I catch a whiff of the heavenly pastry smell that forms a cloud around the building, luring passersby in for a donut or a cupcake or an apple tart made with fresh apples from Snyder’s Orchard just a few miles north.
I’ve spent so many days and nights here since Kiera’s mom quit her nursing job when my mom died, and decided to chase her lifelong dream of owning a bakery. “Live your life how you want to live it, ladies,” she said to me and Kiera after she signed the lease for the building, the two of us tucked safely under her arms. “Tomorrow is never guaranteed.”
I usually hate it when people say stuff like that, but not Nina. I click my lock into place, then jog across the street and push open the door. The bells jingle noisily as I slide inside.
Nina’s is one of my favorite places ever. Aside from the hundreds of baked goods, every corner of this place feels special. From the white walls we all spent hours painting, to the wooden industrial-style shelves my dad hung with practiced precision, to the kitchen in the back we slowly put together one oven and fryer at a time.
But more than that, it also feels new. Sometimes I feel like there’s not a single inch of space in this town that isn’t saturated with old memories. Nina’s is different, though. It’s a product of the after. It’s a blank slate. It’s safe.
The people inside the building help with that feeling too.
“Hey, Emily!”
I look up to see Kiera’s older brother, Paul, sitting behind the cash register, twirling a pen effortlessly in his right hand. His curly black hair is pulled back into a small ponytail; his nose piercing, a small diamond stud, glints brightly against his dark skin.
“Hey, Paul,” I say, unclicking my helmet, the door closing noisily behind me. “Any news from Kiera? Did she get the box?”
Every summer Kiera goes to Misty Oasis, a no-cell-phones-except-for-Sunday-evening, long-letter-writing, let’s-relive-pioneer-America style sleepaway camp. Nina went, and, in turn, Kiera’s gone religiously since she was eight and a half years old. This summer she was promoted from CIT to junior counselor, a job she is apparently taking very seriously.
“Nah. Haven’t heard from her.” He drops his pen onto the napkin he was doodling on. “She’s too busy making fires and, like, trying to make sure her campers don’t die.”
“That sounds awful,” I say, sliding behind the counter. Paul and I are decidedly not the camping type. We’ve each done a one-week stint at Misty Oasis and are still traumatized from it.
“What’d you put in it this year?” he asks.
I make Kiera a homesick box every single summer, filling it with small trinkets that make the month away a little easier. I tick the items off on my fingers as I list them all for him.
“Three packs of her favorite gum, a vanilla candle that smells just like your mom’s Very Vanilla Cupcakes, four different shades of red nail polish, the latest copy of Seventeen, and twenty-five notes, one for every day she’ll be gone.”
To be honest, I don’t think she gets homesick anymore, but it’s tradition.
And this year I’m extra homesick for her. Not only do I wish she were here to help with the move, but she’s the only one who stood by me when shit hit the fan with Matt.
I glance at the napkin in front of Paul and see he’s drawn an intricate machine, a cake sitting underneath what looks like a fancy waterspout. He’s a mechanical engineer in the making, working toward his BS at Carnegie Mellon, on the other side of the state.
“What’s this one do?” I ask, leaning over his shoulder to get a better look at it.
“Streamline cake icing.”
“You trying to put me out of work?” I say, nudging him playfully. Cake icing is my specialty. I always get tapped by Nina to do the birthday and graduation and wedding cakes. Yeah, it takes hours, but it’s worth it. There’s nothing more rewarding than seeing the designs in my head come to life.
“That’s the plan!” he says, giving me a wide grin. “Free you up to have the wild summer you’ve always dreamed about having.”
I roll my eyes at him. “Very funny.”
I head toward the back office to drop off my stuff, passing Nina on my way. “Hey, baby!” she says as she looks up from the dough she’s mixing. “How are you doing this morning?”
“Good! Only sixteen more days,” I say as I push open the office door. Sixteen more days until Kiera comes home from Misty Oasis and I won’t be all by myself, smack in the middle of the worst summer in history, rotating between packing and waiting for the junior prom aftershocks to settle. Which they aren’t. At all.
I hang my helmet in the closet under my self-decorated name tag, swapping my backpack for a black apron and my pink Nina’s Bakery hat. Tying my apron as I go, I head back out into the kitchen, eyeing the bowl of dough Nina is mixing.
“Are those—” I start to ask.
“You bet!” she says, pouring some more chocolate chips into the mixture. “Secret Ingredient Chocolate Chip Cookies!”
I steal a little bit of the dough, tasting the sweet, but not too sweet, chocolatey goodness. “Is it nutmeg?”
She gives me a warm wink. “Em, I told you it’s—”
“Love. Yeah, yeah, so you say. Nina, I know there’s something else in there!” I laugh, giving her a quick hug.
“Nutmeg?” I whisper to Paul as I pass him to make sure the napkin dispenser is fully stocked.
He snorts. “The woman gave birth to me, and it took me eighteen years and a blood oath to get ahold of that thing,” he says loudly, shooting a quick side-eye at Nina before lowering his voice to a whisper. “Think a little sweeter.”
We start to get everything set up for the morning rush while I tell him about bingo the night before, from Johnny’s and Blake’s
