Baking Me Crazy (Donner Bakery, #1)(52)

Proceed with caution. Approach at your own risk.

I rolled my eyes. "Everything's good. We need more buttermilk, though. We only have one carton left."

"Really? I thought there were two full ones in there." She opened up the massive fridge next to her and cocked her head to the side. "Huh. How much pound cake did you guys sell this morning? Or was it the scones?"

"Mikey spilled one," Joy explained.

Jennifer looked over her shoulder. "Oh. What happened?"

I pursed my lips and absolutely refused to answer. Joy cleared her throat and nudged my shoulder.

With a sigh, I set down the spatula again and briefly met Jennifer's eyes. "I may have … scared him. And he dropped it."

Her forehead wrinkled. "How'd you scare him?"

The embarrassment had my cheeks burning as she took in the state of my hair with wide eyes.

"He didn't know I was behind him. He backed up into me, and I, umm, I yelled at him. Just a little bit. I'm sorry, Jennifer," I said on a rush. "I'm having a crappy week, which is no excuse. I already apologized to him, and I helped him clean it up."

She rolled her lips between her teeth, seemingly trying not to smile at the crazy looking woman who was clearly in a delicate mental state.

"Okay," she said after a second. "We'll get more buttermilk."

When she came up behind me and laid a gentle hand on my shoulder, I felt my chin wobble, so I clenched my teeth tight and breathed through that bullshit. No crying. There was no crying in the bakery.

"Whatever it is, Jocelyn," she said quietly, "it'll be all right. I promise."

What would happen if I just opened my mouth and let the words tumble out? If I tried to explain to them how off-kilter everything was now that I knew? How precarious it made me feel?

On two wheels, I was steady. Very little made me feel like I would fall or stumble. I knew now that I treated my chair like a security blanket. I was the proverbial little kid who held it with a death grip and refused to admit that anything else might replace it.

Walking was scary because I wasn't good at it. No matter the way I felt when I stood up straight and saw the world from a different height, it was still scary as hell because one wrong foot placement and kaboom, down I'd go. Changing the way I viewed Levi was scary in the same sense because it held such big, big consequences.

The thought of dating Levi—let me repeat that out loud because even the words paired together felt really freaking weird, dating LEVI—was just as precarious to me as trying to take off at a dead run.

So many things could go wrong, so many things could mess me up or mess him up in the future, and at the end, the thought of not having him in my life at all was simply awful.

But the other side of the cookie was just as impossible to ignore. I couldn't pretend I didn't know. I couldn't pretend I didn't know what it was like to be kissed. Not just by anyone. Lips and tongues, hands and fingers weren't interchangeable, I had to imagine, so what was even bigger was that I knew what it felt like to be kissed by Levi. Those moments in his arms were the closest I'd felt to flying in my entire life.

Joy shifted to the side and seemed to be watching my face very carefully. "Do you … do you want to talk about it?"

Jennifer squeezed my shoulder when my head dropped down to my chest. "I'll be back in my office if you guys need me, okay?"

I nodded, and Joy smiled as our boss—our really, really great boss—gave us some privacy. While I started the lazy Susan again, smoothing out the rest of the crumb coat before I'd lay the thin sheet of fondant on top, I took a deep breath.

Joy, the person I'd written off as silly and about as substantial as a good meringue, stood next to me, patient as a saint.

"I kissed Levi." It seemed like the most logical place to start. "Or he kissed me. I don't really remember who initiated it."

"Oh." She exhaled meaningfully.

"Yeah."

She twisted her lips to the side when I didn't say anything else. "Was it like, bad? Or weird?"

My eyes fell shut so I could remember for the millionth time how his firm, soft lips felt moving over mine. How surprisingly slick his tongue was but not in a bad way. How the scrape of his teeth along my bottom lip was the thing that snapped me violently out of the moment because it made my breasts tingle and my thighs press together desperately.

"Not bad." I glanced at her. "Definitely not weird."

"Was it good?" she asked, eyes sly and cheeks pink.

If her cheeks were pink, then mine must have turned fuchsia. Joy giggled.

"So"—she waved a hand at my hair and face—"why is allll this happening?"

I smiled a bit, amazed how one little curl of my lips and the shift of my muscles on my face could feel so good after such a shitty week. Sometimes you didn't realize how little you'd smiled until it finally happened again.

I set the spatula down and spun the lazy Susan once more to make sure everything looked even. Then I snagged a clean spoon and scooped it through the buttercream. Rolling it over my tongue, I thought about what to say without unloading five years of history onto an unsuspecting Joy.

"He's been, I don't know, wanting this to happen between us. For a long time."

"That's so roman—"