetch her bike. For the first time since he’d set out to wake her up early and see if she’d brought anyone home, Marty regretted this.
It’d been some time since she’d sat in Marty’s lime-green Honda Accord. His first car ever, it boasted rust patches near the tire, a broken rear-view mirror and a duct-taped glovebox. Not that Brandy much cared, as sitting in it meant she wasn’t walking, pedaling through the heat or waiting hours for bus transfers.
He’d been strangely quiet for Marty, only giving her one- or two-word answers. Though she had no idea what he was doing there anyway.
And it had to be when she’d left her laundry everywhere, especially the comfy but always despised granny panties drying over the sink. Talk about starting the day with some serious cardio. Her heart was going a mile a minute at the thought of Marty walking in, spotting her underwear and laughing for days.
Would he even care? Janeth probably only wore those all-lace thongs and bra sets. If any of Brandy’s underwear ever matched it was by pure accident and possibly a dye spill.
As the light changed, Marty pressed on the accelerator. Brandy closed her eyes and pulled in a breath. She didn’t want to be a neurotic mess this early in the morning.
“Your car?” her brain threw out from nowhere. She could feel Marty glancing at her from his peripheral vision, so she had to keep going. “It was MIA for a while there. And I noticed you never told your brother why.”
“Ha. If I wanted a ten-hour lecture, I’d tell my brother something. My flossing habits can get him on his soapbox of ‘dental hygiene is next to Godliness’.”
It sounded as if the discussion was closed, when Marty said, “The insurance. It ran out.”
“Is it still…?”
“No, all squared up. Just needed another paycheck to do it. Then there were all the fees for missing coverage which, ya know, bigger chunk gone.”
She was still scraping by, thanks to the insurance policy and what little had come from selling the bakery. After only having it a year, it amounted to expenses lost, but it wasn’t as if she could go hat in hand to her parents. Or the ex-in-laws. They’d made certain of that.
“Are you…you’re doing okay, right?” she asked him.
“Why? Know any get-rich-quick schemes that work? Maybe a secret lamp to rub, or some rich prince who needs a new butler? I give great foot rubs.”
Brandy snickered at the idea but glanced at his hands on the steering wheel. He certainly had the size for it. What they said about guys and big hands…
What are you doing?
Gripping her knees, she turned to stare out of the window just as they passed the street from her happily never after. It still had the same pale blue and pink awning he’d surprised her with, but the sign with the giant cupcake was long gone. She hadn’t had the money to remove it, the landowner having done it for her. Even then, where would she have kept it? The thing was the size of her bed.
Where had her old dream wound up? A landfill? Broken into pieces and tossed onto a fire?
“You okay?” Marty asked.
Startled, Brandy swiped at her eyes out of habit. A hint of moisture clung to her fingers, but not enough to tell her she’d been crying. “Yes. Just great.” Her smile was strained, but it seemed enough to placate the worried man.
Lines of cars strolled past, the morning commuters struggling to get from point A to B, everyone in a grouchy mood thanks to the rising traffic. No one glanced once at that tiny shop that two years ago had had an entirely different future ahead of it.
“It’s a yoga studio now,” Brandy whispered to her hands. She caught Marty looking. “The bakery I…had. They turned it into a hot yoga studio. We just went past.”
“I didn’t know it was along this route. I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be. Hard to not take Frankford to get to the store. I went in once.”
“Really?”
“Tried to. Made it as far as the door, which they’d had wide open. I can’t blame them. No airflow, which is not good for a bakery. I felt like a puddle of bones every morning, thanks to the ovens all going.”
She didn’t talk about it, because it made everyone around her uncomfortable. She didn’t think about it, because it was a needle straight to her heart. She didn’t let it go, because she feared what else she’d lose in the process.
A warm hand cupped hers, pressing her fingers tighter to her knee. Marty didn’t say anything, but he held her as they merged out of traffic and into the small parking lot behind the shop. As he turned off the car, the hood rattled, the engine barely cooling in the sweltering June weather. Only the loud ping of cheap metal reforming itself in the summer sun filled the air.
With his hand still holding hers, Marty beamed his for-once calm eyes upon her. That always wild hair scattered over his ears, Brandy aching to push it back. To touch his cheek and wipe away a hint of the muffin crumb beside his mouth. To taste the blueberry lingering on his lips and know his hands anywhere besides a friendly shoulder pat or hug.
Her face charred bright red at the thought and she tried to whip away, but she felt pinned in place. Marty snickered, the bare edge of his lip rising to reveal that one crooked tooth. Shifting in the sunken bucket seat, Brandy steadied herself. Would he kiss her?
What would she do if he did?
Marty leaned closer, his breath parting across her cheek. “I was just wondering if—”
Yes?
“Since you seemed busy last night—”
Yes.
“Did I get you out of that shell?”
What? Brandy snaked her hand from below his and twisted to stare at the back wall. There’d been a lovely rainbow mural once, but it had been painted over in rust brown. “I don’t know what you mean,” she said, her ego legless and bleeding on the ground. All of that was just so he could brag about ‘fixing her’?
“Eldon seemed to think you went on a date. Granted, his idea of romance is sitting quietly in the same room, not talking, so he
could be wildly mistaken…”
“I did,” she said, turning to watch him.
Marty’s face didn’t crumple, he didn’t rend his shirt and cry at the injustice. Scratching the ear hidden behind his hair, he said, “Oh.” It popped from his lips in a single gasp of air. “Well, that’s…that’s nice. Very nice. Will you see him again?”
Given that she’d practically run when he’d tried to ask her back to his place for coffee, it seemed unlikely. But Brandy stared at the man who’d shown up at her apartment unannounced and bearing baked goods. “I don’t know,” she said.
Marty repeated how nice it all was, his expression unreadable as he picked at the mass of fast food recipes crammed into the console.
“But I will need you to take the night shift this Friday,” Brandy said fast, her heart setting in stone.
“So soon? Isn’t the advice to make him wait a few weeks and sweat it out?”
It was tempting to keep him dangling on that hook, but Brandy’s mean streak collapsed as soon as it was born. “Mel’s working a party and she asked me to help with the desserts.”
“Oh!” This time, instead of a gasp from his solar plexus, Marty sat up straighter, his face glowing bright. Not a date. She was still as pathetic as the day before. “Well that’s…that’s great. My mamá can’t stop raving about your cupcakes. They’re great. You’ll do—”
“Great?”
“Why learn a new word when repeating the same one works just great?” Marty said with a laugh, cracking open his car door. Whatever inexplicable tension had risen between them vanished in the sticky summer humidity.
“Mind helping me unhook my bike?” she asked, dropping her feet to the asphalt.
“More than happy to, my lady.” He bowed deep.
She rolled her eyes at his goofing around, and both of them undid the buckles. It was Marty who hefted the bike off the bars.
As it landed on the ground, her palms wrapping around the handles on instinct, she asked, “Did your car come standard with a rack?” It was hard to see Marty going out on the trails and even less so his brother. Maybe he planned a romantic bicycling tour for his girlfriend.
“Of course not,” he said, wrapping the loose straps haphazardly around the bars and locking the trunk. So it was for some magical upcoming date she could watch in near real-time over social media. Marty turned and winked at her. “I got it for you.”
“What?”
“The bus system’s gone to shit and you seem to be stuck riding into work through the worst weather, so I thought…be proactive for once, Marty. Get ahead of the curve. And other business terms you shout when you have no idea why the company’s both sinking and on fire.”
A stupid smile wrapped around her lips, Brandy gave a jingle to the bell he’d gotten her, too. ‘Because sometimes she might need to scare a tourist mucking about in the middle of the street.’ As they moved closer to the back door, her heart sank. “If you had other plans on Friday, with Janeth, I can tell Mel to find someone else.”
“Don’t be silly. The world needs to eat your cupcakes,” he said with pure sincerity, before blinking like mad and turning away. “I should use that one in my next chapter of the erotic adventures of Marco Rockhard.”
Brandy gulped, the same confounding tension rising, but Marty banished it in an instant. “Besides, Janeth has some influencer thing going on that night.”
The cold water of his girlfriend was enough to shake Brandy from her light-headed giddiness. With her bike stowed in their break room, she followed Marty out into the store. And they were promptly met by the haggard face of Mr. Fensin.
“Took you both long enough. Don’t you see how late you are?” He jabbed a finger at the clock, which showed them both to be a half hour early.
“Yeah,” Marty said. “You know, it’s a real shame we can’t just be legally chained to the register and never allowed to leave.”
Fensin snorted at the impudence and Brandy tried to hide her smile. “Lip like that is why this place is…”
She tuned out his monthly dirge about how dire the store was. Instead, she watched Marty rummaging through the cookbook section. As he pulled out a bright pink cover festooned with cupcakes, he gave her a big thumbs-up.
Chapter Nine
There’s white handprints on your pants. The black pants. Brandy winced and grabbed one of the multitude of tea towels on the stack. It was too tiny to knot around her waist, so she settled for tucking it into her jeans instead. The makeshift apron disguised the slap of flour she’d blotted across her work blacks.
In her old catering days, she’d known better than to wipe her hands off on her uniform. Even with Mel running around the tiny kitchen hotter than the sun, screaming at her two sous chefs, somehow it didn’t sink in that this was a job. Brandy had breezed in and got to work making her signature tiny pies like she was back at home.
But she had to be professional. It was Mel’s business on the line.
Oh crud! Brandy rolled up the edge of her towel and wiped a spilled spot of cherry juice from a white square plate. All that remained behind was one of her golden pies the size of a half-dollar. She even gave them tiny lattices and added a small pie crust cherry on top.
A great line of the dessert plates stretched along the counters, waiting for a dollop of handmade whipped cream and a sprinkle of cinnamon sugar. Mel blew back in like a hurricane and filled her arms with the entree.
“I thought this was supposed to be a laidback barbecue,” Brandy said, eying the salmon dish flying out of the door.
“So did I. Forty-two, watch your ass before I break it!”
Brandy chuckled at her numbering the two useless men she’d picked up from the local college. They needed the experience, but they required a lot more breaking in than Mel had time for.
With a string of pies topped off, she picked up the sifter and added a dusting of summer snow to the desserts. The screaming she did not miss. Chefs forever at breaking point, lashing out at anyone who got too close. Smoking two to three packs a day until their hair was charred with tobacco. Cornering anyone that didn’t live up to their standards and shouting them stupid for reacting.
After one too many crying matches in her car, she’d thrown in the towel. She’d felt a failure and a waste of her education, until Kevin had told her about the small bakery he’d bought her. It had been a Christmas, birthday and anniversary present in one. And she’d never wanted anything else.
“How can such skinny people eat so damn fast?” Mel bellowed, popping back in. “The desserts?”
“Ready to go out.” Brandy smiled, filling her arms with the tiny plates and turning to her friend.
“Fantastic,” she declared when the sound of broken china erupted from the dining room. Mel vanished but her voice increased. “Fifty-two, will you yank your head out of your ass before I shove it up there?” Her face popped back in and all the venom vanished. “Could you be a dear and hand those out? I have to go murder two waiters.”
Brandy chuckled at the empty threat, but Mel could put the fear of God into anyone when her business was on the line. The party was full of people with clout and a make or break for Mel. No wonder she was in a ripping-throats-out kind of mood.
Testing to make certain she had a good grip on her tiny pies, Brandy eased out of the kitchen. She passed through the dining room where they were plating and setting up. Mel had the waiter cowering in the corner and she ordered the other to clean up.
If a broken plate was the worst thing to happen on a job, that was a miracle. But, if they were already at the dessert stage, there couldn’t be much left in the service. This might work.
She’d buried herself in her work, arriving hours before everyone else to prep the multitude of pie crusts. In that routine—the familiar pull of measuring, kneading, rolling, cutting—her heart soared. She felt at home adjusting ingredients on the fly, fixing mistakes before they became problems and watching the idea in her head become art.
Locked in t
he overheating kitchen, her back aching from hunching over delicate work all day, was what Brandy missed about this job. As she eased out of the door, her pinkie tugging on the handle to give her access, Brandy emerged into the cacophony.
And that was the part she hated about this job. Okay, aside from the screaming.
A cavalcade of blondes and blonds in bikinis and swim trunks that cost the down payment on a car cavorted around an infinity pool. Because that wasn’t enough, there was also a jacuzzi with a waterfall and rock formation which had more girls perched on it. They were all laughing and snapping pics while teeth-grating music scratched over the speakers.
Expensive plates belonging to Mel lay scattered around the pool, high heels stomping near enough to shatter them. Even the glasses were real. No plastic cups for this crowd.
Sighing, Brandy eased closer to the food table, when two men in the requisite Cayman-island tan eyed her up. One tossed a beach ball back to the girls, splattering it in the pool and spraying them in the face. Neither guy cared, both standing far too close to Brandy for comfort.
“What have you got there, dessert girl?” one asked, yanking a plate away.
“A mini cherry pie,” Brandy answered. She tried to turn around and put the plates on the table, but the men wouldn’t move.
The other circled closer, his hot breath darting down her neck. He stared down her shirt, not giving a shit that she knew he was doing it. Wanting to run, but trapped under the plates loaded with her hours of work, Brandy said, “Pie, sir?”
He snickered and took one while the other guy laughed. “Nothing I love more than a woman who brings me her juicy, moist pie whenever I want.”
Gritting so hard to keep her smile in place that she felt something pop in her neck, Brandy spun around and started to fling the plates onto the table. It wasn’t until she was nearly free of the heavy porcelain that she realized it left her ass to them. An ass that’d been a little too big to fit into her old work jeans. She squeezed her eyes tight together, afraid that one of them would grab her. And she could do nothing.
