Page 133 of A Taste of Vanilla

Crowds are poorly managed proof that human beings need more instructions.

Saints & Sinners usually suits Oliver. Although it feels like it’s going through an identity crisis, the bar is comfortable in spite of itself.

Tonight, however, it’s not comfortable.

Tonight, it’s occupied by what feels like the entire Baltimore Vipers team.

Four professional baseball players crowded around a corner table are a crowd. Eight is an event. Tonight, most of the team has come in after a game, still loud from winning. They’re allbeing treated by other customers like gods, which obviously deeply irritates Oliver.

He stands behind the bar, jaw tight, polishing a glass that doesn’t need polishing. “This is why I don’t believe in sports,” he grunts.

Halston leans beside me at the end of the bar, her eyes bright. “You can’t not believe in sports.”

“I can. I’ve been doing it successfully for years.”

“That’s not how that works.”

He rolls his eyes.

One of the Vipers laughs from the corner and slaps his teammate on the shoulder hard enough that beer foams over the rim of his glass.

Oliver closes his eyes. “Large men in jerseys should not be treated like monuments.”

“They just won!” Halston says.

Oliver’s eyes narrow. “They won a children’s game. They didn’t cure scurvy.”

Marley, standing near the back with her phone already up, laughs. “I’m making that the caption.”

Oliver points at her. “Don’t make me content.”

“You became content when you opened a bar next to a bakery owned by her.” Marley turns her phone toward Halston. “That was your first mistake.”

Halston smiles innocently.

Which is a problem for me.

When Halston smiles like that, the room responds. People lift their heads. Customers lean closer. Strangers smile back, no matter how shitty their day has been. Tired men order second drinks and women laugh louder. Even Oliver somehow looks a little less dead inside when she turns it on him.

I hate that I notice all of this.

But I’ve been noticing it all day.

In the bakery, Halston is always in motion. She’s not chaos, exactly. That may be too strong a word. Too careless, even.

She’s not careless. She’s fast, with no one to contain her. And why would they?

She moves from one idea to the next like each one opens a door and she intends to run through them all before anyone tells her not to. Her systems are terrible. Her instincts are amazing.

Halston’s production schedule offends me personally on a deep level, but her understanding of people is better than anything I could ever measure.

Customers don’t come back because her food and drinks are strange. They come back because she remembers they ordered them.

Mrs. Alvarez doesn’t buy a Men are Decorative at Best latte because it has brown sugar and cinnamon. She buys it because Halston knows her first husband had no purpose beyond decoration and says gold sprinkles are cheaper than alimony.

A college student isn’t ordering three muffins because she can’t get banana anywhere else. She’s ordering them because Halston asked last week how her exam went and remembered that she stress-eats soft textures and offered to give her a sample of a new recipe she’s been working on.

A boy in a Vipers hat came in this afternoon, and she handed him a cookie with orange sugar on it and said it was for good luck. His mom bought six more.