Stuck with You (The STEMinist Novellas, #2)(3)

Why, why am I like this? I have no clue. Let’s just blame my aggressively Italian mother.

But back to this Tuesday morning: the crux of my problem, you see, is that back in the winter, before my most successful client pitch to date, I got a bit peckish. So I popped into Faye’s hole-in-the-wall coffee shop, and instead of just asking for the usual—punishingly black coffee: no sugar, no cream, just the bitter oblivion of darkness—I tacked a croissant on to my order. It was just as good as the coffee (i.e., simultaneously stale and undercooked; taste hovering between starch and salmonella) and, to my eternal dismay, was promptly followed by me bagging the most lucrative contract GreenFrame had seen in its young history.

Gianna was over the moon. And so was I, until my half-Italian brain started forming a million little connections between the croissant from hell and my big professional win. You know where this is going: yes, I now desperately feel that I must eat one of Faye’s croissants before every single pitch meeting, otherwise the unthinkable will happen. And no, I have no idea how to react to her kind but definitive, “Sorry, honey, we’re all out of croissants.”

Did I say that there are worse things in the world? I lied. This is a disaster. My career is over. Are those sirens in the distance?

“I see.” I bite into my lower lip, order it to un-pout itself, and force myself to smile. After all, it’s not Faye’s fault if my mom drilled into my baby neurons that walking under the stairs is a surefire way to a lifetime of despair. I go to therapy for that. Or I will. At some point. “Are you, um, making more?”

She looks at the display case. “I’ve got muffins left. Blueberry. Lemon glaze.”

Oh. That actually sounds good. But. “No croissants, though?”

“And I can make you a bagel. Cinnamon? Blueberry? Plain?”

“Is that a no on the croissants?”

Faye cocks her head with a pleased expression. “You really like my croissants, don’t you?”

Do I? “They’re so, um.” I clutch the strap of my fake-leather messenger bag. “Unique.”

“Well, unfortunately I just gave the last one to Erik over there.” Faye points to her left, toward the very end of the counter, but I barely glance at Erik-over-there—tall man, broad shoulders, wears suit, boring—too busy cursing my own timing. I should not have spent twenty minutes tickling the majestic beauty of Ozzy’s little guinea pig tush. I am now rightfully paying for my mistakes, and Faye is giving me an assessing stare. “I’ll toast you a bagel. You’re too skinny to skip breakfast. Eat more and you might grow a little taller, too.”

I doubt I’ll manage to finally push past five feet at the ripe old age of twenty-seven, but who’s to say. “Just to recap,” I say, in one last pleading, whiny attempt at salvaging my professional future, “you’re not making more croissants today?”

Faye’s eyes narrow. “Honey, you might like my croissants a little too much—”

“Here.”

The voice—not Faye’s—is deep and pitched low, coming from somewhere above my head. But I barely pay it any attention because I’m too busy staring at the croissant that has miraculously appeared in front of my eyes. It’s still whole, set on top of a napkin, a few stray flakes of dough slowly crumbling off its top. I’ve had Faye’s croissants before, and I know that what they lack in taste they make up for in size. They are very, very large.

Even when delivered by a very, very large hand.

I blink at it for several seconds, wondering if this is a superstition-induced mirage. Then I slowly turn around to look at the man who deposited the croissant on the counter.

He’s already gone. Half out of the door, and all I get is a brief impression of broad shoulders and light hair.

“What—?” I blink at Faye, pointing at the man. “What . . . ?”

“I guess Erik decided you should have the last croissant.”

“Why?”

She shrugs. “Wouldn’t look a gift croissant in the mouth if I were you.”

Gift croissant.

I shrug myself out of my stupor, toss a five-dollar bill in the tip jar, and run out of the café. “Hey!” I call. The man is about twenty steps ahead of me. Well, twenty steps with my tiny legs. Might be less than five with his own. “Hey, could you wait a . . . ?”

He doesn’t stop, so I clutch my croissant and hurry after him. I channel my best Former Soccer Scholarship Kid self and dodge a lady walking her dog, then her dog, then two teenagers making out on the sidewalk. I catch up right around the corner, when I come to a halt in front of him.

“Hey.” I grin up. And up and up and up. He’s taller than I calculated. And I’m more winded than I’d like. I need to work out more. “Thank you so much! You really didn’t have to . . .” I fall silent. For no real reason other than because of how striking he looks. He is just so . . .

Scandinavian, maybe. Viking-like. Norse. Like his ancestors frolicked below the aurora borealis on their way to funding Ikea. He is as big as a yeti, with clear blue eyes and short, pale-blond hair, and I would bet my gift croissant that his name contains one of those cool Nordic letters. The a and the e smushed together; that weird o slashed through the middle; the big b that’s actually two s’s stacked on top of each other. Something that requires a lot of HTML knowledge to be typed.