“I do,” Henry said, and I could see a smile playing around the corners of his mouth. Clearly, my attempts at correcting my blunder syndrome had not been successful. “It’s my dad’s bakery.”
“Oh,” I said, not quite able to conceal my surprise in time. Henry’s father, from what I remembered, had been like mine, one of the many fathers in suits getting off one of the buses on Friday nights, briefcase in hand. I glanced around the bakery, trying to reconcile these two things, and failing. “But,” I started after a moment, “I thought he used to do something with banking?”
“He did,” Henry said, his tone clipped and final, and I immediately regretted asking my question. His father had probably lost his job, and Henry didn’t need me to point this out. “He says it’s the same principle,” Henry added after a moment, his tone softening a little. “Still trying to get the dough to rise.” I groaned at that—it was the kind of joke my father would make—and Henry gave me a tiny smile in return.
Silence fell between us, and then Henry stuck his hands in his pockets and cleared his throat. “So what can I get you?” he asked, back to sounding detached and professional.
“Right,” I said quickly, realizing that I was a customer in a shop, and the fact that I was supposed to know what I wanted should not have been such a shock to me. “Um…” I saw a platter of cupcakes with multicolored pastel icing, and I immediately looked away from them. Cupcakes reminded me all too much of my birthday, the slapdash celebration, the news about my dad. Searching for something—anything else—I tapped on the case in front of the next thing I saw. “A dozen of these.” I looked closer and saw that what I’d just pointed to were, unfortunately, oatmeal raisin cookies. I hated oatmeal in all forms, but especially when people tried to dress it up as a dessert; Gelsey refused to eat raisins, and none of the rest of my family had ever been huge fans. I had just ordered a dessert that nobody at our house would most likely eat.
“Really.” Henry didn’t exactly phrase it as a question, and he raised his eyebrows at me. “Oatmeal?”
I just stared at him for a moment. There was no way Henry remembered that, five years ago, I hated oatmeal cookies. It just wasn’t possible. “Yeah,” I said slowly. “Oatmeal. Why?”
“No reason,” he said as he took down another green bakery box from the shelf behind him and began transferring in the cookies two at a time. “I just didn’t think you liked them.”
“I can’t believe you remember that,” I said, as I watched the bakery box slowly fill with the World’s Worst Cookies.
“My dad calls me the elephant.” I just looked at him, not at all sure what to say to this, when he explained, “They’re supposed to have really long memories.” He reached toward the front of the tray to get the two remaining cookies. “I don’t really forget a lot,” he added quietly.
I was about to nod when the double meaning of this hit me. Henry hadn’t forgotten the kind of cookies I hated five years ago, but that also meant he hadn’t forgotten the other things that I had done.
He’d put all the oatmeal cookies into the box, and he straightened up and looked at me. “Only had eleven,” he said. “Can I give you one chocolate chip instead?”
“Yes!” I said, probably a little too eagerly. I thought I saw him smile as he bent down again and placed the lone chocolate chip in the box, tucked in the lid, and pushed it across the counter to me. He rang me up, and I noticed when he gave me back my change, he held the bills at the very ends and dropped the coins into my palm, as though he was trying to make sure that we didn’t make any accidental contact. “Well,” I said, when I realized there was nothing to do except take my bakery box and leave, “thanks.”
“Sure,” he said. His eyes focused on my shoulder, and he frowned slightly. “What’s with the shirt?” he asked, and I saw he was looking at my canvas bag, which had one of my new employee T-shirts peeking out of the top.
“Oh,” I said, pushing it down a bit farther, “I just got a job. Beach snack bar.”
“Really?” he asked, sounding surprised. It was definitely a question this time.
“Yes,” I said, a little defensively, until I realized that he would have no idea that I’d never had a job before and would therefore be somehow unqualified. “Why?”
Henry took a breath, about to answer, when the shop door opened and two women who looked around my mother’s age came in, both wearing caftanlike cover-ups and sandals. “Nothing,” he said, shaking his head. “Never mind.”
The women were now standing behind me, peering into the bakery cases, and I knew that it was time for me to leave. “See you,” I said, picking up the green box.
“Stay out of the woods,” he replied, smiling faintly.