Beyond Love - Chapter 31: Chapter 31

The bakery—dull and filled with lacklustre—does not know how to bake. Despite its poor attempts at recreating traditional recipes whilst coming up with novel ideas, Baked Love has managed to keep their profit levels sparingly above the margin and have become a local favourite of middle-aged housewives and fortunately no one else.
The recent defamation case regarding the bakery's spreading of ill-comments about their new competitor (ARCD's franchise branch) down the avenue has gained the attention of several online forums. Although the case is currently still under investigation, this taste review seeks to provide an objective view on the level of professionalism carried out by both bakeries, starting with Baked Love.
Best-sellers of the bakery include their red-velvet cupcakes ($0.90), an interesting take on Belgian waffles ($1) and pumpkin bread ($2). Of the three, the red-velvets can be said to have the most disappointing factor. Belgian waffles are not meant to have a mochi-like consistency (a result of adding mochi and custard to the batter) and while the pumpkin bread tasted fair, it seemed only fitting on the breakfast plate of a poor-paid mechanic—a last resort.
Further details of the store include its attempt at a rustic interior, well-kept floors and a lack of vibrancy. Something worthy of note is their absurd menu that includes hot-crossed buns; all year round. As ridiculous as it sounds, the owner of the store, Chip Honeycutt-Jaxon, went out of his way to insist their daily making of the pastry.
While it might be that this bakery's range has remained mediocre since its genesis, it is not a stretch to admit that they do, at the very least, know how to make a good hot-cross bun.
No one was moaning about the usual two miles before ball games and it was the most obvious giveaway that would allow any gym teacher to instantly tell that something was off. I waited until the last couple of students filtered under the shade before randomly assigning teams and sending them to their respective courts.
"Remember—it's the same thing we did on Tuesday so apply the same rules and have fun. I know we aren't using the real ball yet but just because it's soft doesn't mean you can afford to use your friends' faces as a deflecting tool." They shuffled off and Shin, who was currently under training to overcome his ball-phobia, did so with Nguyen.
The teams were taking some time to choose their captains so I decided to check my phone, recalling that it vibrated in my pocket earlier just as I started giving out instructions.
From: Angel
-howls into the abyss-
I couldn't resist smiling. I would have laughed if I were alone but knowing these kids and their undying curiosity, I barely held it in. The last I checked, bunnies don't howl. What's wrong? Was what I sent in return, stowing the device back into my pocket before going around to hand out colour sashes to the captains.
One minute into the game and already, there were casualties. Shin was sitting on the grass with his hands on his right knee, curled up in a fetal position while the rest of his court gathered around. I noticed the commotion and headed over at once, crossing the field towards their team.
"Someone explain."
I knelt and checked for open wounds. There were none. I checked his knee and then his face.
"Shin tripped over something and now he can't get up," Evans reported helpfully, turning to Finn. "This guy was marking him way too aggressively."
"Look, I was barely in his way. He panicked once I got within five meters of where he was," the starter of the school's volleyball team held up his hands in defence and Brendon snorted.
I turned to Shin. "What did you trip over?"
"...air," he said quietly, lowering his gaze. "Finn's right. I panicked."
A couple of snorts and snickers went around before I gave the rest of his team a look.
"Can you walk?" I applied some pressure close to the ball of Shin's ankle and he flinched. "It's a minor sprain but it could get worse if you continue playing."
"Yeah, he'd totally survive the rest of half-an-hour when he couldn't even get past the one-minute ma—" Finn stopped when Evans kicked the heel of his foot, sparing him a pointed glare.
I sighed.
"I need someone to accompany Shin to the nurse's office first. I'll come as soon as—"
"Me," Evans volunteered immediately. "Shin, do you need a lift? I could carry you on my back."
"No, he doesn't," Finn established. "He's not a baby. Let him walk on his own."
It was clear that I had had enough of their shit and was inches away from snapping when I looked up with a raised brow. No one had the guts to say another word.
"Shin, do you think you can walk on your own?" He attempted, and very clearly failed the test so unfortunately for Finn, the piggyback was due.
"Class rep, take him to the nurse's office. I'll be there after I end the session early," I turned to Evans, who was already getting everyone else to disperse and return to the game whilst cleverly persuading Shin to get on his back. "Remind the nurse to ice it before she bandages the thing. She forgets all the time."
*
By the time I'd dismissed the class and arrived at the nurse's office, several things must have escalated during that small space of time because I had, by some miracle, found an empathetic-looking Shin patting Evans' back while the latter's eyes remained puffed and slightly hidden by a bunch of tissues stuffed under his nose.
"Someone tell me how this happened."
Shin jumped, startled by my presence. "Sir. It's...nothing, uh."
"How's the leg?"
"Evans helped me ice it. The nurse bandaged it after that and now she's out for an early lunch," Shin explained, stopping there; leaving me with the obligation to prompt him.
"And Evans just naturally started crying all of a sudden."
"Yeah, he's very emotional—"
"Mr. Jaxon, I'm sorry about the article," Evans blurted out of no fuck and I was thinking: here we go again. Listening to teenage angst. "I mean, I wish we could do something about it but like with everything happening as of late and like, Brendon's family writing in the complaint abut you and Mr. Honeycutt and like, all the mean things they say about Mr. Honeycutt's bakery which is awesome, by the way—"
"I don't know what you're talking about." I cut him off before he could burst into tears again. "Brendon was the one who wrote in?"
Shin appeared slightly bummed that the cat was out of the bag and that Evans had blurted this out of nowhere without the ability to control his words but nodded regardless.
"His family did. His sister's really weird. We made a visit to his house the other day and she asked if the school did anything about the complaint and she's...oddly familiar. Like, Nguyen and I think she's from that new bakery."
I listened with a frown, thinking. "It's hard to believe, what you're saying. But I'll take note."
"Meanwhile, what's this article you're talking about?"
*
From: Angel
I'm not a bunny!! ;A;
Anyway, I'm sad.
And I wanted to tell somebody.
I read the text only after sending Shin and Evans (who claimed that he was far too upset to attend class and deserved to lie down on one of the infirmary beds) back to class and handing one of them an extra roll of bandage. Predicting that my husband's text was about the article that my students were mourning over, I sent him a reply that would hopefully cheer him up.
To: Angel
Let's do some grocery shopping later and get you some pudding ;)
See you in front of the store?
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
We met in front of the grocery store near school before grabbing a cart and running through a list of what we needed for the rest of the week. It doesn't take a genius to register that Chip perked up a whole lot just by having me by his side (it works both ways, really—I mean, the skies are magically brighter whenever my husband is around), and although shopping for groceries wasn't necessarily the most romantic thing to do, it was the quiet happiness that us three treasured immensely.
"How were the kids today?" Chip raised his gaze, holding onto the side of the cart that I was pushing. Giselle was ahead of us with the list in her hands, combing through the entire aisle of instant noodles for a new flavour.
"The usual. Shin tripped over nothing within the first couple of minutes and now he has a minor sprain in his ankle," I watched my angel's jaw drop and the immediacy of his concern was unbelievably kind and sweet. "His mother came to pick him up after that, so. Everything's alright. I'll call to check in on him later."
"Sh-should we visit him? Can he walk? Was it a ball game—I knew it. I bet it was a ball game," he shuddered at the thought. "Poor Shin."
Giselle floated back with an armful of instant noodles before releasing them into the cart and floating down the aisle again, checking an item off the list as she did so.
"I'll call to check first," I told him. "I'm not a fan of visiting students whenever they're ill or that sort of thing but...if you insist, then."
My husband poked my abs. "That's not very nice. Shin is a good boy, and he fell during your period! Don't you, well, feel responsible for what happened?"
We were heading towards the condiments aisle for sesame oil when Giselle returned with a bag of tomatoes and red chilli peppers for the Arrabbiata penne we were going to make for dinner tomorrow. She looked to Chip, who gave her a thumbs-up in return and beamed sunshine in thanks. She then went back to scanning the list and identifying her next target.
"It's not exactly my fault that Shin tripped over air," I pointed out, grabbing a box of Cheerios. Chip's face turned into a literal ;A;
"B-but I trip over air all the time!"
"That's different because I feel responsible for you in general," I laughed, pinching his nose. He sneezed like a kitten. "But fine...I get where you're coming from. You're too nice, really." Sesame oil, check. What's next again—
"Xan!" Chip forced the cart to stop and I let go of the handle at once, turning to him abruptly.
"Fuck. Did I hit something?"
"You almost ran into a child!" My husband explained anxiously, hurrying over to the small thing that was blocked by our cart-full of instant ramen. I followed.
A boy around the age of four or five was looking up at us with a pale face and large, frightened eyes. He looked as though he barely registered that we were talking about him.
"I'm so sorry! Are you alright?" Chip leaned down to say, bending his knees slightly so that their eyes were levelled. "Where are your parents?"
The boy stared blankly in return, chewing on his lower lip before looking away. He shook his head so vigorously that his pair of glasses (too large for his tiny face) were close to flying a feet from where he was.
"Who is he?" Giselle frowned and pointed at the boy after placing two tubs of ice cream in a corner of the cart and noticing that neither of us were looking at the shelves of condiments. "Chocolate Chip's friend?"
I pulled her aside. "No, but maybe he's going to be so no pointing at other people, Giselle."
"Oh," she retracted her finger, staring at the grocery list in her hands. "I forgot..."
"It's okay. I think he's just lost," I watched as the kid started looking as though he wanted to say something (he was opening and closing his mouth like a goldfish) after the precious sunshine named Chip Honeycutt cast his magic spell on him.
My husband was patient, staying in the same position with his back bent over and knees slightly buckled—thanks to hours of training from yours truly I guess—while he waited for the tiny bespectacled four-year-old to speak. "Go on."
"I shouldn't be talking to strangers," was the first thing he said. I pinched the bridge of my nose and told Giselle to grab the bags of chips that she wanted from the next aisle while Chip and I dealt with lost souls.
She laughed and nodded, glancing over her shoulder at the kid for one last time before leaving the cart.
"You're right! It's not good to talk to strangers is it. Did your mommy tell you that?"
He nodded. "A-and my uncle. But he's not here now, but he said to wait."
Oh. So he wasn't lost.
I was about to bring the cart to the next aisle and help Giselle with the rest of the list when my husband held on to the back of my shirt and stopped me in my tracks. "And how long have you been waiting here?"
"I don't know because I don't have a watch," the boy's shoulders fell. "But I've been counting the announcements? Does that count? I counted four."
Chip and I came to the store often enough to know that they aired annoying-as-hell announcements about promotions every ten minutes or so. My husband turned to me. "Four announcements? That's about forty minutes!"
"Er, kid. Do you know where your uncle went?" Chip nudged my arm and whispered not to call him 'kid'.
Thankfully, kid responded.
"I don't know. He said that the queue was long so he asked me to count the number of products in the condiments section while waiting because I wouldn't stop talking," he clamped a hand over his mouth in shock. "Mffhn. Mh mfnm!"
I fucking laughed. Angel reached up to poke my cheek before holding a finger over his lips. I nodded, attempting to control my laughter.
"And did you count them all?"
"Yeah!" The boy perked up all of a sudden. "A hundred and thirteen of them in total, including the ones on the very top and on both sides of the aisle."
With the level of patience and virtue that my husband had, I wouldn't be surprised if he could handle any problem child in the universe. I asked the kid if he'd checked the counters to see if his uncle was still there and magically, he hadn't.
"Why not?" I raised a brow, finding it strange since he came off as a know-it-all and know-it-alls tended to know what to do in general.
"My uncle told me not to wander anywhere else except the condiment section," kid said simply, round eyes behind those glasses of his staring innocently into mine. Hm. The glasses reminded me of Chip back in high school. You know what, maybe I'll make him wear those during sexy time just for—
"That's very obedient of you," my husband was full of compliments for the kid and I was starting to get jealous of a fucking kid. Way to go, Xander. "How about we take a quick—veery quick—look at the cashier counters to see if your uncle's there before coming right back to the condiments section?"
The boy considered this very seriously, as though he was trying to choose between peanut butter and jelly when he so obviously wanted both.
"Um. Well..." he glanced up at Chip, who flashed him a smile made out of sunshine and lol naturally no one (not even kids) could resist the smile of an angel. "O-okay. Just a quick look."
Giselle was back with five bags of potato chips just in time to see Chip and kid holding hands and heading towards the check-out area. She looked at me. I shrugged.
"They sell children at supermarkets??"
I snorted. "Sure."
"Can we put them on next week's grocery list?"
*
Turns out, kid's uncle was nowhere to be found at the cashier counters and the queue had long dissipated into nothing. Kid was panic and a-frighten. How surprising.
"Don't worry," Chip squeezed kid's tiny hand in his tiny hand. "We'll find your uncle together. Maybe we could make an announcement on the store's P.A system. What is your uncle's name?"
"Uncle Al," kid responded informatively. Very informative.
"How about we page for the uncle of this boy's full name," I put forth so that said boy would leave soon. "What's your name, kid?"
He paused, lowering his gaze and staring at his feet. "I...I'm not supposed to tell strangers."
"Sorry buddy," I was bent on straightening him out once and for all. "We can't help if you don't tell us your name. Logically speaking, there's no other way and even if we take you to the police station, you still gotta tell us your name nonetheless."
Chip was looking at me like ;A; as usual but even so, he nodded quietly in agreement and waited for the boy to respond. Giselle was fiddling with the completed grocery list, restless.
"O-okay, fine. But you can't laugh, promise?" He looked desperately embarrassed, with shifty eyes and nervous hands hidden behind his back.
"We'd never laugh!" Chip shook his head, sincere. "Don't worry. I have the most embarrassing name in the universe too!"
"Really?"
"Yeah!"
Too fluff. I was having seizures listening to their conversation and feeling increasingly okay with kiddo taking away our family time at the grocery store.
"Julian White...but, um, Julian is my middle name. My first name is actually, um..." he was close to whispering. "It's Vanilla."
HolymotheroffuckdidChip'sparentssomehownamethiskidaswell?? Whatinthefucking—
I was trying so hard not to laugh and Giselle had to forcefully turn my head away from the scene so that I wouldn't offend the poor boy.
Chip was the first to break the silence. "That's a wonderful name! What do you go by? We should make it so that if your uncle is searching for you, he'd know at once when they announce it over the system."
"He calls me Vanille," White explained, shy for once. "It's French for Vanilla."
"Okay Vanille, let's make an announcement on the system together, okay?" Chip led him towards the customer service counter and beckoned for Giselle and I to follow with our cart of groceries. "My name's Chip Honeycutt, as in chocolate chip."
Giselle was very happy that he said the last part, probably hoping that someone else would share the same nickname she gave him.
"Can I call you Mr. Chocolate Chip, then?"
My husband commented that it was a pretty long and tedious name for him to call but if that was what he was comfortable with, then by all means he could. Vanilla adjusted the frames that were slipping off his nose as he followed Chip to the counter, turning around to look at me and Giselle from time to time.
Unfortunately, no one responded to 'Uncle of Vanille Julian White' even after two announcements and a fifteen-minute wait at the customer service counter. Vanilla was fidgety and restless, looking left and right for anyone who approached. No one did.
I could tell that he was about to burst into tears from anxiety when Chip hurriedly suggested that we pay for the groceries and head over to the nearest police station instead. "Your uncle could be there waiting already!"
Vanilla held back his tears with a nod, rubbing his eyes with the sleeve of his shirt. "O-okay."
"Alright, let's go to the cashier quickly," Chip took his hand and pointed towards the counter with the shortest queue. I pushed the cart towards it at once while my husband continued to comfort the kid, speaking softly and telling him that everything will be alright.
While I was sifting through the contents of our cart and ensuring that we had everything on the list, Giselle had somehow drifted away and returned with an item that was definitely not on our grocery list.
She dropped it in the cart as though it was a box of mints from one of the stand-alone shelves by the cashiers (not entirely wrong) and waited for me to notice. I did, already.
"Giselle, that's not on our list."
My warning did not seem to faze her. Things escalated when good ol' Vanilla noticed the interesting addition to the cart and boy oh boy, Chip was not going to like this.
"Is that candy?"
Chip peered over into the cart and visibly paled. "X-Xan!"
"It wasn't me," my hands were up in defence. "Giselle was the one—"
"It was on the list," my sister interrupted, producing the grocery list that I'd wrongfully entrusted her with. Beside the very last box, drawn and written hastily by a handwriting that I did not recognize as Chip's or mine, were the words 'strawberry-flavoured' completed with a winky face.
"What?" Vanilla tugged at the hem of my husband's shirt. "What does it say?"
Giselle wore the devious look of a witch teaching her cat how to evil when she turned to answer his question.
"Sweets."
*
It was apparent that both Chip and Giselle had taken to liking the bespectacled vanilla bean we happened to pick up at the grocery store. He'd offered to help with one of the grocery bags, hugging it close to his chest with both arms wrapped around the paper bag.
The police station was located in the next avenue down the street, just opposite the park. It was by no means near or even close to where we lived but a single glance at the soft and edible smiles that my husband gave Vanilla every now and then sealed my fate—I wasn't going to intervene.
Giselle nudged my arm and I turned to her with a raised brow.
"Let's keep him."
I snorted. "Giselle, he's not a lost kitten. No 'keeping'."
"He looks like one," my sister protested and I gave the boy a glance. Unlike Chip who was a honey blonde, Vanilla was leaning towards the fur of a pale, white kitten—platinum blonde. "Either way, he needs protection from bullies."
I was about to tell her that she should in no manner corrupt any other child the way I corrupted her, but Chip and Vanilla who were walking ahead of us came to a stop and were staring at something in the distance.
All of a sudden, the kid was jumping and waving. "Uncle Al! Uncle Al, I'm over here!"
The three of us followed his gaze and spotted an anxious figure in the distance, brisk-walking up the hill in our direction before registering Julian's (god, there was absolutely no way I could keep a straight face saying his name in my head) voice from across the road.
"Vanille?"
The man in a trench coat, carrying a briefcase in one arm and a bag of groceries in another, stopped in his tracks. He broke into an expression of relief as soon as the boy responded with a wave and crossing the road to meet us.
"Vanille! I'm so sorry I—it was my mistake. I made a call when I was queueing and it was an important call about the event and I'd just picked up the bags and! Oh...I had forgotten about you my dear," the man who Julian identified as Uncle Al apologized to his nephew, placing his briefcase on the concrete pavement and taking him into his arms. "Do forgive me."
"It's okay Uncle Al," Julian wrapped his tiny arms around his Uncle's neck. "I counted the number of products in the condiments section, so promise me you won't do it again!"
Aw damn, I'll give it to the kid. He's cute as fuck.
"I promise," the man stroked the back of his nephew's head. "And we have these kind, young gentlemen to tha—"
He paused upon resting his gaze on Chip.
"Mr. Honeycutt-Jaxon," he rose to his feet with a frown. "You are him, aren't you? We met just last week—Dempsey. I came to your bakery. Wrote a review about it, even."
Kid reached up to tug on his Uncle's sleeve. "He's not Mr. Honey...cutting...what you said, Uncle Al. He's Mr. Chocolate Chip. He and Mr. Handsome and Miss Red Riding Hood with sweets. We waited at the store but you didn't come so we tried to make an announcement using the...the speaker system, thing but that didn't work either so we were going to the police station."
Julian was a talker.
I had the feeling that was the case when I first heard that his Uncle actually sent him to count products on the shelves for talking too much. Must have been quite the experience if that was the case.
I turned to Chip with a look, to which he smiled sheepishly. "He was wearing glasses then...I couldn't recognize him until I heard his name." My husband turned to Dempsey with a bow. "I'm so sorry about that. Everything's good now—Vanilla's an amazingly clever boy! Do get home safely."
It was then that I recalled the texts from this morning, including Chip's account of some weird critic from a baking magazine popping by the bakery and leaving with a bad impression. So this was the guy?
I gave him a once-over.
"Hold on a sec, you're the one who wrote that review and told my husband off about selling orange juice outside the bakery?" I raised a brow. Naturally, I demanded answers but with the critic's nephew and Giselle around, I wasn't too sure if picking a fight was the right idea. Okay, I mean—even if they weren't around, Chip would say that that picking a fight wasn't the most ideal option regardless but.
Dempsey cleared his throat. "Yes, I am. However, I did not have an issue with Mr. Honeycutt selling orange juice outside his bakery. Strictly speaking, I was advising him on his profit management skills, which I find that he lacks severely."
Julian-kid stared up at his Uncle with a blank gaze. "Mr. Chocolate Chip owns a bakery that sells orange juice?"
"Not always," Giselle butt in, correcting him. "But they have red velvet cupcakes and hot cross buns which are the best in the world."
The critic's nephew turned to him at once with a glean in his eyes. "Can we go sometime, Uncle Al? Please? I could—I could write a review too! Like you do."
"Not now, Vanille. Let me speak to the gentlemen first," Dempsey took his nephew's hand. "It's not nice to interrupt people when they are speaking, yes?"
Julian nodded obediently, keeping quiet. Dempsey turned to us.
"Thank you for taking good care of Vanille. I was foolish and forgetful, and had left him by himself. I cannot imagine what could have happened had the three of you not decided to go out of your way to help him," he bowed his head slightly, picking up his briefcase as he did so. "We must be on our way. His grandmother has been waiting at home with dinner since six o'clock."
Chip did not pursue the matter. "It was nothing. Please take care!" And to Julian, "you're welcome to pop by the bakery anytime, Vanilla! We could always make orange juice just for you." He waved as they turned in the opposite direction.
"Thank you Mr. Chocolate Chip! Bye bye, everyone!" Julian waved over his shoulder and the three of us watched them go, turning the bend.
"Angel," I reached down to pinch my husband's nose. He sneezed. "You did it again."
He shook his head (his way of shaking away a sneeze, cute right?), pouting. "Did what?"
"Help ungrateful little fucks who obviously don't appreciate your help," I snorted, taking one of the grocery bags from Giselle so that she wouldn't complain having a heavy load. "This has got to be some messed up coincidence. You go to lengths to help a lost kid find his family who turns out to be the nephew of some guy who wrote unfairly bad things about your bakery just because he's got the most unusual taste buds. And you end up spending your entire evening doing it."
"H-hey! Language," my husband warned with an adorable glare. "And, well. It's not like we knew whose nephew he was anyway."
"I mean, even if we end up helping someone who would hurt us in the future, or even in the past," Chip looked up, meeting my gaze. "We shouldn't regret or choose not to give our all. Vanilla had nothing to do with what his Uncle wrote about the bakery, you see?"
I kissed his forehead. "With your powers, you can soften the hardest rock...wait, that kinda goes both ways."
He blinked. Giselle laughed because I was stuck with the most innocent husband in the universe, but stuck happily.
"Anyway, it was thanks to you both, who waited patiently as well!" Chip did not hesitate to give us credit that actually just belonged to him, really. He patted my sister's head.
"Not really," I shrugged, as we began to make our way home. "You were the most patient of us all. Listening to that kid ramble really tested me. I don't have that sort of patience."
I was not expecting Giselle's answer, which threw me off entirely. "Well, you were patient with me all this time." Chip 'aw'ed while I thought of ways to check if Giselle had somehow been possessed by an angel.
"You're my blood and flesh. Of course I have to be patient."
"But what about when we adopt?" Chip was back at it with the ;A; and I corrected at once that I would, very naturally, treat them like my own.
"Good," my husband flashed a playful grin. "'Cuz I want a boy like Vanilla! He's so adorable."
I paled. "Anything but him. I don't have the capacity for talkative children."
*
We were at breakfast the next morning—Chip sipping on his strawberry milkshake whilst running through his emails and I, doing the same except without the milkshake—when my husband received a pleasant surprise.
"Xan!" His eyes were alit as he turned his laptop towards me. "Look, it's an invitation to a state conference organized by the magazine company that Mr. Dempsey works for!"