Nothing More Beautiful (5 page)

“Not really,” Bridgett said. “I don’t think
things will ever settle, for one. For two, if you don’t make the
time, you’ll never have the time. What you need is to find someone
online.”

“Online dating,” Danielle laughed.
“Bridgett, come on,
seriously?
”

Bridgett ignored Danielle’s mocking tone. “I
made a profile last night on NorthwestMingle. I’ve read that it’s
the best place to meet people in Portland.”

“For sex or for relationships?” Danielle
asked, dropping her keys on my desk and taking a seat in the extra
chair.

“Either,” Bridgett replied, spinning in her
chair. She grabbed her mouse, then started typing. “I can bring it
up for you.”

“Sex is what she needs right now,” Danielle
said. “A few good humps should do it.”

I checked my anger, about to throw the
marble at her. “I don’t need sex, Danielle. I need to get to work,
and so do you. Aren’t you working downtown today?”

Danielle checked her sporty wristwatch that
she swapped out for an expensive white gold one when she worked.
“Yeah, I guess I should . . . but don’t think
that just because I have to go means you’re off the hook.” She
snatched up her keys, pausing at the door. “I’ll pick you up at
five.”

I raised my eyebrows and gave her a single
wave.

“She’s right, you know,” Bridgett said once
Danielle was gone. “You could use a good lay.”

I collapsed my head into my hands. “Oy.”

She threw up her hands. “All right, just
sayin’. Well, my break’s over.” She stood and stretched out her
arms while yawning. “I’ll get back to the kitchen. You still have
to do inventory, remember.”

I rolled the marble back and forth across my
desk. “Yeah, I know. I’m a little behind. I’ll get us all caught up
today.”

“You better. We’re already looking at a hard
third month.” With that, she disappeared out the door.

I brought the marble to my eyes and
inspected it. It was such a small thing and yet it caused me so
much grief. I sat there and gazed at the swirl, captivated and
confused, replaying the incident at the gym over in my head.

I FOUND MYSELF BACK
at my
desk after hours of torturous inventorying, something that
supposedly gets easier with experience. The goal was to eventually
get the system up and running to where we could track the inventory
and when someone marked that we needed something, it would be added
to a master-ordering list, where one simple click did all the work
for us. Research called it streamlining, I called it a pain in the
ass. If we had an I.T. guy, I’d be in heaven, but our dismal budget
put an end to that idea when Bridgett and I discussed our technical
skills. She concluded that I had the proficiency to succeed.

It was our third month in business and I was
still having trouble. A headache battered my brain as I gaped at my
computer screen. The morning events hadn’t left my mind all day. I
kept returning to the memory at the gym. I’d fall and he’d catch me
and I’d run away in a flash. It all happened so fast that there
wasn’t much to remember. Online dating had also been running
through my head.
Had it truly come to this?
Would I be
another casualty of the modern dating predicament that forced women
to browse a list of profiles instead of meeting someone
organically?

I typed NorthwestMingle into my browser.
Pictures of happy couples flooded the screen. My cursor hovered
over the “join” button. I desired to meet someone like Danielle
had, and come May she’d be off and married and I’d be alone.

That single thought pressured me into
clicking the mouse.

I filled in the information and became a new
member of “the number one dating site for Northwesteners,” or so
the front page boasted. I didn’t see any data to back up the claim,
and even if I had, I probably wouldn’t have believed it.

And so the search began. I scrolled through
countless profiles. I had never noticed before how many guys in
Portland had beards. It seemed like an uncommonly high amount.
Beards really weren’t my thing, so I checked that off the finder,
which narrowed the list considerably, leaving only those who shaved
or sported stubble.

It was a quarter past five when I noticed
that I’d spent over an hour hunting for Mr. Right. By then, I had
selected and bookmarked four guys. Bridgett had said countless
times that she always waited for men to ask her out, but Danielle’s
nagging about my shyness around men prevailed, and I wrote a quick
message to my first choice and sent it on its digital journey.

Danielle knocked on the back door and I let
her in. “So, I did it,” I announced.

“Did what?” she asked, zooming for the
leftover muffins in the front.

“I signed up for NorthwestMingle and
messaged a guy.”

She peeled off the bottom wrapper and took
an enormous bite, smiling. “You’re kidding. I don’t believe you.
Show me.”

I led her to the office and pulled up the
profile. “He’s cute, right?”

“Sure, I guess. From an objective point of
view.” She wore an aloof face. “I wouldn’t have picked him.”

“You wouldn’t have picked any guy,” I
said.

“True. But give me a break, his username is
CoolGuyPDX.”

“Who cares about usernames?” I closed the
application, shoving her out the door. We made for home after
locking the office and the back door.

“Usernames mean a lot. They tell you about
that person’s character, underneath. You can really judge someone
by their username. Like yours, what’d you pick?”

“CuteLittleBaker88.”

She laughed hard, spitting muffin bits at
the steering wheel.

“You’re such an ass sometimes,” I said. “I
thought it was a descriptive name.”

“It was better than CoolGuyPDX, I’ll give
you that, but not much.” She stuffed the remaining muffin chunk
into her mouth and swallowed. “So, what did you say in your
message?”

I turned up the heater—my ass was frozen.
Danielle never had the heater high enough. “I asked him if he
wanted to get together for coffee.”

“Mellow and informal, a good start,” she
said. “What’s his name?”

“Harry,” I answered, shivering.

“Harry,” she said more to herself than to
me. “I guess there are worse names out
there . . .”

I was about to reply when my phone beeped,
signaling a text or email. Unlocking the screen and sliding to the
alert, I opened the message. “It’s from Harry. He wants to meet
tomorrow night. You think I should?”

“I thought your goal was to get him to not
go out with you,” she said, her sarcasm scraping against my
nerves.

“You’re very funny, you know that?”

“And you’re very strange,” she threw back.
“Of course I think you should. That’s what I’ve been driving at
since Saturday, for you to get out there and find someone new.”

“I was only
double-checking . . . you know what, never
mind.” I returned to the message and wrote out a reply, then erased
it, wrote a second, but erased it, too. I hit the send key after I
revised the third draft. “Okay,” I said, exhaling, as if I’d been
holding my breath the whole time. “Sent. There’s no going back
now.”

Danielle looked over at me with a wide
smile. “To finding Mr. Right. Celebrate at U-Brew?”

I nodded, excited. Maybe he would be Mr.
Right. Maybe he’d be the man of my dreams, the fairytale prince
who’d sweep me off my feet and whisk me off to the bedroom. Maybe
he’d be the one to give me what Danielle says I’d been missing in
my life: the big O.

THE MORNING STARTED OUT
crummy. My hair wouldn’t cooperate, my morning breath persisted
despite three brushings, and I couldn’t find the right outfit for
the coffee-shop date, which had kept me up half the night, the
anticipation stimulating my brain like caffeine. To top it off,
Eddie—my purple Fort Escort—wouldn’t turn over. It took twenty
tries and fifteen minutes before the engine came to life. He was
nineteen and on his last tires.

With the snow gone, it was back to the
routine. I pulled into the private parking behind the bakery at
4:49 AM. Norm, the “Bread Guy” was already there, arriving at 4:30
on most days. The only plus of working so early was that I never
had to contend with traffic. Other than that there was nothing
positive about it. I was dead—a zombie—guzzling drip coffee and
espressos until about eight. This morning was even worse since I’d
only gotten half the sleep I normally did; and all the energy that
had kept me awake during the night had vanished, leaving me
drained.

It was going to be a long day.

Norm and I never really talked. It was too
early, so instead, we took turns blasting our music. He favored
heavy metal and hard rock, where I leaned toward what some might
call alternative rock, like The Killers, but I also enjoyed just
plain, upbeat pop. It was his day to choose, and when I came in,
“Back in Black” was blaring over the built-in speakers. He nodded
at me as he did his thing.

I prepped for the day, turning on the fan
and oven, then crafted a caramel, Irish cream, and cinnamon
macchiato. Afterward, I stuffed the crockpot with oats and milk and
set the timer for an hour. Next came the cookies, muffins, and
sticky buns, made fresh every day. One of the last items I prepared
in the early morning was the bread pudding, using the day-old
breads. It was one of our big sellers to the early risers.

There were always one or two people stopping
in at 5:30 in the morning. At six, the real crowds rushed in—our
special coffees and bagels, along with our unique croissants,
brought in the most customers until we began serving brunch at
7:30. A group of elderly men came in then to be the first to order
from the brunch menu, never diverging from their usual. They were
my favorite customers because they walked up to the counter and
gossiped about people in Portland and those closest to them. I
found them very entertaining and pleasant.

Bridgett arrived at 6:30 a.m. to prep the
kitchen for brunch, which was mainly served upstairs in an old
apartment that we leased when the health insurance company moved
out of the ground floor. It was a rickety building that demanded
some upkeep and renovations—repairs we planned on starting in the
summer sunshine.

Even though we both earned our AAS in Baking
and Pastry Management from the Oregon Culinary Institute—whose
slogan was “training kitchen Ninjas”—Bridgett argued that we should
be more than just a bakery, and was therefore in charge of the
“Brunch House” portion of our operation.

The day, like every day owning a restaurant
or similar business, had its ups and downs, including slow times
and crazy rushes, and by ten a.m. I was wide awake and couldn’t
stop thinking of the impending date. A thousand scenarios played in
my head by the time I clocked out. Half were good and half were
bad. The Killers song “When You Were Young” was stuck in my mind
and ran alongside the situations that I watched with my mind’s eye.
It was the theme song for the day. The only problem was that a
beautiful boy had caused my heartache, so to dream of another one
saving me might be a thorn in the scheme.

By the time I clocked out, I was always
wiped. Ten hours was my standard since we opened Friends Bakery and
Brunch House in December, and I usually worked longer on most days.
The requirements to maintain the place were ceaseless and
exerting.

And I loved it.

Despite the enervation, I soldiered on to
the gym and worked out, my playlist pumping me up and keeping me
company. I used the women’s-only third floor to avoid a run-in with
the driver, just in case he made an appearance.

I sank back into my office chair at four,
staring at Harry’s profile picture. There was no doubt he was sexy.
Tan, but not overly so: he was no orange. Toned, but not Tom Hardy
buff, even though I had liked that about Ryan, whose arms were as
big as my head. Harry’s mossy green eyes captured my focus and I
drifted off into another daydream.

I was sitting in my chair when he kicked
open the office door, rushed in and hoisted me onto my desk,
folding back my silk skirt. He ripped off my simple blouse, the
buttons flying through the air. His silence elevated my heart until
all I could feel was lust. He tore his shirt in the heat of the
moment and buried his face in my boobs as I threw my head back.
Then his image morphed into that of the driver from the accident,
and we were back in the gym as he looked up and kissed me so
passionately that my head felt like it was going to explode from
the rush of blood.

Bridgett broke me from my reverie. “What
time are you meeting your date?” she asked, standing in the door,
eyeing me with her brow crumpled.

“Five,” I blurted, unaware of her presence.
I nearly fell out of my chair, jolted by her voice. “Five,” I
repeated, this time much calmer.

“It’s 4:13, you might want to get ready,”
she advised.

I launched out of my seat. “Right. I—I—”

“I know,” she laughed.

“How long have you been standing there?”

“Long enough to see you drool a little,” she
answered, shaking her head. “I locked up the front and
upstairs.”

I smiled awkwardly. She was one of my best
friends, but it was still embarrassing to be caught doing something
that was probably best suited for home, if it could be helped. I
retrieved the five outfits from my car and laid them out in the
office. “So, what do you think?”

Bridgett studied each one. “I like the
purple blouse with the white cardigan,” she concluded. I trusted
her enough to simply go with her decision. She didn’t have the best
eye for fashion, wearing fishnet stockings outside of work, which
I’d never been a fan of, but she’d been married before, and that
superseded the one poor fashion choice.

Dressed and with my makeup all done, I
grabbed my keys. “Ready,” I said, looking in the mirror one last
time.