“Just a moment!” the voice called. “Be right with you.”
“I won’t hold my breath,” the man muttered, turning to me for agreement. But I had frozen in place. It was a voice I recognized. I glanced at the door, wondering if I had enough time to make it out without being spotted. I was thinking that I just might, when the metal door behind the counter swung open and Henry stepped out.
Chapter eight
HENRY JUST STARED AT ME, AND I LOOKED BACK INTO HIS GREEN eyes, feeling the sudden urge to break into hysterical laughter, because it was beginning to seem like I couldn’t turn around in Lake Phoenix without running into him. The man looked between us, frowned again, and whacked the bell once more.
This seemed to snap Henry into action. “Sorry about that,” he said quickly, as the man harrumphed. “What can I get you?”
“Been waiting out here,” the man grumbled. Now that he had someone to wait on him, rather than ordering, he appeared to want to use his time to complain about the lack of service.
“Sorry about that,” Henry repeated, with the exact same inflection, and I could feel myself start to smile. To hide this, I bent down to look in the case, where there were rows of small iced cookies, cannoli, and brownies. But only half my attention was on the (admittedly delicious-looking) desserts. I snuck a glance at Henry as he nodded, appearing to listen as the man vented at him. He was wearing a light green T-shirt with his jeans. It had the Borrowed Thyme logo in black across the front and a dusting of flour on one shoulder. I realized I was surprised to see him working there, which was fairly ridiculous, since I clearly knew nothing about him now. But when I’d known him before—and seeing him in the woods had confirmed this—Henry had always seemed most comfortable outside. And on the rare occasions over the last few years when I let my thoughts drift back to Lake Phoenix and the people I’d left up there, I’d always imagined Henry doing something outdoors.
The ding of the register brought me back to the present, as Henry handed the man his change and slid a green bakery box across the counter. “Thanks,” he said, his tone still blandly professional. “Have a nice day.”
“Yeah,” the man grumbled, taking the box and heading out of the shop. It wasn’t until I turned back to the counter that I realized it was just me and Henry, alone in the bakery.
I looked at him, then down at my outfit, wishing for the second time that day that I had pulled myself together a little bit more. But then I dismissed the thought. He’d already seen me straight out of bed, scratched up in the woods. And anyway, it seemed like Henry had some blond girlfriend. Not that I cared about that.
“So,” Henry said, shaking his head. “I think we should stop meeting like this.”
“Do you work here?” I asked, then immediately cursed myself for my stupidity. Of course he worked there. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be standing behind the counter, waiting on irascible Phillies fans. “I mean,” I corrected immediately, trying to make it sound as little like a question as possible, “you work here.”
“I do,” Henry said, and I could see a smile playing around the corners of his mouth. Clearly, my attempts at correcting my blunder syndrome had not been successful. “It’s my dad’s bakery.”
“Oh,” I said, not quite able to conceal my surprise in time. Henry’s father, from what I remembered, had been like mine, one of the many fathers in suits getting off one of the buses on Friday nights, briefcase in hand. I glanced around the bakery, trying to reconcile these two things, and failing. “But,” I started after a moment, “I thought he used to do something with banking?”
“He did,” Henry said, his tone clipped and final, and I immediately regretted asking my question. His father had probably lost his job, and Henry didn’t need me to point this out. “He says it’s the same principle,” Henry added after a moment, his tone softening a little. “Still trying to get the dough to rise.” I groaned at that—it was the kind of joke my father would make—and Henry gave me a tiny smile in return.
Silence fell between us, and then Henry stuck his hands in his pockets and cleared his throat. “So what can I get you?” he asked, back to sounding detached and professional.
“Right,” I said quickly, realizing that I was a customer in a shop, and the fact that I was supposed to know what I wanted should not have been such a shock to me. “Um…” I saw a platter of cupcakes with multicolored pastel icing, and I immediately looked away from them. Cupcakes reminded me all too much of my birthday, the slapdash celebration, the news about my dad. Searching for something—anything else—I tapped on the case in front of the next thing I saw. “A dozen of these.” I looked closer and saw that what I’d just pointed to were, unfortunately, oatmeal raisin cookies. I hated oatmeal in all forms, but especially when people tried to dress it up as a dessert; Gelsey refused to eat raisins, and none of the rest of my family had ever been huge fans. I had just ordered a dessert that nobody at our house would most likely eat.
“Really.” Henry didn’t exactly phrase it as a question, and he raised his eyebrows at me. “Oatmeal?”
I just stared at him for a moment. There was no way Henry remembered that, five years ago, I hated oatmeal cookies. It just wasn’t possible. “Yeah,” I said slowly. “Oatmeal. Why?”
“No reason,” he said as he took down another green bakery box from the shelf behind him and began transferring in the cookies two at a time. “I just didn’t think you liked them.”
“I can’t believe you remember that,” I said, as I watched the bakery box slowly fill with the World’s Worst Cookies.
“My dad calls me the elephant.” I just looked at him, not at all sure what to say to this, when he explained, “They’re supposed to have really long memories.” He reached toward the front of the tray to get the two remaining cookies. “I don’t really forget a lot,” he added quietly.
I was about to nod when the double meaning of this hit me. Henry hadn’t forgotten the kind of cookies I hated five years ago, but that also meant he hadn’t forgotten the other things that I had done.
He’d put all the oatmeal cookies into the box, and he straightened up and looked at me. “Only had eleven,” he said. “Can I give you one chocolate chip instead?”