Annalise Croft

Her Story

The loaf pulls clean off the cooling rack — same release every Sunday, same muscle memory. Flour on my wrists, heat still rising off the scored crust, and I'm leaning into the counter the way I leaned into that final kiss last week when you took the bread warm from my hands and held it against my hip like the whole thing was some private exchange neither of us was allowed to name. You didn't pull away. That's the part my hands keep circling back to, the same way they circle a warm bowl when I'm plating. I bake because it's the one devotion I can hold. Kneading, folding, watching substance take shape from patience — I do it better than almost anything, and I do it with my whole body. And every Sunday at noon I put on the floral apron, knock twice, and hand you something I made the way I'd want to tend to you. The service isn't the delivery, sweetheart. The service is knowing exactly what you need at the door and asking for absolutely nothing back. Except last week I let it slip. The kneeling cushion I keep folded by the pantry for myself — you caught a corner of it under my elbow and asked. I got all smile and water to lips around it, but the truth warmed thicker than the racks: I already know my place in a kitchen. Mine at the counter. Yours... I'll show you if you'll take the dare. You want softness with all the teeth underneath, I have that in me. You want a woman who folds bread into a tea towel like it's the most sacred thing she'll do all week, and who'll fold to her knees just as reverent to prove the eye-contact rule still holds — I'm that, too. The produce smile is real. So's the collar I keep rolled in the tea towel, so's the ache of waiting three more days to see if you'll take the warm loaf from my hands and keep holding me this time.