Let's bake love

Mixing it up

It felt like several minutes had passed since the door was opened. The pure utter shock on Zon's face when he realised Saifah was his working partner to-be, was still visible. Of all the people….why him… Zon shook his head, trying to snap out of it. They both spoke at the same time.

"Why does it have to be you?"

"It's you…"

A scowl appeared on Zon's face as he was once again reminded why he hated Saifah.

"Whatever, I am leaving. Tell the boss that I can't work with someone like you." Zon tried turning around to head for his bike, but Saifah's hand on his shoulder stopped him. Eyeing him from the side, Zon raised his eyebrows as if to say 'what do you want'. Saifah licked his lips before speaking in a calm and soothing manner.

"Look, I know you don't like me for the incident in the past, but this isn't university, it's work. I would like to keep things separate, this is business after all. I can promise you I will keep things purely professional." Removing his hand from Zon's shoulder, Saifah swallowed a few times, words seeming harder to come out after his initial outburst.

"Besides, if you leave now….the boss will be in huge trouble as I won't be able to do all the work by myself. Do you really want to be such a burden to him? He treats everyone around here nicely and with respect, I don't think he deserves that.

Please….. just stay." Zon looked up at the last few words Saifah said. It sounded….like he was almost begging? He searched Saifah's eyes, but he only found honesty in them.

What should I do now? He has a point, the boss really doesn't deserve it. Arghhh, I hate it when that long beanstalk is right! Zon winced as he thought about the idea of giving in to Saifah, but it didn't seem like he had another choice.

"Fine!!! I'll help out. BUT! Only for today, I will talk to our boss after that myself to tell him he has to find someone else. Now, can you let me in already so we can get this over with?" He pushed a somewhat stunned Saifah to the side to enter the bakery. Saifah blinked a few times, but followed shortly after.

 

Still silently cursing himself for agreeing, Zon grabbed his apron and put it on before looking around in the kitchen. He'd never stepped in here before when people were still preparing or baking, so it was all new to him.

Man, if I want this day to be somewhat smooth I need to run down some sort of working conditions. The faster I'm done here the better…

"can we quickly talk through some stuff before we start? I would like to make this as painless and effortless as possible, but I think we need some agreement for that when it comes to working conditions. Things like no unnecessary chatter and only talk about work related stuff, only show me the basics that i need to know for today, as I'm not planning to take this shift again, and you can't get mad at me if I fuck up. Just tell me exactly what to do and leave me to it, so we can work separately." Zon eyed Saifah expectantly, hoping that the tall boy would agree. He saw some sort of inner struggle in his eyes, but he couldn't put a finger on what kind of struggle it was. Whatever it was, it disappeared from his eyes as Saifah nodded his head in agreement.

"That sounds reasonable to me, wash your hands so we can get started." 

 

The first two hours went by in a heartbeat. Much to Zon's surprise, Saifah actually kept to the agreement and only showed Zon what he needed to know, nothing more. His explanation was swift and to the point, he made sure Zon knew and understood the basics, like mixing ingredients, working the oven, and he showed him how to execute some moves when it came to rolling and shaping dough. Though the last part was where Zon currently struggled. He was supposed to shape the dough into a round bun, but no matter how often he rolled the ball of dough about, it would always end up uneven. Silently cursing himself for being unable to perform what looked like an easy task, he was considering his options at this very moment. Either he asked Saifah for help, or he would just shape weird looking buns. Zon didn't really want to make his boss look bad by producing these half-assed buns, so he only had one option left. He side-eyed Saifah who was standing at the other end of the counter, already glancing Zon's way.