Page 99 of Shatter

"Lock the back." He says it to Aziza, not to me. "Anybody comes in you don't know, you call Aesir."

"I've been running this kitchen since before you could ride a tricycle." Aziza points a floury wooden spoon at him. "Go do your club business."

He looks at me.

I'm already tying on an apron.

"Tor called kirkja for two." He jingles the truck keys in his palm. "I'll be back by six."

"Go." I shoo him with both hands. "I'll be up to my elbows in buttercream."

He stands there a second longer.

Then he crosses the kitchen in three strides, and he kisses me, right there in front of Aziza, quick and hard, one hand warm on my waist.

When he pulls back, Aziza's grinning like a cat, and my cheeks burn all the way to my ears.

He goes out without a word, and the bell over the front door jangles behind him.

By four o'clock, I've got buttercream to my elbows and a hundred and sixty cupcakes cooling on racks along the back wall.

The radio on the shelf is playing old Motown, crackly and low.

The bakery smells like vanilla and the lemon zest Aziza's been grating for the filling.

My shoulders ache and my feet hurt, and I can't stop smiling.

"Look at you." Aziza's watching me from the big mixer, her arms folded across her apron. "Humming."

I look up from the piping bag.

"I'm not humming." I stop, the bag frozen over a cupcake.

"You're humming." She tilts her head. "Some sad little song I've never heard. And you've got a sunburn on your nose, and you've been grinning at those cupcakes like they're telling you dirty jokes."

My face goes hot.

I look down at the swirl of pale yellow buttercream I've been piping, and the tune I didn't know I was humming is still going around in my head.

His song.

The slow, rocking one from the shop, the one with no words.

"You look like somebody finally let you sleep, baby." Aziza turns back to her mixer, and I can hear the smile in her voice. "About damn time."

I laugh, and it comes out loud and bright, bouncing off the steel counters.

I pipe another rosette.

Laurent's in Apalachicola, and Desmond's in Vancouver.

Somewhere out there, the tangled mess of my life is waiting, and for one afternoon in a pink bakery on Thomasville Road, it can wait.

The bell over the front door jangles.

"Get that, would you?" Aziza doesn't turn from the mixer. "My hands are in the lemon curd."

I push through the swinging door to the front, the piping bag still in my hand.