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Chapter Twenty-Three
“Now we lift and score.”
Rory puffed out a breath, a strand of hair falling over her face. “And if it falls apart?”
“Then we try again,” Jess reassured her. “But this cake is very cold so it will be fine. Don’t think too hard about it.”
Rory rolled her shoulders and leaned over the cake, then slowly lifted the metal mold off of the round vanilla ice cream cake in front of them. It came off clean, the cake still standing perfectly straight. She whooped, then tossed the mold into the sink.
Jess handed her the scraper. “Good, now score the edges.”
Rory obeyed with a smile and scored the sides, then slid the cake into the box and placed it in the fridge to chill overnight, ready to be decorated in the morning.
She washed the dishes in the sink, handing them off to Rory to dry as Melanie and Blake finished serving the last customers out front. “See? You’re going to be fine.”
“It’s going to be weird not having you here anymore,” Rory confessed. “What are we going to do without you?”
“Wow, you make it sound like I’m dying,” she quipped. “I’ll only be down the road.”
“Yeah, but still. It feels like a lot is changing all at once.”
Jess looked up from the soapy dishes in front of her and eyed Rory. “Change is good, yes?”
Rory smiled to herself, her eyes glossed over as if she was recalling a memory. “Yes. Change is good.”
Blake soared by them with full trash bags in hand. “It’s over!”
Melanie followed, turning to the shelves behind them and sliding containers of candies and jimmies from the shelves to refill out front. “I can’t believe it’s already Labor Day. This summer season went by way too fast.”
“It always does,” Rory added. “But this time we’re off to be studious college students. Or in Jess’s case, a sexy baker with a hot new boyfriend.”
She glared at her.
Melanie giggled. “Maybe that’s what your bakery should be named, Jess! The Sexy Baker.”
“It has a nice ring to it,” she mused.
Rory and Melanie cackled. Jess smiled, finishing up the dishes and wiping her hands dry.
“Speaking of, how’s the new roommate?” Rory teased.
Jess blushed, then pointed to the vacuum. “We need to clean. I don’t want to be here all night.”
“I take it things are going well,” she jested back.
“Kevin told Calvin that every morning when he wakes up he’s afraid it’s all going to be a dream,” Melanie explained, sealing the peanut butter cup container in her hand. “Then he sees her sleeping next to him and says he—and I quote—‘falls in love all over again.’”
Her heart fluttered in her chest.
“My god he’s so obsessed with you,” Rory beamed.
“Yes, well, I have that effect on people.”
Another cackle from the two of them.
Blake charged through the back door. “Guess who I found outside!”
Melanie smiled as Calvin walked in next, coming right up to her and whispering, “Hi, headband,” as he cupped her face and kissed her greedily on the mouth, in front of everyone.
