“You told me to leave her alone.”

“Good.”

I put the yeast away in the fridge and look at the list of stuff I need to get finished before my shift’s over.

I glance at the clock.

Krishna’s still talking about tic-tac-toe.

My phone buzzes in my pocket. I pull it out, see my mom’s number, but the text sounds like Frankie.

What r u doing?

I text back. Working. Why are you awake?

Cant sleep, she writes. Sing 2 me

It’s after ten back home. She should have been asleep hours ago. She’s only nine.

Why not Mom?

Shes out.

That’s what I was afraid of.

What song do you want?

Star one

So I type out the first verse of “Dream a Little Dream of Me,” line by line. She sends me a smiley face.

Go to sleep, Frank.

Im trying

Be good.

Always

Love you.

Night west

Night peanut.

When I put my phone back in my pocket, it feels heavier.

I don’t like Frankie texting me after ten o’clock.

I don’t like that my mom’s not home or that she emailed me asking for five hundred dollars this morning but didn’t say what it was for. I tried to call Bo, mom’s boyfriend, who they live with, but he didn’t pick up and he hasn’t called back.

A couple thousand miles away from them, I can only know what they tell me, and Mom only tells me what she thinks I’ll want to hear. I’m supposed to have faith they’ll all be fine without me.

When you’ve had my life, faith is in short supply.

And God damn it, I don’t like knowing Caroline is out there in the dark, alone, awake when she needs some rest.

I’m sick of fucking worrying about her all the time.

That’s the worst thing about Caroline—the endless nagging worry of her. It was bad enough last year, when I met her and fell for her and swore to myself I’d never touch her again, all in the same day.

It was bad enough when I started dreaming about her, waking up with my cock hard and jerking off in the sheets, thinking about her mouth on me, her legs wrapped around my waist, what her face might look like when she comes.

Bad enough, but fine. Whatever. I can ignore that kind of shit forever. I could jerk off a million times thinking about Caroline and still not need to talk to her.

The problem with Caroline isn’t that I want her. The problem is that I want to help her, want to learn her, want to fix her, and I can’t do that. I can’t get caught up with her, or she’ll distract me and I’ll wreck everything.

I’ve got too much at stake to let myself get stuck on some impossible girl.

I’m not going out there.

I look at the clock again.

Krishna sticks his head in the big industrial fridge. “You have any cookie dough in here?”

“No. It’s time for you to take off. I’ve got to start baking soon.”

He cocks his head and gives me an assessing look. He has a streak of wet gunk on one cheek and a drift of flour in his hair.

“You’re trying to make me leave because you’re gonna go talk to her, aren’t you?”

Fuck it, I am.

I am, because I can’t not do it anymore. I’ve been not going out to talk to her for weeks.

“I’ll bring you some breakfast later,” I tell him. “What do you want, a lemon poppy-seed muffin?”

“Bring me one of those ones with chocolate chips.”

“You can have all the fucking chocolate chips. Just get out of here.” I push him toward the back door, into the alley.

“Far be it from me to get between you and your lady friend.”

“You know it’s because you say things like ‘lady friend’ that I’m making you go, right?”

“Nah, it’s because you’ve got serious privacy issues. You could be a serial killer, and nobody would know. Or, like, a secret stripper.”

“As if I have time for another job.”

“That’s true. You’d have to stop sleeping. But it might be worth it to have chicks shoving cash in your jock.”

“They do that, anyway, whenever I go out dancing.”

“Oh, yeah?” Krishna’s face lights up. “You got moves?”

I don’t dance. If I need to get drunk, I do it at the bar in town that doesn’t card.

If I need to get laid, I find somebody who doesn’t go to the college, take her home, make her happy, and clear out. Townie women don’t expect anything from me.

“No,” I say. “I don’t need moves. I’ve got tight pants and an elephant dick.”

Krishna laughs.

“You’re not driving, are you?”

“I walked. I can knock on her window if you want. Send her your way.”

“Thanks, but no.” I turn him in the other direction, pointing him toward the apartment. It’s only two blocks, and I’ve never heard of anybody getting mugged in Putnam.

“Don’t forget my muffin,” he calls as he turns the corner.

After Krishna’s gone, the kitchen is so silent it seems to echo. This is my favorite part of the night, what comes next—the part when I dump out the proofed dough, weigh it into loaves, shape it, fill the pans, and fire up the ovens. It’s an act of creation, and I’m the god of the bread.

I look at the clock and measure out the minutes. Ten.

Ten, at a minimum, before I go look out the window. Maybe she’ll be gone, and I won’t have to do this. I can rule over this tiny world, messing with temperatures and proofing times, how much flour and how much liquid, how many minutes in the oven. It’s like pulling levers. Up or down. More or less. Simple.

I wish Caroline would let me do it—let me be the god of the bread and leave me alone. But she’s out there, messing up my kingdom, and I’m afraid of how much I want to go talk to her.

I think of Frankie on the phone. Of the money I sent my mom this afternoon.

I promise myself I won’t go to the door for fifteen minutes.

Fuck it, twenty. I won’t go for twenty.

I can’t give in to this, because the worst thing about Caroline is that I’ve never promised her anything, but she’s here, anyway. It’s as if she knows.

She doesn’t know. She can’t.

She can’t know that when I make a promise, I keep it.

Or that I’m afraid if I start promising her things, I won’t ever be able to quit.

“You want to come inside?”

That’s all it takes. When she says, “Yeah, sure,” I turn and go back in, and she closes her car up and follows me.

I put my iPod on shuffle and start it playing. I like having music for this part of the night—put it on any earlier, and the mixers are too loud to hear it. While I wash my hands, Caroline wanders around, doing a slow circuit of the room. Unlike Krishna, she doesn’t touch anything.

I tie my apron on over my jeans and go back to what I was doing.

“Bob makes the sweets,” I tell her. “I just stick them in the oven at the end of my shift. Not sure if you want to wait that long.”

As though she’s here for a cookie, and not because … fuck if I know. I clocked her ex, she showed up at the library, I mauled her, and she told me she doesn’t want to have anything to do with me. Then she started stalking me at work.

What am I supposed to think?

She shrugs.

I fling a chunk of bread off the scale onto the floured surface of the table. “So how’s it going?”

Caroline leans a hip against the table’s edge, all the way down at the far end. “Fine.”

Fine.

Everybody says they’re fine. It’s bullshit.

It’s not as though every conversation I have back home is deep and meaningful, but I never wasted so much time being polite as I do in Iowa.

Caroline’s wearing sweatpants and flip-flops and a hoodie you could fit seven of her in. Her toenail polish is chipped, and her hair’s in one of those lazy half ponytails, like she started to put it up but her arms got tired and she had to abandon the job before she finished.