Kissing In Cars

7

"Hey, Ava?'" Emily, one of my front-of-house workers calls to me as I sit in my office trying to go over income expenses on my laptop. Its hour two of them so my brain is starting to get a little fuzzy.

"Yeah?" I call back, tearing my eyes away from my computer, happy about the distraction.

"Someone's here to see you." she says as she appears in my doorway.

"Send them in." I tell her. Often I have people come in for jobs and such so it's not a surprise when someone pops into my office.

Emily nods at me then disappears back to the front of the bakery to send whoever it is that's here to see me. I lower my laptop screen so I can give whoever it is five minutes of attention before I go back to working on my computer.

Not even two seconds later Tony is at the door to my office.

"Tony?" I say, confused.

He leans against the doorway in a casual, effortless way. I scold myself for thinking it looks attractive.

"Hey." he says, a grin on his face.

I close down my laptop screen completely, figuring that this will be more than just a five minute visit. "What's up?"

"I wanted to say thanks for coming the other day, and for setting things up. It was a good time." he says referring to his birthday party on Saturday.

"Yeah, I had a fun time too. It was nice to see everyone." I say with a smile. "Can't believe your mom made me set up the party and stay to clean it up after too."

"You're too nice to her, she takes advantage." he says to me.

"I know but I can't help it. I don't want her to hate me."

Tony laughs at me. "She could never hate you. You're the only girlfriend of mine she's ever liked."

The sound of Tony referring to me as his girlfriend is one that makes my chest hurt. I loved being his girlfriend, we were really great together... and then the band and the fame and money happened, and the Tony I knew became a memory.

I pull myself together, my voice colder than it was moments ago. "I'm sure she's liked others after me." 

He shakes his head at me, not sensing the change in my voice. "She hasn't. Not that there's really been many girlfriends after you."

"Oh yeah," I say in a sarcastic tone. "I forgot the band is your main priority, no time for others when you're famous, right?"

Tony gives me an uneasy look. It's the second time I've been passive aggressive with the events that happened in the past, but I really can't help it. All the things I've wanted to say to him keep slipping out of my mouth before I can stop them.

"It's not like that." Tony says, his tone short. He takes a deep breath in while shoving his hands in his pockets. "Back then, Ava, things were-"

"We don't need to do this." I say, cutting him off. "It's fine."

His brows furrow together. "It's obviously not, though. Otherwise you wouldn't have brought it up."

"We still don't need to talk about it though."

"We should."

"Sure, maybe." I say slowly. "Just not when I'm at work?"

He looks around as if he forgot where we were. "I still can't believe you made this."

Between us neither can I. It was hard working getting this place to where it was at. Some months I spent more money than I made and was sure that I wouldn't be able to recover it. Sometimes I spent more than 24 hours in this place, working overnight to come up with new ideas for the menu, most of which are still on the menu today. The beginning was rough for sure, I was barely staying alive in business and real life, but the more I grew, the more the business did and now we're both flourishing.