“Hey, Evan!” I call out to her mid-morning, well after the rush—during which she only allowed me to fill boxes and cream cheese containers for the customers.
“How is it goin—” She waves her hand and opens up the back door again. “Another batch, huh?”
There’s a bite to her tone, but she’s yet to yell or really raise her voice at me.
“Are you sure the temperature is reading correctly?” I ask.
“Yep, ever since we got them last year.”
“So they’re new ovens, huh?”
“Sure are.” She picks up the tray and tosses it into the large industrial stainless steel sink. “So let’s go over this again. Four hundred twenty-five for seven minutes. Turn and another seven minutes. Should you write it down?”
I grab my pen and paper. “You know, my roommate and I came by last night and I tried every bagel. I really like the garlic and salt ones and the onion ones.”
“My sister mentioned that you came by with your girlfriend.”
“Oh, she’s not my girlfriend. Just my roommate.”
Evan makes round balls of dough into rings. She’s skilled. “Elsie’s at that age where any two people who are the opposite sex and even remotely close must be a couple. I didn’t mean to assume.”
“It’s okay.” I pick up a ball and try to mimic what she’s doing.
“No.” She moves her hands along the dough, showing me the spinning action again instead of my sad attempt.
“You’ve done this a long time, huh?”
She chuckles. “My entire life. I think I’ve been making bagels since I was three. It’s my parents’ shop, but they haven’t had the time lately, so I’ve kind of taken it over.”
“Have you always wanted to run this place?” I’ve never in my life had a job like this.
She balks. “No.” Another small laugh comes out of her. “But I knew early on in those teen years when people ask you, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ that this was my destiny.”
“What would you want to be if you had a choice?” I ask.
“Good job.” She nods at the bagel I made. “I have no idea. I feel like I have no time to think about it. But can I really complain about running a business at twenty-seven? My parents trust me with something they worked on building for years.”
Yeah, I want to tell her, you can kick and scream because it’s not fair to people like us, people who have their futures decided at birth.
“Do you have a boyfriend?”
She laughs harder now. “No.”
“Why not?” I try again to make my bagel look as good as hers, but it’s not happening.
“Who has time for one? And all the guys around here are just…” She picks up another ball of dough, her natural movements faltering when she doesn’t get the shape she wants.
I tilt my head and study her. “I feel like you’re hiding something.”
She looks at me and plops the bagel on the tray. “That can be made into bagel bites.”
“You can trust me.”
“I don’t even know you.” She picks up another ball, but the same thing happens again. It turns into a square bagel with hardly a hole. Whatever she’s thinking about, it bothers her.
“Exactly. Aren’t those the best people to tell things to?”
She seems to think about it for a minute, messes up another bagel, and as she goes to pick up another ball, I steal it from her.
“I get that the Bagel Place is going to be my life until one day maybe one of my kids wants to take it over, but does that mean I have to take on my parents’ fight in order to be in charge of this business?”
“I’m not sure I follow,” I say.
“Promise me whatever I say stays here?” From the seriousness in her eyes, I can see that this girl might need someone to talk to as much as I do.
I nod. “Promise.”
“Okay.” She pulls up a stool and puts one out for me. “There are two bagel places in Cliffton Heights. Us and Andrews Bagels.”
I know that from the conversation with Ethan and Blanca, but I don’t think now is the time to tell her he’s my next-door neighbor.
“So I’ve hated the Andrews family since I was nine.” She waves me off. “Forget it. It’s stupid.”
“You don’t want to hate the Andrews family?” I pry a little.
“My dad and Mr. Andrews were best friends, and I was pretty good friends with their son, Seth. And then something happened…” She stares at the stainless steel table. “Since then, they hate each other. The families hate each other. So Seth hates me, and I pretend like I hate him.” She stares at the tray of messed up bagels. “Ugh. Please distract me from my pity party and tell me something about yourself.”
The one plus to working here is that Evan doesn’t know who I am. If I tell her we have something in common—that we were both destined to walk in our parents’ footsteps instead of blazing our own trail—it would ruin us sitting here shooting the shit while making bagels.
“I slept with my roommate and now she’s put us in the friend zone.”
“Ouch. Sorry.” Her scrunched up nose says she’s sincere.
“Yeah. She’s doing the smart thing. We shouldn’t get involved with one another.”
“Why? Obviously if you slept together, there’s something there.”
There’s a spark with Sierra that I’ve never felt with anyone, but the fact that I care about her is the same reason I refuse to sleep with her. Not to mention I have nothing to offer except a life of scrutiny even if we could somehow be together. Then there’s Princess Adelaide. Am I supposed to leave her high and dry?
“I don’t want to hurt her.”
She narrows her eyes to me. “Why do you think you’ll hurt her?”
Because I can’t give her a normal life.
“I’m not ready to settle down yet.” I shrug as though that’s all it is.
She knocks her shoulder against mine. “What is with guys? Why is settling down so bad? If you find that person, you’re one hundred percent yourself around and who makes you happy you’re not settling for anything. I think “settling down” was some stupid name made up by a perpetual bachelor. Just because you fall in love doesn’t mean you’re settling for anything. I can imagine my husband and me traveling together and seeing the world. Of course, then who will run the bagel shop?” She frowns.
As I watch the reality of her dream splitting open at the seams, it confirms that some of us can’t live our dream life and that’s just a fact.
“Maybe you could find someone to run it for you, or maybe your sister will want to take over.” I try to close up that seam for her because I want one of us to get what we really want.
The chime on the door rings and she stands from the stool. “Okay, so four hundred twenty-five for seven minutes, right? Turn and then another seven?”
“Got it.” I nod.
She laughs and heads out.
I hope she gets everything she dreamed of. I also feel like an impromptu meeting between her and Seth needs to happen. Though I usually hate meddling.