Page 6 of Loverboy
She felt it too. At the end of the summer we shared the most outrageous kiss. Afterward, I walked on air, feeling like a game show contestant who’d just won a new car.
Until the next day, when she got me fired.
Posy turned out to be the same kind of unforgiving rich kid I’d spent my teenage years avoiding. And I guess I’m still bitter, because I think I’d rather crawl through a sewage pipe than work for her shop.
“Here’s an idea,” I say to Max. “I don’t have to work there. I can just loiter.”
“At your former rival’s place of business. Because that’s not creepy at all.” Max smiles slowly.
Fuck.
2
Posy
“Did you set the oven timer?”I ask Ginny, who’s filling in as my kitchen assistant.
My sister rolls her eyes. “Uh huh. Forty-two minutes. Just like you told methree times.”
“Excellent,” I say calmly. I love my sister. I would do anything for Ginny and her five-year-old son. But neither of us is thrilled with this situation. My shop is desperate for labor, and Ginny is strapped for cash. So we need each other.
Unfortunately, last week she burned two full racks of pastry. Margins are tight enough around here without throwing away sixty bucks worth of ingredients and two hours of my labor.
Since it's two o'clock, I've been baking for ten hours already. I’ve made a hundred breakfast pastries, a hundred meat pies, and thirty full-sized pies for the shop. I’m dead on my feet, and closing time is still two hours away.
Opening a cafe is a lot of hard work and risk-taking. I knew it would be. I've had a lifetime of watching how the restaurant industry operates. I opened Posy’s Pie Shop with eyes wide open. Newly divorced, and burnt out on my desk job, I needed a new challenge.
And boy, did I find one. I’m already doing a booming business. The place is packed for most of our business hours. My lower-Manhattan clientele is willing to pay six dollars for a slice of my gourmet fruit pie, or nine bucks for a lunchtime meat pie. We sell out nearly every day.
But my costs are high, too. Gourmet ingredients cost a fortune. And I have trouble hiring enough help. I had a terrific staff in place before Lily—my assistant baker—fell in love with Keisha—my barista. It was all well and good until they decided to ditch city life to work on a billionaire’s yacht. I lost two terrific employees in one day.
That was a month ago, and I’ve been struggling ever since. In the first place, I think of Posy’s Pie Shop like a family. So losing Lily and Keisha hurt. Since then, I’ve already hired and fired three people. That hurt, too, since it felt like firing family members.
But one of them was stealing from me and two were chronically late. That’s family for you.
"Where's Jerry?" I ask Ginny, who’s measuring out flour for tomorrow's first batch of pastry.
“Out back,” she says. “Vaping, probably.”
“No, I'm not!” Jerry's voice pipes up from just outside the screen door. “I’m reading comics on my tablet!”
Jerry never lies to me. “Jerry, honey, it's time to clean the kitchen. You can read comics after four, okay?”
“Okay, Posy!” The backdoor bangs open and Jerry appears, all smiles. He has Down syndrome, and I employ him through a program that matches men and women with special challenges to businesses that can hire them. He comes in every day at one o’clock to restock things like napkins and cups, and to wash dishes.
He is the nicest guy you will ever meet, and it was a lucky day when I agreed to give him a try in my shop. He is, however, prone to distraction. Not a single day goes by that he doesn’t wander away from a sink full of dishes just to catch up on comics.
That's just the cost of doing business with Jerry. Everyone is flawed in his own way, right? Just like in a real family.
"Posy!" calls Teagan from the counter out front.
Crap. “Is it time for you to leave?” I call out.
Teagan is a baker, too. She makes the world-class donuts I buy wholesale to supplement my early morning offerings. But because I’m in such dire need of help, and because Teagan has expensive taste in shoes, I've talked her into working the counter for me a few hours a day, too, on a temporary basis.
“I’m leaving in fifteen,” Teagan calls. "But there's somebody here about your barista job."
“Wait, really?” I drop the metal mixing bowl I’d been holding and grab the nearest towel to wipe off my hands. “Don't let her leave! I'll be right there!Ginny,” I bark. “Listen for the oven timer.”
