Page 23 of Digging Up Love
Not fine at all.
But Quentin didn’t take the out. Instead, he waited, silent.
What if she told him the truth? How losing her parents had left her holding too tightly on to everything else around her, gripping until her hands were calloused and bruised, and still feeling like it all might slip away in an instant?
The fear that usually strangled her tongue loosened its hold. “Senior year of college, my grandma received the same diagnosis. Breast cancer.” She scooped up a square of dough, rolled it in her palms, placed it nextto the others. “And I knew I had to do everything in my power to keep her here. So here I am.” A diluted version of the truth that still left her feeling exposed, naked to her bones, a bare skeleton displayed behind museum glass.
What would he think of these fractured pieces of herself?
“You must love her so much.”
He’d listened. He’d heard.
“I do. Her and Grandpa, and my sister, Simone—they’re my whole family. Mom and my father were only children. My mom’s parents passed when I was young.” Snatches of memory slipped, hazy, to her consciousness. The smell of damp soil and rosebuds. Grandpa arranging cut stems in a porcelain vase. Grandma spreading thick, sweet frosting on a cake.
Memories of love and wholeness from a time before Momma was sick. Before Alisha’s family was shattered and shaken to the core. She’d been left straddling boundary lines and navigating a new life that felt so perilous. Fractured, fragile. Desperate to hold on to those who remained. Simone. Granny. Grandpa. “And I just ...”
“Want to keep them around?”
“Yes. More than anything.”
“I get that.” Quentin blinked down at the countertop, the muscles in his jaw clenched. “Not that I’ve lost a family member. But loss is hell.”
Hell on earth. Exactly. She rubbed her palms down her apron with a quick nod, swallowed hard. “Anyway, looks like you’re ready to roll.”
Quentin swept a searching gaze over her face, then nodded. He made a show of cracking his neck and shaking out his shoulders, shuffling in place. “I was born ready.”
A giggle bubbled up out of her despite the thickness in her throat. “Remember Play-Doh time in kindergarten?”
He nodded. “Fondly.”
She snorted at his earnestness. “Same deal. Roll a ball, then make a snake. We’ll end up twisting up all the colors together.” Laying six ropes of dough side by side, she rolled them into a single log. “Then we wind it in on itself.” She swirled the rope into a flat circle. “Like a giant lollipop. See?”
Nodding, he got to work, his fingers deftly rolling the dough with a light touch, not leaving any imprints or blending the colors. She grinned up at him. “You’re a pro.”
“No, you’re the pro. I’m just the sidekick.”
She placed a lollipop stick on the sheet tray and pressed the cookie on top.
Watching her, he did the same, but the swirl came apart in his hands. “You make this look way easier than it is.” He unwound it and tried again. “Have you ever thought about opening your own bakery? Separate from the restaurant?”
His eyes never left the dough, giving her the space to breathe, to consider.
This could be the perfect, low-stakes trial run. He’d be in her life for the summer, then gone. This whole afternoon had been a sort of suspended unreality. A cathartic confessional. What could it hurt? She inhaled a big breath, held it in, then released it in a rush of air.
“Actually, yes. I have thought about it. A lot.”
Key in the lock, she turned it, opening the door on her dreams and letting Quentin in. “At the end of the summer, I’m going to move to Chicago. I have enough saved to open my own bakery in the city.”
CHAPTER 9
ALISHA
Turns out hot professors were her kryptonite. What else explained why she’d opened up to Quentin like a long-lost friend? She quartered a potato and dropped it into a pot of salted water. A week had passed since his last visit, and things had settled back into normalcy at home, their sugar-cookie interlude in the kitchen fading to a hazy memory.
Why had she told him about her bakery dream? About Mom? Maybe it was the humid embrace of the vanilla-scented kitchen. Or perhaps the calm, quiet way Quentin listened had peeled back the disordered scraps of armor she’d pieced together to shield her heart.
She eyed the pile of potato peels in the sink like a reality check. Or maybe too many years of single life had her overanalyzing common kindness. Her phone rang, and she glanced at the screen. Speak of the handsome devil ...
