Page 36 of Spiced!

The timer went off.

I checked the pan sobao. It was perfect, so of course I sent a photo to Brendan—just the tray fresh from the oven, golden and exactly right—with no caption.

He responded in forty seconds.

Puck’s Dad: That looks really good. It’s like I can smell it through the screen.

Me: It is incredibly good. You should try it sometime.

There was a pause, longer than his prior pauses.

Puck’s Dad: Yeah, I should.

I put the phone down and stood there for a second with the warm kitchen around me and the smell of the bread and the feeling of a conversation that had just said a whole lot without saying much of anything. I swear, I did not do a happy dance in which flour flew off my apron in a cloud like Pig-Pen.

Doña Carmen cleared her throat.

“The empanada dough,” she said, pointing at the counter with her re-arched brow that I suddenly realized was more of a secret weapon than an expression.

“Right,” I said. “Yes. On it.”

I went back to the empanada dough but didn’t stop smiling.

Tuesday was busy enough that I only checked my phone twice before noon, which felt like personal growth. A private dance booking came through for a Thursday corporate event that I agreed to and immediately regretted, because corporate events had an energy that required a specific kind of professional patience, and my patience was finite.

I texted Brendan about it at 1 p.m. while eating lunch on the panadería steps, Mofongo sitting on my foot in his new favorite position. Doña Carmen didn’t love that I brought a puppy into the shop but couldn’t resist the urge to cuddle him every chance she got.

Me: I just agreed to dance at a corporate event Thursday. I think I made a mistake.

Puck’s Dad: What kind of corporate event?

Me: The kind where men in khakis cheer for quarterly targets. It’s contemporary dance, not the bar kind, and there will be three others dancing the routine, too. still . . .

Puck’s Dad: That does sound challenging.

Me: I danced for fifteen drunk bachelorettes and a man named Dennis. I can handle khakis.

Puck’s Dad: Dennis seems to come up a lot.

Me: Dennis had a transformative evening. He tipped forty dollars.

Puck’s Dad: Sounds like a man who needed exactly what he got.

I looked at that for a second, at the simple accuracy of it.

Me: That’s exactly what it was.

Mofongo, impatient with my phone focus, put both front paws on my knee and stared at me until I put it away and gave him the attention he required, which was all of it, always and immediately.

“Demanding little shit, aren’t you?”

He licked my knee.

“That’s not a refutation.”

He sneezed.

On Wednesday, my mother called. She called at noon, not 4 a.m., which was unusual. I was at the market two blocks from the panadería, and I answered on the second ring the way I always did.