by Roxie Noir
“It’s a little like being a doctor, I think,” he said. “It’s weird for a few minutes, but after that you’re just concentrating on doing your job right. Even if you’re tattooing something that you’re pretty sure is dirty on a lady’s crotch.”
“Now I want to know why she got a butterfly,” Annika said.
“It’s a mystery,” Sam said.
They both paused, and Annika itched to say something else, something that would keep her from leaving, an excuse to stay in Sam’s company.
She couldn’t think of anything, and the bakery stood empty, no one there to ring up sales.
“I should probably get back,” she said.
“Do you want to get a drink sometime?” Sam asked, suddenly.
“You mean on a date?” she asked.
Sam nodded, still leaning against the partition.
He’s nervous, she realized.
Annika took a deep breath. Just get everything out in the open all at once, she thought. Quit pussyfooting around.
“Are you and Calder back together?” she asked.
“I think so,” Sam said, slowly.
“What does that mean?”
Sam exhaled and looked at the floor.
“I have no idea,” he said. “It means that he’s been living in my house and he swore he wouldn’t leave again.”
“Is that good?” Annika asked, quietly.
Sam just nodded.
“Yeah,” he said. “It’s good.”
“He tried to get me to sleep with him,” she blurted out. “After Greta’s rehearsal dinner.”
Sam’s eyebrows went up.
“He did?” he said, his face indecipherable.
Annika nodded, her stomach in knots.
I shouldn’t have said anything, she thought. Was I supposed to not say something?
“When he was ridiculously drunk?” Sam asked. His eyebrows lifted a fraction of an inch.
She nodded again.
“I turned him down,” she said. “But then he kissed me the next night, after the actual wedding, and I turned him down again so I’m not really exactly sure how this whole thing works, but I’m pretty sure I cannot handle dating two people at once because I already feel like I’m walking into quicksand,” she said, letting everything rush out in one breath.
“Annika,” Sam said. He walked toward her and held out one hand, palm up. She hesitated, then put her own hand into it. Sam closed his hand around hers and brought it to his lips, brushing them across her knuckles. “It’s just a drink.”
“I don’t know what I’m getting into,” she said. “I’m human.”
She couldn’t tear her eyes away from his lips against her hand, and she swallowed. Inside her, something yawned, something hungry and needy.
“One drink with us,” he said again, his green eyes smiling. “And of course he hit on you. He’s got good taste, even shitfaced.”
“So it’s not weird that he tried to sleep with me?” she asked.
It was what she wanted to hear, of course, but that didn’t mean she believed it.
“If it were someone else, I’d be a jealous mess,” Sam admitted, her hand still in his. “Though I’m still glad you turned him down.”
“Why?”
“He showed up at my house later,” Sam said, casually.
Don’t think about them naked, Annika thought.
She did. She wasn’t jealous.
This is still going to be really strange and complicated and that’s not what you want, the logical part of her brain said.
Stop overthinking it and go for a drink, her heart said.
“Okay,” she said. “Let’s get a drink. The three of us.”
Chapter Ten
Calder
“You’re really overthinking this,” Sam said. “Just put a shirt on and hurry up.”
Calder stood shirtless in front of Sam’s closet, his arms crossed in front of himself. Sam was wearing the same thing as always, a black t-shirt and jeans.
“All my shirts are shitty,” Calder said. “And all your shirts are what you’re already wearing, and we can’t match.”
I should probably own more than four shirts, too, he thought.
Sam crossed the small bedroom, stepping around the corner of the bed. He put his chin on Calder’s shoulder and his arms around the other man’s waist.
“If you don’t put a shirt on and hurry up, I swear I will drag you out of here naked,” he said softly.
Calder grinned.
“Is that a promise or a threat?” he asked.
Still obnoxiously punctual, he thought. What’s five minutes either way?
“It’s both,” Sam said.
Calder sighed, then shut the closet and got one of his own t-shirts out of a drawer. It was green and had a star on it — he’d gotten it for free somewhere, though he didn’t remember where any more. Currently, it was the nicest shirt he owned.
Moving into Sam’s place had taken about ten minutes. Everything Calder owned fit onto his motorcycle, and the only valuable thing was his laptop full of romance novels. One drawer and he was done.
“Is this too casual for a date?” Calder asked, looking down at himself. Sam only had the mirror in the bathroom, which was useful for when Calder wanted to see his head and collarbones.
“We’re just getting a drink,” Sam said.
“But it’s a date,” Calder said. “We’re trying to impress her, you know.”
Sam walked up to him again and stood nose-to-nose. Calder’s heart fluttered for a moment, the way it always did when Sam got this close.
“Leave the impressing to me,” Sam said. “I’ve never gotten trashed and tried to talk her into bed.”
He tilted his head forward and gave Calder a quick kiss on the lips, then stepped back.
“Let’s go,” Sam said.
Calder stood at the bar, trying to decide on a beer, when he felt someone come up and stand close to him. He looked down into a pile of honey-brown braids.
“You’re late,” he said.
“It’s eight-o-three,” Annika protested. “That’s not late, that’s a technicality.”
“I’ll let this one slide,” Calder said. “What do you want?”
He ordered beers, and Annika went to the booth where Sam was sitting, making sure no one else took it. When Calder got there, carefully setting three beers on the table, they were talking about Scarlet.
“Oh, she thinks she’s the sneakiest,” Annika said, her eyes dancing. Calder slid into the booth next to her, and for a moment, he had the strangest sensation of completeness, looking from Sam to Annika and back.
“Right?” said Sam, taking a sip of his. “She keeps asking me about the t-shirts I’m wearing. Once I said that I was going to dinner after work, and she raised both her eyebrows like she had the scoop, and just asked, ‘Alone?’”
Annika laughed, and looked at Calder.
“You know Scarlet, right?” she asked.
“I met her last week,” Calder said.
“She was in jail and now she’s not,” Annika said. “It’s a whole story. Her sister-in-law is gonna pop any day now, I think.”
Calder raised his eyebrows.
“She’s super pregnant,” Annika said. “I mean, pop with a baby.”
“That doesn’t sound much better,” Sam said, dryly.
“She had a crazy thing for lemon tarts her first trimester,” Annika said. “She came by every day for weeks on end at exactly eight in the morning, and half the time, she was practically green and had to sprint to my bathroom. It wasn’t that hard to guess. Though I think Scarlet didn’t notice.”
“Scarlet probably had other things to worry about,” Sam said.
Calder leaned back in the booth, wondering if he could put his arm around Annika, sitting next to him.
How do you woo a human? he thought.
Marie had been human, but that had been totally different. The summer after they graduated from college, he and Sam had impul
sively signed up for a backpacking trip in the Sierras. The trip was led by a sunny, bright twenty-two-year old named Marie.
They hadn’t known what they were doing then, either, so they sat around the campfire and flirted. The final night of the trip, she’d crawled into their tent.
“What’s your shirt?” Annika asked, looking over at Calder.
“It was free somewhere, I think,” Calder said, looking down at it. “I don’t really remember.”
“He owns five shirts and can’t remember where he got one,” Sam said. “But he could still remember exactly the route he took out of San Antonio, going to El Paso.”
“Directions are important,” Calder said.
“Shirts are also important,” Sam teased.
“Says the man who wears one thing,” said Calder.
He turned to Annika, who was watching the two of them with amusement.
“At least now it’s t-shirts. In college it was black turtlenecks.”
She grinned and leaned back in the booth, her beer still in her hand.
“Was it really?” she asked.
“No,” Sam mock-grumbled.
“Yes,” said Calder. “Black turtlenecks, checkered pants, and blazers.”
And it was still super hot, he thought.
“I was an art student, okay?” Sam said. He took another drink from his glass. “That’s what we all wore.”
“I’m just trying to imagine it,” Annika said, her eyes dancing. “Did the blazers have elbow patches?”
“Not all of them,” Sam said. “And we can’t talk about this unless we’re also going to talk about the time that Calder bought fake glasses.”
“Fake glasses?” Annika asked.
“The lenses were just flat, there was no prescription,” Sam explained.
“Those looked pretty good,” Calder said. “I looked smart.”
Annika laughed so hard she snorted.
“And he borrowed my blazers all the time,” Sam said.
“Someone asked if I was the new poetry professor once and it made my day,” Calder said.
“And now here you are, owning five shirts,” Annika said. She took a drink as well. “I think I’m glad no one’s here to talk about me in college.”
“Why?” asked Calder. “What would they say?”
“Wait,” Sam said. He leaned forward, his forearms on the table. “Can we guess?”
“Sure,” said Annika. “Go ahead.”
“You brought stuffed animals with you from home,” Calder said. “And they had names that started with Mr. and Mrs.”
Annika’s eyes went wide and her forehead scrunched.
“Really?” she said.
“Don’t listen to him,” Sam said. He tapped his thick fingers on the tabletop, thinking. “You had a lot of t-shirts with brightly colored cartoons on them.”
“Closer,” Annika said.
“You didn’t drink at all until your sophomore year, when a friend talked you into going to a party, and you had three drinks and danced on a table,” Calder said.
Annika laughed again, turning slightly red.
“That’s not exactly wrong,” she said. “It was four drinks and there was no table.”
Sam narrowed his eyes.
“You definitely tried making out with a girl once, just to see if you were into it.”
“Well, I was in college,” said Annika. “Besides, how was I supposed to know if I didn’t try?”
“Totally valid reasoning,” Calder said.
Put your arm around her, he thought. That’s what you do on dates, right? Stuff like that?
“It didn’t do anything for me,” Annika said with a shrug. “She did smell nice, though.”
“Are you saying we don’t smell nice?” asked Calder.
“Not like flowers and strawberries,” she teased, her eyes sliding to him.
“That can be arranged,” he said. “We just have to get... whatever it is that makes you smell like those things.”
Perfume? He wondered, then frowned.
How do girls always smell nice, anyway?
“Don’t worry about it,” Annika said, laughing. “You smell fine, anyway. It would be weird if you smelled like strawberries and flowers.”
Then she frowned and took her phone out of her pocket, looking at it. The screen had a number on it, and she shrugged, silencing it and putting it down on the table.
“I think it’s a wrong number,” she said. “And I’m busy.”
“Besides, we only just started getting into your wild phase,” Calder said. “Come on, tell us everything.”
“There’s not much to tell,” Annika said dryly.
“Liar,” Sam said. “Nobody wears braids and owns a bakery without something dirty in her past.”
“I had my first kiss when I was nineteen,” Annika said. “Guys, I was not cool. Not even when I was dancing and drunk.”
The phone buzzed again, and she frowned, shutting it off.
“The late bloomers always get crazy,” Sam said. “Come on.”
“I got fingered in the library once,” Annika said very quickly, turning bright red.
Sam and Calder both laughed.
“There we go,” Calder said. “Was it fun?”
“It was unsatisfying,” Annika admitted.
Calder had a hard time not imagining it: Annika, her back up against a shelf full of dusty books. Her legs around his waist, her eyes closed and head thrown back as she tried her best to be quiet.
“The computer lab saw a bit too much of me a couple of times,” Sam said.
Before he could go on, her phone buzzed again.
“Okay, fine,” she muttered. “Sorry, I guess I have to answer this. Hello?”
Calder looked across at Sam and winked.
He knew exactly the times that the computer lab had seen too much of Sam. For example, there was the time that Calder had stopped by at two in the morning to say hello, when Sam was deep in a project. There had only been one other person in the lab, ten rows in front of them. Calder had wound up blowing Sam under the desk as Sam tried his best not to make any noise.
In retrospect, it had been really rude to that other person.
Not much better was the time Sam had given Calder a hand job in the back of a student theater production, and then they’d finished off the night by fucking loudly in the men’s bathroom, even though Calder had kept a hand over Sam’s mouth the whole time.
“What?” Annika said. Her eyes went wide and her face paled. “The whole thing?”
Her eyes flicked from Sam to Calder, and Calder’s heart sank.
“Okay,” she said. “Okay. Thanks.”
Then she hung up, and before she said anything, she finished the rest of her beer.
“I have to go,” she said. “That was the water company. A pipe burst in the building that shares a wall with the bakery, and everything is flooding. Fuck. Fuck!”
“We’ll help,” Calder said automatically. He got out of the booth, slamming the rest of his beer back, and grabbed her jacket.
“Shit,” Annika was muttering. “Shit. I’ve got a wedding cake in the freezer, all that cookie dough. Shit.”
She led them out of the bar, still muttering to herself.
It was only a couple of blocks, but Sam drove his truck down the alleyway at top speed. They got out, and Sam went into the back and came out with two flashlights.
“The breaker’s in the basement,” Annika said. “We’ve gotta shut off the power before we do anything or we’ll get electrocuted.”
She grabbed a flashlight and marched to an ugly metal door, going through her key ring. Sam followed her, and then Calder did too. Inside was a long wooden staircase.
“Well, it’s down here somewhere,” she said.
Sam flicked on his flashlight and started down the steps.
“Mine’s on that far wall,” he said, and Annika followed him. Calder didn’t, since he didn’t have a flashlight and didn’t think they needed thre
e people to turn off the breakers anyway. Instead he stayed up top and hoped the bakery wasn’t flooding.
Then he watched a trickle of water seep from under the door, and he started to panic as he heard footsteps pounding back up the wooden stairs.
“Oh, fuck,” said Annika when she saw the trickle of water. She unlocked the back door, threw it open, and looked inside.
The floor was covered with a sheet of water, all gushing from a crack in one wall.
“Is that drywall?” Calder asked.
“I don’t know!” she said, still staring at her bakery kitchen.
“Do you know when this was built?”
“No!” Annika said, sounding on the verge of tears.
Sam stepped in, ignoring the rush of water over the toe of his shoe. He shone the flashlight around, quietly trying to assess the damage. Next to him, Annika took a deep breath, then started talking.
“There’s another flashlight in the broom closet,” she said. “I think we just need to get as much off the floor and onto the counters as we can, and take everything in the fridge and freezer back to my place.”
Calder nodded once.
“Got it,” he said, heading for the broom closet.
It was a long, wet couple of hours. Annika spent half the time on the phone either with the water company or trying to get the owner of the boutique next door on the phone as Sam and Calder took everything that was near the floor and put it on the counter. By the time Annika got the water shut off, they were both soaked, half from the water and half from sweat.
“Okay,” she said at last. “I got the cake loaded into the truck, along with all the icing and the ganache, and those roses that Scarlet made for it.”
She paused, then went over to the wall of ovens, shining her flashlight into them.
“I think the bottom one is fucked,” she said, sounding defeated. “Along with the freezers, for sure.”
“We got all the mixers onto the counter,” offered Sam. “And whatever that thing is that looks kind of like a letterpress.”
“It’s for rolling out dough,” Annika said, her voice sounding automatic. Now the floor was just wet, and she kicked at it with the toe of her shoe. “Thanks, guys. I’d be screwed if you weren’t here.”
