“Yeah. Sure.” Ambrose nodded, and Beans grasped him by his sleeve ushering him out the door. Fern's face flamed in embarrassment. She might be homely. But she wasn't stupid.
Ambrose let himself be pulled away, but then paused. Suddenly, he walked back to her and handed her the envelope that she'd given him only minutes before. Beans waited, curiosity flitting across his face.
“Here. They're yours. Just . . . don't share them. Okay?” Ambrose smiled briefly, just a sheepish twist of his well-formed lips. And then he turned and pushed out of the building, Beans on his heels. And Fern held the envelope close and wondered what it all meant.
“Get a net over that hair, son,” Elliott Young reminded patiently as Ambrose dropped his gear by the back door of the bakery and headed to the sink to wash up.
Ambrose pulled his hair back with two hands and wrapped an elastic band around it so that it was out of his face and less likely to fall into a vat of cake batter or cookie dough. His hair was still damp from his shower after practice. He pulled a net over the dark ponytail and pulled on an apron, wrapping it around his torso the way Elliott had taught him long ago.
“Where do you want me, Dad?”
“Get started on the rolls. The dough is ready to go. I've got to finish decorating this cake. I told Daphne Nielson I'd have it ready at six-thirty, and it's six now.”
“Grant said something about cake at practice. He said he thought he was close enough to weight he would be able to steal a slice.”
The cake was for Grant's little brother, Charlie, a birthday cake with characters from the animated Hercules on the top of three chocolate layers. It was cute and fanciful, with just enough color and chaos to appeal to a six-year-old boy. Elliott Young was good with details. His cakes always looked better than the pictures people could look at in the big cake book positioned in front of the bakery on a pedestal. Even the kids liked to peruse the laminated pages, pointing at the cake they wanted for their next big day.
Ambrose had tried his hand at decorating a few times, but his hands were big and the tools were small, and though Elliott was a patient teacher, Ambrose just didn't have the touch. He could do very basic decorating, but he was much better at baking, his strength and size more suited to labor than finesse.
He attacked the rising dough with competence, kneading and rolling and tucking each mound into a perfect roll without thought and with considerable speed. In the bigger bakeries there were machines that did what he was doing, but he didn't mind the rhythm of the operation, filling the huge sheets with hand-made rolls. The smell of the first batch of rolls in the oven was killing him though. Working in the bakery during wrestling season sucked.
“Done.” Elliott stepped back from the cake and checked the clock.
“Looks good,” Ambrose said, his eyes on the bulging muscles of the mythical hero standing atop the cake with his arms raised. “The real Hercules wore a lion skin, though.”
“Oh, yeah?” Elliott laughed. “How'd you know that?”
Ambrose shrugged. “Bailey Sheen told me once. He used to have a thing for Hercules.”
Bailey had a book propped on his lap. When Ambrose peered over his shoulder to see what it was, he saw various pictures of a naked warrior fighting what looked to be mythical monsters. A few of those pictures could have been framed and put in the wrestling room. The warrior looked like he was wrestling a lion in one and a boar in another. That was probably why Sheen was reading it; Ambrose didn't know anyone who knew more about wrestling than Bailey Sheen.
Ambrose sat down on the mats beside Bailey's chair and started lacing up his wrestling shoes.
“Whatcha reading, Sheen?”
Bailey looked up, startled. He was so absorbed in his book that he hadn't even noticed Ambrose. He stared at Ambrose for a minute, his eyes lingering on his long hair and the T-shirt that was inside out. Fourteen-year-old boys were notorious for not caring about clothes and hair, but Bailey's mom wouldn't have let him leave the house like that. Then Bailey remembered that Lily Young didn't live with Ambrose anymore, and Bailey realized it was the first time he'd seen Ambrose all summer. But Ambrose had still shown up for Coach Sheen's wrestling camp, just like he did every summer.
“I'm reading a book about Hercules,” Bailey said belatedly.
“I've heard of him.” Ambrose finished tying his shoes and stood as Bailey turned the page.