Tanya smiled from across the circle and gave Kyra a look that communicated her gratitude. She knew Kyra had willingly taken a hit from Lacey to save the baby shower from too much drama. Though Kyra found it easy to smile back and act like nothing was bothering her, the truth was that it kind of did bother her. She’d been questioning her own life choices lately, wondering if she would ever get out of Alder Creek.
It wasn’t that she didn’t enjoy working in her mother’s bakery, or even that she didn’t love Alder Creek. What she was doing now was just not what she wanted to do her entire life. The trouble was, whenever anyone asked her what she did want to do with her life, she didn’t really have an answer.
Kyra stayed for another hour, just long enough for Katie to open her presents. But then she made the excuse that she had to work early in the morning and left. Sometimes, working in a bakery had its perks, even if it was just free rolls and a good excuse to leave parties early.
Leaving early was the right choice. Kyra wasn’t sure she could hold her smile much longer. She was uncharacteristicallydepressed and barely able to hug the other partygoers on her way out the door.
All the same, Katie gave Kyra a big squeeze and said, “Well, thank you for coming. It means a lot to me.”
“Thank you for the invitation,” Kyra said, grabbing her coat from the coat tree. “It was a lot of fun.”
Katie squeezed Kyra’s shoulder with a doubtful expression. “I know that’s not entirely true,” she said with a quiet smile. “Please don’t take Lacey’s words to heart. No one else feels that way about you. You know that, don’t you? We all think it’s pretty great that you’re around to help your mother with her business. Most of us would kill to work in a bakery. Honest. Lacey’s just mean when she’s jealous. You know she’s always been that way.”
“I know,” Kyra said, but it was a lie. There was no chance Lacey was actually jealous of her. She had been blessed with the perfect family early on. It was something she bragged about almost every time Kyra ran into her.
Even if the minuscule chance that Lacey was actually jealous was true, that didn’t stop her words from digging little holes into Kyra’s heart and nesting there. Even a broken clock is right twice a day, Kyra thought to herself on her way out the door.
She got into her car in a bit of a daze, relieved that she could finally drop her smile. Kyra had always been known as the life of every party she attended, and she took that reputation seriously. To her, making sure other people had a good time was a reward in itself. The downside to this was that she frequently felt the need to perform, even when she wasn’t feeling it wholeheartedly. Tonight, for some reason, she hadn’t been feeling it at all. It wasn’t entirely Lacey’s fault. Lacey’s words could only get toKyra so easily because Kyra had been questioning her own life choices lately.
She drove home in a pensive silence, not even bothering to turn on the radio for some music. Was she really throwing her life away? Was she letting all her chances to make something of herself fly away with her youth? Would her indecisiveness be her downfall in the end? Probably.
Once home, Kyra heated a TV dinner for herself and sat down on the couch to eat. She let a show she’d already seen play in the background, so her apartment felt less lonely. Sometimes, she wondered why she even bothered having a separate residence from her mother. Did it really change the fact that she still followed her mother around like a lost chick, despite being an actual adult now? Maybe she should accept her spinsterhood and room with her mom, save a few bucks in the long run. But just the thought of it made her want to sink into her couch. No, giving up was not an option.
After finishing her dinner, she threw away the disposable tray and told herself she should be grateful she didn’t have to do dishes for an entire family. But she couldn’t make herself believe it. Doing dishes for an entire family actually sounded kind of nice right about now.
She imagined children bringing dishes in from the dining area and loud laughter coming from outside the kitchen. She imagined choosing a movie to watch or a game to play with her family that night. She imagined looking forward to the weekends because she would be able to spend time with people she loved. She imagined all these things while she brushed her teeth and put her pajamas on in an empty apartment, and she did her best not to cry.
Finally, she turned off the television and climbed into bed. It hadn’t been a lie when she said she had to get up early for work. She really did have to rise at 3:30 in the morning to get dough proving. But try as she might, she couldn’t seem to fall asleep. She lay there in the dark, staring up at the ceiling, wondering whether this was exactly how the rest of her life would be if she didn’t take drastic steps to change it.
Even if she could take drastic steps, she had no direction to take them in. She wasn’t someone who spent her young life dreaming about what she wanted to be when she grew up. Whenever people asked her the question, she would tell them she had plenty of time to figure it out. At the time, that answer felt true. But now it felt like a lie she’d been telling herself, and no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t believe it anymore.
CHAPTER 3
KYRA
The alarm on Kyra’s phone went off at 3:30 in the morning, as expected, but Kyra hadn’t even fallen asleep. She’d been awake most of the night, thinking. Normally, she would hit snooze and doze for a while, but there wasn’t any point this morning. Why not just start the day right away if she wasn’t going to be able to sleep anyway?
She got up, showered, leisurely ate her breakfast since she had plenty of time to do so, and drove to the bakery at a medium pace in a medium kind of mood. She was determined not to let last night’s drama get to her. She would work away her worries. While there were no customers in the bakery, she would play her favorite album so loudly that she couldn’t begin to think, and she’d distract herself with dough.
It was a perfectly good plan, as far as she was concerned. But, as she pulled up to the bakery that morning, she noticed another car was already in the lot. It was her mother’s maroon coupe, her midlife-crisis car, as she frequently referred to it. Wasn’t it Kyra’s turn to open the bakery? She was sure she’d gotten the schedule right, but she was beginning to doubt herself again.
Inside the bakery, all the lights were on and the speakers were already blaring music. Since Kyra and her mother had a shared taste in music, it wasn’t too far from what Kyra herself would have chosen to play — a little candy pop, a little disco, and the occasional love ballad.
Kyra moved quietly through the bakery to the back and dropped off her bags and coat at the little wall of lockers her mother had bought for employees last year. Theft wasn’t really a problem in Alder Creek, but the lockers made new employees feel more comfortable. Jasmine, Kyra’s mom, was in the kitchen, already mixing dough and dancing along with the latest track.
Kyra tiptoed over and shouted, “Boo!”
Her mother jumped, but quickly recovered with a laugh and grinned at her daughter. “Perfect timing,” she said. “Will you get this proving while I start the next batch?”
Kyra went to the sink to wash her hands. “Sure, but I thought it was my day to open. What are you doing here?”
Jasmine shrugged. “What? Not happy to see me?”
“Of course I am. It’s just surprising, even if the surprise is a pleasant one. You know I love working with you. I just can’t see you getting up before the crack of dawn when you don’t have to. Seems out of character.”
“Hmm.” Jasmine thought a moment, adding a dot of flour to her chin where she touched it. “Maybe I wanted to do a surprise inspection on you to make sure you’re still doing the job well. Does that seem more in character?”
“Not even a little bit.” Kyra laughed. “So, who called you last night?”
