She doesn’t.
Of course, she doesn’t.
I take a breath. Then another. Then I realize I’m smiling like an idiot. I don’t wipe it off.
I walk down the block with my hands in my pockets, the sound of the bakery, metal clatter, Gwen’s laugh, the low thrum of ovens still ringing in my ears like a song I don’t want to end. I replay the last ten minutes on a loop.
Come back tomorrow. Or don’t.
I don’t know which version of that sentence scares me more.
I pass a storefront with reflective glass and catch my own reflection. I look different. Same body, same face, same expensive shoes I probably shouldn’t have worn inside a kitchen, but something has shifted. There’s flour on my sleeve. A faint smear on my pants. I don’t brush it off. It feels earned. Even if it isn’t. Not yet.
My phone buzzes in my pocket. I ignore it. Whatever it is can wait. Everything else in my life has always demanded immediacy, emails, calls, deals that need attention, but this? This deserves quiet.
I keep walking.
The city feels louder than it did an hour ago. Cars are honking. Someone shouting into a phone. A delivery truck backfiring like a gunshot. I realize how insulated I usually am from this kind of noise. My apartment has glass thick enough to mute the world. My car seals me inside leather and silence.
The bakery didn’t.
The bakery was chaos. Controlled, purposeful chaos. Heat and sound and movement and people talking over each other because timing mattered more than politeness.
I liked that.
God help me, I liked being told where to stand.
I stop at a crosswalk and wait for the light, replaying Tess’s face when I said I wanted the job. The skepticism. The assessment. The way she didn’t laugh, but didn’t soften either.
She’d looked at me like a problem to solve, not a spectacle.
No one ever does that.
Most people see me and immediately decide which category I belong in. Asset. Opportunity. Brand risk. Rich guy. Asshole. Occasionally, savior, which is worse.
Tess had looked at me like a liability with potential.
I grin again, quieter this time.
The light changes. I cross.
My phone buzzes again. Then again. I sigh and pull it out.
Five missed calls.
Marissa.
Three texts.
MARISSA: Leo???
MARISSA: I saw the Mavericks story. Are you seriously at some bakery??
I lock the screen without responding.
Marissa is… a lot. She was a chapter, not a future. I told her that. Repeatedly. Kindly. Clearly. She just never accepted that an ending could exist without her permission.
I tuck the phone away and keep walking.
