Downgrade My Ride? I'll Upgrade My Groom! novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: Andersonville

Nobody in that kitchen saw me cry.

I walked out past Niles and the planner and the tent men, and I didn't cry in the Land Rover either.

I held it until ten o'clock that night, in the back of Sydney's bakery in Andersonville.

The sign on the door said CLOSED.

The kitchen smelled like burnt sugar and lemon zest.

"Sit," Sydney said, and pointed a spatula at the stool by the steel table. "Eat this. Don't talk yet."

This was a lemon tart the size of a hubcap.

"I can't eat all that."

"It's not all for you. Clay gets a slice if he's good."

Clay was leaning in the doorway with his tie off and his sleeves rolled.

"I'm always good."

"You're tolerable," Sydney said. "Go wash something."

He went and washed something.

I took one bite.

Then I put the fork down and started to cry.

It came all at once, with no warning and no edges.

I cried for my mother's dress on a dress form.

I cried for a brass key with red polish on it.

I cried because my father had said "a daughter who signs things" in the voice he used to read me the funny pages.

Sydney came around the table and pulled my head against her apron.

She smelled like butter and vanilla.

She didn't tell me it would be okay.

"I know, babe," she said. "I know. He's a dick."

I laughed into her apron and cried harder.

Behind me the water in the sink kept running.

Clay didn't come over.

He stood at the sink with a dish towel and let me have it.

When it was done, it was done.

I sat up and wiped my face with a napkin that said BEST LEMON BARS IN ANDERSONVILLE.

"Okay," I said.

Sydney sat down across from me.

"Okay what?"

"Okay, I'm done with that." I pulled her order pad over and flipped it to a blank page. "Give me a pen."

She gave me a pen with a cupcake on the end.

I wrote three lines.

KENWARD.

MY NAME.

DAD SAYS IT. OUT LOUD.

Sydney read it upside down.

"That last one's the hard one."

"That last one's the only one he'll fight."

Clay pulled up the third stool.

He looked at the pad for a long time.

"I could buy Niles out," he said. "Monday morning. An offer his lawyers would beg him to take. He'd be gone by July."

I put the pen down.

"No."

"Liv."

"I'm taking it, not buying it." I tapped the first line. "If you buy it, he gets a check and a story. Poor Niles, pushed out by the rich new husband. He'd tell it at every dinner party in Chicago for twenty years."

"He'd be telling it from a smaller house."

"I want him telling it from the lobby. With everybody watching." I looked at Clay. "I drew those hotels. I want them back with my own vote."

He was quiet.

Then he smiled, slow and crooked.

"Fine. What do you need?"

"Four people," I said. "The outside investors. They hold twenty-nine percent together. With my eighteen, that's forty-seven."

"Which is less than fifty-three," Sydney said. "I went to culinary school and even I know that."

"It's less than fifty-three today."

I took out my phone.

I sent all four investors the same thing: the photo from the church lot, and one line under it.

"This is who paid for the crash that cost your brand director her wedding. I'd like to put it in front of the board."

I hit send four times.

Then I put the phone face down on the steel table.

Sydney stood and untied her apron and threw it at Clay.

"I'm going home," she said. "Lock up. Don't touch the sourdough starter. It's older than both of you."

"Yes, chef," Clay said.

"And if anybody does anything on my steel table," she said from the door, "you bleach it after."

The bell jingled.

The door shut.

The bakery went quiet except for the hum of the walk-in fridge.

Clay was folding her apron into a neat square.

"Clay."

"Mm."

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