I sat on the stool, elbow on the wooden countertop with my chin cupped in my upturned palm. “I feel it, Sam.” I took a second take. Could it be? “Sam?”
“In the flesh,” she said spreading her arms wide. I normally would have jumped clear over the counter and scooped her up in a bear hug. It’d been months since I’d last seen her and here she was when I needed a friend most.
Instead, I stared at her afraid that if I blinked she’d disappear.
“Seems to me,” she said, as if she came into the shop every day and this was nothing new. She leaned down to get a good look at a strawberry-chocolate swirled cheesecake sprinkled with curls of dark chocolate. “That you of all people should have a reason to celebrate.”
“Yeah? How do you figure that?” So she didn’t know about Claire. I suppose that made sense, it had ended before it even began. If Sam had just gotten back into town then she wouldn’t have even seen her around.
“You’re still not much of a guy for social media, are you?” she asked by way of answering.
All I could do was shrug.
“Well, I am. And if you’ve been anywhere in the last few days you’d know that your goofy-ass bakery is one of the most trending topics on the east coast. I’m surprised you don’t have a line out your door already. I bet even with the rain you’re going to see one wrap around the building.”
I couldn’t muster the will to care very much, but Sam was so damn persistent that I felt the ghost of a smile curve my lips. “That sounds very wet.”
Sam pointed one black-painted fingernail at the cheesecake and with a flourish brandished a horribly hand-drawn imitation of the loyalty card I gave out to some of the earlier customers.
“Hey, don’t give me that look. That’s real crayon for the design. I wasn’t here when you were giving out your little cards, so I figured I’d make one myself. You were going to give me one anyway.”
She was right. There was no way I wouldn’t give one out to my best friend. “You know,” she continued, “you’re causing quite a bit of uproar with these little cards.” Sam fanned herself with the tiny thing. I snatched it from her and looked it over.
“Did you take the business card for the hotel and just draw on the back?”
“Maybe,” she hedged.
“I’ll get one made for you soon,” I said handing it back to her. “I assume you’re staying at the hotel?”
“A lady never tells, and a gentleman never asks.” Sam plucked the card from my fingers.
“That’s not how-” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Just come into the shop in a few days and I’ll have a card for you. Until then use that…thing.” I gave a weak motion to the card she clutched in her hand.
I ended up giving her the whole cheesecake and a paper bag of her favorite, french twists, as well.
Sam tried to pay, but I wasn’t taking it. “I haven’t seen you in months and you come into the shop unannounced acting like this is a daily thing for you. I’m not taking your money.” I shooed her and her money away.
There was a pensive look on her face. Her blonde hair caught up in a messy bun, dewed with droplets of rain. She left without saying much else except to wave goodbye.
Something about the interaction bothered me. But I wasn’t in the right state of mind to sort it out. But the brief run-in had made me feel better, if only momentarily.
Sam was always coming and going from Sunrise Valley. She first came here with a boyfriend years before and we got along surprisingly well. Something must have resonated with her about this place because she kept coming back. It might take her a year, but she always came back.
She was like the sister I never had.
Come to think of it, she was usually a lot more foul-mouthed than she had been today. Strange. Sam could string together obscenities that would make a sailor blush. And she did it with surprising regularity.
That she hadn’t made me wonder if something was wrong. There had to be something I was missing.
There wasn’t much time to muse on the oddities of my best friend that morning. Sam had been right. At around ten o’clock there was a line of people with umbrellas stretched out the door and down the street.
Every so often I had to take a break to get out the mop to soak up the extra water that everybody trailed in. Nobody was going to slip and fall on my watch. That was precisely the sort of bad luck that would happen to me right now.
By two that afternoon, I had more people in the bakery than was legally allowed based on the maximum occupancy plaque I had been given after the first inspection. Skipping my lunch to continue serving customers had become common. They just kept coming, one after the other in an unending march.
It was hard to believe all these people were here for my food. It felt unreal, like something out of a dream that was too good to be true. Like Claire coming up next in line walking a vaguely familiar blue and silver bicycle into the shop.
I froze, my heart pounding in my chest.
This wasn’t a dream. It was Claire. One by one everything around her faded away until I saw only her. Her hair fell in captivating dark spirals that shimmered with droplets of rain. She didn’t wear her usual business attire, instead she had on my sweatshirt and a pair of jeans. Both were thoroughly soaked through showing her curves in all their glory.
My heart beat like a drum.
“Hi,” she said with a slight quaver.
27
Claire
I stood there, hands on the handlebars in the middle of Thomas’ shop with fifty or so other people just as soaked as me and all of them were staring. Now that I was here, I had no idea what I was supposed to do.
Jemma had finally managed to convince me to leave Dad’s place and come to the hotel with her. She was lucky to have a room considering how packed the place was.
We shared a room and talked late into the night. She was a remarkable listener. I missed having a confidant and realized belatedly that this was probably the first time I had ever told Jemma some of my fears.
She was my sister, and it felt like we were almost strangers. It broke my heart all over again. By the time I woke up that morning I knew what I had to do.
It was probably too late to win Thomas back. To prove to him that I could love him the way he loved me. I saw how I was afraid to be vulnerable with him and instead of opening myself up to his love I became afraid of his judgment, of the possibility that my love wouldn’t be good enough.
Jemma helped open my eyes to the fact that I didn’t need to love him the same as he loved me. I only needed to love him in my own way, and I did. It scared me how much I loved him and I did what I always do when I’m scared. I shut down and pushed the people closest to me away.
He didn’t deserve that. I had to tell him how I felt before it was too late. Jemma’s suggestion that I go to him immediately that morning and tell him froze the blood in my veins.
“I can’t do that!” I nearly shrieked at her.
“Why not?”
“Because it’s mortifying! What if he doesn’t accept my apology? What if he doesn’t love me anymore because I broke his heart too many times? Maybe I’ll write him a tasteful note. No. An email, ye-“
Jemma grabbed me by the shoulders and gave me a firm shake to restore some sense to me. I gaped like a fish and shut my mouth with an audible click.
“No,” she said firmly, hands still tight on my shoulders. “If it scares you, all the better. He needs to know you’re serious. You need to show him that you’ve changed. Show him you aren’t afraid of letting people know your feelings. You told me yourself you were worried about people finding out. To Hell with them, tell that man how you feel.”
“I just have one stop I need to make first,” I said throwing on his sweater and a pair of jeans that looked particularly flattering. Thomas had seen me too much as a business partner, as the professional version of myself.
I wanted him to see me, no makeup, no blouse or button-up shirt. If I was going to bare my soul
to him in front of God knows how many people at his shop, I would do it as myself.
Even if it was too late, it would be worth it just to let him know. I owed him that much. I owed myself that much.
Jemma came with me in the Suburban to a small shop an hour or so out of town.
“Something I can get you ma'am?” asked the older man with thinning hair and a kind face behind the glass counter. The bike shop was full of every type of bicycle imaginable from fat-tire bikes to ones with electric motors and everything in between.
“Hi, I was hoping you could…fix a bike for me?”
He brightened immediately. “That’s one of my many talents, what’s wrong with it if you don’t mind me asking?”
I gulped and took out my phone, swiped to the image I had snapped of Thomas’ bike. He let out a low whistle. “I’m sorry to say, but that’s not possible to fix. Even if we were to bend it back into shape, get a machine shop to weld the joints properly it won’t ever be sturdy enough that I’d be willing to let another soul ride it. No telling what the stresses of that have done to the frame in the long run.”
I hung my head in defeat. I knew it was too much to hope for. I needed to do something more than just admit the truth. I thought, maybe, if I could fix the damage I did to his bike he’d understand that I knew how much it meant to him.
“However,” said the shopkeep. “We do have a very similar cruiser bike like that. May I?” He reached out for my phone again and I handed it over. “Yes, one very similar though a newer model. Would you like to take a look at it?”
Jemma nudged me in the ribs. “Better than nothing,” she said. “Besides, how did you think we’d get that bike out of his apartment?”
Now that it wasn’t an option, I just gave her a mischievous smile. “I have my ways.”
“You have ways of putting off something you really don’t want to do despite all the days of crying you did.”
I rolled my eyes at her. To the shopkeep, I said, “Yes, please.”
In the end the bike could’ve been the same thing I had gotten him all those years ago, except the new frame was sleeker and of course not bent like a pretzel.
We loaded it into the back of the Suburban as the rain began to pour down in earnest. By the time we got back to town, there was a line out of the bakery, past the bookstore and wrapped around the side of the building.
I stopped the truck at the back of the line. “Could you take this back to the hotel?”
“Sure thing.”
I took the bike out of the back, went to the rear of the line that had grown by two people in the meantime and waved at Jemma as she climbed over into the driver’s seat without getting out. “Good luck,” she called out and drove off.
I had hours in the rain to ponder what I was going to say. To put everything in its proper place and maximize every word to try and get my point across as eloquently as I could.
I kept telling myself that he loved me. That he would understand, but I couldn’t evict the niggling doubt that he had finally gotten over me and I had given him that final shove.
I wouldn’t blame him if he hated me. I know how it must’ve looked, but I really did love him. I was just too scared to admit it.
The understanding came too late for me. Maybe it was too late for us, but I would stand naked in the middle of Times Square if it meant I had one last chance to profess my love for him. To make him believe.
As it turned out, there’s not much you can do to prepare for such a grandiose moment. When I finally got up to the counter I was soaked through and through. It was like wearing a wet blanket somebody had tossed into the freezer. My teeth rattled and I shook uncontrollably, but whether it was from the cold or my nerves I couldn’t tell.
When I finally saw Thomas again my heart stuttered in my chest like Jemma’s car trying to start up in the rain. The carefully sculpted words died on my lips and I fumbled for something, anything to say.
“Hi,” I said trying to stop from breaking down on the spot. He was so handsome in his jeans, white shirt that hugged every curve of his bulging muscles and that flour-dusted black apron made me weak in the knees.
Focus, Claire.
The bakery was filled with the low roar of dozens of conversations going on at the same time, coupled with the driving rhythm of the rain against the wide windows that looked out onto Main Street.
“I’m so sorry for everything,” I blurted out and motioned to the bike. “I got you a new bike. I love you. Please don’t hate me.”
It all felt very childish and weak. I had a whole speech worked out over the last couple of hours standing in the rain and instead I broke down sobbing and shaking from an upwelling of emotion and the freezing cold.
He was up and over the counter in one smooth, practiced motion. One moment I was standing there, choking back sobs that I couldn’t stop and shivering like a Chihuahua. The next I was wrapped up in those glorious muscled arms of his and lifted off my feet.
The bike rattled to the floor and what eyes hadn’t been on me before were firmly glued to the spectacle.
There were tears in his eyes. I buried my head into his shoulder and bawled my eyes out. I tried to explain, tried to put words to the feelings but only gibberish came out.
“You got me a bike?” he asked, slightly amused.
“I broke the other one I got you. I didn’t know it was so important at first. I’m so sorry Thomas. I’m s-“ His finger pressed to my lips to cut me off.
“Stop apologizing, Claire.”
“Sorry.”
He gave me one of my favorite lopsided smiles. “Are you sure?” he asked and I knew immediately what he was asking. There was a wariness in his eyes, a yearning desire being held back by recent pain.
The pain I had inflicted.
Thomas sat me back down onto my feet and I was keenly aware of all the eyes on us and more than a few phones held out recording this embarrassingly pathetic scene. Why was it nothing ever worked like in the movies?
I would have delivered a heartfelt plea for another chance, there would have been more time to sort it all out. The room wouldn’t be cramped and I wouldn’t be so cold that I could barely stand. When I was done explaining how wrong I was and how much I yearned for a second chance people would clap and urge Thomas to give me that chance.
They’d root for me, maybe even clap for me.
But this wasn’t the movies. Things didn’t work like that.
Instead, I was freezing my ass off and hungrily stealing all of Thomas’ deliciously dry warmth for myself while people filmed me - without makeup and drenched to the bone in a sweatshirt and jeans no less - from a dozen different unflattering angles.
“Yes,” I said, and into that one word I put every ounce of conviction I had. “I love you.” I poured my soul into those three letters and hoped - prayed - that it was enough.
Please let it be enough.
Thomas didn’t reply immediately. For a moment I was absolutely sure he was going to say no. He stared, his eyes roaming my face as if he searched for something. I waited, unable to breathe.
“If you don’t take her I will!” shouted somebody from the crowd that had gathered around us. A chorus of snickering and good-natured laughing ensued.
In the bubble of rising noise, Thomas pulled me close and whispered into my ear, “I will always love you, Claire Walker.”
He swept me up into his arms and I clung to him, hungry for the warmth and comfort he offered me. My teeth were chattering, but I forced the words out anyway. “I w-will always l-love you t-too.”
We were out of the bakery in a flash and into the rear kitchens. Thomas called out over his shoulder. “Bakery’s closed for today!” To a chorus of groans and disappointment.
Epilogue
Claire
I never understood how much was missing from my so-called perfect life, until Thomas came back into the picture. We all walk around life thinking we’re complete, when in fact we’re only pieces of a whole waiting
to be completed.
I used to think that I had the best job. I traveled the world, telling high-powered executives how to fix their business and I got that unique high of seeing my plan in action. I was paid extremely well, and the competition kept me on my toes.
It took my father’s death to bring me back to what truly matters in life. I still didn’t know what I was going to do about my job, but for now, I was happy with Thomas.
I told him I loved him every single day.
Things weren’t perfect. We had a long way to go for that, and besides who actually wants perfection?
If I learned anything, it’s that spreadsheets and pie charts are perfectly fine for numbers, but not for people. A balanced sheet is great when you’re dealing with finances and business planning.
With people, it’s boring.
We still argued, got mad at each other from time to time and had to cool off. But we always came back to each other, better and stronger than before. We never slept alone again.
There were still a lot of problems to overcome, the bakery’s viral trending wouldn’t last forever. I already had ideas on how to build on that foundation. Beth and her mysterious buyer were still an obstacle to overcome, but for now, things were just the right amount of perfect.
Even when we were mad at each other, Thomas would make sure I came with him on his nightly run.
Endorphins flooding our bodies, blood pumping in our veins, it was hard to stay mad. Harder still to keep our clothes on and make it all the way back home. Sometimes we didn’t.
I managed to convince Thomas to reopen the bakery the next day and offer a Lover’s Special item. For each person that came into the shop that day, they each received one - completely free - heart-shaped pastry, filled with a selection of raspberry, strawberry, or my favorite, pomegranate jam.
Since then, they became a staple of the shop, and one of our most sought-after items.
Thomas was just turning out the lights to the front of the store when I came in through the back. “How was today?”
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