1. Get Flour

"He's cheating on me."

Maisie Small knocked back the rest of her coffee and nearly gagged at the bitter taste of the dregs before turning to face her friend who was on the verge of a mental breakdown. Charity stood in the middle of Maisie's step-grandmother's bakery and was about to blow the whole damn place down.

"You don't know that," Maisie said, tapping her pen on the edge of her coursework. The first few weeks of college had been hell and the possibility of making friends was slimming down more and more seeing as her stepdad had talked her into living at home.

Stupid, stupid, stupid decision.

When the rest of the first years were having parties and staying over at each other's dorms, Maisie was stuck on a lumpy couch watching a football game with her stepdad, Tony. Her mom was no help at all as every waking moment she was trying to perfect her handmade candle collection which she thought was going to be some huge breakthrough in the industry and would make her a millionaire in a year.

It's been three years and the only thing her mom's handmade candles have done is stink up the entire house and force Maisie to spend every waking moment at the bakery down the street.

Charity suddenly snapped her fingers in front of her friends face and placed her hands on her hips over her painfully bright floral dress. "Are you even listening to me?"

"What?" Maisie grumbled. "I mean yeah, of course I am. Rick's cheating on you."

"Maisie!" Charity pouted.

"Sorry," Maisie winced.

"Am I just that bad that a guy would happily be with someone else but still pretend to be with me?" Charity asked. "Fuck. I don't love the guy but this shit hurts." She slumped down on a bright orange chair and continued to squirm until she eventually got comfortable. "Man, I hate these chairs."

Maisie nodded. "I would replace them but..."

"You have no money," Charity finished, sending her a sad look. "Maisie, you realize how hard it's gonna be to run this entire bakery and try to get a degree at the same time. You'll drive yourself insane."

"Loads of people have part time jobs while at college." Maisie blew a piece of red hair out of her face. "It's totally normal."

"Yeah." Charity rolled her eyes and crossed her legs. "Working part time is normal. Running an entire business is not. If you pull it off you'll hit Forbes one-hundred at this rate, but if you don't..."

"Tony helps with the finance and mom sometimes helps around," Maisie shrugged.

Charity's eyes lingered on her best friend before she sighed and leaned back in the chair, letting her neck flop back so she could stare at the ceiling. She frowned at the bright yellow colour someone had painted it. "This place is so colourful it hurts."

"Grandma liked bold colours."

Charity lifted her head to look at Maisie. "Bold is one thing but painting the place to look like a fluorescent rainbow that was just retched up is another."

Maisie gave her a flat look and packed away her books, setting them in a tall pile on the table. The entire place was empty. And they weren't closed. Maisie ran her hands over her face and rubbed at her temple tiredly.

"I can't just give the whole place up," she finally said. "No matter how much of a burden it's turning out to be. It meant a lot to grandma."

"But does it mean anything to you?" Charity frowned.

Maisie sighed. "I'm not selling this place. I don't care, I'm not."

"Mais-" Charity's words were cut off by the door to the bakery opening with an obnoxious jingle. Max, one of her employees, came stumbling into the room flustered and out of breath. Maisie stood up and walked over to him.

"Hey, are you okay?" she asked. "Its not your shift yet, how come you're here?"

Max put his hand in his pocket and pulled out something before grabbing Maisie's hand and shoving it against her palm. "Thats my locker key," he said then grabbed something from his bag. "And that's my apron."

Maisie held his key and apron in each of her hands and her mouth slowly fell open. "What the hell? Max are you quitting?"

"Yep," he nodded.

"You have to give me three weeks notice," Maisie shoved his things back at him but Max took a step away.

"Already did. Three weeks ago. I gave you a letter with the form in it. You said you would check it out later that day and put it in your mail box."

Maisie walked over to her mail box behind the counter where the baked goods were displayed and pulled out the bin with stacks of papers in it. She shifted through each one until she found a letter with her name on it in Max's writing.

Fuck.

"That would be my three weeks notice," he said smugly and Maisie walked round the counter to stand in front of him. "Look, sorry Maisie, but I can't work here anymore. You hardly bring in any customers. I didn't want it to be like this but I got offered a job down at Bud's Bakers."

Maisie ground her teeth together. "Really?" she scoffed. "You've moved onto the competition?"

"He pays good. And he's got professionals working there. It's nice to work in here but you're never gonna teach me anything new and you're never gonna get me into a real bakery."

"Oh, so now this isn't a real bakery?"

Max shook his head. "Whatever, Maisie. It was nice working with you."

Max pulled his bag further up his shoulder and turned, pushing the door open with that God- awful jingle. He threw his hand out without turning around and waved. "Don't miss me too much."

Maisie threw his notice down on the floor. "You're a little bitch, Max!"

Max waved her off with his hand and rounded the corner. Maisie growled under her breath and looked at Charity who whistled lowly.

"Well this is just great," Maisie said. "One more employee gone to Bud's fucking Bakers."

"Actually that would be all your employees," Charity said slowly and Maisie clenched her eyes shut. "Max was your last employee. Now it's just you and me."

"Fantastic," Maisie muttered. "Just fantastic."

Charity walked over to her and gave her a quick hug. "It'll be okay. We'll talk to your dad. Maybe we can sell some stuff at the police station, get the guys to come in during their lunch break. I don't know."

Maisie nodded and gave Charity a sad smile. "Yeah, it'll be fine. We've just got to think things through well."

Charity squeezed her shoulder before grabbing her handbag. "Well it's Sunday which means dinner date with Rick. I'll make sure he pays for the food before I dump him. I'll bring you some back."

Maisie grinned. "Thanks Char."

When Charity left, Maisie leaned against the side of the counter, her back pressed to the glass that let people peek in to see the cupcakes. She tilted her head to look at them and fought the urge to sigh again. She was sighing too much lately. When her grandma was around, the entire family worked on the bakery. Her mom made bread, Tony had a knack for frosting cakes, she would bake the cakes and her grandma sat back and watched it all unfold.

But then her grandma died.

Maisie was the only one that still believed in the bakery.

She picked Max's notice up from the ground and threw it back in her mailbox. She would bother with the paperwork later and she didn't even want to think about where she was going to find the money for his last pay check.

"Little bastard..." she grumbled under her breath. "His bread tasted like crap anyway."

Maisie grabbed her coffee mug and washed it out in the kitchen through the side doors. The kitchen was completely bare and unused apart from the batch of bread she made that morning a few hours earlier. She picked up a roll of cinnamon and raisin bread and bit off a huge chunk. She seemed to be the only one willing to eat it.

"Hey!" a voice barked from inside the bakery through the doors of the kitchen Maisie stood inside. "Get the fuck off me...I don't give a shit if you're a cop, I'm an American citizen so you better get your wandering hands off me before I bite them off!"

Maisie's eyes widened and she quickly ran over to the kitchen doors and pushed through to the bakery. Her mouth dropped open when she saw four guys being cuffed to a pipe that ran along the ceiling.

"Small, I'm not a ballerina okay? I can't go on my little tip toes for hours on end because you decided to be a dick and cuff us to the ceiling," a dark haired boy snapped.

"Shut up Nick," Sheriff Small growled and put the keys to the cuffs in his pocket as the two other cops with him shut the door to the bakery behind them.

"Uh, Tony?" Maisie voiced out to her stepdad. "Want to explain what's going on?"

"The car is completely out of gas. We had to walk these criminals nearly a mile to get here. I need energizing before we walk all the way to the police station."

Maisie looked at the so-called criminals and raised an eyebrow. "They're the criminals?"

"Oh I'm sorry," Nick frowned with fake concern. "Am I not criminal enough for you?"

Maisie glared at Tony who sighed. "Theft and vandalism. They'll probably end up in prison and I'll get a bonus."

Maisie choked. "Prison?"

"What the hell do you mean, prison?" Andrew yelled out with a flicker of a German accent.

"You guys are what, nineteen, twenty?' Tony asked. "Juvie ends at eighteen idiots. You're going to prison for at least a few days."

"For stealing condoms?" Nick screeched.

"It was artistic interpretation you dick!" Logan yelled.

"Shut it, criminals," Small glared at them before turning to his stepdaughter. "Can we have those cupcakes with the caramel in the centre?"

Maisie's mouth opened then closed again before she finally just nodded silently and went behind the counter and got out three of the caramel and chocolate cupcakes. She held them out for Tony who took them off her and went to sit at one of the tables with the other two cops. Maisie glanced over at the four boys who leaned against the wall, one arm raised high in the air to reach the pipe.

Maisie walked over slowly until she stood beside the table with her coursework on it which was just a few steps away from the boys. "Do you guys want anything?" she asked.

Three of them looked up in surprise while the fourth who had yelled about artistic interpretation just hung limply from the pipe.

"Criminals don't get cake!" Tony yelled from across the room.

Maisie narrowed her eyes at him. "Then they can have pastries."

She went behind the counter and brought out a platter of pastries from the display.

"They broke the law Maisie. You can't give them sympathy," Tony said.

Maisie rolled her eyes and held the plate of pastries out. Nick stared down at it and raised his eyebrow. "This won't add an extra year to my sentence, will it?"

"Criminal and a smart-ass," Maisie commented.

"It's all part of the charm," he said and reached for a pastry.

The rest of the boys took a pastry too and Maisie put the plate down on the table. Suddenly one of the boys moaned something in German and Maisie looked at him in shock.

"Damn this is good," he said around a mouthful of pastry.

Maisie laughed a little and walked over to Tony. "Are you really going to send them to the station?"

"It's not my fault they broke the law," Tony shrugged.

"Yeah but they didn't kill anyone or endanger lives," Maisie said. "Can't they just do community service or something? Without courts involved. Help the community out?"

Tony shook his head. "Cleaning the giant penis off the town hall will be part of the sentence but it's not enough for what they've done. More time needs to be added and there's no where for them to go."

"Did you even bother looking?"

"Unless someone comes up to me and says they'll take them in for community service, then they're going to prison."

Maisie looked back at the four boys who were finishing off their pastries before looking around the bakery that hadn't had a paying customer in ages. She gulped and crossed her arms over her chest, looking directly at Tony.

"I'll take them in."

Tony raised an eyebrow. "What?"

"They can do their community service here, at the bakery," Maisie said.

"Maisie they're not gonna-"

"You said only if someone comes up to you and says they'll take them in for community service will you allow it," Maisie stated. "Well here I am, asking for their community service."

"Maisie I'm not gonna let some criminals work with you on a daily basis alone."

"They drew a penis on a building and stole some stuff," Maisie said. "I hardly think you're gonna walk in and find me drowning in my own blood in the corner."

Tony sighed and looked away. "Can they even bake?"

Maisie shrugged. "I'll teach them."

The other two cops laughed. "You're gonna teach those four guys how to bake?" one of them asked.

Maisie glared at him. "Yeah I am."

"This is something I've got to see," the second cop chuckled.

Maisie turned to Tony expectantly. Her stepdad looked at the four boys over her shoulder before looking back at her and groaning. "Fine. But only because Matty from NYPD would make fun of me again for only getting a couple days in jail. Not my fault he gets serial killers and I get graffiti artists."

Maisie grinned and nodded. "It's a deal."

Tony leaned back and yelled out to the four boys. "Congratulations idiots, you might not end up in jail after all."

"You letting us go?" Keith asked.

"Nope," Tony grinned. "You're working here till you make it up for the shit you just pulled."

The freedom-of-speech kid lifted his head. "Is that even legal? Isn't that forced labour?"

Nick raised an eyebrow. "Here? A bakery? Small, do I look like I know how to bake a fucking cake?"

Tony smirked. "That's what's gonna make this even funnier."

- Tahlie x