Baking Up Love

by Simone Belarose

  The truth was a little worse than that apparently. She’d run off but nobody knew where or if she was going to come back. Richard never spoke of her, and I wasn’t very interested in bringing up the awkward topic.

  “Where do you think she’s been all this time?” I asked.

  Claire rolled onto her back, pulled my arm across her and stared at the ceiling. “Your guess is as good as mine. Though she’s supposedly been clean for ten years, has the chip and everything.”

  “When are you supposed to meet?”

  “Tomorrow, Jemma said she’s staying at some place out of town. She didn’t feel it was right to stay in Sunrise Valley proper I guess.”

  I tried not to laugh at the ridiculousness of it. “Does she think she’s some sort of town pariah?”

  “I don’t know, sounded kind of weak to me but I didn’t hear it directly. Maybe she thought it would be odd seeing the place after all these years.”

  “Do you want-”

  “No,” she cut me off before I could get the words out. Her voice softened and she squeezed my hand. “No. This is something I have to do on my own. You’ve got enough on your mind.”

  I didn’t agree. This felt important enough to drop everything and be there for her but if she thought she needed to do it on her own I wasn’t going to doubt her. All I could do was be here for her when, and if, she needed me.

  That was what was important. “You know I’m not going anywhere, right?”

  Her eyes shone brightly and she blinked back tears. “I do, that’s what makes you so wonderful Thomas. I know I can count on you to be here when I need you most. I don’t know what good deed I did to deserve you but I’m not going to let you go now that I have you.”

  There was a husky fierceness to her voice. I wondered if the memory of Claire’s mom running out on her made her feel like she had to prove that she wasn’t that woman.

  That she was different. Better.

  All the things I already knew deep in my soul. I doubted Claire about as much as I doubted the sun wouldn’t show up tomorrow.

  “Maybe you saved an old gypsy woman without thinking anything of it, you know like a reverse curse.”

  That brought a snorting laugh out of her. She clapped a hand to her mouth and eyed my spreading grin accusingly. I hadn’t meant to make her laugh, but man did I love the sound of it.

  “A ‘reverse curse’?” She bit her lip to stop from laughing again, took a moment to steady herself. “That’s adorable. And I think I’d know if I was blessed - the word you were looking for is blessed, hon - by some old gypsy woman that I saved and didn’t realize it.”

  “Could’ve done a good deed to somebody and got rewarded for it. What, you don’t believe in karma?”

  She made a face but there was a pensive cast to it for a moment.

  The next second she shook her head to dispel the notion. “I’ve helped too many asshole executives get rich while the hardworking backbone of the company got paid less and less to afford the pay raises and benefit packages of the corporate bosses.”

  Rolling forward, I got to my knees and loomed over her. She paused like a deer in the headlights and looked at me with such open vulnerability that I nearly wept. She was everything precious about life.

  I leaned down and kissed her soft and slow on the lips. “I like to believe that what goes around comes around.”

  Claire ran her tongue over her lips after the kiss. Her eyes fluttering ever so slightly. “It’s too bad my deadbeat mom doesn’t have the same belief, she wouldn’t have dared come back into our lives then. There’d be nothing but a couple of decades of bad karma for her.”

  Nudging her with my hip, she moved enough so I could sit on the edge of the couch. I felt her breasts press against my hip and thigh as she curled around me. I loved the way she did that.

  Whenever we were close, she had this way of eliminating any space between us. Like she had this compulsion to feel all of me against her. It was the little things that she didn’t think of or plan out that showed how much she loved me. Even when she’d doubted her feelings, I knew.

  “What if she did,” I said, reaching down and gliding my palm over the blanket on her hip.

  “‘What if she did,’ what?”

  “What if she believed in karma and knew without a doubt that by coming back she’d be reaping all that bad karma.”

  “Then I’d say I got my brains from dad’s side of the family,” she said with a derisive snort.

  “No, think about it a moment. I’m not on her side or trying to argue for her but just think about what that might mean to a person if they knew it was going to end badly. Maybe, in some small way she’s here not to make amends, but to let you hate more than just the memory of her.”

  I didn’t know if it was true. If her mother was a decent person, maybe it could be. It could just as equally be that she heard of Richard’s death somehow and that was enough to propel her into action.

  Or it was something worse. Much worse. I didn’t really know how wills worked with regard to inheritance and spouses but if Richard had never divorced her she may be looking for a payout.

  Which was definitely not the sort of thing you shared with your worried girlfriend who was looking, fiercely searching was more like it, for any way out of meeting her estranged mother.

  “How about I get us some ice cream?” I said with more enthusiasm than I felt.

  I was beat. There were unseen side effects of hiring Sam. I figured now that I had a good rhythm going I could come in around eleven in the morning, get started on some things and be there to cover her lunch hour later.

  What I didn’t realize, is that by having Sam in the front all day I ended up finding more things to do in the back.

  Supply stopped being an issue but I was constantly making or kneading something. I didn’t get the forced breaks from using my arms, hands, and back whenever a guest came into the shop.

  If I was going to make it work I’d need to find a way to pace myself. I wasn’t working twelve-hour days anymore. I was able to work a relatively standard nine now. And while that didn’t seem like much, I could already feel the difference it made.

  But there was a marked difference between nine hours of near-constant labor and twelve hours of running back and forth between front and back. I was putting in a lot more physical work than I was used to because I suddenly could.

  Still, I wanted to be there for Claire. The siren call of our bed could wait. I wouldn’t sleep well if I knew she was upset anyway.

  “What, right now?” she asked sitting up.

  “Yeah, there’s an ice cream parlor down on Third. If we go now we can get there before it closes.”

  The name was brilliant, and the pun was so effortless I’m surprised nobody ever thought about doing it before.

  The woman that ran it was relatively new but the shop had passed through many hands ever since I was a kid. At some point it was a dress shop but I guess a small town like ours never had much use for that. It was a shame because it always looked so pretty when I was a kid. Fancy dresses and gowns on display in the large window like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting.

  Now it was an ice cream shop with a few dozen flavors that were cycled out once a week.

  “I keep thinking there’s some sort of punch line here.”

  “Oh, there is,” I assured her. “Just wait until you see the name.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” she said as we pulled up to the small parking lot outside the parlor. Clair pinched the bridge of her nose. “What is up with this town and puns?”

  I got out of the car clutching my sides, reading the sign again. Scoopy-Doo Mystery Cream. Absolutely brilliant. I always loved Scooby-Doo as a kid, and the sign had its own little painting of the green Mystery Machine they used to solve all those ridiculous capers in.

  By the time we got inside, I was still giggling like a little kid.

  Behind the counter was a young woman, somewhere in her early
twenties but I was also horrible with telling age so I could have been way off.

  She greeted us with a cheery smile. Her bright red hair was cut short in a wavy bob that dusted her shoulders. She had dark blue eyes the color of deep seawater and a smile that spread from ear to ear. “Welcome to Scoopy-Doo! What can I get ya? Any flavors you want to try?”

  With my arm around Claire’s waist, we walked deeper into the chilly room.

  Each of the glass cases was frosted with ice and gave off a frigid chill that I absolutely loved. It’d been so long since I’d been in a proper ice cream parlor I’d almost forgotten what it was like.

  The woman’s gaze lingered on me, and I felt Claire stiffen beside me. She suddenly snapped her fingers loudly and pointed. “I know who you are! You’re the baker guy on Main Street, right? A Game of Scones?”

  “That’s me,” I said with a weak smile.

  “That’s awesome!” She reached over the display to shake my hand. We had a friendly, if a little awkward, handshake. I got the surreal feeling like she thought I was some kind of celebrity but kept the thought to myself. I didn’t want to feed my ego by voicing it aloud. “You know, us folk who come up with punny names should stick together.”

  I chuckled. “We really should form a club.” I nudged Claire forward a little. “And this is my girlfriend, Claire. I don’t know if you remember it but her dad used to own the closed bookstore next to my bakery, A Novel Place.”

  The girl snorted and chortled, one hand covering her mouth. “Oh, that’s clever. I love books. The library here sucks. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Claire. I’m Alice.” They shook hands, somehow Claire made it seem professional and not the least bit awkward. “Both of you pick out a flavor you like and take it, it’s on the house.”

  “That’s very kind of you Alice,” said Claire. She looked at all the options, then back at Alice.

  Before Claire could ask, she hustled down the row of tubs in the glass display until she came to a deep green one with black bits crumbled in it. “I’m really proud of this one, it’s called Shrek’s Swamp. It’s mint ice cream with fudge swirl, brownie bits, and of course chocolate chunks.”

  “That. I want that,” said Claire.

  “And what’ll you have?” Alice looked expectantly at me.

  “How about that one?” It was a riot of color swirled together with bright sprinkles and what looked like those little gumballs that I remember from the childhood ice cream man. The sort that came from those sherbert ice cream pops in the shape of video game characters.

  “Ohhh, Unicorn Farts.” I couldn’t help but laugh at the name. “Very good choice. Now, the most important question of the day. Cone, waffle, or cup?”

  Claire and I walked out of there with our ice cream, both in massive freshly made waffle cones. Not the dried out crusty kind you get at the store but actual waffles.

  “I don’t know how I’ve lived in this town as long as I have and never managed to go inside,” I said, smearing ice cream on my face by accident when Claire stepped on the gas suddenly.

  “Sorry. Still not used to this thing. If I’m going to stay here I’ll need to get something a bit more economical. Going two blocks is like five gallons of gas!”

  I sincerely doubted that but I got what she was driving at. Suburbans were basically miniature buses in my opinion. “Maybe we’ll get one when we have a thousand kids and need the room to ferry them around town.”

  Claire blushed straight to the roots of her hair and I realized what I’d said aloud. How presumptuous it was even if I meant it innocently enough. She looked at me and I did my best to paint a look on my face that didn’t reflect that I was screaming internally at myself for making such a colossal fuck-up.

  By the time she pulled into the parking lot behind the bakery, it was dark out.

  We rode in silence the last two blocks and I was sure I fucked something up. Her hand fell on my thigh. “You’re not going to scare me off by saying something so sweet and, quite frankly fucking hot. I don’t want you to feel like you need to walk on eggshells around me, okay?”

  I nodded and offered her cone back to her. “I didn’t think you would, but I realized it may have seemed a little…odd.”

  “We’ve known each other much longer than we’ve been dating.” She took the cone and leaned forward, licking a trail of melted ice cream that dripped onto my hand. “I would be lying if I said I didn’t have fantasies or dreams of us getting married and having kids. And that was before I knew how loving you were.”

  My breath hitched in my chest and I forgot to breathe. Claire sauntered up the steps as innocently as can be. Halfway up the steps, she shot me an impish smile over her shoulder.

  I hurried to catch up to her.

  Once we were inside we went back to the couch, one of our favorite places in the apartment. It had a decent view of the skyline and was tall enough that if you were seated on the couch you couldn’t tell that most of the shops along Main Street were closed.

  Despite all the new people coming into the shop from all over, it was something I heard a lot. People wondered why my shop was one of the few open on Main Street. They wanted to know what happened to the others, and quite frankly I did too.

  There was no denying that it hurt business. Not just mine but the whole town’s. I wished there was something I could do about it.

  Claire put her feet up on my lap. “This is really good, you two should do a promotion. Drive business to each other. Neither of your products overlaps on the other’s, I’ll give her a call tomorrow.”

  “You really think so?” Despite the ridiculous - and deeply enjoyable - name, Unicorn Farts was delicious. It was a medley of different sherbert flavors swirled with cream.

  “Yeah, she’s got the same problem as you did I think. All she needs is a little exposure. Unfortunately, her location is pretty bad. I didn’t even know it was here and I’ve been driving around town for the past couple of weeks doing various errands.”

  “Everybody loves a good cone of ice cream.”

  Claire licked hers suggestively and grinned at me. “This was a good idea, thank you, Thomas. It really helped me get my mind off my problems for a bit.”

  “Alice had a point, you know. This town’s library does suck. I usually have to get books delivered if I want anything decent or new.”

  “One step at a time, hon.” There was that word again. It sent a shiver of affection running through me. I’d never been one for pet names, or little bits of cuteness like that, but when she said it…something felt right about it.

  We stayed on the couch for most of the night. After the ice creams, she popped out her laptop and caught up on some work while I got out my phone and continued my research.

  I put on some music from the wireless speakers and we relaxed in companionable silence. This was the sort of night I always dreamed of having. The comfort, the quiet.

  I would have said it was better than sex before meeting Claire. These were the moments I imagined all happy marriages were built on. The simple moments between the chaos of life that we all take for granted once they’re gone.

  That was when I knew, without an ounce of doubt, I was going to marry Claire.

  15

  Claire

  Something had changed between Thomas and I. At first I thought it was just my imagination but there was an ease with the way we treated each other. He was more relaxed around me, and I felt at home with him near me.

  It was subtle but it was the difference between being alone by yourself and being alone with somebody else. I was always - even if just a little - different when I was with somebody else.

  There was this level of complete relaxation when I was on my own. I didn’t need to worry about how I looked or what I did or said. I could be myself, entirely. It was like that between Thomas and me that night after we came back from getting ice cream.

  For once I was able to enjoy the solitude of being alone, without having to actually be alone. Thomas was there, and
while we were both in our own little bubbles we remained tethered to each other.

  It was the best of both worlds.

  If only it could have lasted forever and we never needed to break the spell by going to sleep.

  The next morning I woke up to the grim task of getting ready for a day I truly did not want to face. Thomas was there for me. I had almost expected to wake up alone, then happily remembered that he wouldn’t be leaving home anymore until around eleven except on the weekend.

  Home. The apartment is my home now. The thought still made me giddy.

  Even then he’d only be leaving around eight in the morning instead of six or earlier. It really was too bad that I couldn’t take advantage of this gift of time we had now in the morning.

  I’d have to make it up to him later.

  I got ready, ate breakfast and was out of the apartment by nearly ten o’clock. Jemma had texted me the address of a place we could get brunch, which gave me plenty of time to pull it up on GPS and make my way there.

  For some reason, I felt a sense of relief knowing that we were meeting her outside of town. Maybe there was something to her reason for wanting to stay out of town after all.

  Sunrise Valley had become a safe space for me. A place where things were still capable of being good. I didn’t want her to ruin that.

  Off the state road that wound through the valley and up over the mountain, I found the diner where I’d most likely skip brunch and stare angrily at my mother if she even bothered to show up.

  I wasn’t going to hold my breath.

  Jemma’s rusty station wagon was already there. I spotted her in the driver’s seat, hands still on the wheel in an iron grip. Uh oh. I parked in the spot beside her and came over to the driver’s side window.

  I tapped on the glass. “Having second thoughts?”

  She jumped, then glared at me like it was my fault. “Jesus! You scared me. Of course I’m having second thoughts, I didn’t really think you’d agree to this.”