Tru scoffed. “Just reminding. Hi, Kid.” He flashed a grin at me as he grabbed his jacket from the back and shrugged it on. “Bye, Kid.”
“Bye, Tru,” I said through a laugh. He was such a whirlwind. “Good to see you.”
“Thanks for helping with the books,” Tru said over his shoulder as he flounced toward the front door. “They are seriously fucked up.”
Tru left, and locked the front door behind him. Once he was gone, Stella’s was much quieter, but it was a warm, comfortable silence. I turned back to Dante, waiting for direction.
Dante was so handsome I almost wanted to sigh just looking at him. His black t-shirt was tight across his chest, and he was wearing his long white apron folded into a half-apron low on his hips. He’d just been doing some minor prep tasks for tomorrow, it appeared: mixing dry ingredients and chopping fruit. He looked so comfortable, relaxed, and competent—I was reminded of that day in the kitchen at the clubhouse, when he taught us all to make pie, and what had almost happened afterward.
“Follow me,” he said warmly. “I’ll show you the office.”
Dante pulled his apron off and alley-ooped it the same way Tru had. I bit back a smile. They looked so different, but their shared mannerisms spoke to years and years of friendship. Honestly, it was cute.
I followed Dante to the back of the bakery, by the dish pit.
“That one leads to the dumpsters,” Dante said, motioning to the leftmost door, “and this one to my office. Fitting, huh?” He shouldered the right hand door and waved me inside.
And. Boy. He wasn’t kidding.
“Did your filing cabinets explode?” I asked.
“What filing cabinets?”
The office was small: more like a closet than an office, really, with terrible, dim lighting and an enormous desk. The furniture was clearly second-hand, from the beat-up desk to the tattered chair to the mismatched shelves stacked with manila folders. I wouldn’t want to spend any time in here, either. It didn’t exactly have the same inviting energy that the rest of Stella’s did.
When I’d offered to help with the books, I hadn’t expected it’d be this bad. But, honestly, I liked a challenge—and since there was no apparent system in place, I’d be able to implement a system that worked from the ground up.
It’d take more time than I expected—but spending more time with Dante was not exactly a hardship.
“All right,” I said, “give me the tour.”
“What’s there to show?” Dante asked. “Old stuff in the folders, new stuff stacked on the desk.”
“What’s ‘stuff’?” I asked. “Orders? Invoices? Tax documents? Have you filed your taxes for the year yet? Do you have an accountant?”
Dante groaned miserably and closed the door to the office behind us. He pushed the old chair aside and motioned me closer to the desk. We stood like that, leaning over the desk shoulder to shoulder while Dante picked through his stack of recent documents, and I began sorting them into categories.
It was hard to focus, though, with Dante’s muscular arm pressing against mine, and his low voice close to my ear as he explained how, exactly, he’d managed to mis-order flour three times in a row, because it was definitely his rep’s fault, not his own for forgetting he’d done it the week before because he lost the receipt.
After about half an hour of sorting, I was already getting a headache from the dim lighting. “I need a headlamp to read all this stuff,” I groaned.
Dante laughed. “You do? Imagine how I feel!”
“Well, you’re the one who could fix it,” I said. “Just bring a lamp in here. Problem solved.”
“Ugh.” Dante pinched the bridge of his nose. “Then I’d have to spend more time in here.”
“No, you won’t, not once we get all this sorted out,” I said. “Have you considered spreadsheets?”
“Have I considered—” Dante sputtered. Then he noticed I was smirking. He laughed again, a rich sound, and then rolled his eyes. “Teach me all about spreadsheets, then. I’m dying to learn.”
“If you saw how elegant my spreadsheets are, you wouldn’t be making that joke,” I said with my arms crossed over my chest.
I was trying to look stern, but I couldn’t help smiling a little bit. It was just so easy to tease Dante like this, especially when he was clearly so flustered by the sheer amount of paperwork ahead of us. It wasn’t that bad really, it’d just be laborious to convert it all to digital. But once it was done, maintenance would