Page 8 of Sweet Rivals

TheBakingChick: Good. Maybe they won’t show up.

PotatoBake888: Good luck

TheBakingChick: Hey, what did you want to tell me?

PotatoBake888: What?

TheBakingChick: Your message last night. You said you had something to tell me.

PotatoBake888: Oh, nothing important. I’ll tell you later.

TheBakingChick: Okay

I would be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed. I wondered what he had wanted to tell me and why he decided not to. Could it have been something personal, or even better, a confession of feelings?

“Uhg! Stop!” I told myself, but in the secret recess of my mind, I wished it was. Somewhere along the way, PotatoBake888 had become my favorite person to talk to. I spent a lot of time convincing myself that I had no feelings, but I couldn’t explain away how excited I got when I heard the little ding announcing his messages. Every time something newsworthy, or even mildly interesting, happened, he was the first person I thought to tell. Did he feel the same about me? I was more real with Potatobake888 than anyone else in my life. He knew about my dreams, my worries, my self-doubts, in a way even Cat didn’t know. I wouldn’t know how he felt until I asked, but I wasn’t ready for that just yet. One problem at a time.

Chapter Seven

The knife slammed against the claw joint before the sharp, red shell popped apart and flew through the air. I didn’t bother watching where it landed, although I hoped it wasn’t on an innocent passerby. I had been up to my elbows in lobster shells, juice, and guts since we ran out a few hours into the night. I didn’t think even an hour-long, scalding hot shower would be enough to remove the smell. Normally, I’d never shell the lobster right there in the booth, but we had grossly underestimated the crowd at Food Fest. Sweat dripped down my brow, and I had no idea what my hair looked like, but I could only imagine it was pulling out of the tight bun, creating a halo of wild, frizzled strands. I had gone light on the makeup, like I usually did, but even the little bit of mascara was likely smearing down my cheeks. It wasn’t the best look, but it didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was cracking the next claw, pulling out the meat, and moving to the next. It was marginally better than cutting through the knuckles with kitchen shears and getting the tiny pieces out. That was Jose’s job beside me.

Normally, Mom had me as the smiling, front-facing greeter, taking orders and passing off food. But I was one of the fastest with the knife and claws, so I found myself in a mindless rhythm, the celebratory atmosphere of the Summer Food Fest lost to background noise, until my knife hit the wrong spot, sending the sharp tip of the claw shell shooting out from under me and out into the crowd.

“Ow!”

Shit, shit, shit. It was bad enough that I had been relegated to disgusting grunt work, but now I was injuring patrons.

I had naively thought my day couldn’t get any worse when I looked up to the parting crowd as the vacationer from the boardwalk with his handsome smile and perfect hair stepped up, holding up the piece of shell.

Suddenly, it mattered very, very much just how covered in lobster guts I was. I looked down at my apron covered in the green internal workings of a lobsters. I would have smoothed out my hair, but my gloves belonged in a hazardous waste receptacle. My cheeks burned. I was powerless to stop the inevitable conversation that was about to happen.

“You lose this?” he asked, waving the claw in one hand and rubbing a little red welt on his forehead with the other. For half a heartbeat, I got lost in the pools of brown that were his eyes and the warmth of his smile, fantasizing of an alternate reality in which I was not seeing this man for the second time while looking like I had been dragged from the bottom of the ocean.

“Sorry,” I said, once again stricken with one-word-itis.

“You’re pretty powerful with the knife,” he laughed.

I realized I was holding it up like I was about to stab him, so I lowered it carefully to the cutting board. “Sorry, I guess I was moving too quickly,” I said. I did it! I said more than one word, although I wasn’t sure if it counted since one of them was sorry. “Are you okay?”

“I’ll let my lawyer be the judge of that,” he said with a face of stone that betrayed no hint of a joke.

Could I have completely misjudged this guy? Was he really an absolute hard ass instead of a golden retriever type?

He leaned in over the counter, probably getting gross lobster guts on his clean linen shirt to whisper an inch from my face as I looked on with paralyzed horror. He was so close, if I leaned in just a little bit our lips would touch, which would be a terrible idea because I must have smelled awful. Still, it was the closest I had been to a man in months—or was it even longer than that?

My eyes darted to his lips before I corrected course and willed myself to stay locked on his eyes, which didn’t help my pudding brain form coherent thoughts any better.

“You’re cute when you are nervous.” Then he leaned back and laughed.

I couldn’t decide if I should be mortified or excited—possibly both—which seemed to be my only way of feeling around this overwhelming stranger.

I blinked several times as my brain glitched. We stood in a sort of time bubble, eyes locked, frozen while the rest of the town moved on around us. I could feel Jose giving me the side-eye as he worked through the lobster knuckles. Behind me, Steve and my mom greeted customers with thinly disguised, frantic stress. People moved past the booth in wide-eyed wonder at the small-town charm highlighted by sparkling string lights. An acoustic rendition of “Cruel Summer” by Taylor Swift drifted over the sounds of the crowd.

“Jared Wallace?” My mom’s voice broke me out of my trance, saving me from the prolonged embarrassment of standing there dumbfounded and flustered.

What the hell do you say when someone calls you cute despite being decidedly not cute? I bet Cat would have had a witty comeback.

Wait, had my mom said Jared Wallace?