“If you have any left, I’d take it off your hands.”
“For the community center?” I asked, imagining it would be useful for the same thing on one of their walls.
He paused for a moment, a big smile forming. “Sure.”
“Or personal use?”
Turning, he started painting again. “It won’t be wasted, if that’s what you’re worried about.” He let out an adorable giggle.
There was something about the way time flew by when I was around him. It wasn’t the most productive, but since we were both working on the walls, it didn’t take us much longer until we were done.
I invited him up to my apartment above the bakery to clean off. “I’ve got the good stuff,” I prefaced it with. “Gentle on skin and strips the paint right off. I can’t send you out there covered.”
“I already said yes. Plus, I want to see what it looks like up there,” he said. “You know how long I’ve passed by this place and wondered what it looked like upstairs. I have a friend, Jace, whose family owns the ranch up the road. He wanted to buy this place... like, it wasn’t something he actually tried to buy, but you know when you have a dream to do something? This was his dream.”
I sucked on my teeth. “Oh god. I—I kinda feel awful now.”
“Oh no, don’t. Jace would never leave the ranch anyway. He practically runs the place now,” he said. “Besides, once you’re open, you’re going to be giving them business since most of the eggs in town come from them.”
I had been put in contact with someone. “Wilde Ranch, right?” I asked. “Oliver gave me their contact details. They’ve got some good deals on eggs. I’m gonna need a whole lot of them as well.”
Leo scoffed. “Like a ton of them.”
Probably not that many, but ballpark figure. “I’ll make sure I only get and use the best eggs from them.”
As we headed up to the apartment above, Leo talked about how it was all one big community here and everyone helped each other, which is why he was pushing the ranch’s eggs onto me. He’d also said they were the best eggs around. It felt like he worked on commission.
“I like the community here,” I said, showing Leo around the apartment, which was mostly still in boxes that were stacked everywhere and labeled with large lettering in black Sharpie. “I was always working and far too busy in Chicago to feel like I had a community. I had people I worked with, and we’d go out for drinks and food occasionally, but since leaving, I haven’t been contacted by any of them.” We reached the bathroom where there was already a large skin-friendly paint remover on the counter of the sink.
“Their loss. Did they even taste the cakes you were making?”
I laughed. “No, I really got back into baking when I started watching all those baking shows on TV. There’s nothing better than watching people battle it out to see who has the best sponge or filling.”
“And don’t forget about soggy bottoms.”
“Don’t worry, no soggy bottoms here, I promise.” I winked at him, it was totally unintentional, but as I did it, there was a warm tightness over my chest, as if it was telling me I should just go ahead and ask him out. But if I asked him out and it all went wrong, then the community would know, and he was well connected. There was no world in which they wouldn’t know. “Do you ever bake?”
He looked away, shaking his head. “Well, sometimes, but never for anyone but me, and most of the time it’s those mug cake things you put in the microwave.”
“So, there’s a towel here, and the soap is there,” I said. “I’ll let you get cleaned up first.”
“Oh, I guess I should get my bag, it has my change of clothes in it. What’s the water pressure like here?”
It was a pretty old bathroom, but the water pressure was fine. “If it stops, just give the head a little tap. I’m going to be replacing a lot of this soon.”
“It’s nice. It reminds me of my grandma’s place when she had it,” he said.
“You’re saying it’s old and dated, then?”
He giggled.
“Because you’d be right, it is,” I said. “The focus is the bakery for now, but after that, I’ll make this place home. Don’t worry, I won’t ask you for help painting up here.” I paused, trying to see his face react to my words. A smile twitched at his cheeks. “Unless you want me to.”
He shrugged. “It all depends on how well you do when you open,” he said. “But don’t worry, I’ll make sure people know to come here—if only to see the work I did on those walls.”
“I’d appreciate that.”
We lingered around each other, almost like there was something we wanted to say or do, but we didn’t. We kept our hands and eyes to ourselves as he went off to get his bag, and I tried not to get paint on anything as I occupied myself, waiting for him to finish.
