news outlets that Nick and I are not in a relationship. Even though we aren’t in one and we never will be.”
Annie pauses. “I feel like a bitch. You know I don’t want you to do anything you don’t want to do, right? You know I just want you to be happy?”
“Yes, and you’re not a bitch. I love you, okay?”
“Okay,” she says, and I can practically see her nodding and biting her lip. “I love you, too.”
“I’m gonna go draw up some pie blueprints now, so I’ll talk to you later.” We say our goodbyes and hang up.
I love Annie. I really do. Our friendship is the single most stable relationship in my life, and I know that I can trust her. She’s been there for me through some of the roughest moments of my life, and we’ve been almost-roommates for years. Maybe that’s why it stings so much that she’s telling me I’m making her life harder. She literally wrote a fictionalized version of mine, and I didn’t even know about it until it was halfway to being a real movie.
I get up off the bed and pull my pie books off my cookbook shelf. Spreading them out on my tiny kitchen table, I get to work. Because if there’s one thing I know for sure, it’s that a good pie can solve most problems.
Chapter Nine
The next morning at work, the Doobies are pumping, customers are happy, and I have pie on the brain. I love retreating to dessert fantasies in stressful moments. Why think about my dad’s care when I could think about strawberry pie, covered in a thick layer of sweetened whipped cream instead? It’s so nice to let my problems melt away like chunks of butter in a baking pie crust.
This morning I made chocolate lavender muffins, which may sound unusual, but customers are really going for them (which I knew would happen, because they’re great). Lavender is one of my favorite herbs because you think it’s delicate—those tiny little flowers, the barely-there color. But if your hand slips and you put too much in, you’re going to be overwhelmed by lavender, because it’s strong. It’s assertive. It’s almost too much.
In a way, I relate to lavender.
“Tobin?” I ask as the line snakes around the counter. “Could you grab a small hot chocolate, please?”
Tobin is in his senior year at OSU and he is truly a good kid, but asking him to hand you something is asking for trouble. I don’t know how he’s worked here for years without being able to handle the concept of . . . well, handling things without dropping them. While I’m swiping a customer’s credit card and Nick is putting a muffin from the baked goods case into a paper bag, Tobin gets the hot chocolate ready. And I don’t see it happen, but I hear it: a loud and uncharacteristic yelp from Nick, followed by Tobin’s profuse apologies.
“This is . . . scalding,” Nick says, looking down at his white thermal, the one that’s now soaked in hot chocolate and clinging to his body in a way that is positively Colin Firth in any given movie (Annie’s made me watch Bridget Jones’s Diary and the entire Pride and Prejudice miniseries way too many times).
Tobin and Nick both look at me and I realize I’m making an inappropriate low, guttural noise, kind of like that time we took a school field trip to the Columbus Zoo in the fifth grade and we saw the Aldabra tortoises mating.
I cough. “Sorry. Something in my throat. Um, okay, right.”
I begin to apologize for the delay to the customer who’s waiting, but she doesn’t even notice my words because she’s staring, openmouthed, at Nick and his accidental entry into a wet T-shirt contest.
And who can blame her? Certainly not me. So much of popular culture acts like men have to be super muscular to be attractive, with bulging forearm veins and abs so distinct you could vigorously scrub laundry on them. Nick’s arms are thick but not scarily so, and his abs lack that washboard definition, but he’s still got what it takes to entrance a line full of caffeine-seeking women (and a few men).
I grab a new hot chocolate myself, despite Tobin’s offers to get one, and hand it to the customer in front of me while refraining from reaching over to gently close her mouth. By the time I’m on to the next customer, Nick is gone, presumably off somewhere changing