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“Welcome home, Biscuit,” Ruby says, and the dog licks her face, and I sit on the floor of our messy apartment, covered in flour, watching Ruby laugh with a dog in her lap, and I think—not for the first time, not for the last time, but with more certainty than ever—
This is the point.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Ruby
Home Is Where the Heart Is
The line is around the corner.
Our booth, at the downtown food festival, is the third row from the entrance, between an artisanal cheese vendor and a woman selling lavender honey who keeps giving Aiden free samples he can’t eat but accepts with a polite nod because he’s gotten very good at that.
We’ve been open for two hours and we’re already running low on cinnamon rolls.
“Ruby.” Aiden appears at my elbow, apron dusted with flour, sleeves pushed up. “We’re at thirty percent inventory on the cinnamon rolls, and demand is accelerating. I recommend pulling the backup tray from the cooler now rather than waiting for full depletion.”
“Thank you, business robot.”
“I’m not a robot. We’ve discussed this.”
“Get the tray.”
He goes. I watch him navigate the narrow space behind the booth—efficient, graceful, moving around me without collision the way we’ve learned to move around each other in the bakery kitchen. A choreography nobody taught us. It just happened, somewhere between the first morning and this one, and now we work together like we were built for the same space.
Which, I suppose, one of us literally was.
The festival turnout is bigger than I expected. Caroline wasn’t exaggerating about attendance—the crowd is thick and constant, and our booth has had a line since we opened. I’ve already taken nineteen orders for custom cakes and given out forty business cards and talked to a food blogger who asked if she could feature Hart’s Bakery on her Instagram, and I said yes without underselling myself, which felt like bench-pressing a car, but I did it.
Aiden helped. Of course he did. He talked to two brides, which always makes me nervous. He told a customer that our sourdough uses a starter that’s been active for eleven months, which is true and which I didn’t know he tracked. He restocked, organized, and managed the cash box with a precision that makes Jess look like she’s working in slow motion.
He’s also wearing the apron. The Hart’s Bakery apron—the one I tied on him the second week, the one that says my name across the chest. He wears it like he earned it. Because he did.
Oh, and the customers can’t stop looking at him. The female customers. And okay, a few male customers too. And not because of any nefarious reason, but because my boyfriend is drop-dead gorgeous.
“RUBY!” Liv’s voice cuts through the crowd like a foghorn. She’s pushing toward the booth carrying two drinks and wearing sunglasses that are too large for her face and a crop top that’s too small for a family event. “I brought you a lemonade. Also, the cheese guy next door is flirting with me, and I need you to know I’m considering it.”
“The cheese guy is fifty.”
“He has a booth, Ruby. He’s an entrepreneur. Don’t be ageist.”
She shoves the lemonade into my hand and leans across the counter. “How’s it going? Are you killing it? You’re killing it. I can tell because your cheeks are flushed and you haven’t stress-eaten a single muffin.”
I can’t stress-eat the inventory, not at the pace we’re selling it.
“We’re doing well.”
“She’s being modest,” Aiden says, returning with the backup tray. “We’ve exceeded projected sales by twenty-three percent, and it’s not yet noon.”
Liv looks at him. Looks at me. “I love him. I love you both. I love this booth. I’m going to go talk to the cheese guy.”
She disappears back into the crowd, and I watch her go with the same mix of affection and concern that I’ve been watching Liv with since freshman year.
Gemma arrives at eleven, carrying a notebook. Because, of course, she is.
“I’m documenting the operational setup,” she says, examining the booth layout. “Your traffic flow is efficient, but you could optimize the queue management with a—”
“Gemma. Please just eat a scone.”
