Page 5 of Sugar for the Mountain Man
“Okay, great!” For a moment, she just sits there, soaking in her success. Then, a new energy seems to run through her. Without warning, she hops up from her seat. “Don’t go anywhere.”
As if I could. As if my bones haven’t fused to this seat. I watch, mesmerized, as she rushes away and disappears into the back, leaving me in the sudden, deafening silence of my own recklessness.
The few minutes she’s gone feel like a lifetime. My mind races through a hundred scenarios, each more disastrous than the last. I should get up. I should walk out that door and never come back. I should spare her the fallout.
But then she reappears, a flash of pastel and warmth, and every thought of escape evaporates. She’s clutching a small, crumpled piece of paper in her fist, her knuckles white. Theconfident baker from a moment ago is gone, replaced by a flicker of the same nervous hesitation I feel curdling in my own gut.
She stops beside the table, her bottom lip caught between her teeth again. “So we can… You know, figure out the details,” she says, her voice a little unsteady. She holds out the paper.
I take it. Our fingers don’t brush this time, but the potential for it hangs in the air. The paper is warm from her grip.
I unfold it carefully. A phone number is scrawled in a looping, slightly hurried handwriting. Below it, her name is in looped cursive, like I need to know this is hers.
Does she think women throw their numbers at me as a daily occurrence?
“Text me,” she says, her voice gaining a little more strength, a little more of that hopeful energy. “We can get this going. This is going to be great.”
She gives me one last, dazzling smile before telling me she should get back to work. All I can do is nod because none of this feels real. Once I’m alone, the paper curls against my touch.
I stare at the ten digits like they’re a foreign language. It’s just a phone number. A simple, mundane thing. At the same time, it’s everything.
Folding the paper carefully, I slip it into my pocket and stand up. Tossing away the remaining piece of the roll, I decide now is the best time to head out before I feed into this reckless trend of mine.
I should walk away before this becomes something dangerous. But her number burns in my pocket like a heartbeat, and for the first time in months, I want to feel alive again.
3
Maribel
It’s embarrassing how much time I let pass before I have the courage to set my plan into motion.Days. Enough time to risk losing my chance.
I find Sasha cradling a piping bag, her eyes glued onto a baking sheet full of cupcakes, each missing a chunk, replaced by an apple filling. At this early hour, bags hang under her eyes, but her passion for her job keeps her focus clear.
The scent of butter and sugar is a comfort, but it does nothing to calm the nervous energy buzzing under my skin. I lean against the stainless-steel workstation, my fingers tapping a restless rhythm.
I can do this.
“Can I ask you a huge favor?”
She doesn’t look up; her focus is on the perfect, caramel-colored swirls. “You can ask. The answer depends on whether it involves me getting involved with another one of your‘community outreach’ ideas that somehow always ends with me baking ten dozen cookies.”
It was for the middle school’s bake sale, and it was an awesome pitch. Even better outcome.
“No cookies,” I promise, taking a deep breath. “I need to borrow the bakery. After hours. For a… project.”
That gets her attention. Her hands go still, and her sharp, knowing eyes flick up to mine. “Aproject.”
It all comes tumbling out in a rushed, excited whisper. It’s the outcome of holding everything in for three days straight without telling the one woman I consider my best friend.
“It’s Wesley,” I blurt out, voice too soft for the chaos happening inside me. “I’ve decided I can’t just… keep watching him from across the room, pretending I don’t care. I have to try. I have a plan.”
A slow smile spreads across Sasha’s face. “Finally. Does this plan involve something more effective than just staring at him while he stares miserably at a slice of cheesecake?”
Her eyes truly are knowing.
“It’s the only way I know how,” I confess, feeling a blush warm my cheeks. “I’m going to win his heart, literally through his stomach. I’m going to invite him here for private tasting sessions. I’ve already told him that I need help improving, that I want to be a real pastry chef. It’s the perfect excuse to spend time with him, and we’ll get close. Friendship will form, and then a relationship will develop. It’s foolproof.”
I beam at her, expecting her to share in my genius.
