Angry Baker's Arc

Chapter 7 of 13

Sunday morning Allan opened the bakery an hour early. The May wedding felt closer now that Melissa had shown him the arch. But close wasn't enough. He wanted to marry her sooner, before anything else could go wrong. That evening he asked Melissa the question he'd been holding all day. "What if we moved the date up? To February twenty-fourth instead of May." She stopped wiping down the counter and turned to face him. Her eyes went bright. "I was hoping you'd say that," she said, and stepped forward to hug him. As she wrapped her arms around his shoulders, Allan felt something give way in his chest—relief mixed with fear, the two things he carried everywhere. A chunk of chocolate fell from the shelf above them. It landed square on the tray of croissants he'd just pulled from the oven. Allan looked down at the mess. Chocolate smeared across the golden pastry. His hands should have frozen. His chest should have tightened with that familiar anger. But Melissa was still holding him, and the croissants looked different now—like something people might actually want to buy. He laughed. "We can sell these," he said. "Chocolate croissants. They'll pay more for them." The next morning Allan built a wooden rack and set it outside the bakery with the new chocolate croissants stacked in rows. By noon he'd sold them all and taken five orders for more. He went inside and wrote out an invitation on good paper, the kind Melissa kept for special things. February 24th in careful letters, circled by flowers she'd drawn in the margins. He hung it on the trail marker behind their house where the path split toward the clearing. That night he gave Melissa the diamond necklace he'd been saving since before the proposal. She put it on without a word, and they walked to the arch together to see how the flowers were coming in.