The Copper Valley Bro Code Series: Volume 1, page 56
“Bailey—” I start.
Mama appears behind her, dark sunglasses on, white cane gripped in her hand. “Don’t be such an old lady,” she tells me. “It’s just a drive. Oh. And now there are catfish swimming in the bakery. Are the walls in here still yellow?”
“Yes, Mama.”
“I like the wooly mammoth in the kitchen better, but it’s going to crush the sink if it’s not careful. Also, we’re going for a drive. With Roger. He promised he wouldn’t take advantage of us.”
“He doesn’t have to work today?”
“Plumbing’s all good in Sarcasm today,” she assures me. “And do you remember his son, Birch? He’s on call.”
“You don’t want to go rest? You’ve been up since four this morning. And you don’t normally have two hallucinations in a row if you’re not tired.”
“Annika Rose, I may be blind, but I’m still your mother, and I’m also still quite the spring chicken.”
“She really is,” Bailey agrees, which is even more suspicious. “We left two more pans of cinnamon rolls on the counter in back. I frosted them and everything, so all you have to do is put them out.”
“It’s almost lunchtime. People aren’t coming in for cinnamon rolls.”
She smiles. “They should. The cinnamon rolls are so delicious, people should have breakfast dessert for lunch. Or you can pack them up for customers to reheat in the morning. Awesome either way! Later, Anni-gator.”
“After while, Bailey-dile,” I reply automatically, though I’m still highly suspicious, but honestly, Mama getting out is a good thing, even if I know she’ll be exhausted, because she tries to deny it, but the stress is getting to her, as evidenced by the hallucinations. “And remember Mama needs to be home for her appointment with the mobility specialist by two.”
“Got it,” Bailey calls.
I turn back to Liliana. “So. You want a cinnamon roll?”
“Wooly mammoths?”
“Just go with it.”
She asks for a coffee and a banana, so I grab both for her and then we sit to catch up.
“What’s it like seeing Grady again?” she asks, her hazel eyes sparking with curiosity as she goes straight for the kill.
“It’s just like seeing everyone again,” I lie.
“Annika. You two were attached at the hip in high school. I never understood why he didn’t just ask you out. He was clearly crazy about you. And now you’re back, and he’s still over there in Shipwreck…”
“Being a Shipwreck shithead,” I remind her.
“Please. Cooper was a shithead. Grady was not. He worshipped the ground you walked on.”
“He did not.”
“Um, yes, he did. Did he bring anyone else cookies and cupcakes and muffins every day? Did he beat up Garrett MacGruder for saying crude things in the locker room about any other girl in school? Or her mama? Did he come all the way here, to Sarcasm, in enemy territory, to see any other person besides you? No, he did not. Because he was sweet on you.”
I open my mouth to tell her she’s wrong, that we were just really good friends who clicked because he knew what to say to calm me down when I’d go too far down the path of seeking perfection, and I didn’t care what his brother or sister did, unlike half of the rest of high school.
But I can’t tell Liliana she’s wrong, because everything he told me the night we graduated high school suggests she’s right.
C’mon, Annika. You know you’re it for me. You always have been. Let’s make it official. Fuck the Army. Stay here. Move to Shipwreck. Come work for my family while I go to culinary school. You can take classes at the community college. I’ll be home every weekend. We’ll get a place together, and it’ll be awesome. You feel it, don’t you? This thing? We’re more than friends. Let’s BE more than friends. For real.
And in the moments when I’m being completely honest with myself…I knew it.
I knew he liked me.
But I was terrified of him liking me. I was terrified I was reading him wrong. I was terrified that I was reading him right.
I was terrified of having to work two jobs to support an unplanned baby while ruining both of our life plans.
“He…might’ve said something to that effect before I left, but he just didn’t want things to change. He didn’t really mean it. He just didn’t want me to leave.”
She gives me that seriously? That’s your story? look. “I get it. God, Annika, if anybody gets it, you know I do. We didn’t want to be our mothers, and we needed to establish ourselves before letting crazy teenage hormones change our lives forever. But…we’re all adults now. You’re home now. He was your best friend. Are more friends ever really a bad thing?”
I sip my own coffee and squint at her, because Liliana grew up next door to us, in a rented house with barely enough room for two people, much less three, and she always hated that I was friends with anyone from Shipwreck, even Grady. “What’s in Shipwreck that you want? Because you and Shipwreck aren’t exactly BFFs. At least, you weren’t.”
“I’d say this even if my new boss hadn’t already sent a memo about wanting to expand local distribution to all the liquor stores in the tri-county area. Just for the record. Because you two were best friends, even if I was a total Sarcasm asshole about it back then. And honestly, I miss you both. I didn’t realize it until you were gone, but you were my hope that my grandparents would quit calling people from Shipwreck shitheads. Like Romeo and Juliet, without the stabbings and death stuff. And I was never really sure if you two should have sex or not. Risk of teen pregnancy aside and all that. But like…if you could overcome how different your families were and the fact that our towns are rude to each other, then maybe love’s possible for everyone.”
“You are a total nut.”
She grins and fluffs her curly auburn hair. “Some things never change.”
And thank goodness for that.
Because she’s right. I need a friend. Probably several.
I’m just not sure if I agree with her assessment of who I should start with first.
And after last night, I doubt he’d be interested in any kind of truce.
So today, I choose to be grateful for Liliana.
My new Sarcasm best friend.
“You know anyone in town who can bake like a goddess and doesn’t have to go back to school in a few weeks?” I ask her.
“Oh my god, you still can’t bake?” she whispers.
“Sshh! I’m trying, but so far, all I’ve managed to do is create something that NASA scientists came and confiscated to see if I somehow recreated moon rock here on earth, and also set fire to the stovetop.”
She chuckles over her coffee. “God, I’m so glad you’re home.”
I am too.
Except I’m not.
I’m not fully home. But not fully gone.
I’m just filling space while we figure out my family’s new normal.
And in the meantime, I’m trying to make all my mama’s dreams come true.
9
Grady
I’m putting the final touches on a carrot cake, ice pack to my ball sack, Apocalyptica blaring in my kitchen while I whisper to the frosting.
“Beautiful, baby. So smooth. So silky. I could stroke you all day long.”
Neither the cake nor the cream cheese frosting answer, but they both clearly love the way I’m smoothing the finish with gentle spins of the cake’s turntable coupled with the precise caresses of my icing spatula.
The strings on my speakers rock out to “Enter Sandman,” and I can almost pretend everything is completely normal.
“So perfect,” I whisper. “I could lick you from top to bottom and over again.”
Georgia stalks into the kitchen in her Crow’s Nest apron, hits a switch, and my music goes silent. “People are complaining about the vibe. You need to talk it out?”
“I’m talking to the cakes. And what’s wrong with Metallica? This is fucking awesome.”
“It’s orchestral Metallica.”
“It’s leveled-up badass.”
She levels me with a we’re done talking about this glare, like she owns the place or something. Which she doesn’t—I do, backed by a loan from my brother, the rich baseball player, which is the only reason I haven’t had to shut down yet, and yes, that irritates the shit out of me too, plus adds a big dollop of guilt at the idea that I could be letting him down too—but she’s the best employee I’ve ever hired, and I don’t want to lose her.
I’d marry Georgia if that’s what it took to save the bakery, even though we’d fight like cats and dogs and she’s told me numerous times that I’m not tall enough or black enough for her, and she also prefers a man with what she calls a bigger package, though I think she’s fooling herself if she thinks that exists.
Can’t fix any of those—and honestly, we’re too similar for a relationship of convenience to work—so instead, I’ll let her pretend she runs my bakery.
Sales are up since she started here.
Just not enough to dig Crow’s Nest out of that nebulous place where it’s regularly making two dollars in profit after paying Georgia what she deserves and me just barely enough to not default on my mortgage.
She’s right.
I can’t afford to chase my customers away.
And wouldn’t that be the frosting on the shitcake to have Crow’s Nest go under right when Annika opened her own bakery?
Because her mama went blind.
Fuck.
“Cake can’t love you back like a woman can.” She eyeballs my crotch. “But you’re not getting any from that front either, are you?”
“Are you here to rob me of my joy and ruin my day, or did you actually need something?”
“Both.”
“Fantastic.” I straighten. My lower back gives a twinge, and if I could glare at it and threaten to fire it too today, I would.
Especially since I know better than to threaten to fire Georgia.
“You want bad or worse first?” she asks.
“Bad.”
“We still have four dozen tres leches donuts left.”
“What? Those were delicious.” And expensive, and if they don’t sell, today’s a red day.
A red day I can’t afford.
“Yeah, but they’re not banana pudding donuts. Also, there’s a teenager and a blind lady sitting down at the end of the row giving away cinnamon roll samples and telling people to go to Sarcasm to support the Maria Williams Foundation for the Blind by buying from Duh-Nuts.”
Fuckers.
They really are stealing my customers now, and my daily profit sheet isn’t the only thing going red.
“I called the sheriff. She said they got a permit. So I called your Pop instead. Got a feeling he’s gonna take Sue and Long Beak Silver for a walk.”
I rip off my apron and stalk around my worktable, grabbing my phone while I go. “Fucking sheriff.”
“Yeah, but until we can get somebody from Shipwreck to run against her, we’re stuck. Plus, there’s that whole thing where crime’s down forty percent since she took over. And she charmed the pants off all those rich people with houses up on Thorny Rock Mountain.”
“Cooper owns a house up on Thorny Rock Mountain.”
“And he’s never here, and half of the rest of ’em up there aren’t really locals either. They just put money toward the election campaign because they like their houses not being broken into during the week while they’re doing their regular jobs making oodles of money in the big city.”
I toss my bag of ice in the sink, and I head for the back door.
“By the parking field or by the gazebo?” I ask.
She points me toward the mountains, and I march out the back door.
I can’t be a total dick, because yeah, it sucks that Annika’s mama went blind.
But they’re poaching my customers, and Crow’s Nest can’t afford to lose customers.
Fucking numbers.
If I could just bake and leave the books to someone else, I would, but I can’t afford to pay for it. Every little bit of savings I stash away manages to get eaten up by an oven needing repair or a mixer breaking or a leaky roof.
Something.
And here come the Sarcasm assholes, sitting in my town when they could be giving away samples in any one of the little towns dotting our county.
They’re baiting me.
And they’re stealing my customers.
I’ve worked up a good, steaming pile of mad by the time I spot the two of them lounging on a bench beside the Argh, Ye Be in Shipwreck Now sign, not a full block away from my bakery.
Pop’s crossing the street from the other side the same time I approach from the back. Sue’s tugging on his leash, and I can already hear Long Beak Silver.
“Get the fuck out of my town! Rawk!”
“Your bird is really rude,” Bailey calls to Pop.
“So’s sitting a block from my bakery and stealing my customers,” I tell her.
She doesn’t jump at my approach from behind the bench, and I notice the same guy who was at Duh-Nuts the other day coming from the small parking lot at the edge of the park with a box of what I assume are fresh cinnamon roll samples.
“Should’ve known not to expect manners in a pirate town,” she says.
“Bailey. Who is it?” Ms. Williams asks.
“That old man who wears eyeliner all the time with the rude parrot, and that Rock guy who thinks he owns the world or something,” the teenager replies.
“He owns the best damn bakery this side of the mountains,” Pop says.
“Grady.” Ms. Williams turns her head in my direction with a smile. “How are your testicles today? Annika felt terrible for hurting you.”
“Not terrible enough to pause before she got on base,” Pop points out.
“She forgets bakers don’t have the brass cojones of all those Army men she’s known the last ten years. And she did stop at first instead of going on to second like she could’ve.”
Bailey snickers.
I really did like her better before she could form full sentences.
“What are you gentlemen doing in Sarcasm today?” Ms. Williams asks.
“We’re not in Sarcasm. You’re sitting in Shipwreck,” Pop tells her.
“What? No. Surely not.” She smiles, and in my more forgiving moments, I’d say she was teasing me, but I’m not feeling very forgiving at the moment. “I’d smell the pirates if we were. And if we were in Shipwreck, those mountain lions sitting over there would definitely be gnawing on someone’s peg leg.”
Pop and I both jump and look around, but there are no mountain lions.
And Maria’s blind.
Even if there were, she couldn’t see them.
More snickering from Bailey.
“Here you go, Maria. Last box of samples. Told you that you still had it in you to bake the good stuff.” The plumber—Roger? Is that his name?—plops the box on the edge of the bench.
Sue lunges for it. He’s probably just as interested in the white cardboard as he is the cinnamon rolls inside.
I don’t try to stop my goat, but Roger makes a go of saving the cinnamon rolls.
“Yes, Ms. Williams,” I tell her. “You’re in Shipwreck. Stealing my customers.”
“It’s karma.” Bailey makes one of those irritating teenager faces that Tillie Jean still tosses out when Cooper’s in town and we’re ganging up on her, though Bailey’s is all brown eyes and the same bone structure as Annika’s, which means she’s probably going to be hit on by everything with a single red blood cell in its body in the next four years, which means shit, somebody’s gonna have to watch out for her.
“First of all,” she continues, completely unaware that I’m about to have a heart attack at the idea of teenage boys at the high school trying something with her, which is none of my damn business, but apparently I can’t stop the feelings, “we wouldn’t be stealing your customers if you were giving them anything worthwhile to eat. And second of all, you stole my donut idea. We’re just making things even.”
Yeah. Maybe I stole her donut idea.
And maybe I’ve been debating spending my last four hundred dollars on a soft serve machine, because bubble waffles are trending hot, and there’s only one restaurant in Copper Valley serving them, which means Crow’s Nest could be a trendsetter.
“You’re twelve,” I say instead of letting more guilt sink in. “You don’t make business decisions.”
“I’m thirteen, which I know you know, and I could pass economics with a higher grade than you could.”
“Are you sure we’re in Shipwreck?” Maria asks.
“Fewer pirates,” Roger tells her. He’s standing on the bench now, which is creaking under his weight while he holds the donut box over his head and Sue tries to eat his pants. “The festival’s over, so the fake pirates went home and everyone finally took their annual baths. But this Pop guy has a parrot and a pirate hat.”
“I could take those for you,” I tell Roger. “Give them away over at my shop.”
All three of the Sarcasm intruders snort-snicker.
“You used to be so much smarter,” Ms. Williams says with a soft smile.
“You callin’ my grandson dumb?” Pop asks.
“Dumb as a box of pins missing their hand grenades,” Long Beak Silver offers. “Walk the plank! Rawk!”
“Just thought we could be neighborly,” I tell Maria. “You help me, I help you.”
Bailey tosses her long hair, which has some curl to it, just like Maria’s, though the older woman’s hair is streaked with a few strands of silver. “There’s no help for you.”
“I’m gonna have to ask you to leave my town,” Pop growls.
“Do you know what I’ve never understood?” Maria says. “I’ve never understood why Shipwreck hates Sarcasm so much.”
“It’s because we got the better name, Mama.”
“Down, you mangy goat!” the plumber barks.
“It’s unfortunate that we did get the better name,” Ms. Williams agrees, “but we’ve all been named for over a hundred years. Maybe it’s time we bury the hatchet.”
“Maybe if you all didn’t cheat in softball, we could,” Pop says.
“Cheater, cheater, pussy-eater,” Long Beak Silver squawks.
Mama appears behind her, dark sunglasses on, white cane gripped in her hand. “Don’t be such an old lady,” she tells me. “It’s just a drive. Oh. And now there are catfish swimming in the bakery. Are the walls in here still yellow?”
“Yes, Mama.”
“I like the wooly mammoth in the kitchen better, but it’s going to crush the sink if it’s not careful. Also, we’re going for a drive. With Roger. He promised he wouldn’t take advantage of us.”
“He doesn’t have to work today?”
“Plumbing’s all good in Sarcasm today,” she assures me. “And do you remember his son, Birch? He’s on call.”
“You don’t want to go rest? You’ve been up since four this morning. And you don’t normally have two hallucinations in a row if you’re not tired.”
“Annika Rose, I may be blind, but I’m still your mother, and I’m also still quite the spring chicken.”
“She really is,” Bailey agrees, which is even more suspicious. “We left two more pans of cinnamon rolls on the counter in back. I frosted them and everything, so all you have to do is put them out.”
“It’s almost lunchtime. People aren’t coming in for cinnamon rolls.”
She smiles. “They should. The cinnamon rolls are so delicious, people should have breakfast dessert for lunch. Or you can pack them up for customers to reheat in the morning. Awesome either way! Later, Anni-gator.”
“After while, Bailey-dile,” I reply automatically, though I’m still highly suspicious, but honestly, Mama getting out is a good thing, even if I know she’ll be exhausted, because she tries to deny it, but the stress is getting to her, as evidenced by the hallucinations. “And remember Mama needs to be home for her appointment with the mobility specialist by two.”
“Got it,” Bailey calls.
I turn back to Liliana. “So. You want a cinnamon roll?”
“Wooly mammoths?”
“Just go with it.”
She asks for a coffee and a banana, so I grab both for her and then we sit to catch up.
“What’s it like seeing Grady again?” she asks, her hazel eyes sparking with curiosity as she goes straight for the kill.
“It’s just like seeing everyone again,” I lie.
“Annika. You two were attached at the hip in high school. I never understood why he didn’t just ask you out. He was clearly crazy about you. And now you’re back, and he’s still over there in Shipwreck…”
“Being a Shipwreck shithead,” I remind her.
“Please. Cooper was a shithead. Grady was not. He worshipped the ground you walked on.”
“He did not.”
“Um, yes, he did. Did he bring anyone else cookies and cupcakes and muffins every day? Did he beat up Garrett MacGruder for saying crude things in the locker room about any other girl in school? Or her mama? Did he come all the way here, to Sarcasm, in enemy territory, to see any other person besides you? No, he did not. Because he was sweet on you.”
I open my mouth to tell her she’s wrong, that we were just really good friends who clicked because he knew what to say to calm me down when I’d go too far down the path of seeking perfection, and I didn’t care what his brother or sister did, unlike half of the rest of high school.
But I can’t tell Liliana she’s wrong, because everything he told me the night we graduated high school suggests she’s right.
C’mon, Annika. You know you’re it for me. You always have been. Let’s make it official. Fuck the Army. Stay here. Move to Shipwreck. Come work for my family while I go to culinary school. You can take classes at the community college. I’ll be home every weekend. We’ll get a place together, and it’ll be awesome. You feel it, don’t you? This thing? We’re more than friends. Let’s BE more than friends. For real.
And in the moments when I’m being completely honest with myself…I knew it.
I knew he liked me.
But I was terrified of him liking me. I was terrified I was reading him wrong. I was terrified that I was reading him right.
I was terrified of having to work two jobs to support an unplanned baby while ruining both of our life plans.
“He…might’ve said something to that effect before I left, but he just didn’t want things to change. He didn’t really mean it. He just didn’t want me to leave.”
She gives me that seriously? That’s your story? look. “I get it. God, Annika, if anybody gets it, you know I do. We didn’t want to be our mothers, and we needed to establish ourselves before letting crazy teenage hormones change our lives forever. But…we’re all adults now. You’re home now. He was your best friend. Are more friends ever really a bad thing?”
I sip my own coffee and squint at her, because Liliana grew up next door to us, in a rented house with barely enough room for two people, much less three, and she always hated that I was friends with anyone from Shipwreck, even Grady. “What’s in Shipwreck that you want? Because you and Shipwreck aren’t exactly BFFs. At least, you weren’t.”
“I’d say this even if my new boss hadn’t already sent a memo about wanting to expand local distribution to all the liquor stores in the tri-county area. Just for the record. Because you two were best friends, even if I was a total Sarcasm asshole about it back then. And honestly, I miss you both. I didn’t realize it until you were gone, but you were my hope that my grandparents would quit calling people from Shipwreck shitheads. Like Romeo and Juliet, without the stabbings and death stuff. And I was never really sure if you two should have sex or not. Risk of teen pregnancy aside and all that. But like…if you could overcome how different your families were and the fact that our towns are rude to each other, then maybe love’s possible for everyone.”
“You are a total nut.”
She grins and fluffs her curly auburn hair. “Some things never change.”
And thank goodness for that.
Because she’s right. I need a friend. Probably several.
I’m just not sure if I agree with her assessment of who I should start with first.
And after last night, I doubt he’d be interested in any kind of truce.
So today, I choose to be grateful for Liliana.
My new Sarcasm best friend.
“You know anyone in town who can bake like a goddess and doesn’t have to go back to school in a few weeks?” I ask her.
“Oh my god, you still can’t bake?” she whispers.
“Sshh! I’m trying, but so far, all I’ve managed to do is create something that NASA scientists came and confiscated to see if I somehow recreated moon rock here on earth, and also set fire to the stovetop.”
She chuckles over her coffee. “God, I’m so glad you’re home.”
I am too.
Except I’m not.
I’m not fully home. But not fully gone.
I’m just filling space while we figure out my family’s new normal.
And in the meantime, I’m trying to make all my mama’s dreams come true.
9
Grady
I’m putting the final touches on a carrot cake, ice pack to my ball sack, Apocalyptica blaring in my kitchen while I whisper to the frosting.
“Beautiful, baby. So smooth. So silky. I could stroke you all day long.”
Neither the cake nor the cream cheese frosting answer, but they both clearly love the way I’m smoothing the finish with gentle spins of the cake’s turntable coupled with the precise caresses of my icing spatula.
The strings on my speakers rock out to “Enter Sandman,” and I can almost pretend everything is completely normal.
“So perfect,” I whisper. “I could lick you from top to bottom and over again.”
Georgia stalks into the kitchen in her Crow’s Nest apron, hits a switch, and my music goes silent. “People are complaining about the vibe. You need to talk it out?”
“I’m talking to the cakes. And what’s wrong with Metallica? This is fucking awesome.”
“It’s orchestral Metallica.”
“It’s leveled-up badass.”
She levels me with a we’re done talking about this glare, like she owns the place or something. Which she doesn’t—I do, backed by a loan from my brother, the rich baseball player, which is the only reason I haven’t had to shut down yet, and yes, that irritates the shit out of me too, plus adds a big dollop of guilt at the idea that I could be letting him down too—but she’s the best employee I’ve ever hired, and I don’t want to lose her.
I’d marry Georgia if that’s what it took to save the bakery, even though we’d fight like cats and dogs and she’s told me numerous times that I’m not tall enough or black enough for her, and she also prefers a man with what she calls a bigger package, though I think she’s fooling herself if she thinks that exists.
Can’t fix any of those—and honestly, we’re too similar for a relationship of convenience to work—so instead, I’ll let her pretend she runs my bakery.
Sales are up since she started here.
Just not enough to dig Crow’s Nest out of that nebulous place where it’s regularly making two dollars in profit after paying Georgia what she deserves and me just barely enough to not default on my mortgage.
She’s right.
I can’t afford to chase my customers away.
And wouldn’t that be the frosting on the shitcake to have Crow’s Nest go under right when Annika opened her own bakery?
Because her mama went blind.
Fuck.
“Cake can’t love you back like a woman can.” She eyeballs my crotch. “But you’re not getting any from that front either, are you?”
“Are you here to rob me of my joy and ruin my day, or did you actually need something?”
“Both.”
“Fantastic.” I straighten. My lower back gives a twinge, and if I could glare at it and threaten to fire it too today, I would.
Especially since I know better than to threaten to fire Georgia.
“You want bad or worse first?” she asks.
“Bad.”
“We still have four dozen tres leches donuts left.”
“What? Those were delicious.” And expensive, and if they don’t sell, today’s a red day.
A red day I can’t afford.
“Yeah, but they’re not banana pudding donuts. Also, there’s a teenager and a blind lady sitting down at the end of the row giving away cinnamon roll samples and telling people to go to Sarcasm to support the Maria Williams Foundation for the Blind by buying from Duh-Nuts.”
Fuckers.
They really are stealing my customers now, and my daily profit sheet isn’t the only thing going red.
“I called the sheriff. She said they got a permit. So I called your Pop instead. Got a feeling he’s gonna take Sue and Long Beak Silver for a walk.”
I rip off my apron and stalk around my worktable, grabbing my phone while I go. “Fucking sheriff.”
“Yeah, but until we can get somebody from Shipwreck to run against her, we’re stuck. Plus, there’s that whole thing where crime’s down forty percent since she took over. And she charmed the pants off all those rich people with houses up on Thorny Rock Mountain.”
“Cooper owns a house up on Thorny Rock Mountain.”
“And he’s never here, and half of the rest of ’em up there aren’t really locals either. They just put money toward the election campaign because they like their houses not being broken into during the week while they’re doing their regular jobs making oodles of money in the big city.”
I toss my bag of ice in the sink, and I head for the back door.
“By the parking field or by the gazebo?” I ask.
She points me toward the mountains, and I march out the back door.
I can’t be a total dick, because yeah, it sucks that Annika’s mama went blind.
But they’re poaching my customers, and Crow’s Nest can’t afford to lose customers.
Fucking numbers.
If I could just bake and leave the books to someone else, I would, but I can’t afford to pay for it. Every little bit of savings I stash away manages to get eaten up by an oven needing repair or a mixer breaking or a leaky roof.
Something.
And here come the Sarcasm assholes, sitting in my town when they could be giving away samples in any one of the little towns dotting our county.
They’re baiting me.
And they’re stealing my customers.
I’ve worked up a good, steaming pile of mad by the time I spot the two of them lounging on a bench beside the Argh, Ye Be in Shipwreck Now sign, not a full block away from my bakery.
Pop’s crossing the street from the other side the same time I approach from the back. Sue’s tugging on his leash, and I can already hear Long Beak Silver.
“Get the fuck out of my town! Rawk!”
“Your bird is really rude,” Bailey calls to Pop.
“So’s sitting a block from my bakery and stealing my customers,” I tell her.
She doesn’t jump at my approach from behind the bench, and I notice the same guy who was at Duh-Nuts the other day coming from the small parking lot at the edge of the park with a box of what I assume are fresh cinnamon roll samples.
“Should’ve known not to expect manners in a pirate town,” she says.
“Bailey. Who is it?” Ms. Williams asks.
“That old man who wears eyeliner all the time with the rude parrot, and that Rock guy who thinks he owns the world or something,” the teenager replies.
“He owns the best damn bakery this side of the mountains,” Pop says.
“Grady.” Ms. Williams turns her head in my direction with a smile. “How are your testicles today? Annika felt terrible for hurting you.”
“Not terrible enough to pause before she got on base,” Pop points out.
“She forgets bakers don’t have the brass cojones of all those Army men she’s known the last ten years. And she did stop at first instead of going on to second like she could’ve.”
Bailey snickers.
I really did like her better before she could form full sentences.
“What are you gentlemen doing in Sarcasm today?” Ms. Williams asks.
“We’re not in Sarcasm. You’re sitting in Shipwreck,” Pop tells her.
“What? No. Surely not.” She smiles, and in my more forgiving moments, I’d say she was teasing me, but I’m not feeling very forgiving at the moment. “I’d smell the pirates if we were. And if we were in Shipwreck, those mountain lions sitting over there would definitely be gnawing on someone’s peg leg.”
Pop and I both jump and look around, but there are no mountain lions.
And Maria’s blind.
Even if there were, she couldn’t see them.
More snickering from Bailey.
“Here you go, Maria. Last box of samples. Told you that you still had it in you to bake the good stuff.” The plumber—Roger? Is that his name?—plops the box on the edge of the bench.
Sue lunges for it. He’s probably just as interested in the white cardboard as he is the cinnamon rolls inside.
I don’t try to stop my goat, but Roger makes a go of saving the cinnamon rolls.
“Yes, Ms. Williams,” I tell her. “You’re in Shipwreck. Stealing my customers.”
“It’s karma.” Bailey makes one of those irritating teenager faces that Tillie Jean still tosses out when Cooper’s in town and we’re ganging up on her, though Bailey’s is all brown eyes and the same bone structure as Annika’s, which means she’s probably going to be hit on by everything with a single red blood cell in its body in the next four years, which means shit, somebody’s gonna have to watch out for her.
“First of all,” she continues, completely unaware that I’m about to have a heart attack at the idea of teenage boys at the high school trying something with her, which is none of my damn business, but apparently I can’t stop the feelings, “we wouldn’t be stealing your customers if you were giving them anything worthwhile to eat. And second of all, you stole my donut idea. We’re just making things even.”
Yeah. Maybe I stole her donut idea.
And maybe I’ve been debating spending my last four hundred dollars on a soft serve machine, because bubble waffles are trending hot, and there’s only one restaurant in Copper Valley serving them, which means Crow’s Nest could be a trendsetter.
“You’re twelve,” I say instead of letting more guilt sink in. “You don’t make business decisions.”
“I’m thirteen, which I know you know, and I could pass economics with a higher grade than you could.”
“Are you sure we’re in Shipwreck?” Maria asks.
“Fewer pirates,” Roger tells her. He’s standing on the bench now, which is creaking under his weight while he holds the donut box over his head and Sue tries to eat his pants. “The festival’s over, so the fake pirates went home and everyone finally took their annual baths. But this Pop guy has a parrot and a pirate hat.”
“I could take those for you,” I tell Roger. “Give them away over at my shop.”
All three of the Sarcasm intruders snort-snicker.
“You used to be so much smarter,” Ms. Williams says with a soft smile.
“You callin’ my grandson dumb?” Pop asks.
“Dumb as a box of pins missing their hand grenades,” Long Beak Silver offers. “Walk the plank! Rawk!”
“Just thought we could be neighborly,” I tell Maria. “You help me, I help you.”
Bailey tosses her long hair, which has some curl to it, just like Maria’s, though the older woman’s hair is streaked with a few strands of silver. “There’s no help for you.”
“I’m gonna have to ask you to leave my town,” Pop growls.
“Do you know what I’ve never understood?” Maria says. “I’ve never understood why Shipwreck hates Sarcasm so much.”
“It’s because we got the better name, Mama.”
“Down, you mangy goat!” the plumber barks.
“It’s unfortunate that we did get the better name,” Ms. Williams agrees, “but we’ve all been named for over a hundred years. Maybe it’s time we bury the hatchet.”
“Maybe if you all didn’t cheat in softball, we could,” Pop says.
“Cheater, cheater, pussy-eater,” Long Beak Silver squawks.
