The riverfront park was mostly damp grass and grey stone pathways, but the sun had warmed the wooden benches near the iron railing enough that you could sit down without getting your pants soaked.
A few seagulls were circling over the brown water, making high, annoying cries as they fought over a piece of old hotdog bun someone had dropped near the water's edge.
Ethan and Maya sat on a bench near the old drawbridge, watching a long flat barge crawl slowly down the river toward the harbor.
Ethan took a bite of his squished almond horn. The pastry was crispy, flaky, and packed with sweet almond paste that made his teeth ache in a good way. "This is really good."
"Sarah's good at what she does," Maya said, leaning her arms on her knees as she stared at the barge. "Even if she's chaotic."
"How long have you two worked together?" Ethan asked, chewing slowly.
"Three years," Maya said. "Since she opened the place. I was supposed to just help her for two months while she got the kitchen set up, but then her original baker quit to move to California, and I just... stayed."
"Do you like it?"
Maya shrugged her shoulders under her black sweater. "It's fine. I like the morning routine. I like making stuff with my hands where you can see the result at the end of the day. But I don't wanna be doing it when I'm forty."
Ethan looked at her profile—her dark hair blowing slightly in the cool breeze off the river, a tiny speck of white flour still visible near her left temple. "What do you wanna do?"
She turned her head to look at him, her dark eyes squinting slightly against the bright sunlight. "I don't know. Something where I don't have to wake up at four in the morning every day. Maybe graphic design. I took a few classes in college before I dropped out."
Ethan blinked. "You dropped out?"
"Yeah," she said casually, pulling a loose string on her sweater cuff. "Junior year. Running out of money, didn't like my professors, whole thing was a mess. What about you? You always wanted to fix record players in a dark room?"
Ethan laughed, a short sound that got caught in his throat. "Not really. I went to trade school for electrical maintenance for a year, but I hated the commercial construction sites. Guys screaming at each other at six AM on freezing concrete floors. So I took a part-time gig at Henderson's to pay rent, and... well, it's been four years."
"Four years," she repeated quietly, looking back out at the brown river water. "Time goes fast when you're just doing the same thing every week."
"Yeah," Ethan said. He swallowed the last bit of his almond horn and wiped his sticky fingers on his jeans. "It does."
They sat in silence for a minute, the only noise being the distant rumble of traffic on the bridge and the soft slap-slap of small waves against the stone river wall.
It wasn't an intense conversation, but Ethan felt something shift slightly in the quiet space between them—like a gear finally sliding into its proper groove after grinding for a long time.
Maya checked her phone screen, letting out a small sigh. "Alright. Twelve-forty-five. Back to the dough."
She stood up, pulling her sweater down over her waist. "Thanks for walking down, grease monkey."
"Thanks for the squished pastry," Ethan said, standing up too. His knees made their usual dry crack sound.
"You really need to see a doctor about those joints," she said, giving him a dry look as they started walking back toward the street.
"They're fine," Ethan insisted. "It builds character."
"You say that about everything that's broken," she snorted, but there was a warm, easy tone in her voice that stayed with Ethan all the way back across the street and through the squeaking door of the record shop.
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