Baker's Dozen

Chapter 2: Brown-Eyed Boy

I barely hear the wind chimes sound when the bakery door pushes open. Not that I was asleep again, just blasting Daft Punk and everything on shuffle through my earbuds as I sit behind the cash register.

It's early morning and people haven't come in yet for breakfast. Usually, all you can hear at this time are the bakers back in the kitchen preparing for the day.

The sound of my mother and Janie greeting each other is muffled by electronic voices and sounds. I'm not jamming out as usual.

I'm too curious about Janie's son. Behind the music, I hear a guy's laugh and he's introducing himself. I didn't even know Janie had a son until yesterday.

Except for the fact that I know that Janie is one of my mom's closest friends, I never really pay attention to my mom's friends. I never really pay attention to anything.

I try to keep my eyes on my iPod. I really do. But, I couldn't help but take a glance at him.

He's tall, and has dark hair, the guy looks about my age. He has his hands stuffed in his Express track jacket pockets and I catch him flash a smile. Janie's son seems really humble, and he doesn't exactly strike me as unattractive.

And his eyes are so.. brown. I swear the color of his eyes match the top of of those fudge brownies in the display cases sitting next to me. His eyes aren't a really dark brown, they're just so bright, and it made emphasis on everything he looked at. Even me.

I see him say something to Janie, and he saunters over to me. I stuff my iPod into my pocket, music still playing quietly through the earbuds.

He smiles, and as he closing in to the counter, I ask while taking out my earbuds, "Anything I can help you with?" He was pretty cute.

"Yeah, anything you recommend for breakfast?" the brown-eyed boy says casually.

I'm still disoriented by his eyes. Leaving from the crazy little world in the back of my mind, I blink back into reality.

"Well, the blueberry muffins here are pretty good," I reply trying to sound nonchalant.

"Then, I better take your word for it. Two please."

He grins and hands me some cash, and I hand him his change. I'm wrapping bakery tissue around a muffin when he says, "Oh, and how do I run the cash register?"

I freeze up. I look back at him questioningly.

"I'm sorry, what?" The hell is he talking about?

I come closer, needing answers, and my earbuds are resting on the counter. He's about to open his mouth, but then while I'm setting down the muffin, my arm accidentally yanks down on the wire connecting to my iPod. It pulls the earbuds out of the plug.

Dangit.

I can feel Fergie's voice screaming through my jeans.

It just had to be 'Clumsy'.

My eyes are wide, cheeks burning with embarrassment. Why do I even have this song on my iPod?

I think back to the time when I was at a sleepover and my friend Abby downloaded the song and set it up as my alarm to wake me up for April Fool's. Now, all I have to ask myself is why I hadn't gotten rid of it.

Crap, crap, crap.

You got me slippin'  Oh tumblin'  Oh trippin'  Oh stumblin'  Clumsy cause' I'm falling in-

At that point, I'm afraid to look at him and I just keep saying, "Sorry. Sorry," as I fumble to slip the iPod out of my pocket to press pause.

I never realized how loud it was playing 'til my mom and her friend stopped talking and started eyeing me. I could tell that brown-eyes was trying his best not to laugh while the "music" played.

I fail to press pause, though, because while I was pressing the home button, it went to voice control and apparently Apple thought I wanted to play a different song.

Oh god. Please no. Not-

Hearing Mariah Carey's voice did not please me. 'Touch My Body' was also another that was used to prank me on April Fool's. My mom is very alerted by this, but trust me, I was way more alerted by this than she was. Alarmed, really. I decide to just give up and press the power button on my iPod.

Wait. Why did I not think of this before? Stupid, stupid, stupid.

My mom rushes over to me. I gaze back at brown-eyes, and maybe for the last time, too. I was going to die.

I hurriedly hand him his muffins and blurt as fast I can, "Thank you for coming to Best Bites have a nice day come again."

I didn't have time for separating my sentences with verbal commas. My death is urgent. I scurry away, scared out of my mind. Of course Mom was going to ground me for causing myself to look like a fool. Or for causing her to look like the parent of a fool. I could never see Abby again, or my cell phone, or my books, or my-

"Vanessa." I slowly raise my head in shame to meet my mother's eyes. This keeps happening, and I hate it. I hate getting in trouble like this, I hate embarrassing myself, and her, and this whole bakery. I felt so dang sorry.

"I have to talk to you about something." You're grounded. You suck. Of course she would never say anything like that, but that's how the words would feel when they hit me.

I wince, "Okay. Sure."

"Janie's son is going to be working here for the rest of the time he's in town."

I swear my eyebrows shot up to my forehead. "He's what?" I ask way too loudly. In the corner of my eye I can see Janie's son trying to peer in from in front of the counter. My eyes have never been this wide this amount of times in one day.

"I know this is very out of the blue, Vanessa, but I need you to work with me here. Janie is one of my closest friends, and giving a job to her son was the least I could do. You don't know how badly he needs it." The amount of concern in her eyes and voice is overwhelming, but I try to handle everything that just happened calmly.

But I can't. I just can't. What. The heck.

"Okay.." I say shakily. My breathing is so unevenly paced that I sound like a broken metronome. "Okay."

I glimpse back at the boy still standing there in front of the cash register. I smile nervously at him and he smiles back faintly. So, I'll be working with him now. I'll be working with a boy I know absolutely nothing about. Great.