"Millie told me you burned a pot of water last month."
"It just randry!"
"Well you should stick to making coffee and let your wonderful wife make her delicious scones. Leave the pastries to me."
From behind me, a snort echoes through the bakery, and I don't even have to turn around to know who it is.
Quinn Reyes has waltzed on in, perched herself on the counter behind my register and has a look on her face like she owns the place. Her black boots are dangling, and somehow, she already has a Butter Batch latte cupped between her tattooed hands.
"Harold, sweetheart," Quinn drawls, "the only thing you should be operating in a kitchen is the dishwasher. And even that's a stretch."
Harold glares at her over his glasses. "Don't you have a tattoo shop to run?"
Quinn's violet-black hair is dead straight today, and she's got that look that says she's about to make my life significantly more interesting.
"Don't you have a wife to argue with?" Quinn quips in return.
"Touché." Harold winks and nods his head. "You people and your sharp tongues. Oh, to be young again."
I slide the bakery boxes across the counter, already mentally preparing the rest of my morning.
I dropped Morgan at school two hours ago. So now I need to prep the afternoon batch of brownies, get the inventory order sent off by noon, and somewhere in amongst the chaos of customers, I'm supposed to eat actual food that isn't scraped from the bottom of a mixing bowlandexercise.
"That'll be forty-two fifty," I tell Harold, tapping the register.
He hands over the cash without complaint and tucks the boxes under his arm.
"Same time tomorrow?"
"Same time every day for the past three years, Harold. I think we've established the pattern."
He grunts his gratitude, shoots one more suspicious look at Quinn, and shuffles toward the door.
"You young whippersnappers and your attitudes," he mutters on his way out. "Back in my day, we showedrespectto our elders."
"Back in your day, dinosaurs roamed the earth!" Quinn calls after him.
The bell above the door chimes as Harold disappears into the Chilmore cold, and I finally let myself exhale.
Quinn takes a long sip of her latte, watching me over the rim. "You look like shit, by the way."
"Oh, thank you, Quinn. Your kind words are, as always, overwhelming."
"I'm serious." She hops off the counter and moves closer. "When's the last time you slept more than four hours?"
I narrow my eyes at Quinn, because the honest answer to that question is so pathetic it might actually make her cry.
When's the last time I slept… at all?!
Here's the thing about being a single mom that nobody warns you about: sleep isn't a right. It's anegotiation. And the other party in that negotiation is a ten-year-old girl who has somehow developed the bedtime compliance of a feral raccoon.
Last night she stood in the doorway of my bedroom at 10PM to inform me that she'can't sleep because her brain won't stop being interesting.'
When she'd finally crashed, sprawled diagonally across my bed, one foot on my pillow, hogging the entire comforter, I didn't move her.
Inevermove her.
Instead, I curled into the remaining fourteen inches of mattress, pulled a throw blanket up to my chin, and stared at the ceiling until my 3:45 AM alarm dragged me out of bed again.