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“When does he get home?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Well, thank God we don’t have anything scheduled. I plan on sleeping the entire day.”
I had plans that involved a bed, but Slash and I wouldn’t be doing any sleeping.
“I have, like, zero food in my house,” Jazz said. “I need to go grocery shopping. Or I could just order takeout again and go grocery shopping tomorrow.”
“I support that decision,” I said.
The only reason I’d been eating healthy was because Darcy, Mia and Allison had been delivering slow cooker meals and sticking them in my fridge while I was out of the house. Their generosity had tears rushing to my eyes. They really did look out for their own, and their actions proved I was one of them.
Jazz stifled a yawn. “You know when you get to that point that not even caffeine prevents you from falling asleep?”
“I remember those days well,” I said. “I call them my madness and mayhem days when I lived in Manhattan.”
“Do you miss the city?”
“Nah,” I said. “It was exciting for a while, I guess. But I worked all the time. It wasn’t like I was going out and listening to jazz or attending Broadway shows.”
“You still work all the time. What’s different now?”
I chuckled. “Now I own the business.”
“Ah. Valid point. It’s going well with Brielle, isn’t it?”
“So well,” I said. “I’m kind of surprised. We all just…flow.”
“Well, it makes sense. You’re the one with the actual baking skill and creativity, and we can help you in other ways. We’re not going to try and tell you how to do that part of it, you know?”
“It is all working, isn’t it?” I asked.
“Yup.”
Part of me was just waiting for the other shoe to drop. Maybe that shoe was Kurt Antol. Maybe it was my relationship. It was going too well. Despite the tumult of the last few months, everything was calm.
For the moment.
I wasn’t sure I knew how to let things be. To believe they’d stay good or easy. I’d been taught that you had to work hard with your nose to the grindstone and put in more time; be better—all those sayings you’d find on bumper stickers or T-shirts.
“Eddie’s coming in tomorrow to make the vanilla wafers for the banana pudding,” Jazz reminded me.
“Excellent. We’re right on schedule. All the shelf stable ingredients will be made a few days ahead of time, and then we’ll combine everything and bake right before the wedding.”
Duke was outside on his bike. Because of the crazy hours we were working, Duke, Savage and Acid had been on rotation, sharing the burden of watching us.
I locked up the bakery with Jazz next to me. Brielle would drop off the van in front of my house and then have Virgil swing by and get her.
“We really need to figure out a better plan than parking the van somewhere other than the bakery every day,” I said.
“Yeah, well, until Kurt is totally out of our lives for good, then it’s a bad idea to leave the van a sitting duck.”
“Who’s Kurt?” Duke called out.
“Shit,” Jazz muttered. “I forgot he was here. I’m so tired.”
“Come up with something, and do it fast,” I muttered.
