by Tracey Ward
She’s beautiful under the bright lights with her cheeks flushed. They match her lips, and there’s something insanely sexy in the way she quirks them at me. It’s not a smile, not even a grin, but when I’m being obnoxious she twists them in this way that’s disapproving and laughing at the same time. She’s annoyed but she likes it. She likes me, even if she won’t say it. It does it for me in the worst way. She doesn’t give me anything for free. I’m earning those smirks, those hot little lip quirks, and I eat them up like candy for breakfast, wondering what it would be like to taste her, just for a second.
“Colt?” Sandra calls loudly. It doesn’t sound like it’s the first time.
I tear my eyes away from Lilly. “What’s up?”
“Rona was handing you the next cookie to dip.”
“Oh, right.” I take the little black circle from Rona, resisting the urge to pop it in my mouth. I frown at the mess in front of me, white chocolate dripped all over the counter, the bowls, my hands. I’m not great at this. “Are you sure you want me to do this? The ones I’ve dipped look like shit.”
“Watch the language, please. We’re rolling.”
“Sorry. They look like crap.”
“They look fine. You’re doing great.”
I glance between the cookie sheet in front of me and the one in front of Lilly, both slowly filling with white creations. Hers are perfectly smooth circles. Mine are… well, mine literally look like piles of shit.
I get a bit of frosting on my finger as I get ready to ugly dip my next cookie. I go to lick it off when the cookie slips, falling inside the melted chocolate, dropping to the ghostly deep. I bite on a curse, moving to dip my fingers full on inside the bowl after it.
Lilly stops me with a firm hand on my arm. “Don’t.”
“My hands are clean.”
“No one’s hands are that clean. Besides, it’ll make more of a mess.”
She hands me a fork before picking up one of her own. I follow her lead, lowering mine into the chocolate on the opposite side of the bowl from her. We both push forward, meeting in the middle at the cookie. Together we raise it slowly.
“You know what this is like?” I ask her deeply. Suggestively.
She shakes her head. “It’s not like sex. Not even a little bit.”
“Is your mind always in the gutter? I was going to say it’s like teamwork.”
“Sure you were,” she laughs. I watch as she sticks the tip of her tongue out the side of her mouth as the cookie emerges. “Okay, we got it. To keep it smooth we let it sit on the fork. The chocolate will run right off. You just have to be patient.”
“I’m not very patient.”
“I am so getting that from you, believe me. Wait it out. Just a little longer.” She deftly twists her fork minutely from side to side, encouraging more chocolate to run off the top and drizzle down cleanly. I do the same, mirroring her movements. “There, see? If you let it work itself out, it comes out perfectly.”
“Is that a metaphor?”
“You’re a metaphor.”
I grin down at her. “For what?”
Quick as lightening she tips her fork, rocking the cookie away from me and into her hand. It’s only half hardened, the chocolate still dripping. It coats her fingers, trickling down her chin as she unrepentantly takes a bite.
“A bitch who just lost his cookie,” she tells me proudly.
Can you be turned on by chocolate? I can. And I am. By the chocolate and the girl and the lips pink as candy. By that look in her eyes that’s not bitter, that’s all sweet and inviting in a way she hasn’t shown me yet. It’s an opening, one I’m not about to miss.
I lean forward slowly, giving her plenty of time to stop me. She doesn’t. Not even when I part my lips. Not when her eyes go wide with an excited sort of fear. Definitely not when my lips touch her chin just below her mouth, my tongue faintly licking her skin coated in decadent, rich chocolate.
It’s not a kiss, I’m careful not to touch her mouth, but it’s close as shit. So close I’m having trouble resisting the urge to move north and taste her. So close that her breath is held tight inside her body like she’s waiting for me to do it. When I pull away slightly her eyes are fixed on mine; shocked and electrified.
“You taste good,” I tell her deeply.
Lilly releases her breath in a burst that washes over my face still so close to hers. Close enough to move back in to take another taste. Another lick. Steal a kiss.
“Uh, guys?” Sandra calls awkwardly.
Lilly blinks as she falls back a step. Her cheeks flush when she glances at the camera, suddenly remembering we’re not alone. Not by a long shot.
“Hour’s up,” she announces, not looking at me. She grabs a towel off the counter to wipe her hands on, swiping it along her chin, but there’s nothing there. I ate it all. “If you guys need anything else Rona is your girl. Thanks for…” she flounders, not sure who to thank for what. Her eyes flicker to me for a small moment, a polite turn of her lips hitting me hard and hollow. “Thanks for everything.”
I don’t follow her when she bolts out the back of the bakery. I know better. I watch her run away because I’m making downs right now. I’m still stuck behind the fifty yard line, but I’ve got plenty of clock, plenty of time. I’ll take this yard by yard, because that’s all she’s giving up right now. I don’t want to push her. But I can’t walk away either.
She’s so fucking bittersweet I feel sick just thinking about her, and this day has been nothing but a confirmation of what I already knew. What I felt this morning when I woke up thinking about her. What I wondered in the bar watching Sloane and Trey.
I’m into this girl.
And she’s into me too, even if she doesn’t want to be.
CHAPTER EIGHT
LILLY
Colt leaves not long after I bolt. From my hiding place on a bare wooden crate abandoned in the alley I see him walk down the street, checking his very heavy, very expensive looking watch. He grimaces at the time.
He holds a box in his hands, one I assume is full of Oreos, and I feel guilty bailing like I did. He’s doing us a favor by telling people about the bakery. He agreed to be in our episode of Tastetastic for free. He’s still wearing the purple shirt with our logo on it, the emblem stretched slightly out of shape by the pull of his broad chest. And yeah, maybe he did it as an excuse to hang out with me, to bug the shit out of me, but how is that a bad thing? I like him. I can’t deny that. He’s funny and handsome. He’s annoying in a way that I want. How does that make sense?
How does hiding in a dark, dirty alley from a hot guy who’s interested in me make sense?
It doesn’t. None of it does, but as I watch him slide behind the wheel of a painfully red car, the engine roaring to the attention of everyone on the street, I can’t help but sink deeper into the darkness. I pull away, begging to be unseen, because I can’t stomach how seen he is. On TV, billboards, magazines. Pantries. Bakeries. He’s on his way somewhere, someplace big, and I won’t be a sight he saw on his way there. A tourist trap he can easily escape.
I am no one’s Biggest Ball of Twine.
I wait until he’s gone to walk out of the alley onto the street. Ron Jeremy’s mustache is there. He’s sitting on a barren planter box across from our storefront. He raises his stark white coffee cup to me in greeting.
“You missed Colt,” he tells me. “He just left.”
“I saw.”
“He’s a cool guy.”
“Yeah, he’s the best.”
“I think he likes you.”
I pull the door open with a hard tug. “He’ll get over it.”
Our lobby is blissfully empty. No cameras, no crewmembers, no customers. No running backs. Our CLOSED sign is broadcasting to the outside, warning them away from the uncanny within.
In two hours it will be over. The cameras will leave, the store will open. Things will go back to normal. I’ll go in the back and bake my brains out, losing myself in the rhythm of
mixing, timing, cooling, frosting. Mixing, timing, cooling, frosting. Mixing, timing, cooling, frosting.
Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
But I can’t do that now. Not yet. So instead, I clean. It’s the worst thing in the world, my most hated chore, even above hanging my clothes in the closet, but I have no other choice. I can’t stand here doing nothing and I definitely don’t want to go outside and talk to Mr. Mustache about how stellar Colt is. How funny. How irritably offensive but oddly sweet. How my skin is scorched like fire where his lips touched it. How badly I wanted to take his face in my hands and kiss him until my lips ached.
“Shit,” I grumble, hurrying behind the counter. I nearly dive for the bottle of Windex.
By the time the film crew starts packing up an hour later, the front of the store is spotless. I’ve scrubbed every surface and washed every piece of glass from windows to display cases. Rona takes it all in carefully, her eyes reading the spotless space like I wrote my feelings and fears across every surface.
Sandra surprises me with a gentle hug on her way out the door. “Thanks for agreeing to go on film, hon. It’s a better story about the bakery with the both of you telling it.”
“I’m glad I did it,” I reply, returning the hug. And it’s not a lie. It was fun, if not a little unsettling. And hey, now I have a video souvenir of the time an NFL superstar licked my face.
Rona and I stand behind the counter waving goodbye to the crew. They shuffle out quickly, moving at a speed I haven’t seen from them all morning. When the last one lets the door bang shut behind him, Rona collapses listlessly onto the counter.
I slap her ass hard. “Stop breathing on that! I just cleaned it.”
She lifts her head to look at me, her dark hair in her eyes. “Dare I ask about that?”
“Ask away.”
“Whatchya stressed about, Lilly?”
“Global warming.”
“And the fact that Colt Avery’s blistering hotness is melting the polar ice caps?”
“Exactly. Think of the children.”
“It seems creepy to involve kids in this.” She stands up straight, replacing her face with her ass on the counter. “So why does he stress you out?”
“He asked me to dinner.”
“That bastard,” she snarls.
I grin, shaking my head. “I sound insane, I know. Most girls in this town would kill to go to dinner with him.”
“And kiss him.”
“I didn’t kiss him,” I argue sharply.
“It looked like a kiss from where I was standing.”
“It wasn’t on the mouth.”
“A guy can put his mouth on your elbow and it’s still a kiss,” she educates me. “Why’d it freak you out?”
“It was in front of a room full of people. It was in front of a camera.”
“You made out with Hank Lester for a solid five minutes in front of our entire eighth grade class. You’re not shy about a crowd. Give me the real reason.”
“It freaked me out because I liked it,” I admit, falling back against the wall. “Because I wanted to eat his face.”
“That’s nothing to be embarrassed about. Every woman in that room was thinking the same thing. Probably some of the dudes.”
“That’s the thing. It’s like it’s expected that of course I’ll like him. Of course I want to kiss him. Of course I’ll go to dinner with him.”
“And you don’t want to be a forgone conclusion.”
“I don’t want to be an idiot.” I look out the window, my eyes following the angle of the sun through the glass. It cuts the room in half, casting long shadows across the floor. “He’s not a real person. He doesn’t do ‘like’ and ‘dating’. He does supermodels.”
“There were no models here when he spent his entire morning letting you be frigid toward him.”
“I wasn’t frigid.”
“You were cold. You know you were.”
“I think that’s just me, Ro.”
She frowns. “It didn’t used to be.”
My leg starts to twitch, a nervous energy building in my toes and branching out up into my blood, flooding my body. “Yeah, well, it is now.”
“He’s gonna call you later,” she blurts out.
My leg goes still. “Why? No, not why. How, Rona? How is he going to call me if I’ve never given him my number?”
She touches her nose in reply, the international charades symbol for ‘that’s it’.
I shake my head tightly. “You’re using that wrong.”
“Not really. You know how he got your number.”
“You.”
She touches her nose again.
“Stop it.”
Rona lowers her hand, but her face is unrepentant. “You should give him a chance.”
“Why?” I ask bitingly. “Because he’s famous?”
“No, dummy. Because he’s nice.”
The little golden bells hanging from the front door jingle cheerily. We both turn to check the entrance and I’m thankful for the break from the conversation.
We have two other people working with us at Mad Batter, the same way the previous owners hired us to work with them. Rona and I work mornings prepping the kitchen, the ovens, the register. Fridays Rona and I are on our own all day, pulling twelve hour shifts, and six days a week we have help in the afternoons from John and Gina.
John is twenty, studying computer science while dreaming of making it big with his band. He’s covered in tattoos and his hair is always just a little longer than I can stand. Gina is the opposite, clean cut and adorable, partying her ginger ass off through her senior year of high school. She’s only seventeen and she drives John absolutely crazy. They’re my favorite show to watch.
He’s at the door now, holding it open for Gina. She blows past him without a word to bounce up to the counter.
“Are they still here?” she asks excitedly.
Rona casts her a sympathetic look. “Nope. They left a while ago. Sorry.”
“Dammit! I got my hair blown out and everything.”
“They told you the cameras would be gone by the time we got here,” John reminds her irritably. He raises his eyebrows at me, his hand on the CLOSED sign.
I nod once. “Yeah. Flip it. We’re ready to open, but I need help with the first batch of bagels in the back.”
“I call register!” Gina cries, throwing her hand in the air and running behind the counter.
John shrugs roughly out of his battered leather jacket. “Do you have to yell everything?”
“I wanted to make sure you heard me.”
“I’m literally five feet away. How could I not hear you?”
“You don’t listen very well.”
“I don’t listen to you very well. You’re boring as shit.”
“My boyfriend says I’m hilarious!”
“Your boyfriend will say anything to get laid!” he shouts back, mocking her.
It’s lost on Gina.
“He’s not like that!” she yells at him, her pale, freckled face turning red with rage.
John calmly slings his coat over his shoulder, heading for the back. “All guys are like that.”
“All guys like you!”
“Yep.” He shoves the swinging doors open wide. “All guys.”
“Asshole,” Gina mumbles when he’s gone.
Rona rubs her hand up and down Gina’s back supportively. “He really is, but he’s a magician with bread so we’ll have to put up with him.”
“I won’t. He sucks.”
“The talented ones usually do,” I warn her, following John into the kitchen.
Three hours later and I’m dead on my feet. I’m starving and tired, sweaty from hours pulling bread in and out of the ovens. I need a hot meal and a cold shower, the kind you take in the summer when the heat is too much and your AC blows out. When you stand under the cold spray and pretend that you’re not living in the sweltering center of the sun.
The door jingles faintly up front.
Almost immediately the store’s radio cuts off.
John looks at me knowingly. “Your brother’s here.”
I smile as I pull my apron off over my head, heading for the front. He’s standing at the counter with his hands in the pockets of his jeans, a gray t-shirt hanging loosely from his thin frame. My brother is tall. Taller than John, taller than our dad. Even taller than Colt. He’s thin, though, built for tennis, not tackles. He was an amazing player in high school. Varsity every year. State champ two years in a row. You want to think someone with talent like that will go pro, but it’s a tough market. All pro sports are. Just because you’re great doesn’t mean you’re going to get rich doing it, and Michael didn’t.
But he got to watch as Cassie did, and he was proud of her. He watched her career blow up overnight. Watched her become a star. Then he watched her walk away, but her voice still haunts him on every radio in town. That’s how Rona and I got so fast with the dial.
“Hey,” he greets me with an easy grin. “Are you off soon? Do you wanna do dinner?”
“Dude, it’s like four o’clock. No one eats this early but old people.”
“Old people and young professionals who skipped lunch.”
I pause to ask my stomach if I fed it yet today.
Its reply is rancorous.
“I need to stick around for another hour,” I warn him. “We just started a batch of donuts.”
“Go,” Rona insists. “We’ve got it.”
“Are you sure?”
“Go!” John shouts from the back.
“No one is talking to you!” Gina practically screams at him.
I raise my eyebrows at Rona, repeating, “Are you sure?”
She snorts. “I grew up with three little brothers. I can handle conflict. Go. Have fun.”
I hurry behind the counter to get my purse. I give her a quick hug as I pass her. “You’re the best. Thank you.”
“Thank you for what you did today. It’s going to be so big if he follows through with those cookies.”
