Page 68 of Always Been His

SIENNA

I’ve been parked outside Butter Treats for eleven minutes.

I know because I’ve looked at the clock on the Jeep’s dashboard eleven times, once per minute, like watching the numbers change is going to make walking through that door any easier. It isn’t. The lunch rush is in full swing; through the glass, I can see the line snaking from the counter to the door, the little chalkboard sign on the easel out front with today’s specials written in Iris’s precise handwriting, the warm yellow light of the interior spilling onto the sidewalk even in the middle of the day.

I can see the back of her head through the gap in the service window, brown hair up in the bun she always wears when she’s working, moving between the counter and the kitchen with the efficiency of a woman who has been running her own business since she was twenty-three. She hasn’t seen the Jeep. She hasn’t seen me.

I don’t fully know what I’m going to say when she does.

Please don’t be mad at me for having super-hot, rain-soaked sex in your backyard. It wasn’t the first time. And it won’t be the last, because your brother and I have been low-key in love for almost a decade. And don’t make me choose between you and him, because I love him, and I love you, and I can’t do that. But believe me I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be madly in love with your brother.

That sounds ridiculous.

The problem with Iris Douglas is that she is the sweetest person I know. She is warmer than anyone else I’ve ever met, more loyal than any contract I’ve ever signed, and she loves with the specific intensity of a woman who grew up watching her father love a woman until he forgot her name and still believes in love completely. She doesn’t do anything halfway. She doesn’t hold back. When Iris gives you her friendship, she gives you all of it, every morning text and 2 a.m. phone call, and birthday cake made from scratch, and inside jokes and quiet nights on the couch. She has never iced me out like this, but I know this requires a grand gesture, probably the grandest gesture of all time.

I take a deep breath and make my way inside.

The only thing I know Iris loves more than sugar, are 90s movies, especially 10 Things I Hate About You. She’s been in love with Heath Ledger since the first time she saw him. The thing about his character Patrick in that movie is that he gets Cat to go to the dance with him by making an absolute fool of himself singing ‘Can’t Take My Eyes Off You’ in the bleachers. It is Iris’s favorite scene. She thinks it is ridiculously romantic to cause a scene for someone you love, because she believes, like all lover-girls believe, that’s what love is. Making a complete fool of yourself and being deliriously happy while you do it. She has never been immune to a big gesture, and hopefully she won’t be for me.

The bell above the door of Butter Treats jingles as I enter. A thick warm scent of sugar and butter and the specific cinnamon note that has lived in every space Iris has ever occupied since she was old enough to hold a mixing bowl. The lunch crowd is buzzing, every table full, the line five deep at the counter, and nobody looks up when I walk in.

I stand in the doorway for a moment.

Then I pull up the song on my phone, hit play, let the opening brass fill the doorway for exactly two seconds, and drop the phone into my flannel pocket.

I take a breath. And I go.

“You’re just too good to be true,” I belt, stepping into the bakery with both arms wide open like I’m walking onto the MSG stage and not into a lunch rush in Bar Harbor. “Can’t take my eyes off of you.”

A woman holding mid-bite into a croissant freezes.

“You’d be like heaven to touch,” I sing, pointing directly at her. “I wanna hold you so much.”

She covers her mouth with her free hand.

“At long last love has arrived,” I continue, moving down the line, spinning once, my flannel flying out around me, the man at the window stopping with his coffee raised to his mouth to watch. “And I thank God I’m alive.”

The toddler in the corner starts laughing. I lean down to tickle his belly as I pass.

“You’re just too good to be true,” I tell the toddler solemnly. “Can’t take my eyes off of you.”

I grab the hand of one of the elderly women at the corner table, the one wearing silver earrings and the expression of a woman who has been waiting for something interesting to happen for twenty years, and I spin her gently in her chair.

“Oh, pretty baby,” I sing, and she fans herself with her napkin.

“Don’t bring me down, I pray,” I belt toward the ceiling, one hand on my chest, the other stretched toward the light fixture, full commitment, no irony.

Someone at a table starts clapping the beat. Someone else joins in.

I hop up onto an empty chair at the two-top nearest the counter, and then onto the table itself, which holds, and I plant my feet wide and tip my head back.

“Oh, pretty baby,” I sing to the ceiling of Butter Treats. “Now that I found you, stay. And let me love you, baby. Let me love you.”

The whole room is clapping now. The elderly women are singing along. One of them knows every word and isn’t shy about it.

I jump off the table, land clean, grab the hand of the barista who has come out from behind the counter to watch, spin him once, and he goes with it because there is nothing else to do. He grins, and the room cheers, and I let him go and turn toward the service window.

Iris stares at me with an expression that I can’t quite read. Her eyes are wide. Her lips are pressed together. Her cheeks are flushed. But she isn’t singing.