Are you handing out baked goods anywhere else? Any black market I should be aware of? Bo would raid it.
I smiled. The little girl smile I mocked with an eye roll. It seemed Regan really did make me smile like I used to. And he made me smile even when I was doing that slow lazy fall like Alice did through the rabbit hole. The one my mother trained me to parachute through. People refer to it as a fast, velocity-hungry descent. It’s not. It’s slow, and you get drunk on too much time to think while you beg for the bottom. Still, I smiled.
No, no black market. I forgot I gave you my number.
I didn’t think I had.
You didn’t. Lissa did.
Fucking Lissa.
Fucking Lissa. She can’t keep a secret to save her life.
She really couldn’t. Which is why she didn’t know any of mine.
She put up a good fight, but I wore her down. I told her there was a leak in the apartment and your bakery was starting to flood.
I smiled again. Crafty, Kane.
Thank you. So. Can we have more of your goodies? Like tomorrow. Or ... every day?
No. You can’t possibly appreciate it every day.
I appreciate everything every day.
Damn him. I knew he did, too.
Come on, he cut in front of me, please? They’re so good. The hippies are in love. Do you use organic ingredients?
I rolled my eyes. Tell them yes.
It wasn’t them who asked. It was me. ;)
I chuckled out loud, my bitter exterior fading, peeling like old paint.
Still yes.
You’re lying.
What do you care?
I don’t want to die from pesticide-laden food.
Regan, I think the three cigarettes a day you think I don’t know you smoke will kill you faster than processed tapioca flour will.
My smile took over my full face. Once I knew his recording schedule, I’d watch him leave sometimes. You can tell a lot about a person by how they leave a place in the morning. He was someone who wasn’t at all convinced that mornings should exist.
Now you’re the crafty one, Hall. Won’t you be sorry when you’re wrong. My tombstone will read “For the love of Tapioca.”
I laughed out loud. An elderly man with his hand on a cane as he sat across from me looked up and smiled, too. I bit my lip and formed my response.
With a capital “T”?
Well, if it was the death of me, I’d say it’s important.
I’ll allow it.
Are you working at the bar tonight?
Yes.
Hmm. I’m coming. Let me play, too. Also, I’ll stay till close and then we can go back to your bakery and make more muffins. And cupcakes. I swear Bo has to shut up about the cupcakes. It’s like he grew up in an Amish household the way he’s carrying on about them.
You won’t get any sleep if you do that.
Trust me, I don’t need sleep. Baking that stuff keeps Ember and Willow from an MMA fight.
The power of food.
“Georgia?” The real-life voice sounded out of place in my ears. I’d spent the last half hour with Regan’s muddled Bostonian-Irish mashup flowing through my brain.
Brain.
Shit.
I looked up to find the same pleasant nurse with the rehearsed smile and precision head tilt standing in the doorway.
“You can come back with me, now.”
I stood. Smiled. Walked forward. Rehearsed.
We were all actors here.
Regan
I walked into E’s promptly at 9:00 PM. That wasn’t a time Georgia had told me to come. In fact, she never texted me back with confirmation of my request to come and play, and then to bake with her. No response at all even after a series of cheeky texts designed to make her smile. I know I couldn’t actually see if she smiled or not. But the thought of her smiling was reason enough.
Bo and Ember were going to be coming in later, a make up of our cancelled date last night when we’d all ended up in Georgia’s bakery for a couple of hours, openly processing Rae’s letter.
As I approached the crowded bar at E’s—a place just as crowded on a Monday as a Saturday—I was giddy for the first time in a long time. Baking with Georgia last night gave me direction and focus with a direct result. No waiting for an album to be cut, the results were immediate and delicious. Georgia’s back was to me as she was waiting on people a few tables away from the bar. I hopped—literally hopped—onto the last open stool and ordered a Guinness from a male bartender I hadn’t seen before. I always felt like they gave way more attitude than necessary. Maybe that was their schtick, like the women dressing the way they do.
“Here ya go, man.” With triceps that tried too hard, he set the beer down without looking at me. That’s the problem with young bartenders, too. They miss out on the stories around them while they’re too busy flexing their egos. Too busy to hear what people are drinking to remember ... or forget.
“Thank you. Do you guys have anyone playing tonight?”
“Nah.” He shook his head with an authority that would have made you think he’d just said an actual word. “Football season just ended, though, so maybe they’ve got someone soon. Why?”