Page 19 of Sugarlips
Without lifting her head, Chloe lifted her arm in the air. Pinched between her fingers was a one-dollar bill. “Did you not hear me? Cupcake, please!”
“We sold out,” Neil said.
“Want a donut or a Pop-Tart?” I offered instead.
She lifted her head, eyes bright. “Yes. And yes.”
I hopped over the counter and placed a donut and Pop-Tart on a napkin as Neil narrowed his gaze at me. “Those cost more than a dollar, Chloe.”
She crossed her arms and pushed her lips into a pout. “Don’t you just throw out the day-olds, anyway?”
Neil seemed completely unbothered by her questions. “Not if there’s a paying customer who barges in after we’ve closed.”
“Come on, Neil,” I coaxed. “We were just going to hand them out to friends anyway.” We usually give them away to the first person we see outside the door or bring them to the retirement home.
Neil snorted. “Is that what Chloe Dyker is? Yourfriend?”
Chloe was on her feet, launching herself at me in a hug. “Bestfriends, actually. Did you not tell him who helped you make the donuts?”
“Youhelped make those?” Neil asked, and his brows shot up higher.
“Helped being a ‘relative’ term,” I clarified, rubbing the back of my neck before glancing back at Chloe, still dangling off my shoulders.
“Why didn’t you tell him I helped!” Chloe cried.
“Neil and I, uh, didn’t really talk much that night,” I told her.
Understatement of the year. I arrived at his cabin, handed him the box of donuts. He gave me a beer, and we watched the game in silence until I went home. So much for Chloe’s brilliant plan for breakup donuts being therapeutic.
“Come on, Neil. I am jobless, fiancé-less—”
“And donut-less.” He crossed his arms, and I rolled my eyes. God, he was such a hard ass.
“Dude, go home. It’s Friday and I know you and Jude have a call scheduled to…” I glanced at Chloe, unsure how much she knew about the gig that Neil was taking out of the country. “Discuss details.” Neil had taken a job as a stunt coordinator on Jude Fisher’s latest film… happening in Budapest. He had worked in Hollywood as Jude’s stuntman for years before moving back here to help us with the bakery when Mom was diagnosed with cancer. Though I wasn’t sure, I had my suspicions that the freelance gig on a different continent likely contributed to his and Elaina’s breakup. “I’ll handle closing up tonight.”
“You sure?”
I shrugged. “As long as you come in tomorrow in a better mood and don’t care where the unsold items go today.”
Neil rolled his eyes and tugged the apron off his bare chest, shoving his head and arms into a t-shirt behind the counter. “See ya,” he said, heading toward the door.
“Well, he’s a joy.” Chloe stuck her tongue out at him from behind the closed door.
“He’s having a bad week,” I said and finished closing out the register.
“Yeah? Well, so am I! At least his breakup resulted in winning half a million dollars. My breakup, on the other hand, left mewithouta job. And the stupid jobs I’m interviewing for are boring and lame andstupid.”
“You said stupid twice.”
She threw her hands in the air. “Well,that’show stupid they are!”
I set the napkin with the donut and Pop-Tart on the table, and she plopped back down in her chair, breaking off a corner of the pastry.
“I take it the interviews didn’t go well?”
She sighed. “One was … fine. Until they asked me why I was passionate about real estate marketing. And I said…Uh, um, I guess because I own a house.”
I winced. “Not exactly the answer they were looking for?”
