Sweet on You

by Carla de Guzman

  Sari narrowed her eyes at him, because she wasn’t sure if he meant to say that as an insult or a compliment.

  “Kira Luz was actually the one who helped get me this space,” he continued, steamrolling right over any retort Sari might have to the contrary. “We were classmates in Ateneo. In Manila.”

  Because of course, he was.

  Who did this guy think he was, just showing up in the Laneways, opening up a store, with a fancy Ateneo education, perfect English, cringey Taglish, blasting his music loud enough like he had the right to all of it, and offering Sari muffins of all things. E di ikaw na yung magaling! Buwiset.

  “I know where Ateneo is,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I went to UP. Diliman.”

  “Oh, a smart girl,” he said, and she wanted to wipe that little grin on his face, because it wasn’t fair that she was the one getting all riled up, and he had yet to take the bait. “Have you met her?”

  “Who?” Sari asked, and God, these tangents. Stick to one conversation topic, sir!

  “Kira Luz?”

  “Yes, I know her. I know her better than you do. We grew up together, went to high school in Manila together.” Sari shrugged. “If you think the Luzes are a big deal, both our families have been in Lipa for as long as Lipa has been a city.”

  A fact that she had found out very late in life, when she and Kira were old enough to do a little digging on their family histories. While the Tomases had been here since the Spanish priests brought coffee to Lipa in 1740, the Luzes had lived in Lipa long before that. Legacies like Kira’s and Sari’s were rooted in the land, and Sari had thought more than once that it was her legacy that saved her.

  “My apologies, Big Deal,” he said, humoring her with a little bow, and Sari’s frown deepened even further. They were getting off-topic again, and the man clearly wasn’t respecting her authority.

  “Just keep the music down.”

  “What?”

  “Music!” Sari made a gesture like she was either telling him to lower the volume, or trying to pet a very small dog. Clearly he was thinking the same thing, because he suddenly pressed his lips together and looked away like he was trying very hard not to laugh in her face. “All I Want for Christmas Is You” was really not helping Sari’s mood.

  The timer that she hadn’t realized was attached to the front of his apron beeped, and he frowned and pressed a button on it.

  “Hold that thought, muffin,” he said, giving her a little wink before he turned and left the door, making Sari scramble forward to hold it open. She was just about to barge in to his space, invade him a little bit (not innuendo) when he came back with the music volume a little lower, and a tray of freshly baked muffins that he placed on the counter near the fire escape.

  “You sure you don’t want my muffins?” he asked using his pouting lips to point at the muffins before he walked back to the door and held up his side. Sari could just smell the sweetness of him, the little bit of citrus and flora from the sinturis that he must have been hand-squeezing. It was an intoxicating smell, mixing in with the coffee still lingering in her own clothes. If she closed her eyes she could remember being a kid lying on the grass, with sunlight filtering through the trees as she sipped sinturis juice from a glass. Her grandmother would be inside, calling the kids to merienda, tired after trying to convince her daughter-in-law not to leave her son.

  Sari immediately knew getting this guy’s muffins was a bad idea.

  “My mother taught me not to take baked goods from strangers,” she managed to say without fluttering her eyelashes.

  “Lucky I’m not a stranger, then. Gabriel Capras,” he said, holding out a hand for her to shake. One look at his long, tapered, sugar-splattered fingers and the veins on the back of his hand made Sari’s knees feel slightly weak. She pushed that thought to the furthest recesses of her mind, in a box labelled DO NOT OPEN. “I just moved from Manila, and I’m not a Big Deal like you or Kira, but...this is my bakery.”

  Did she just imagine that little catch in his voice when he said that? If she hadn’t, then he covered it up quickly, picking up a steaming mug of coffee that he raised to his lips.

  Sari couldn’t help it—her nose wrinkled.

  “Is that...3-in-1?” She couldn’t help but ask. Yes, her voice had A Tone. She was totally aware that the instant three-in-one mixes were popular, convenient, and sugary sweet. But why have that when she was right next door?

  I smell a hypocrite, Sari heard her conscience whisper. But she was way too deep in the waters of her annoyance to really try to process that, so she stayed in it, glaring at the mug. It was almost insulting, really, that he would dare put that stuff anywhere near her café.

  “Yes it is,” Gabriel said, lifting his mug, which said, “I’ve got big buns.” “You sure you don’t want a sinturis muffin?”

  “Yes,” Sari said decisively. Clearly having as little interaction as possible to her neighbor was going to be the right course of action here.

  “Yes?”

  “Yes, I’m sure I don’t want one,” and because she was her grandmother’s granddaughter, she struggled to find a polite reason to decline perfectly baked, fresh muffins that were, just as importantly, free. “I’m...on a diet. No carbs, no sugar, no muffin.”

  “Why are you on a diet, though? You’re gorgeous.”

  Sari nearly let go of her side of the door as her knees buckled. He said that like it was a fact. The sky is blue, grass is green, and you’re gorgeous. Had anyone ever said that about her?

  Sari didn’t really want to think about it at the moment. Between this and her upcoming Naked Dance Parties after Sam left, she was having one of those days when nothing made sense. And for someone who needed her entire world to make sense, she absolutely hated this, hated him.

  “It’s gorgeous because I haven’t touched a carb in two years,” was the least caustic of the replies she came up with. “I’m going back to my lab. Keep the music down.”

  “Only if you can resist dancing to it.” Gabriel smiled again.

  Her cheeks burned hot, and she knew from experience that Gabriel could see it. She preferred when she didn’t know her competition was this flirty, and had a smile that betrayed how...bastos he was.

  “You sure I can’t tempt you, Sari Tomas?”

  Seriously. Sweet face, but the things he chose to say with that mouth? Ka bastos.

  “I’m sure.”

  “How about a date, then?”

  Now, Sari knew when she was being teased. It had happened to her often enough in other places. And she knew better than to trust anything this guy said to her, especially after she’d been so rude to him.

  He probably didn’t think she was gorgeous at all. Her mother was right. Boys didn’t like girls with big thighs. You know it’s wrong when you start thinking your mother was right, Sari told herself.

  She decided then and there that one, she disliked the bakery owner as much as she disliked the things he baked. Two, she was putting a ban on all his products in her shop, and three, she was never, ever eating anything this guy made.

  “Music down. No muffins. And drink better coffee, my God,” she summarized and exited the fire escape to head back to the safety of the coffee house, where Sam had patiently waited for her.

  She could have sworn she heard him laugh as she closed the door behind her.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” Sari grumbled at her sister, making a beeline for her abandoned coffee cup, the foam now dissolved, turning the coffee into a sad, cool mess. But she didn’t like to waste things, so with a few motions, a bit of tinkering, and a gigantic pour, she was now drinking an iced latte.

  It was no sinturis muffin, but Sari had her pride to keep her cool at night.

  “I was just about to leave,” Sam said with her trademark innocence. “Lots to do, things to plant, muffins to eat...”

  �
��Sam, it was a fire door, how on Earth did you even hear...”

  “I have my ways! Anyway, I’m heading back to the farm to talk to the construction team,” she said, and the reminder that her sister was moving away sent pangs flying right back into Sari’s heart. Sam kissed her on the cheek. “Oh, did I tell you? Your used coffee grounds worked really well in the vermi-compost.”

  “I told you it would.”

  “I know. The worms love your coffee.”

  “Lovely,” Sari said drily before she took a sip of her latte.

  When the three Tomas sisters inherited the Tomas Coffee Co. from their grandmother, Sari and Selene were surprised when their younger sister announced she was taking over the hectares of farmlands that the family owned just outside Lipa. But it seemed that Sam loved it more than they thought she would, and now she was going to move.

  She was going to move, and Sari was going to be alone.

  “Ate?”

  “Hm?” Sari acted like she wasn’t paying attention, busying herself with prep for the beginner’s barista class later. She didn’t have to do this, her people knew how to prep these things for her, but she wanted to. She needed to, really.

  “The baker guy,” Sam said gently. “Why didn’t you say yes?”

  “We are not talking about that,” Sari said a little too quickly, setting the tray down a little too hard on the table, making the mugs rattle.

  “Whatever you say, Rosario,” Sam’s voice was too light and singsongy when she said that, before she headed out to the door of the coffee lab. “Although you’ve always been partial to the pirate look!”

  “Sampaguita,” Sari yelled back at her sister, just to make sure she had the last word.

  “Merry early Christmas, Sari!”

  Sam closed the door behind her, and Sari’s heart gave a little jump when she realized that this was going to be a familiar scene. Sam would come into her café, come into her space, flip it around, mess it up, and then leave everything a little less bright, a little quieter. Sari looked around the place that had been her comfort when she was starting out, and suddenly felt it was too big, too open, too quiet. The music next door had finally stopped, but instead of being a comfort, only made her feel more alone.

  This is what your life is going to be like, she thought as she released a shuddering breath. Get used to it.

  She was about to busy herself with work again when Kylo barked behind her, blinking expectantly at Sari and making her jump fifty feet in the air, spilling coffee on her clothes, because she’d been so dramatic about taking off her apron just minutes ago.

  “Sam!” she yelled. “Come back here and get your horse!”

  Kylo barked again, as if in protest.

  It was going to be a long day.

  Chapter Three

  December 9

  To Gabriel Capras, Christmas meant lengua de gato. So when he baked a test batch this morning, it took a lot of his inner strength not to stuff the biscuits into an old ice cream tub and munch on them all day.

  The paper thin pieces of biscuit perfection snapped like nobody’s business, but were so creamy and delicious on the tongue that you had to have more. Kira Luz’s mom knew how to make the biscuits by hand and had sent a whole tub to the Capras family every year that she and Gabriel were blockmates. And every year, Gab would go down to the Christmas tree and sneak a piece or two without anyone seeing. Sure, once or twice he needed a sibling accomplice, but there was nothing a little piece of the prize couldn’t do to keep them quiet about their heist.

  He hadn’t thought about Tita Alice’s lengua de gato until he was in Australia. Years since the last tub of lengua de gato arrived in his house, working late into the night, so lonely he wanted to sob, and all he craved was a sliver of lengua de gato with his coffee. Gab had felt pathetic, thousands of miles away from home, years left in training, with nothing to his name but a staggering lease, burns and cuts. He wanted lengua de gato, and he didn’t know how to make it.

  He decided that one, that was ridiculous. He was a Filipino baker, he should know how to bake Filipino things. Two, it was time to stop wandering. If he was going to make something of himself, he was going to stay in one place and make it happen.

  When he’d told his younger sisters, two halves of a responsible whole, of his plans, they both gaped at him through the screen of the video call. Gabriel was only a year older than Lily, two years older than Daisy, but to them, their kuya might as well have been a wanderer all his life. Four different courses in all four years of college, until he’d finally managed to stick to culinary school long enough to get a degree. Then there was the whole Kelly phase, when he thought he was in love enough to wait for her, to marry her, but...well, that didn’t happen.

  After that, he’d literally wandered, finding work in Hong Kong, then Japan, Bali for a while before he went to Singapore, then Melbourne, learning how to bake breads and mille-feuilles, croissants, desserts and puddings of all kinds. He could make a perfect caramel, had a sourdough starter that was at least five months old, and even if chocolate tempering still eluded him, he’d known he was armed with enough knowledge to finally do something worthy of his father’s approval.

  “Kuya,” Daisy, the third in the family, the sweeter of the two, had said excitedly. “You’re coming back to Manila, that’s great!”

  “Oh no, not Manila,” he’d scoffed, shaking his head. “Too many chances of me running into people. I was thinking Lipa. Kira Luz just called me, said she had an open place. The rent’s not too bad, and if I get a business partner, it’ll be even better.”

  “What do you mean not Manila?” Daisy looked crestfallen, but Lily had always been the faster one of the two of them to catch on to things.

  “Kuya, aren’t we too old to still be emotionally scarred by the things Dad told us when we were younger?” Lily shook her head with the same kind of disapproval Gab was used to getting from his father.

  He hated to say this, but the girls didn’t understand. None of his eight siblings could, even Angelo and Mikael, the only other boys. His father had expectations of his oldest son. The onus was on the oldest to be the most successful, the most impressive, to blaze the trail for the younger ones to follow in his footsteps. Even more so for the oldest son, to be the head of the household, the one everyone deferred to or consulted, and Gabriel, with his wandering heart, didn’t meet that criteria.

  How do you expect to raise a family of your own on a baker’s earnings? I raised nine kids on a VP’s salary, and even that was extremely hard!

  Not that he’d ever had any plans to have that many kids. Gab knew his limits. But clearly that hadn’t mattered to Hunter Capras, who expected nothing but excellence from his failure of a son. Unless you had a whole chain of bakeries, and I don’t think you can focus long enough to do that.

  And because while Gabriel was a failure, he was obedient, so he’d decided that he would follow his father’s suggestion exactly—open a shop that he could turn into a whole empire, make enough money to comfortably allow at least nine kids to have the same kind of life he had. And he would do it all without telling his father a single thing.

  Challenge accepted.

  Lily and Daisy had been gobsmacked at the plan, and he knew they were full of reasons why it was a bad idea. But because they were good sisters, they agreed to help him carry it out, swearing to tell nobody else in the family. Let them think he was still in Australia, or maybe even Japan. It didn’t matter.

  He had just pulled the freshly baked lengua from the oven, the scent of butter and sugar filling the warm air, when his phone chimed with a message. Trust Santi to text as early as six in the morning. The man never seemed to sleep.

  Any chance you’ll reconsider your chocolate supplier? I really think we’ll have an easier time when our supplier doesn’t make chocolate based on mood.

  Kira’s chocolate is the best o
ut there, Gabriel texted back with one hand while he placed the hot baking pan on the counter to cool. Better than some of the other local variants I’ve tried. I’ve never been disappointed. And Gemini Chocolates is just across the street so we save on delivery. Also I thought we agreed that I was the baker here?

  Fine, Santi replied. Gabriel chuckled and tucked his phone back into the front pocket of his apron. Lily did always say that Santi was very particular, both in and out of business.

  Anton Santillan was a classmate of Lily’s from grad school, with an MBA to his name, had his own restaurant in Lipa and was in need of a supplier for his baked goods. Gabriel knew the difference between a sfogiatelle and a biscotti, so they set up a meeting.

  With his sisters’ help, Gab created a business plan in Melbourne, then flew in to Manila and drove straight to Lipa to talk to Santi. He made his sisters swear not to tell the rest of the family where he was, and secured the partnership. Santi liked Gabriel’s ambition, and six months later, the one-year lease was signed, and the bakery began construction.

  It felt like a perfect first step, and Gabriel was locked in on this path, for once. And while he missed his siblings dearly, he didn’t regret his decision not to tell his father about it. He was never the kind to look back, so he didn’t.

  “You and I are going to do good business together,” Santi had said, clapping him on the shoulder like they weren’t the same age. “Run the shop well, and I’ll talk to the malls. I’m sure we can get a space in the next couple of years.”

  And while Gabriel’s ultimate goal was to get to the malls, he enjoyed being in the Laneways for now. He really liked the Laneways. It was quaint, the way things in Manila were rarely allowed to be, nowadays. All the little alleys were still paved with concrete, with greenery growing in between them. The walls had so much bougainvillea growing that it looked like someone had poured them on in greens and magentas. Gabriel liked that every single shop in the Laneways was specialty—masters of crafts that they had picked up or had been passed on to them and revived in this hipster village. He liked that the street was lit up by strings of Christmas lights that moved from one store to the other, like a pretty web of twinkle lights. He liked that Lipa got light jacket cold when Christmas rolled around, so cool that he didn’t need air conditioning some nights.