Page 28 of Bleeding Hearts

It’s nine a.m. and I’ve already had enough of today.

I’ve worked six morning shifts in a row since my first night alone in my apartment and I’m fucking exhausted. I’m still not sleeping as easily as I once did, but it gets a little better every night.

Not better enough to stop my stress baking. I mean, my apartment is practically a full-on bakery at this point, but that’s beside the point.

“The orders just came out, Sheila. I’m bringing them over to my table right now,” I say politely, turning away from her to do just that.

“Actually, they were ready about forty-five seconds ago. You should’ve been here right away. Maybe try putting a little pep in your step and acting like you want to be here,” she says, her high-pitched voice piercing my ears as she does.

I don’t even grace her with a response, continuing to walk the hot plates of food to the customers’ table, setting them down and making sure everything is okay before walking away.

It’s not that I don’t want to be here. Working at Angelo’s has been a pretty solid job for me over the years, and I’m grateful for it. It’s just that I’d much rather be in the kitchen cooking than out here waitressing.

Last year there was a sous-chef position that opened up in the kitchen and I tried really hard to get it, but there were a lot of other applicants better suited for the job, according to the owner.

Alejandro, the head chef of the restaurant, even told me that my food was better than some of them, but the owner was worried about my lack of experience.

And that’s what it always comes down to when trying to get a job cooking. Experience.

The only reference I have when it comes to cooking in an actual kitchen is Lydia, and she owns a bakery, not a restaurant, and I never officially worked for her.

Lydia has been kind of like a surrogate mother to me over the years, although I rarely see her anymore since her bakery is closer to where I grew up and I tend to avoid that area like the plague.

I do call her at least once a week to check up on her though.

She’s a seventy-three-year-old woman that has the heart of a thirty-year-old managing her bakery, Sweet Exchange, practically alone for the better part of forty years. Her husband, Harvey, was the love of her life, but he passed away years ago.

She was only in her fifties when he was diagnosed with lung cancer, which was brought on by years of smoking, and they never had kids, so it’s been just her for a while.

I’d like to think I’ve been somewhat like a daughter to her since she’s been so important to me.

I first met Lydia when I was fifteen. I walked into her shop and asked for one of every flavor of cupcake she had. She told me she had over fifty flavors of cupcakes, so I told her I’d start with five.

I came back every day and tried five more, then I did the same with her cookies, pies, cake pops, and every other sweet she sold.

Somewhere between the cupcakes and the cookies was when she started questioning me. She wanted to know if I just had a major sugar obsession or a bigger reason for making it my goal to try every item on her menu.

I told her how I was trying to expand my palate and my love for cooking and baking, and she took pity on me.

Before I knew it, Lydia had become my best friend. She came in early and stayed late to teach me everything she knew about baking.

Then she would let me come to her personal kitchen in her house to practice my cooking since she knew I couldn’t do it at my own house.

She never knew why back then, not for sure, but I think she assumed.

I would come in some days with random bruises or a limp I couldn’t hide, so there was no way she wouldn’t notice.

But she never pushed me to talk about it. She’d simply ask me if I was okay and remind me that I could always come to her with anything.

It wasn’t until I left my house at eighteen that I realized she’d known all along.

I called her that night to tell her I moved out and was living with Jake for the time being. Her first response was to ask if I was out of my family’s home for good and when I told her yes, all she had to say was thank fucking god.

She offered for me to come stay with her instead, but I couldn’t do that. Lydia had helped me so much over the years, more than she could possibly know, and I refused to impose on her like that.

Plus, at the time, I wasn’t sure if my father would try to come after me or not and I refused to ever put her in the middle of that.

To this day, Lydia still remains one of the most important people in my life. Aside from her lessons, plus what I’ve managed to teach myself, my professional experience with cooking is pretty much nonexistent.

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