Page 1 of Spicy or Sweet
1
NOELLE
Nobody warned me that adulthood is just an endless stream of dirty dishes.
Sure, I expected there to be a lot of dishes when I opened my bakery—I even hired someone specifically to keep on top of them—but the sheer volume is staggering. Since opening The Enchanted Bakery last Christmas, I’ve had to hire a second dishwasher, and even then, I’m here after closing most days, washing up.
And when it’s not dishes, it’s laundry. Or spraying down the surfaces. Or deep-cleaning the fridge. Or brushing leaves off the sidewalk and tables outside. God, there are so many leaves.
My hometown of Wintermore, Wyoming, is best known as the backdrop of the best-selling holiday movie,A Christmas Wish in the Mountains. Every year, a perfect dusting of snow covers the town, and tourists from all over flock to visit. My family loves Christmas more than most—we moved herebecauseit’s a Christmas town—but I love fall almost as much.
It’s the anticipation: the crunch of the first crispy leaf; the day you open your eyes and the world looks a little more warm-toned; the transition from T-shirts to light cardigans to thick sweaters. In my family, winter has always been the busiest timeof year. Fall is the season when everything changes—the calm before the storm.
Or it was, anyway. These days, I wouldn’t know calm if it hit me over the head with a rolling pin.
I rinse the last stainless steel mixing bowl, holding it up to the light to make sure there’s no residual butter, and set it on the drying rack. The stack of now-clean dishes is too big to leave for the morning, but the thought of drying them and putting them all away after the day I’ve had makes me want to break something. I dry my hands on my apron, cursing as powdered sugar sticks to them, and turn away from the sink.
The fading glow of the sunset shines through the windows as I pull off my apron, ball it up, and toss it in the hamper. Putting away the dishes, laundry, unpacking this afternoon’s delivery… I’m going to be pissed at myself in the morning when I have to wake up an hour earlier than my usual five a.m. to get everything done. But I’ve been here for thirteen hours and barely stopped. I need a break.
Apartments in Wintermore are hard to come by, but most of the stores in the town square have upstairs apartments. Thank god—if I had to commute, I’d probably end up curling up in the storage room in the basement every night. My apartment is cozy and homey—considering how little time I spend there—but I don’t want to be in this building anymore.
I leave the back of the bakery, inspecting the front of the house and mentally adding to tomorrow’s to-do list on my way out the door. It’s still too warm in Wintermore for a jacket, but the breeze is cool enough to wake me up a little. I lock the bakery door, turn around, and breathe it in. I can smell the change of the season in the air, but it doesn’t bring me the sense of excitement it once did. Now, all I can think about is the hordes of tourists a month or two away from rushing into town, and how busy I’m going to be.
Closing my eyes, I force myself to focus on the soft sound of rustling leaves, the smell of sugar and ginger (that I’m pretty sure has more to do with me than the season), and the feel of the cool breeze tickling my neck. Slowly, the tension from the day starts to fade a little.
A soft jingle sounds, and I look across the street, every drop of tension flooding right back into my spine. Shay Harland exits her bakery—patisserie— lifting her hand and smiling as she waves.
“It’s getting chilly,” she calls, wrapping a maroon scarf around her. “Have a good night, Noelle!” She doesn’t wait for me to respond before heading down the street—in the opposite direction I’m heading. Thank god.
I grit my teeth and start the other way. Of all the things that stress me about running my bakery, Shay is at the top of the list.
My family moved to Wintermore to open our toy store, The Enchanted Workshop, when I was seven, and I’ve always dreamed of opening a bakery here. There was an amazing bakery in my hometown in Texas before we moved here, and, though Wintermore has a couple of cafés and a ton of restaurants, I missed a true bakery growing up—somewhere with more exciting treats than basic chocolate chip cookies and vanilla cupcakes. I began saving my toy store wages as soon as my parents started paying me, and majored in business at college while taking pastry night classes at culinary school five days a week, so I’d be ready to put down a deposit and get started as soon as I came home.
Instead, I got stuck looking after The Enchanted Workshop for seven years because my older brother, Felix, couldn’t take his job as manager seriously. Then four years ago, Shay arrived in Wintermore and stole my dream out from under me, openingÉpices et Sucré, a.k.a. Spicy and Sweet.
And so began my four-year, one-sided feud with Shay Harland.
She calls it a patisserie, but it’s just a slightly fancier than usual bakery. Her menu has become significantly less French-inspired as she’s come to know the Wintermore market better. There were lines out the door when she opened, confirming what I always suspected: Wintermore was in dire need of a bakery. I shouldn’t be surprised that someone else had the idea. If anything, I’m surprised it didn’t happen earlier. Bakeries are a given in kitschy small towns like this. But the success of Shay’s place had me questioning if Wintermore needed two. From my view, peering longingly out the window of the toy store I never wanted to run, it looked like she had the market covered.
I almost gave up entirely, but I kept saving, kept practicing, and when the owners of the coffee shop next to The Enchanted Workshop decided to retire somewhere sunny, I pounced.
Felix got his shit together and started pulling his weight, and the townsfolk have been nothing but supportive of my bakery, despiteÉpices et Sucrébeing just across the street. Almosttoosupportive, if I’m being honest. My hometown has shown up for me in droves, not to mention the tourists. Everything is perfect. And I hate it.
I know my work is excellent; it more than speaks for itself. But I’m also well aware that I owe a hell of a lot of my bakery’s success to how well-liked my family is in Wintermore. My luck isn’t lost on me, and I sound ungrateful as all hell, which is why, as far as everyone else is concerned, I’m having the time of my life. I’m no stranger to hard work, but this isn’t what I expected. All I’ve ever wanted is to bake. I love the precision, the science, the art behind turning what looks like nothing into something incredible. But these days, I spend more time out front, talking to customers, doing admin, advertising, and doing all the other things that go along with running a business than Ido in the kitchen. Some days, I don’t even touch a spatula. It’s a petty complaint in the grand scheme of things, but the pressure of owning a business and trying to keep everything together by myself is suffocating.
I hurry along the streets, chasing the sunset as I turn into the cul-de-sac I grew up in. I only moved out last year, and my parents still live here, but it’s not their driveway I trudge up. My mom has been needling me and Felix to stop by more since we moved out, but I have no idea why. We both live less than five minutes away, and I swear my parents spend 90 percent of their days between The Enchanted Toy Store and The Enchanted Bakery. It’s not like we don’t see each other.
I knock twice, and a second later, my best friend pulls the door open.
“I need to cuddle the baby,” I say before she can open her mouth.
Rora eyes my clothes with concern as I step into the living room. Or rather, she eyes the dusting of powdered sugar, butter stains, and orange marmalade covering me from head to toe. Fuck knows how they got past the apron, but they always do.
“It’s after eight, Noelle.”
“And? She’s three months old. I know she’s not sleeping.”
Right on cue, my niece’s happy little giggle sounds from the kitchen, and she appears in the doorway in the arms of her dad. The sound alone is enough to lift my spirits after the day from hell. Three months old, and Sunny has no idea about the horrors of customer service, taxes, or the goddamn price of butter. Oh, to be a clueless newborn.
