A week passes rather quickly when you get up at 4am, work a 15 hour day, come "home" to a mostly empty shack with only enough energy to eat a Pop Tart, pass out and then do it all over again the next day. I'm used to waking up early. It comes with the territory. I'm also used to working longer hours than most people. That also comes with the territory. I'm just not used to everything being in constant upheaval.
I wake up at 4 am and walk to Tiny Baker. It's not even light out, but I enjoy the walk. There are usually still crickets singing, and the damp, warm night air is a nice relief from the scorchingly hot days we've been having. It gives me time to think. Time to get ready for the day. Once at the bakery, I start the morning bread and pastries. At around eight, Mandy comes in. She always brings coffee with her, though I'm usually already on my second cup by then. She's sweet like that. Our morning rush starts around 8:30, and doesn't die down til after 10. Then, I have time to work on sorting out the tornado of an office I've neglected. Mandy had done what she could, but a lot of it was Krissy's negligence. Another downside of trying to run a business from the other side of the country. Things can seem peachy, but in reality, your head chef was probably fornicating with the pool boy instead of keeping orders straight.
After I work on the piles of paperwork for a few hours, Mandy usually begs me to take a break, or forces me to eat a sandwich, and then it's back to more paperwork or cleaning. I also help her with the lunch crowd, if it gets too crazy. I don't usually leave until six or seven, way after our closing time of 2pm. I do this every day. And by day seven, I'm starting to feel a little despondent. Just a little. Like, a nice, long walk off a cliff would be a good vacation.
"Don't you want to take a day off? It's waited this long, I think the paperwork can wait a few hours so you can breathe for a second." Mandy says, looking at her nails. She's just taken a long lunch to get them done. She has another hot date with Marcus the drummer later tonight. She's curled her dark hair, and it falls in ringlets around her pretty, excited face. I can't remember the last time I was so excited about a date that I was practically beaming light.
"I don't have anything else to do." I shrug, and start filing more papers. I'm used to Tiny Baker being my life. It may seem sad to some, but to me it's just who I am.
My hands are shaking a bit. It may be because of all the coffee I've been drinking. Today has just felt weird, unsettled. Like, I've been walking a tightrope all day. I feel a bit down, and I wonder if I do need to get away from the bakery for a bit. Who knew bread could be so depressing?
"You can come with me and Marcus. We're going to the Ink Pot. They have a band on Friday nights." Mandy says, her eyes lighting up. Ah, the Ink Pot. One of the only real bars in Havre de Grace. It is as it's name suggests. Dark, sort of dirty, and full of shady spots to get lost with a date.
"Mmm...beer." I sigh, but then I'm shaking my head. "It's sort of a place for a younger crowd." I'm well aware I'm only three years older than Mandy, but I honestly feel like I could be her grandmother. She rolls her eyes and jabs me in the shoulder.
"Stop acting like you're so old, Charlie."
"I am." I groan. "I wonder why the library doesn't have a bar? How great would that be?" I grin. Mandy considers this for a minute and then nods.
"Maybe if you actually slept, and ate more than one turkey club a day, you'd feel normal." She leans against the door frame of the office, tucking her arms under her chest. I lean back in my rolley desk chair, and I swear I hear my bones creaking.
"I eat at least four or five croissants when you leave." I grin. She rolls her eyes again, and purses her lips.
"Is it because you don't want to see him?" Mandy's voice is quiet. I can tell she is almost afraid to ask, and I am immediately afraid to answer her. We don't even need to say his name. I'm almost a little surprised that I've been in Maryland for a week now, and it's the first time anyone has brought him up.
"Hm." The noise that comes out of me is short, and succinct. "Let's not go there." My final answer. She nods, and then tucks her hands into her pockets. She is the closest thing I have to a girl friend in Maryland, and I know she knows it. It makes her a little protective of me, which makes me smile.
"I've never seen him at the Ink Pot. He mostly sticks to his restaur—" Mandy keeps talking, but I almost immediately shut her out. She just becomes a blurry figure, with a big 'ol moving mouth.
"Mandy." I say, reaching up and pulling my hair into a messy bun. She stops mid sentence. "Go and have fun. I have more to do here. Thanks for the invite, but maybe another time." I say gently.
Mandy opens her mouth, but then closes it, realizing that I'm not going to budge. She sighs and then shrugs.
"Okay. I'll see you tomorrow, Charlie. How's the cottage coming along?" Mandy moves around the office, grabbing her bag and getting ready to leave.
"It's...existing." The cottage looks almost exactly like it did a week ago, except now there is a queen sized air mattress (the only thing they had left at Walmart), and a folding chair with a matching folding table. Basically, the saddest thing you can ever think of for furniture in a house. Yeah, that's where I live.
"You'll get it together." Mandy flashes me a smile and I nod.
"I will. I'm just going to clean it up and sell it, most likely. So I have to keep that in mind." I turn toward the computer, and start clicking through my work email. A few requests for cake tastings, and orders. Some spam mail from various baking suppliers. An email from my mother, the subject line titled "Family dinner!!!" I groan inwardly, but don't open it. If I don't open it, does it still exist? It's like Schrödinger's cat.
Mandy is checking her phone, and moving very slowly toward the door. I wonder if she's going to walk right into it but then she stops dead, her nose practically touching the wall in front of her.
"Mandy?" I frown, turning my chair toward her. She's staring at her phone.
"Oh my god. Your imaginary friend...Tom Harrison?" She asks. I feel something run through me, but I can't quite put a finger on it. Worry? Fear? Confusion? It's strange to me that he's a celebrity, and when people mention him sometimes it's because they have seen his work, or have heard his name somewhere, but they mostly likely don't actually know him. I never think of him that way. To me, he's just pain-in-the-apple-pie Tom. The fact that Mandy is mentioning him means she's heard something about him.
The first time I had let on that he was one of my best friends, she'd squealed for about five minutes into my ear before making a coherent sentence. It had been pretty funny. Unfortunately, every time she'd come to visit me in LA he'd been away for work so she has yet to actually meet him. We joke that he's just my imaginary friend. If I was going to have an imaginary friend, I would have made him far less cheeky, and not quite so obnoxiously good looking.
"Yes. What about him?" I say carefully.
"Oh wow." She's still looking at her phone, scrolling on the screen with her forefinger.
"Mandy?" I sit up, frowning. She looks at me, her eyes wide and surprised. I swallow hard, feeling my mouth go dry.
"He was engaged?" She says, her voice loud in the small office. Was? Was engaged?
"Yes." I say again.
"His fiancé was caught cheating on him. She was making out with someone in broad daylight. It's all over the news. There's pictures." Mandy says, her voice coming out fast and high with excitement. I feel my stomach drop to my feet, and then everything feels a little fuzzy. It's like the air has become full of spider webs, sticky and obtrusive. I can't breathe.
"What? Where are you seeing this?" I stand up, wobble a bit and then steady myself. Mandy rushes over, and grabs my arm.
"Are you okay?" She looks worried, her light eyes narrowed. I nod.
"What does it say?" I nod at her phone and she hands it to me. We both notice my hands are shaking when I take it from her, but neither of us say anything. She has a website open that I immediately recognize as one of the more popular celebrity gossip websites. There is a paragraph or two of writing, but I can't seem to focus enough to read it. I scroll down with my shaking fingers, and then there she is. Keegan.
Keegan with her arms wrapped tightly around a man's neck. Their faces are smashed together, in what looks like a rather passionate, if not painful, kiss. It's the sort of kiss that looks like they are trying to eat each other's noses off, rather than share a lovely, sweet, intimate moment. He has dark, long hair that's pulled into a low pony tail. He's stocky, on the shorter side, and everything about him is olive skinned and dark haired, aka not Tom. Not Tom at all.
"Oh. Fuck." I whisper. Granny, forgive me.
"That's not good." Mandy breathes out. I shake my head. I notice that they are standing out in front of Keegan's yoga studio, only a few miles from where Tiny Baker is in LA. For some reason, this makes me almost blindingly angry. Did she honestly think that was okay? To so boldly cheat on Tom?
"Have you talked to him recently?" Mandy asks, and I have to take a deep breath before answering, waiting for my blood red vision to clear up.
"No. Not since last week." I whisper, pretty sure my stomach has fallen out of my butt. I can barely breathe. Oh god, does Tom know? Has he seen? I hand Mandy back her phone and then reach into my apron, fumbling around to find mine.
I swipe it on, and find that I have a text message. My heart is racing. Oh, Tom. My poor Tom. Though he annoys me with his constant cheeriness and his penchant for dropping Shakespeare casually into conversation, but he is also quite possibly the sweetest person I know. He is the last person on earth that deserves this. My heart breaks as I shakily open my text message program. Only, the text is not from Tom. It's from my mother. Forks and spoons, for the love of pastries! Argh!
Family dinner soon! Love, Mom!
I blink away tears as I go back to my text messages, ignoring my mother's inconvenient text. I click on Tom's name, just to make sure there isn't anything new from him. All I see is the last text I sent him, from the plane. I'd asked him if he'd ever been in love, and his reply.... I think so.
Mandy is babbling now, but I can't hear her. I just look at her, like she's speaking Spanish (which I've always wanted to learn, but haven't gotten past hola! and a few choice curse words because sometimes it's okay to curse in another language since Granny only spoke English and wouldn't recognize them anyway), and then I'm shaking my head.
"Mandy, I need a minute." My voice comes out all squeaky and now she's looking at me funny.
"Okay. Are you alright?" She asks.
"Yes, but I need to call Tom. I'll see you tomorrow?" I ask, gently pushing her out of the office. She nods, tucking her phone into her pocket.
"I hope everything is okay with him and his fiancé!" She says as she backs out of the room, toward the front of the bakery. I'm not sure how to respond to that, so I just nod and close the office door quickly, slumping against it as I turn back to my phone.
Tom? Are you okay? What is going on? I text quickly and hit send. I wait for all of four seconds before I'm hitting the phone icon and dialing his number.
It rings and rings and rings, and then I get his voicemail.
"Hi! You've reached Tom. Leave me a message and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. Thanks so much." His voice is cheery, and carefree, and I can almost see him smiling as he says it. My heart squeezes.
"Hi, oh god, Tom." My voice is still squeaky, but I rush forward. "Please, call me. I hope you are okay. I can't..." I don't want to ramble, but I can feel the word vomit coming on. "Keegan is a flipping idiot, Tom. I saw the picture and I just want to..." I'm so angry I could spit, and it's just making me sound like an illiterate fool. I take a breath and pause. "Please, just call me. I'm here." I say, and then hang up before I can say anything else. I slide down the office door, coming to stop on the floor. I close my eyes, and feel my heart still racing. I can't help but remember the day Tom told me he was going to ask Keegan to marry him. It was also the day that I burnt three dozen chocolate chip cookies. I don't know if those two things are related.
****
When Tom told me he was going to propose to Keegan, it was a Friday morning and he'd just randomly shown up at the bakery. I was covered in flour, and in a really terrible mood. Fridays are always busy at the bakery since everyone wants their weekend pastries, or they've given up on their week long fad diets and only a half dozen macaroons will make things right in the world for them. I don't blame them, in fact, I support them in their quest, but it does make things rather hectic.
"Tom's here." Alice stuck her head in the kitchen, and I look up from the bread I'm kneading. I was elbows deep in dough when Tom walked in, looking way too forking happy.
"I can't talk. I'm making sourdough." I said, punching away.
"I brought you a latte." He set a huge paper travel cup down in front of me, and I sighed.
"Okay, I can talk." I grinned and started wrapping the bowls of dough in plastic film. Tom sat down and started staring longingly at some huge chocolate chip cookies that were cooling on a rack. There were three other trays in the oven, almost ready to come out.
"You can have one." I said. I picked up the coffee he'd brought me, and take a sip. Tom grabbed two cookies off the rack and started eating them quickly. I walked by, bumping him with my hip as I did.
"Did you go on another date with that wanker?" Tom asked, leaning back against the table behind him. I groaned and rolled my eyes as I began cleaning up the space. At the time, I'd been dating a guy named Josh who Tom absolutely hated. It wasn't serious, and Tom was doing everything he could to make sure it never got serious. I thought Josh was a nice guy, but for whatever reason, after they'd met one time, Tom had decided he didn't like him.
"You mean Josh?" I moved around the large kitchen, putting dirty things in the sink and throwing away waste. Tom watched me, his eyes following my movements as he ate his cookies. The man loves cookies. I could have told him I was dating Charles Manson, and as long as he was eating a cookie, he'd probably take it in stride.
"Yeah." He crossed his arms over his broad chest. He was dressed casually in a gray tshirt and jeans, his hair a bit darker than normal from some movie he'd been working on.
"We went out last Saturday. We saw a movie and then we made out. It was okay." I take another sip of my coffee and fight off a groan. It's so good. Tom knows me well enough to know the true way to my heart. Coffee is one of those ways.
"How was it?" He asked, shifting in his chair and eyeing more cookies.
"It was really funny, and I liked the one actor in it. I don't remember his name, but he's been in other movies by the same director—"
"Not the movie, the making out." Tom said, sounding annoyed. I stopped moving around and leaned against the table next to him. He turned and looked at me, his blue eyes revealed nothing. I pursed my lips and then tilted my head.
"Nosy." I said with a grin. He shrugged.
"Answer the question, Charles."
"It was decent. I give it a 7 out 10." This made Tom laugh and he grabbed another cookie, putting the whole thing in his mouth at once. I frowned at him, then shook my head in mock disgust.
"7 out of 10? 70%? That's barely a C. That's failing. And you want to still see this guy?" Tom finished the cookie he was eating and then grabbed my coffee and took a drink.
"What do you want, Harrison? Besides to come here, be annoying and eat all my cookies?" I crossed my arms in front of my chest, suddenly very aware of how disheveled I must have looked. My dark hair was piled on my head to keep it out of the way. I was wearing an old threadbare tshirt, and a pair of ratty jeans that hung low on my hips. Tom was used to being around perfectly coiffed, sized 2 women in designer clothes and dripping in jewelry, but strangely enough, he never made me feel like I was dumpy. Perhaps it's because I'm not even sure he recognizes that I'm female. I'm like the Keebler flipping elf to him.
"I'm going to ask Keegan to marry me." He seemed to blurt out, his smiling fading. He watched me, waiting for my reaction. I stopped dead in my tracks and pressed my lips together. I was really not sure how I felt. Not quite surprised. Not quite happy. Not quite sad. Just...resigned?
"She's the one, eh?" I said finally and crossed my arms under my breasts. I'd worn quite possibly the most uncomfortable bra that day, and could feel the underwire digging into my cleavage. Awesome. A punctured boob and Tom getting married, all in one day. Perfect.
"Yeah. She is." He stood up and moved toward me. I took a step back, without even really thinking about it. I felt like there just needed to be more space between us. He didn't seem to notice.
"Congratulations. That's great news." I said, but for some reason my mouths feels big and clunky, like my teeth are too large and my tongue is too big, and I just ate a bunch of peanut butter.
"Thank you, Charlie. I know you and Keegan have had your differences, but it's so important to me that I told you in person. That you are with me on this." Interesting choice of words, TW. I swallowed hard, and then pushed everything I was feeling deep down into the back of my mind. I smiled, a bit too hard, sure that my giant teeth and fat sluggy tongue were just sort of bulging out all over the place. He looked at me in a way I couldn't quite read, but then it was gone a split second later, and Tom was hugging me.
A Tom hug is not like any other hug. It might be because we have almost a foot difference in height, and I come about mid chest on him. But he throws his whole self into a hug. He sort of bends down, and makes his long, lean body into this amazing comfy Tom cradle. I can't focus for a minute, with my face smushed against his chest, and his long arms wrapped around me. He smells like clean. Clean clothes and a bit like leather and old books and crisp fall days and manly things. Oy, I need to get out more.
"I'm glad for you, Tom. I hope you two are really happy." I said into his broad chest. He pulled back and I can breathe again.
"Will you make our cake?" His eyes were this ridiculous blue color, and he looked at me with quite possibly the most open and sweet expression I'd ever seen. If I had a heart, it would have melted.
"Of course!" I smiled. He licked his lips.
"Will you be in the wedding, sweet? On my side? As a sort of...grooms lady?" He blinked, slowly, waiting. My mind went completely and totally blank.
It was at this point that I smelled something burning. Quite possibly my feet as I was desperately trying to run away.
"The cookies!" I exclaimed, my voice way too loud. It dawned on me that I'd left the last batch in the oven for about ten minutes too long. I ran over to the big oven, grabbing my mitts as I did, and started pulling the trays out. The big, black lumps were definitely not chocolate chip cookies anymore. Tom watched, looking both amused and a bit upset. I waved my mitt around, trying to dispel some of the smoke.
"I'm having second thoughts about the wedding cake..." He raised an eyebrow at me as I started angrily poking at my cookie turds.
"Go away, please." I mumbled. He walked over, and I could feel him hovering near me. I ignored him for as long as I could, scraping and grumbling. He kept inching closer, until he was standing directly behind me, and I could practically feel him. I straightened, banged the tray onto my metal work table and turned around abruptly. Ah. He was directly behind me. We stood nose to nose, or in our case, nose to chest.
"What do you say then?" He asked softly, looking down at me. I stood completely still, the inch or so inbetween our bodies was incredibly important to me keeping my sanity. I clenched my hands, balled them up into fists and then shoved them into my apron pockets. The air around us smelled of burned cookies, and yet all I could really smell was him.
"About what, Tom?" I asked, trying my best to look huffy and annoyed. He tilted his head to the side, his blue eyes searched mine. I was holding my breath, and I didn't totally know why.
"Being in my wedding." He said simply.
"Yes of course. No problem." I nodded and then slid quickly to the side, away from Tom and his imposing figure. I turned back to my cookies, and kept scraping and scraping and scraping until I could practically see my reflection in the shiny metal.