The Baby Shift- Idaho

by Becca Fanning

  Well, that explained why Gracie, Fatima, and Andy had each been forced to take home three pieces of cherry pie. Sadie had been stealing all his dessert-loving customers from him!

  Josh walked a few steps closer to the neighboring truck, peering into its dark interior. When he didn’t immediately see anyone inside, he began to turn away, until his eyes landed on a long blonde ponytail.

  “Sadie?”

  The ponytail whipped around, revealing the face of Sadie Brown, the former Chef de Cuisine at The Orchard. And Josh’s former crush, not that he would admit that to anyone.

  “Oh my gosh! Josh! Hey!” Sadie said, beaming at him as she walked to the side door of the truck. She hopped down and walked over to him, holding her arms out for a hug. Josh stepped awkwardly into it, her scent immediately surrounding him. He’d always been hyper-aware of smells---it was a wolf thing--- but he’d never been affected quite like this. Suddenly, he didn’t want to let go of Sadie. He wanted to stay wrapped in her warm, slim arms, the smell of cake batter, vanilla and jam encircling him forever.

  Josh was not a hugger, never had been. He didn’t like physical contact much in general, and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d hugged someone. But he’d obviously been missing something because this was awesome. Did all hugs make people feel so safe and supported? Had he just been hugging wrong his whole life?

  When Sadie pulled away, Josh barely bit back a moan of displeasure. He tried to school his face back into what Andy called his “resting assface” as Sadie continued smiling at him and said, “Of all the food truck markets in the world!” She laughed, and so did Josh, though he didn’t quite get the reference.

  “Is this one yours?” she asked, looking past him and pointing at Gem State Eats. The outside was painted a dark navy blue, with a map painted overtop and superimposed versions of the state’s mountain ranges. It was definitely more old school than a lot of the other trucks in the yard, but Josh loved it. He’d paid an art student from U of I to do it, and every few years the kid, who was now a successful graphic designer with his own firm, came back to touch it up.

  “Yep, that’s me,” Josh said, nodding as he stuffed his hands in his pockets.

  “What kind of food do you do? I thought I smelled bacon earlier and maybe gravy?” Sadie asked, turning away from the truck and back toward Josh.

  She looked even better than she had back at The Orchard, he thought. Her hair was longer and lighter, her figure fuller, but her smile was just the same as he remembered. It was the first thing he’d ever noticed about her, a smile he still thought about from time to time.

  Sadie was a few years older than Josh and had already been a chef at The Orchard when he started bartending there. They had rarely spoken, but he’d often caught himself looking at her during a family meal when all the restaurant staff came together to eat before the dinner shift. He had seen her go from bright-eyed and excited about food to dejected and depressed over the years, and he’d rued that he had never confessed his feelings to her before leaving The Orchard.

  Realizing she was still waiting for his answer, Josh perked up and replied, “Mostly comfort food. Ribs, pulled pork, tacos, empanadas. We did a poutine special tonight, and earlier today there was a chili con carne. There’s a core menu of stuff, but it’s only a few dishes, and the rest we rotate around based on season, what’s popular…

  “Wait, earlier today? Do you park somewhere else as well?” Sadie asked.

  Josh nodded. “Yup. We have a standing spot downtown by the zoo. We’re there every weekday from 10-3, and then we go to different markets and night and on the weekends.”

  “Wow. That’s intense. This is my first day.”

  “Wait, seriously?” Josh didn’t believe that. The few times he’d looked, the line next to his truck had been out the entrance and curved around the block. No one did that well on their first night. No one.

  “Yup,” Sadie nodded. “I was worried I was shooting myself in the foot not doing savory stuff, but it turned out okay. Apparently, people in Idaho really like pie and cake!”

  “That they do,” Josh nodded, privately adding “just not the ones I sell,” because he was after all a bit of a bitter bastard.

  “So how did you end up here? Last time I saw you was at The Orchard, and back then you were behind the bar. I know you quit, but I never found out why. Was this your plan all along?” Sadie asked, crossing her arms over her chest and leaning back onto Josh’s truck. Her ponytail fell over one shoulder, the strands playing up the gold in her skin, which appeared tanner than normal against the bright white of her tank top.

  “Not exactly. I just knew I was never going to become a cook if I was stuck behind a bar for the rest of my life,” he told her. “I grew up in Boise, so I moved back here and took a chance on a food truck back when they were still an anomaly. We’ve been in business for about seven years now.”

  “Seven years? Wow. Makes me feel like a baby in comparison,” Sadie said, shaking her head.

  “How ‘bout you? What’s a fancy, trained chef doing out slinging cakes from a truck window?”

  At that, Sadie’s smile dimmed. “Let’s just say that The Orchard ended up not being quite my cup of tea. And I trained as a pastry chef. Add to that a serendipitous ad for a food truck outside my building, and voila, three months later you have Sadie’s Sweets,” she said, sticking her hand out toward her truck. “I’m sure it’ll all come back to bite me in the butt at some point, but for now, it feels like the right move.”

  “Only one way to find out,” Josh said, shrugging his shoulders.

  “And what’s that?” Sadie asked, giving him a challenging stare.

  “Let me try one of your cakes.”

  Chapter 5

  “Oh my god, this is the best poutine I’ve ever had. And that’s coming from someone who grew up in Canada,” Sadie said through a mouth full of cheese curds and gravy.

  Josh smiled warmly at the compliment as he dug his fork into a thick slice of Belgian chocolate cake. He’d already sampled Sadie’s cherry pie and grudgingly admitted to himself that it was, in fact, better than his grandma’s. It was the exact right balance between sweet and sour, with a perfectly buttery, flakey crust that practically melted in his mouth the moment he took a bite.

  “Wait, you’re Canadian?” Josh asked after he’d swallowed a truly blissful bite of chocolate cake.

  “Yup. I moved to the States when I was fifteen with my dad after my parents split. My dad moved back when I went to culinary school, but I stayed here,” Sadie said, swiping her finger through the gravy coating the paper lining the red basket on her lap.

  “See! You are fancy. Culinary school?” Josh scoffed, rolling his eyes at her. Sadie glared at him.

  “Is being hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt from said culinary school fancy? Because if so, then yes, I’m the fanciest.”

  Josh winced. “Okay, point taken. I guess I just assumed you were the same as all those other frou-frou chefs at The Orchard. Man, those guys used to get on my nerves sometimes. They were so clinical about food, you know? I remember seeing chef scream at a sous chef once because all the tomatoes on the plate weren’t symmetrical.”

  Sadie laughed, but Josh could tell it was a bitter laugh because her smile didn’t quite meet her eyes when she looked at him. “Yeah. That was one of the reasons I left. That, and the hours. Eighty-hour weeks making food that I didn’t even want to eat by the end. I used to escape to food trucks on my day off just to remind myself that not all food had to come as part of a fifteen-course tasting menu.”

  “So that’s why you came here?” Josh asked, pressing his fork onto the last few remaining chocolate crumbs on his paper plate.

  “Well, that and a break-up.”

  “Break-up?”

  Shrugging, Sadie nodded. “Yeah. I was dating this guy for a while before we both realized we wanted totally different things. He wanted me to quit my job and become some sort of 1950’s housewife, and I wasn’t into
it. So, we broke up, and I moved here.”

  “That’s tough. Do you miss him?” Josh asked, hoping the answer was no.

  And thank God, it was. Sadie shook her head. “Hell no! I’m happier here. Boise is cool. I needed to get out of Portland anyway. I’d been there too long. When I first got there it still had something to it, you know? It wasn’t just some white hipster wonderland.”

  Josh wasn’t sure why he said what he said next, except that they’d been talking about dating, and that had made him think of his crush, something he suddenly desperately needed to tell Sadie about. And did, though he played it off like it was no big deal.

  “You know, I had the biggest crush on you back at The Orchard.”

  Sadie turned to face him fully. “Wait, really? That’s so weird. I had a crush on you, too!”

  “You did?” This surprised Josh. He was self-aware enough to know when the women in his environs took a liking to him. It was how he’d managed to stave off a sexual drought for the last seven years. He knew, immediately after entering a bar or nightclub or restaurant, which pair of feminine eyes were turned his way. He’d always thought it part of the heightened senses that came with being a wolf, one of the few advantages of his condition.

  “Yep. I was way too shy to ever tell you, but man, looking at you got me through some long, tough shifts,” she joked, taking a sip of the open beer that had been resting at her feet while they spoke.

  Josh grinned at that. “Same for me. I used to read the schedule hoping I’d see your name on there. I actually waited to quit until a night when you were on. I had this fantasy that we’d all go out for goodbye drinks, and slowly everyone would head home until it was just me and you.”

  “Yeah? What would happen, then?” Sadie asked, and Josh didn’t think he was imagining the rasp of her voice as she asked that. He also didn’t think he was imagining the sudden hunger in her eyes, a hunger that was most definitely not related to the food laid out on the folding chair between them.

  “Well, I was hoping we’d go to that wine bar that was down the street from the restaurant. We’d get a bottle to share, and just talk. And then, maybe we’d kiss,” Josh said, his own voice sounding suddenly rough.

  “Like this?” Sadie said, pushing the makeshift table away from them and closing the space that separated their bodies. She drew herself to him, leaning out of her chair until her body was pressed against his, her lips against his lips.

  The kiss was gentle at first, closed lips, little touching, but it quickly morphed into something needier, more urgent. Their mouths clashed as Josh drew Sadie onto his lap, running his hands underneath her shirt, feeling the soft skin of her back, the lace of her bra. His fingers were at the latch, preparing to undo it when a throat cleared from somewhere behind them.

  Josh looked up and around Sadie’s head to find a security guard looking pointedly away from him as he said, “Sorry folks, but this lot’s closing in ten minutes. We need you to pack up and head on out.”

  Josh nodded, and Sadie carefully climbed off his lap, adjusting her shirt and bra as she did. She didn’t look at him or the security guard as she gathered the empty paper plates from the chair and walked back to her truck.

  They didn’t speak again until their motors were running, and the guard was tapping his foot at the gate, clearly anxious for them to leave so he could clock out.

  Sadie’s head popped into Josh’s truck window as he was adjusting the radio dial. “Here’s my number. Call me if you want to get together before the next market. It was good seeing you, Josh.”

  Her smile was both shy and knowing as she passed a piece of paper through the window, their fingers touching briefly. Her warm, cake batter smell stayed with Josh the whole drive back to the kitchen, where he dumped the rest of the cherry pie in the trash, more than happy to admit he’d met its match.

  Chapter 6

  “We need a new pie here! This one’s out!” Mike yelled to Sadie as he plated up another slice of rhubarb and strawberry pie.

  Sadie had nabbed the rhubarb at the farmer’s market this morning, buying the whole stock from a friendly farmer who sold it to her at half price because Sadie had gifted him a cherry pie.

  The truck was parked near the university, where Sadie had gotten permission to park for the next six weeks from 12-4pm. They’d put fliers up around the campus advertising discounts for anyone who flashed their student ID before purchase, and the deal had been a hit. They’d made so much money that week that even after paying Mike, the other two employees and herself, as well as buying gas and supplies, Sadie still had enough to buy some new clothes.

  It was odd cooking in anything other than kitchen whites, but Sadie had quickly grown used to showing up at the truck in crop tops, overalls and makeshift headbands made out of funky scarves she picked up at Goodwill. It was a little bit Christina Tosi, a little bit Rosie the Riveter, and much more comfortable than the starched coat and slim trousers she’d been forced to wear at The Orchard.

  However, for the Food Truck Market that evening, Sadie had laid out a different outfit. A red dress bursting with yellow sunflowers and a flirty hem paired with cork clogs was her way of pairing fashion with function, as well as a ploy for getting Josh to notice her.

  Not that he hadn’t been noticing her. In the last three weeks, they’d had two coffee dates, gone to an outdoor movie and cooked each other dinner. The latter had resulted in some exciting make-out action on their couches, and the dinner at Josh’s had ended with his hands up her skirt and the orgasm of a lifetime making its way through her system. So far, everything was awesome.

  But Sadie hadn’t seen Josh in four days. He’d had “family stuff” for the last hadn’t been as responsive to Sadie’s texts as she would’ve liked. She was hoping the red dress would get him to notice her and they could get back to what they’d started at his apartment. She’d worn matching, red lacy underwear just in case.

  When the time came to head to the market, Sadie had matched her lipstick to her lingerie and had done her blonde hair in a braided side bun. There was a flower stand just outside the market when she drove in, and while Mike set up, she hurried over and purchased a single sunflower to add to her bun.

  “Well, you’re certainly dressed up, aren’t you?” Mike said, giving her a thumbs-up as he set a cake stand on the counter to show off the night’s special of black walnut banana cake with cereal milk buttercream frosting.

  “Just felt like wearing something nice,” Sadie said as she nonchalantly glanced back at the entrance. It was 4:45, and most of the trucks had already arrived. Josh’s truck, however, was conspicuously absent. For the last two weeks, his employees had been running it. Surely he wouldn’t just take a night off completely? She knew by now how important the market’s income was for each and every truck owner.

  But sure enough, a few minutes later, just as Sadie was finished writing out the special on the truck’s chalkboard in swirling calligraphy she’d taught herself from YouTube, Gem State Eats pulled up.

  Sadie breathed an audible sigh of relief when Josh hopped out, his muscular legs clad in a pair of faded, ripped jeans.

  She tried to rein in her grin when his eyes met hers. Sadie had expected to see at least a trace of happiness in Josh’s eyes—after all, hadn’t he missed her?—but all she saw was a stormy blue that quickly flitted past her.

  She had raised her hand in greeting, but now she felt like a fool, standing there with her hand in the air as Josh turned away from her and walked through the back entrance of his truck. What the fuck?

  From there, the night went downhill. Sure, she and Mike turned a good profit, selling out all the rhubarb pie as well as the blueberry limoncello cake and the Oreo chocolate chunk cookies, but Sadie couldn’t focus on the good sales. All she could focus on was the fact that Josh hadn’t once looked her way the whole evening, all five and a half hours of it. It made her feel gross inside, the fear that he was ghosting her crawling into her belly and settling there, nullifying a
ny chance she would be able to stomach the delicious delicacies the guys from the dumpling truck had dropped off earlier.

  Mike was wiping the counter, and Sadie was counting the cash, figuring out his cut for the night, when a knock sounded on the truck’s heavy tin siding. Sadie looked up, hoping it was Josh. Instead, she found a scruffy, college-age guy in a flannel shirt and jean shorts staring up at her, a goatee rimming his nervous smile.

  “Sadie? Sadie Brown?” he asked her.

  “Yup, that’s me. I’m afraid we’re about ready to close up for the night, but I can sell you some leftover cake at half-price if you like,” she said, looking back down at the cash, trying to hide her disappointment that this guy was not Josh.

  The guy shook his head. “No, thank you. I mean yes, I’ll take some cake, but that’s not why I’m here. I’m Ryan Senesi. I work for The Herald, and we’d like to do a feature on your food truck for our Local News section. Do you have any time this week for a short interview?”

  Sadie turned to Mike, who nodded enthusiastically and mouthed, “Go!” Looking back at Ryan, she nodded her head. “Okay. Let me come down and we can talk.”

  Ten minutes later, Ryan left with two free pieces of cake and an interview scheduled for that Wednesday at ten at the newspaper’s central office on West Jefferson Street.

  “I’ll man the truck for you. Lisa’s working that day anyway, and things are usually slow around then, so we should be fine,” Mike told Sadie, who was picking at a leftover cookie. They were her favorite, and the first time she made them, she’d nearly eaten the whole batch.

  Now, however, the crumbs tasted like dust in her mouth. She should be happy. Getting written up in The Herald would be a boon for business; it was the state’s most frequently read newspaper, and Sadie knew its Twitter account had hundreds of thousands of followers. The article would bring in heaps of new customers, which meant she might finally be able to afford that industrial stand mixer she’d had her eye on.