Jordan measures flour like it’s a sacrament. Scoop, level, scrape the excess back into the bin with the flat of the knife, tap the cup once against the bench — once, never twice — and then look at it before she tips it. Riley has watched her do it for three years and still hasn’t decided whether it’s superstition or craft.
“You’re staring,” Jordan says, without looking up.
“I’m learning.”
“You’ve been learning for three years.”
“I’m a slow study.”
The night shift is the two of them and the mixer and the radio, and the radio is always tuned to the jazz station because Jordan’s grandmother had it on in this kitchen before either of them was born, and Coltrane at two in the morning is felt in the floorboards more than heard. Riley does the register and the trays and the cleaning, and Jordan does the dough, and somewhere around midnight they stop being coworkers and start being two people in a warm room with the door locked.
At 2:40 the last batch goes into the proof box and there is nothing left to do but wait fourteen minutes. Riley sits on the flour bin. Jordan leans against the bench with her arms crossed, and the blue LED in the proof box paints her jaw, the hollow under her cheekbone, the wheat stalk tattoo on her wrist where her sleeve has slid up.
There’s flour on her jaw. A fingerprint of it, white in the crease beside her mouth, from where she pushed her hair back with the back of her hand an hour ago and forgot.
“You’ve got flour on you,” Riley says.
“I’ve got flour on everything. I work in a bakery.”
“On your face.”
Jordan wipes at the wrong cheek. Riley reaches out before she can think about it, three years of not thinking about it dissolving in one second, and puts her thumb on the flour. Drags it slow along the line of Jordan’s jaw. Stops with her thumb at the corner of Jordan’s mouth.
Jordan doesn’t pull away.
The mixer is off, and the sudden quiet is enormous. The timer ticks. The proof box hums. Somewhere out on the street the late bus goes past and the windows rattle in their frames, and neither of them turns to look.
“Fourteen minutes,” Jordan says. Her voice has gone rough in a way Riley has never heard it, and Riley has heard her talk for three years, has catalogued every version of her voice, has spent whole shifts on that cataloguing and told herself it was nothing.
“They can wait,” Riley says.
The key is in Riley’s pocket. It’s the only spare; she’s the only one besides the owner who has one. The back door only locks from the inside. She takes it out, turns it. The click is very loud in the empty shop.
“Riley.”
“Yeah?”
“Lock it properly.”
She does. She checks it with her palm, the way she was taught, and when she turns around Jordan has already closed the distance.
The kiss is not gentle and it is not a revelation. It’s the opposite of a revelation: it’s three years of ordinary Tuesday nights arriving at the obvious place. Jordan’s mouth is warm and tastes like the coffee she’s been nursing since eleven. Her hands are on Riley’s hips. Flour comes off her apron in a soft pale cloud between them.
“Three years,” Jordan says, against her mouth. “You could have done that three years ago.”
“I was waiting for the right batch.”
Jordan laughs, once. Then she stops laughing and pushes her back against the stainless prep table. The cold goes through Riley’s shirt and she gasps into Jordan’s mouth.
the bakery, the prep table · 2:40am
Jordan gets her up on the table. The timer dings somewhere behind them and neither of them moves; the croissants will overproof and split and come out golden and ruined and it will not matter at all, but the dinging goes on and on like a small animal asking to be let in, and eventually Riley reaches out blind and hits the button and the kitchen goes quiet again.
The prep table is cold against her back and Jordan is warm over her, and the flour on Jordan’s hands is on Riley’s throat now, her collarbone, the inside of her thigh where Jordan pushes her jeans down and gets them off one ankle and then the other. The wheat stalk tattoo comes level with Riley’s face and she puts her mouth on it.
“God,” Jordan says. “Do that again.”
Riley does it again. Jordan’s fingers are in her hair and then lower, two of them, wet and sure, and Riley’s back comes up off the steel. Jordan knows exactly what she’s doing and does it without any of the hesitation Riley expected — slow circles, then a press, then the flat of her palm grinding down while her fingers curl, and Riley hears herself make a sound she has never made in this kitchen.
“Look at me,” Jordan says.
Riley looks. Jordan’s face is flushed, her hair come loose, flour still on her jaw. She is watching Riley the way she watches a proof — patient, certain, a little greedy. Riley comes apart under that look, heel braced on the table edge, hand in Jordan’s hair.
Jordan doesn’t stop. She takes her hand away and replaces it with her mouth and Riley swears, loudly, in a bakery that has been open since 1954, and Jordan laughs against her and keeps going, tongue flat and then pointed and then two fingers again, working her through it until Riley’s thighs are shaking and she has to push her away with both hands, laughing and gasping and half embarrassed.
the bakery, the flour bin · still the same night
Jordan sits on the flour bin with her apron in her lap and laughs until she has to wipe her eyes. Her thighs are still wet. She sits there with flour on her jaw like she has been caught at something, and Riley licks her own lip and tastes her.
“Fourteen minutes,” she says. “We gave them thirty-five.”
“They’ll be ruined.”
“They’ll be perfect. They always are.” She looks up. “You came twice. I heard the second one from down here.”
“Shut up.”
“You’re the only one who measures like this.”
“Like what?”
“Like it matters. The scoop. The scrape. You do it the way she did it.” Jordan turns the recipe card over with one finger. 14 min, not 15, oven runs hot, in ink gone brown at the folds. “Nobody else in this shop does it the way she did it.”
Riley crouches down in front of her and puts her hands on Jordan’s knees. “I learned it from watching you.”
“Yeah,” Jordan says. “I know.”
“My turn,” Riley says.
“Your turn later. I want to see that again.”
“Jordan—”
“I’ve been thinking about it for three years,” Jordan says, matter of fact, wiping her mouth with the back of her wrist. “I get to be efficient.”
Riley pulls her up by the apron, kisses her, gets her turned around. The apron comes untied. The jeans go down around Jordan’s knees, and Jordan braces both hands flat on the stainless steel and puts her forehead down and says, “Oh,” in a small surprised voice.
Then nothing else for a while. Riley gets two fingers in her from behind and Jordan’s whole body goes still, then not still. The steel is cold under Jordan’s palms and she pushes back into it and Riley has to move faster than she planned, the apron hanging off one shoulder, and Jordan says Riley’s name once, twice, in a voice with no composure left in it at all.
“Don’t stop,” Jordan says. “Don’t you dare stop.”
“I’m not stopping.”
Jordan comes with her forehead down on the steel and one hand slapped flat on the table. Riley keeps going until Jordan’s knees go and she has to catch her around the waist. Then she turns her around, lifts her onto the edge of the table, gets her heels up on her shoulders, and puts her mouth on her. Jordan says something that isn’t a word. Riley takes her time about it, tongue flat and then pointed, until Jordan’s hand fists in her hair and she came a second time with her back arching off the steel. Riley licks her through it, slow, until Jordan has to push her head away with both hands.
“I’ve got you,” Riley says, against her skin.
“You do,” Jordan says, her voice cracking. “You really do.”
the bakery, front of house · the morning rush
Morning rush, and the croissants are imperfect, split open and slightly overproofed, and the regulars say best batch ever. The old man at table three orders six and takes two home in a paper bag for his wife.
Flour in the cuffs of Jordan’s apron, in the crease of Riley’s wrist, one long pale fingerprint on the steel table that neither of them wipes off until the rush is over. The recipe card has a new note in pencil beside the old ink: 14 min + love.
Riley keeps the key. It’s on her ring with the car key and the mailbox key, and Jordan has not asked for it back. At 2:40 every shift one of them says fourteen minutes, and the other one goes to the door.
