Baking Me Crazy (Donner Bakery, #1)(42)

"Isn't that funny? I could've been the grumpiest person on the planet, but it's like they knew. I'd much rather be happy and make people happy than dwell on the awful things. Because dwelling on them doesn't make them go away."

"Aren't you insightful today?"

Joy laughed. "I guess."

I glanced at the wasted dough on the island. "I'll start over on the bread. Sorry about that."

She waved it off. "No worries. Listen, if you don't feel like sticking around, we're pretty slow today. I think because the weather is so nice, people are out enjoying it instead of loading up on sugary treats."

"What idiots," Levi said from the doorway of the kitchen.

Joy beamed at him. "Hi, Levi!"

"Good afternoon, ladies." He gave me a look. "I think you should take her advice and leave early."

"You really don't mind?" I asked Joy.

"Not at all. Besides, I think you're a danger to the well-being of the rolling pins if you stay for another two hours."

I rolled my eyes. "Ha, ha. Okay, thanks, Joy."

Levi waited patiently while I took off my apron and washed my hands.

We left through the front door, Joy sending us off with a beaming smile as Levi swept his arm in front of him to let me through the door first.

"So romantic." I heard her sigh.

I was still shaking my head when he jogged to catch up to me.

"What was with the rolling pin comment?" he asked.

I pushed down hard to be able to keep his pace. "Nothing."

He gave me an epic side-eye, but I didn't answer.

We passed two women who couldn't have been much older than me, and they both smiled widely at Levi, complete with hair flounce and obvious arching of the chest area.

Nope, I couldn't answer Levi. That man had probably never been turned down in his entire life, so there was no way I was going to lay out my pathetic attempt with Andrew during the one time I'd ever asked someone out.

"Your brain is working awfully hard over there," he said casually.

"What was your first date like?" I heard myself ask, not even aware that I was going to ask it until the words were out. Suddenly, I wanted to know.

"Geez, like, very first?"

He thought for so long that my annoyance popped up like a damn jack-in-the-box. Because clearly, he'd been on so many dates over the years that his tiny, pea-sized male brain couldn't filter through them all?

My hand shoved down hard again, gripping the circle outside the wheel so tight that my fingers almost got caught in the spokes. Great. Now I was making rookie mistakes.

"Yeah, first-first date, where you have no clue what you're doing and everything feels huge and important." Or so I imagined. "You know what? Never mind."

My pace was slightly faster than his, but he caught up with a couple of quick steps. "Hold up, Sonic, what's this about?"

"Nothing," I snapped. A curl fell out of my ponytail, and I shoved it ruthlessly behind my ear. "Never mind."

"Stop." He laughed. "Just give me a second, okay? It's not like I think about my first date often. I'm old, and my memory sucks."

I stopped, giving him a look over my shoulder. "You're hardly senile. You're twenty-three."

Levi sighed, propping his hands on his hips. "I was sixteen, and I asked Katie Sue Wright to the movies. She was in my algebra class, and I thought she was the prettiest girl in school. I picked her up, bought her popcorn, and she tried to shove her hands down my pants before the previews ended."

My nose scrunched up. "Seriously?"

"We hadn't even kissed yet." He set a hand on his chest. "I was traumatized."

I snorted. "Yeah, right. I'm sure you put up a valiant fight."

"Considering a young family was sitting right next to us, yeah, I politely yanked her hand out of my Calvin Kleins and told her that it wasn't the place to make a man out of me."

This time, I laughed because I could imagine his horrified expression pretty well. That was only a couple of years before he and I would've met. He seemed so smooth back then, so sure of himself.

Just like that, the proverbial bomb went off over my stupid, senile head.

I blinked. Levi had been turned down. I turned him down.

Holy mother effing shit, I'd turned down Levi Buchanan once upon a time. The fact that he'd asked me, that he could've been my first date, a full five years earlier, knocked the breath from me.

"What?" he asked.

"Nothing," I answered in an absentminded tone. "Just thinking about something I'd forgotten."

Back then, I'd told him I wasn't in the right head space to date, and I hadn't been. It took a solid eighteen months after sitting in my chair for the first time to stop thinking about things like catheters and bed sores and needing to be turned when I slept and learning how to navigate the world. About how to exit buildings with no ramps or elevators. About how to pay attention to the parts of my body that I couldn't feel but still needed to be taken care of. There was no way I would've been a good dinner date back then. It made sense that I said no, at the time. And it brought me his friendship, which I could never, ever do without.

But looking up at him now, I felt irrationally furious with myself.