Julia
“Julia? Are you listening?”
The sound of Naomi’s voice cut through my daydream as I stared across the lanai toward the sparkling ocean in the distance. The sun shone brightly in the sky, its rays warming my cheeks.
Now that it was a more reasonable hour, the shoreline teemed with beachgoers, surfers, paddleboarders, and even a few kayakers enjoying the gorgeous weather. Regardless, I couldn’t stop thinking about Surfer Boy Chris, as I’d named the blue-eyed surfer who came to my rescue during my deadly jellyfish attack.
At least that was how I preferred to think of it.
“Sorry.” I forced out a smile at my friend and director of operations. Raising my coffee mug to my lips, I took a sip of the delicious Kona coffee. “What were you saying?”
“I asked if this schedule works for you?”
“Schedule?”
“Here.” She pushed her tablet across the patio table, allowing me to see everything she’d just gone over but I was too lost in my thoughts to pay attention to.
My eyes skimmed over what appeared to be a rather packed itinerary. Cooking segment on a local morning show. Various interviews with a handful of social media influencers. Photo shoots. Commercial shoots. Even a few book signings.
I pretended to be excited about all the public appearances scheduled over the course of the following week. It was something I’d always dreamed of, a fact I’d had to repeatedly remind myself of more and more recently.
When I first launched the social media account for my home-based baked goods business, I was thrilled to receive an order that same day. Back then, I would have done anything to achieve the success I’d found.
But now that my bakery was a nationally recognized chain and my role as the executive chef and president had become more or less that of a figurehead, I wondered if all the years of hard work and sacrifice were worth it.
My days went from being covered in flour as I spent hours in the kitchen, testing recipe after recipe, to now being nothing more than a spokesperson for the company I built from the ground up. For some people, they’d welcome the opportunity to do something easy, at least compared to the toll hours in a hot kitchen could take.
But I missed those days.
Missed the excitement.
Missed the passion.
Would I ever experience that again?
“I don’t see anything about taking time to go to the bakery,” I mentioned.
Naomi furrowed her brow, swiping the tablet from me and scrutinizing it. Then she smiled. “Here it is. Opening day, you’ll be cutting the ribbon with the mayor.”
“Opening day? I’m not scheduled to go to the bakery bearing the brand I developed from scratch until it opens?”
She returned her eyes to the tablet, brows scrunched in concentration. “I can try to move some things around, although your agenda is quite tight. But you do have an influencer interview on the north shore on Thursday. We could probably swing by afterward for about twenty minutes.”
“Twenty minutes.” I laughed, frustration tightening my throat. “There was once a time I’d spend hours in a bakery preparing for a grand opening.”
A smile tugged on my lips at the memory. Of singing to Imogene as she slept in her portable crib while I painted the walls. Of watching her eyes light up in excitement when I gave her the first taste of my latest sweet concoction. Of praying my gamble would pay off.
“I know,” Naomi replied fondly, clicking off the screen of the tablet. She reached across the table and squeezed my hand. “I was there.”
And she was. Naomi was my very first employee. A transplant from New York to Charleston, where I lived before moving to Atlanta when I couldn’t stomach being surrounded by the memories in that town any longer.
I never dreamed my home-based business would take off to the point I’d have to hire someone to help with the packaging, shipping, and deliveries. But it did. Naomi was exactly the person I needed to do all the mundane tasks that went with running a business so I could do what I did best — bake delicious sweets. Over a decade later, she was still the person I trusted most to oversee the day-to-day operations.
“Do you ever miss it?” I asked wistfully.
“Miss what?”
I shrugged, waving a hand around. “How simple things were when this all began.”