Total pages in book: 180
Estimated words: 176012 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 880(@200wpm)___ 704(@250wpm)___ 587(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 176012 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 880(@200wpm)___ 704(@250wpm)___ 587(@300wpm)
It only takes me a moment to calibrate. “Are you serious?” I almost laugh.
Maybe I would’ve felt threatened when I first met her a month ago. Dylan and Aro had been sneaking their Weston friends and little Green Street criminals into the Falls on a regular basis by then. But I know better now. She colored my fingernails with Sharpie after I fell asleep at a party last week. She’s a marshmallow if she likes you. And she likes me.
She hoods her eyes, closing the knife again. “Okay, I’m kidding,” she mumbles. “But just so you know, I could make you my brownie slave if ever I decide to.”
I hesitate a moment and then shake my head, because I can’t seem to ever want to disappoint anyone. “They will be boxed on this table in two hours,” I tell her. “That’s the best I can do.”
“Awesome.” She breaks into a smile. “Didn’t need them at his school until two anyway.”
Of course, you didn’t. Emergency, my ass.
She takes out a cigarette and starts to light it, but I grab it out of her mouth. “Gross.” I crush it in my fist and fling it into the garbage. “Now let me work.”
I push her out the door, back into the bakery, and quickly turn to the young woman she brought to work. “I’m Quinn.”
No time for handshakes.
“Codi,” she nearly whispers.
I try to catch her eyes, but I can’t even see what color they are. She wears baggy jeans, rolled up at the ankle, and her nails are painted with chipped pink polish. Her heart-shaped face makes her seem so young, but the trim waist visible just above her loose jeans makes me wonder if she hides herself on purpose to not get attention. In any case, she looks old enough to work legally.
I point toward the store. “The shelves out there all have labels,” I instruct, gesturing to the storeroom behind me next. “Would you be able to grab whatever you need from here to restock them for me?”
She nods about four times in quick jerks.
“When you’re done, please clear and clean whatever tables inside and outside need it.” I grab the jar the customer asked for and call out behind me. “Sixteen an hour, plus you get to split tips,” I tell her.
I don’t know if I can afford the help, but I can’t not pay her. And it’s only a couple of days.
It takes another hour before I can free myself from the morning rush to get Mace’s brownies in the oven. While those bake, I get the soups going for lunch and start prepping the pizza pans with dough. I typically prefer to stay in the kitchen as much as possible because the summer crowd always brings in old classmates who want to talk when I’m busy. Or my dad, who always winks at me when he insists on paying for his coffee like this is my lemonade stand.
He’s just trying to be supportive. My whole family makes me nervous, though.
My brothers only stop in to check that everything is running smoothly, to make sure no one is fucking with me, and whether or not I have a ride home. And their wives are too afraid to order birthday cakes, thinking they’re taking advantage of their relationship with me to get a last-minute order in. Don’t they understand? I want them all to rely on me. To bum a coffee, a cake, or a donut. It feels good to be needed and treated like an adult with something to offer.
The only family members I might like to see paying for their treats are my niece and nephews. They take stuff because they think I’m too gutless to stop them. It’s different.
However, today, I keep fighting an urge to leave the kitchen and go back out front. Every once in a while, I’ll hear a male voice and my pulse will quicken, or I can’t help myself from glancing out the windows on the off-chance Lucas wanders by.
It’s been hard to stay focused.
Where is he right now? What’s he doing?
He doesn’t show up, though. At least to my knowledge.
It was bizarre, being alone with him this morning. I was afraid he could see me blushing, or how I could barely breathe every time he looked at me. What did I seem like to him? I keep replaying everything I said in my head, thinking about what I should’ve said instead.
The girl, Codi, works quietly as she lugs in tub after tub of dirty dishes, straightens shelves, and walks around with a broom and dustpan. She even restocks napkins, finding more by herself in the storage room, and tucks in vacant chairs whenever she finds one. I don’t hear her speak more than one word, but I know she can. A fellow teenage girl was leaning her chair back into the wall mirror, and I don’t know what Codi said to her, but she stopped and planted all four legs back on the floor. They must have the same superstition in Weston. We don’t lean back into mirrors here.