The most important part of the preopening setup is making sure the donuts are on display, the pink Nina’s Bakery bags sitting poised just next to them. Nina is known for her donuts. We always sell out of them before noon, and on Saturdays we’re lucky to have any left by ten. She has to make an extra four dozen every Sunday so the churchgoers don’t forget their teachings at the door and square up near the glass display case.
“Everything ready?” Nina asks, wiping her hands with a towel as she walks to the front from the kitchen, her eyes scanning the pastries to make sure everything is neatly in place.
“Ready!” Paul says, saluting confidently, but sweat lines both our brows.
She rolls her eyes at him, the corner of her mouth twitching up into a smile as she pushes open the windows. Slowly, the scent from her Secret Ingredient Chocolate Chip Cookies wafts through the bakery and out onto the street. It’s like a siren’s song, drawing out the donut lovers and the baked-good regulars from every corner of Huckabee.
Practically the second she turns the sign to open, the front door of the library busts open and Mrs. McDonell, the head librarian, begins trotting eagerly down the steps for her two glazed. She’s surpassed being just a regular and is now a certified addict, pairing her Nina’s with a cup of coffee and a book every single morning. Somehow though, she’s still barely more than ninety pounds, her tiny, elderly frame all sharp angles and knobby knees.
The bells on the front door jingle as she comes in, and they don’t stop jingling for the next two hours straight. The noise is almost constant, as customer after customer comes inside, eagerly eyeing the display case. I work the cash register as Paul grabs the donuts and slides them into the pink bags, handing them out to everyone with a toothy smile. Nina sticks to the kitchens, churning out the goods.
It’s a blur of people from around town until the clock lands on ten, and I couldn’t be happier. I’m so busy moving at light speed, I don’t even have time to think about Matt or my friends or the move. Instead, I focus on the people right in front of me: Annie from Hank’s, Mr. Schmidt, the principal at Huckabee High. I do my best to put a name to every face, which always earns a warm smile and the clattering of change in the tip jar.
Luckily, it’s pretty easy to do when you’ve lived in the same small town your whole life.
When there’s a lull, Paul slides a stool over and sits down next to me with a long exhale, his shoulders slumping.
“Stop playing. You missed it,” I say, nudging him.
“Working with you? Absolutely not,” Paul says, grinning back at me.
The three of us, Paul, Kiera, and I, would work every weekend together during the school year before he went to college. On Sundays we used to plot some new variety of pastry or some funky cookie combination to cook up. If Nina taste-tested it and gave it the stamp of approval, she would put whatever we made out and let us keep all the profits from it. It was harder to find time to do it after he left, especially when the rush at Nina’s became more and more hectic with each year that passed.
The bells on the front door jingle, and we both look up, plastering artificial customer-service smiles on our faces. But I’m surprised when I see Blake standing in the doorway, a white Ron Jon T-shirt making her arms look even tanner than last night.
“Blake? What are you doing here?” I blurt out, my brain and my mouth working on two different wavelengths. Luckily, she cracks a smile. Her golden-streaked hair is pulled back into a ponytail, full and wavy and swinging gently as she moves.
“Nice to see you, too,” she says, closing the door carefully behind her. “I Yelped the best place to get a donut in Huckabee, and this was the only place for, like, twenty-five miles.”
“That’s almost true,” I say with a nod toward the window. “There’s a gas station about ten minutes down the road with a whole display case of them. I think they put new ones out once a month, just to keep them fresh.”
“Once a month? What am I doing here, then?” she asks, throwing her hands up with fake exasperation.
I laugh, quickly fixing my hair and smoothing out my Nina’s Bakery shirt as her eyes dart down to look at the cupcakes on the other side of the glass. I glance over and catch Paul looking at me, a faint smirk on his face.
I roll my eyes. With Kiera gone, he knows Blake is my one chance at having a friend this summer. There’s no need to rub it in.
“I think I’ll just take a glazed donut,” Blake says finally, both of our heads whipping back around to look at her. “Is that lame?”
“Nah,” I say as Paul dramatically pulls a single sheet of waxed paper from the box. “They’re the cornerstone of Nina’s.”
“You’re in luck!” Paul says from behind me. “You got the last one.”
He puts it carefully in a bag and holds it out to her. “I’m Paul, by the way,” he says when she takes the bag from his blue-gloved hand. “Brother of Emily’s best friend, the better-looking sibling, former resident gay of Huckabee.”
Blake laughs, her entire face lighting up in the morning sun, trickling in through the storefront window. “Nice to meet you. I’m Blake.”
She doesn’t even raise an eyebrow at his gay
