Forever | ✓

31. Trip

Serena

"No."

"Yes."

"But I don't want to."

"Would you stop being a child?" I asked the man-child, who was my head baker at the cake shop.

Elias looked at me with a pout, like the small child he was behaving as, with arms crossed against his chest.

"I don't like people," he said, and when I raised a brow at him, knowing that was an utter lie, he sighed. "Okay fine, I don't want to work with anyone."

I rolled my eyes.

Between Arya and Elias, I felt like I had just hired children. Arya wasn't a fan of people, Elias wasn't a fan of working with people.

"Not good enough," I told him. "Everyone needs help."

The Frenchman just gasped at me, as if I had insulted him outright.

"I'm not saying you're not good, you're great, but I don't want to on the verge of collapsing whilst trying to do everything," I told him.

Elias had been working with me for a while. He was really great and knew what he was doing. Anything he made was divine, and at the start it all worked out, but when we started getting more orders and customers, I knew he needed some extra help.

I knew that I couldn't just handle the wedding store on my own, I needed Arya and I did rely on her a lot. Elias needed someone like that too, he just refused to accept that.

"But-"

"Elias."

"Fine," he sulked.

I really didn't understand this issue he had working with someone.

He'd remain the head baker, since I knew I could trust him to run things and I wouldn't easily just pass that onto someone else. I had reassured him his job was there to stay, he'd basically be the boss of someone, yet the numerous times I've told him this, it never seemed to get through.

He remained stood on the other side of the counter where all the baked goods were displayed and I stood opposite him, the glass case in between us.

When he leaned onto it with a sad expression, I closed my eyes momentarily and shook my head. This was more dramatic than it needed to be.

"I'm not going to hire someone without your consent," I told him.

He looked at me and smiled. "So if I don't like them, no hire?"

"If you don't like them for a real reason, then no hire," I corrected.

He frowned but nodded anyway. "Okay," he relented - even if there wasn't that much of a choice.

I smiled. "Interviews have been set up for next week," I told him.

He looked at me in shock. "So this was always happening?"

"Exactly," I said, and placed some papers on the counter, in front of him. "Here are the cvs, look through them."

He grumbled something under his breath, but picked up the small pile of papers nonetheless.

"They could suck," he said, probably hoping that they would.

"The last person we hired moved jobs after a month. The other, she lasted 3 weeks," I reminded him. "It doesn't look good for us if people want to leave."

I didn't want people to think we were horrible and making people leave. If they thought that, it would affect business and I planned on keeping both my shops running for a long while.