I know about it.
Unfortunately, I know about everything this morning… the soft line of concentration between her brows. The way she bites the corner of her bottom lip when she’s counting. The fact that she hums under her breath while working, barely loud enough to hear. None of these details are useful to me. All of them feel dangerous.
“I thought standing was fairly universal,” I tell Jillie. She shakes her head as though I'd just committed a crime against pastries.
“Not in a bakery.”
“Noted.”
Sadie glances over. “She’s not wrong.”
I place a hand against my chest. “Et tu, cinnamon roll queen?”
Her mouth twitches. That tiny almost-smile feels like scoring in overtime. Ridiculous.
I need coffee.
Actually, I have coffee. I brought coffee. I brought my house coffee and the burned cinnamon rolls currently sitting on the far counter like evidence of a baking-related crime scene.
Sadie had laughed when she opened the door.
Really laughed.
The sound has been sitting in my chest ever since, warm and bright and inconvenient.
“Mommy,” Jillie says, swinging her legs, “can Colby wear an apron?”
“No,” Sadie and I say at the same time.
Jillie beams. “You said that together.”
Sadie immediately becomes fascinated by dough. I immediately become fascinated by the croissant tray.
Jillie, unfortunately, becomes fascinated by both of us.
“I think you should wear the pink one,” she says.
“I’m not wearing the pink one.”
“It has cupcakes.”
“I’m aware.”
“And sparkles.”
“I have a public image to repair, not destroy.”
Sadie laughs again, quieter this time, but I catch it. I catch everything. Maybe that’s the problem.
On the ice, noticing everything keeps me alive. The angle of a defender’s shoulders. The shift of a goalie’s weight. The half-second window before a play collapses. In this bakery, noticing everything just makes me want things I have no business wanting. Like belonging.
That thought lands hard enough to annoy me.
I reach for a clean towel and wipe flour off the counter. “Where do you want these trays?”
Sadie pauses. “You don’t have to help.”
“I know.”
