shift, I’m not sure what the right thing is to say.
A moment later, the kitchen door swings open.
“Oh. Hey, Upstate,” Nash says, plucking an unfrosted vanilla cupcake off the cooling rack and jumping up to sit on one of the countertops.
My heart twists in my chest every time he calls me by my lie.
“Hi,” I say, wondering what gives Nash the privilege to sit on the countertops we just wiped down.
“Employees only, dude,” Sawyer fake deadpans.
“Diana said you were wrapping up,” Nash says, undeterred.
Sawyer grins and grabs a rag and a bottle of disinfectant spray from the cabinet. “We are. If you can finish up in here, Hal-lee, I’ll take care of the tables.”
I nod. “Got it.”
I reach for a clean dishrag and continue doing the dishes, hoping Nash will follow Sawyer from the kitchen to the seats out front. Nope. He hasn’t moved from the countertop, where fresh crumbs are accumulating. I try not to look at them. Or Nash. How is he always just there, wherever I am?
“What’s up?” I ask.
“Bored,” Nash says, his mouth full of cupcake. He swallows and looks at me. “Like the job? The Davidsons treating you okay?”
“It’s good,” I say, drying cupcake plates.
The stack of dirty plates is almost as endless as the silence that follows, so I reach for another rag and toss it to Nash.
I wish I could screenshot the look on his face right now. He raises his eyebrows, like, seriously? I step to my left to make room for both of us at the sink. If Nash Kim has the audacity to come into my nearly perfect kitchen and crumb it all up—he can at least make himself useful. If his idea of a fun Saturday afternoon is loitering in a bakery kitchen and stealing cupcakes and stressing me out, he’s going to help me finish early.
He takes the spot by my side at the sink.
“I’ll wash. You can dry,” I say. “You do know how to dry a plate, yeah?”
Kels’s snark comes out of Halle’s mouth so effortlessly it’s shocking—and that’s when I know he’s already messing with my head. Nash just rolls his eyes. “Of course.”
In between passing plates and humming along to the Ed Sheeran song on the radio, I learn that Nash has a scar on his right palm. It begins at the midpoint between his thumb and pointer finger and runs down the center of the palm, following the curve of the lifeline crease. Every time I pass a plate to him, I steal a glimpse of that scar, fixated on a flaw I never knew, and never could’ve known, as Kels.
“What happened?” I ask.
Nash’s eyebrows scrunch together. “Huh?”
My eyes point to the scar. “Your hand.”
“Oh.” Nash coughs. “Bike fail when I was seven. I hit a rock and flew right over the handlebars. Thought I was ready for the training-wheels-free life. Clearly, I was not. Stitches in the palm suck, by the way. Do not recommend.”
I pass another plate to Nash. “That is tragically generic.”
Nash laughs. “Oh, for sure. But it was still traumatizing! For my mom, at least. I don’t remember much of it.” He holds out his palm so I can see the full extent of the damage. “I don’t remember my hand ever not looking like this.”
If I were Kels, I’d trace his scar with my thumb.
But if I were Kels, I’d never know there’s a scar to trace.
What else don’t I know about Nash?
It’s just a scar, I remind myself. Anyone can fall off their bike. You know Nash.
He curls his fingers into a fist and returns to drying dishes and we revert to a more comfortable quiet.
“Do you bake?” he asks.
I blink and my heart skips a beat. “What?”
Nash stacks the dry plates. “I am clearly the master of segues.”
“And bicycles.”
He clutches his hand to his heart. “Ouch. Too soon, Upstate.”
I ignore his theatrics. “Sometimes,” I say. “But I like eating cupcakes more than baking them, I think.”
Nash nods. “Dude, same! My friend and I argue about this, like, all the time. She bakes cupcakes that are art, cupcakes that could win Food Network competitions. I know it’s her brand, but sometimes I wonder why she—why people—put so much effort into a product that is temporary, you know? At the end of the day, cupcakes are meant to be eaten. But if you love them, you have to see these.”
His phone displays One True Pastry’s Instagram page and I am dead.
Nash scrolls through my most recent #CupcakeCoverReveals and