He stares at our hands, his massive one beneath mine, then at the star, then up at me. He looks like he expects me to yank it away and tell him it is still wrong.
I am scowling because scowling is safer than anything else. Still, I can feel my eyes betraying me.
Focused. Soft.
In the corner of the bakery, a college student who has been quietly studying now has her phone out. I am too busy keeping my kitchen from imploding and my customer from crying to engage, but it almost looks like she is filming.
I look back at Leo and pull my hand away.
Leo inhales like he is about to perform surgery. He tries again.
Squeeze. Stop. Pull.
Another star.
This one is better.
He looks up at me and beams, openly proud.
“I did it,” he says, like a toddler who has just mastered the potty.
I glance up. Our eyes meet. A tiny, almost smile slips out before I can stop it.
He sees it.
“Do not get cocky, Leo,” I say, forcing my voice back into business. “You have ninety-eight more to pipe.”
The student is now grinning at her screen, thumbs flying. I push the strange flutter in my chest aside and keep working.
For the next hour, we move without stopping.
Leo pipes one hundred stars with heroic concentration. His tongue sticks out slightly when he focuses, which is ridiculous and absolutely not something my brain should be recording, yet here we are.
I frost the cake with midnight-black buttercream, my spatula leaving a smooth, flawless surface. Then I take a fine brush and a pot of edible silver luster dust and paint a galaxy, flicking the bristles to form distant nebulae, mirroring the colors on Maya’s phone wallpaper.
“The scepter,” Maya says nervously. “It’s the most important part.”
Leo looks at his stars, and I watch dread settle into him. He knows it with absolute certainty. He cannot pipe a scepter. He will only make another blob.
“Boss,” he says. I look up, already irritated, because my day has been an unbroken parade of problems I did not order. “I can’t pipe it.”
“Figure it out, Art Department.”
He scans the bakery, frantic. Then his eyes lock onto the snack box Gwen keeps under the counter.
“Fruit Roll Ups. Do you have… fruit leather?” he asks.
I stare at him, baffled. “In the snack box. Why?”
He does not answer.
He grabs a red, strawberry-flavored Fruit Roll-Up and unrolls it onto parchment. He picks up a paring knife and suddenly, his hands change.
The same hands that fumbled with a piping bag go steady and precise.
This is design. This is angles.
With a few careful cuts, he transforms the flat, sticky sheet into a sharp, multifaceted crystalline shape.
