AllFreeNovel
Share Us
One
Noel
My phone’s timer blares through the kitchen, reminding me that my third test batch of cookies is done cooling. I pluck a cookie off the rack and take a careful bite.
“Hmmm,” I muse. “I don’t think I put enough vanilla in this batch.” I take another bite, carefully chewing the crunchy cookie in an effort to identify each flavor. The warm, spicy vanilla. Mellow brown sugar. Bitter-sweet chocolate. The rich, butteriness of the walnuts. The balance from the flaky sea salt.
It tastes so good, but something is missing…
“Noel, what’s with the frown? What can possibly be wrong with this batch? I’m sure you put enough nuts in there. Ya know, because you like nuts,” my younger brother, Valentino laughs. He swipes a couple of cookies and gobbles them down one after the other. A warm, gooey chocolate chunk falls and smears on his uniform.
Yes, our parents werethatunoriginal. They named me Noel because I was born on Christmas Eve, and Valentino was born the day before Valentine’s Day.
I throw a cookie at him, which he catches and inhales. I’m not even sure if he finished chewing this one first. The heathen, who has no taste for the finer confections in life, has crumbs all over him. As long as he has sweets in his life, he’s happy. Packaged cookies from the store would be just as good. No taste, no palette.
After I’m done grimacing at how disgusting he is as he chews with his mouth open, I pack some up in a container for him.
“Ha, ha, ha. How original. The bi guy liking nuts. You should quit at the precinct, and pursue comedy.”
“Nah, bro. Crime never sleeps, and someone has to watch over the city of New York,” he says in a mock raspy superhero voice as he touches his badge. “You sure you don’t want a ride home? I don’t mind hanging around for a few hours.”
It’s already 10pm, and I know he’s on morning shift tomorrow. I hate to inconvenience him. I’m so close to figuring out what’s missing. As much as I appreciate his offer, I turn him down. “No, I have more work to do, but I’ll make sure to lock up.”
“You sure, bro? The holiday season brings out all the crazies. Not like the bag ladies and the street preachers yelling at you to find Jesus. I’m talking about desperate muggers, gangs of roving teenagers, and people who are dangerous.”
He’s so dramatic. “Val, I live three blocks away. I’ll be fine getting home. You have to wake up early. So why don’t you lay off the sugar and turn in for the night?”
He sighs, taking his box of cookies and the donuts he packaged up for himself earlier. After crushing me in a vise hug, he makes his way to the door. “Remember to lock up on your way out, okay. Promise you’ll text me when you’re home?”
Val means well, but ever since our mother’s old apartment got robbed, he takes safety to a whole new level. He installed cameras at all the entrances of the store, upgraded the lock to a keypad one, and placed panic buttons in the kitchen and the front. “Yeah, I promise you’ll get a text when I’m home.”
“See you and my favorite girl tomorrow!” he yells on his way out.
I spend hours in the kitchen, trying to come up with the perfect cookie recipe for the Christmas Cookie Crumble-thon, the biggest annual baking competition in New York City. Professional bakers from all over the city and surrounding suburbs compete every year for the grand prize of $50,000 and an hour-long special on the Fresh Network.
The first four years I participated, I didn’t place. Every year I hustled harder and researched until I finally created a recipe to be proud of. Last year I got third place. Placing in the competition attracted enough business that Anisette and I were finally able to get an apartment of our own a few blocks over from here. We spent the past few years living in my mom’s spare room in her tiny apartment while I got on my feet with my bakery, Sugar & Spice.
Now she can have her own space with enough room to live. My beautiful Ani deserves the world, and it took way too long to give it to her.
With thoughts of my girl swirling through my heart, I bake off almost a dozen different doughs I made the night before. After tasting a cookie from each one, I realize that none of them hit the mark. They’re either too soft, or too crunchy. Some of them are way too sweet, while others taste too plain. One of them is so bad that I toss the entire batch into the trash. Aside from making notes on what I can do differently, there’s not much I can do until I can make more dough tomorrow.
When I check my phone, it’s already two in the morning.Fuck. Ani is going to be up bright and early, and she’ll want to see me in the morning.
I shut the ovens down. Cleaning up the prep areas takes forever—there’s flour everywhere, including my hair and brows. Even though the cookies aren’t good enough for the competition, they’re still sellable.They just don’t have that spark I need to grab the grand prize. I package them up into grab and go cookie trays and vow to try again tomorrow.
After washing the trays, returning the frostings to the refrigerator, and wiping all the surfaces down, I’m tuckered out. I run this place alone, so there’s no one else to pick up the slack or do the dirtier chores. Eventually, I’ll hire employees when I have the budget, whenever that is.
I’m barely paying attention when I bring the garbage to the dumpster in the alley behind the shop. As I reach the back door, I hear rustling outside and the clank of metal. It’s probably the raccoon that lives out there and riffles through the dumpster. I named her Trash Panda, because she’s always eating stale sweets out of my dumpster. She’s a sweetie, but I wish she’d move on and make a mess somewhere else.
“Get out of here little Trash Panda!” I shout as I open the door.
Except when I open the door, it’s not a raccoon making all of that noise outside. It’s a tall, stark man in a peacoat. He’s tall, towering over me like a god on earth. His dark brown hair and beard contrasts to his stone cold, black eyes. Those little black holes stare into my own, probing right through to my soul. He’s shrouded in a light shadow from the streetlight, which makes his grimace that much more severe. The tattoos on his knuckles stand out because his hand is wrapped around a gun…that he’s aiming at another man who’s cowering against the dumpster, covering his head with his arms as he grovels to be spared.
“C-C-Collector, please!” he cries, his snot and tears mingling as they run down his haggard face. “I can get you the money, I just need more time. P-please, give me more time!”
He breaks eye contact with me, switching his intense focus onto his victim.
“You’ve had enough time, and my hands are tied. This is what happens when you don’t pay your debts, Dimitri.Do svidaniya.” His voice is raspy, deep. It reminds me of what dark chocolate would sound like.
