How Sweet It Is - Alice J. Wisler [52]
“Deena,” he says with clarity.
I like the way my name sounds on his lips. Gosh, I didn’t know that my name could sound like that.
“We don’t bite. We’re not the raccoons or bears that live in the woods.”
My eyes narrow as I say, “I know that.”
“Do you?” He gives me a peculiar grin and returns to his task, adding another drop of glue to the flannel material.
With his attention no longer fully devoted to me, I feel free to go. Yet, even as I walk down the hall, farther and farther away from him, my shoulders straight, my mind is still with him. I want to understand what he’s saying, where he’s coming from. I want to believe that he would listen to my story of woe about Lucas and show enough empathy for me to fill all my new stainless-steel cake pans. I want to open up and tell him.
At my car, the realization hits me that he cleverly kept from telling me how he knew that I’d been engaged. He gave away none of his own secrets. Yet he wants me to trust him?
The truth is, I am afraid to find out whether these people bite or not. I know this about myself, and yet I cannot seem to change it. I have already been hurt enough.
I get into my Jeep and gun the engine. I will not be putty in Zack’s basketball-playing hands.
twenty-five
At Southern Treats, a little coffee shop beside the railroad tracks, I meet the elderly owner, who introduces herself as Mrs. Dixie. She is dressed in black with a string of milky pearls swaying from her narrow neck.
I have been to Heaven’s Railway, the bookstore, and Yum Yum, the Chinese restaurant, to ask if I may display a few of my brochures. The employees behind the counters at both places said the exact same thing: “I don’t think that would be a problem.” Then they took a dozen brochures, smiled, and continued to wait on customers. I hoped my brochures ended up somewhere where customers could see them, but I did suspect that they very well could end up in the trash bin behind each location.
Mrs. Dixie holds one of the Southern Treats menus toward me until she realizes that I’m not there for coffee and pie. Standing at the front entrance of the store by windows framed in pecan-colored curtains, she opens my cake brochure. She studies it as I watch three patrons inside the tiny shop sip on cappuccino in delicate white cups.
Adjusting her glasses, she looks me over. “So you make cakes?”
“Yes.” I attempt to stand straight.
“That’s all?”
“For now,” I say.
She flips the brochure over, removes her glasses, then looks at me. “Cakes.” She has an impish voice, a cross between the squeal of a piglet and the cry of a calf.
“Yes.”
“Do you make pies?”
“No.”
“Hmmm.” She flips her glasses back on and turns the brochure over once more.
“I mean, I can. I have. I studied at the Atlanta School of San Sebastian.”
Apparently, she is not impressed by where I went to school.
So much for Sally’s theory that Atlanta is looked upon as the New York City of the South. “Hmmm.” She twists her necklace in her fingers. “I like pie.”
“Oh, I do, too.” I say this using my gushing tone. Immediately, I feel foolish.
“Chocolate.” She raises her eyes to look at me. “That’s my favorite.”
But of course. It’s my least. “Oh.”
“I don’t eat cake.”
I nod.
“Now, my mother made a chocolate cake I ate growing up.”
I’m not sure how to comment so I just stand there.
“I didn’t like it, though.”
I want to go home.
“I sell cake here.”
“Yes.” I shift from one foot to the other.
“I just don’t eat it.”
I force a smile.
“What kind of pie do you like?”
“Peach.”
“Peach? Hmmmmm. You’re from Georgia.”
I hope she doesn’t say anything corny like I’m a Georgia peach. Or ask if I have seen the huge peach that stands tall near Interstate 85 outside of Gaffney, South Carolina.
“Atlanta? I went there once to hear the symphony at the Woodruff Arts Center. Magnificent music.” She smiles broadly as my stomach spins like Lucas’s car