“It won’t,” he says, and I don’t ask him how he can be so sure. I just let the words hang there, final and bitter.
When the butter and sugar are ready, I turn off the mixer and add egg and vanilla, then the lemon he zested, then the flour in two slow parts. He finishes the last lemon and washes his hands without me asking, the bar towel slung over his shoulder like he’s back behind his bar. He steps aside so I can slide the sheet closer to the oven. We move like people who’ve shared small kitchens before. It’s a stupid thing to feel tender about. It happens anyway.
“Do you remember Marlene’s?” I ask, scooping dough and plopping neat mounds onto the parchment. “When I was little.”
He huffs a breath that might be a laugh. “I remember you standing on tiptoe at the case like you were praying to the gods of frosting.”
“I was.” I steal a bit of dough and point the spoon at him. “And Harold always slipped me a cookie. Always. My mom pretended not to see and then pretended harder when I got icing on my shirt.”
He smiles. Small and sad. “Marlene used to make these huge cupcakes, and she always made sure there was one for me when we hung out there in the summer.”
“I remember those,” I whisper. I can’t speak any louder because my eyes are prickling again.
“Back then,” he says, voice thoughtful, “you’d walk into her shop and everything was bright and… right. Like someone plugged you in. And I’d think, this is how it’s supposed to feel, you know?”
I freeze with the scoop midair. He doesn’t look at me when he says it.
“And when I saw you in your shop,” he adds, quieter, “it was the same.”
The scoop touches parchment with a soft thud. I clear my throat and keep going like we’re still talking about dough. “I want that for my customers,” I say. “That feeling. The one where your shoulders drop and you forget the thing that was chewing you up on the sidewalk.” I glance at him before I can stop myself.
“It will be,” he says.
I slide the tray into the oven and set the timer. We stand there, side by side, watching heat turn dough into something new.
It’s practically like I can feel him not reaching for me. It’s almost worse than the night he did.
“I’m not ready to forgive you,” I say finally, staring at the little puffs as they rise.
“I know.”
“And I’m not ready to pretend we’re friends and make jokes about it.”
“I know that too.”
“But I don’t want to pretend I don’t see you.” The confession is out before I can lock it down. “It’s exhausting.”
“I don’t want that either.”
We clean the kitchen in silence while the time passes, and I’ve set out the ingredients for my next test batch when the timer dings. I pull the tray, and the kitchen fills with the scent of caramel and lemon.
I tap a top; it springs back. Good. I move them to the rack, steam curling up in tender ribbons.
“They need a few minutes to cool,” I say, but I grab one anyway and break it open, letting the steam out. I hold one half out and say, “Careful.”
He takes it like it’s something precious. We eat leaning against the counter, chewing quietly. The cookie is exactly what I wanted: crisp at the edge, soft in the center, lemon singing through the butter.
“It’s good,” he says around the last bite. “It’s… you.”
I roll my eyes because crying in front of him again is not on my list of acceptable activities. “Me?”
“Bright, sweet. A small bite to it,” he says, and I hate him a little for it. Because why does he understand me so well after such a short period of time? Why does he understand me in a way that no one ever has?
The one person who’s lost to me.
I look down at the half cookie still in my hand. It’s already losing its heat. Everything does, I guess. “A couple of things,” I say, before I lose my nerve. “Ground rules.”
“Okay.”
