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“You know what happens if you wait for the right time? Someone with a stroller and a trust fund walks in here and says they want to open a matcha bar, and Rosa likes their smile, and that’s it.” She reaches for my hand and covers it. “Ask her. If it’s bad, it’s bad. Then at least you’re fighting a number instead of a what if.”

I look down at the notebook and take a deep breath. “Okay.” My stomach is already twisting itself into knots, but I know she’s right.

She raises her eyebrows.

“Today. I’ll ask her today.”

I ask Rosa during the mid-afternoon lull, when the case is half empty and the weak afternoon light comes in through the front windows.

She is piping rosettes onto a tray of butter cookies with her back to me.

I say her name and then, before I can lose my nerve, “If I wanted to buy the bakery, Rosa, how much would you want for it?”

She doesn’t stop. She finishes the row of cookies, each rosette the same size with a little twist at the top. Then she sets the bag down, wipes her hands on her apron, takes her glasses off their cord and puts them on, peering at me over the top.

“Okay,” she says. “The name, the equipment, my recipes, the accounts, the customers. Not the building. The building was never mine. I’m still talking to the landlord about the lease on the shop and your apartment.”

I nod, adrenaline pumping through my veins.

“A hundred and forty.”

My stomach drops.

“Thirty down,” Rosa says as though she hasn’t noticed. “The rest paid over seven years. Four percent, because a bank would ask for nine and I’m not a bank.” She picks the piping bag back up. “And you’ll have to replace the oven before it kills somebody, out of your own pocket, not mine.”

I stand very still.

Thirty down.

I know the number at the bottom of my pencil column the way I know my own phone number. It’s higher than thirty. Not by much. But enough.

“I can make thirty.” I chew my bottom lip.

“I know you can.” She smiles. “I’ve seen you counting your tips since you were seventeen. Go and think about it properly. I’ll still be here.”

I turn away and then hesitate. “Rosa, how do you feel about selling to me?”

Her eyes grow watery. “Do you really need to ask?”

I shake my head and go upstairs. I sit down on the top step with my back against the door and my hands over my mouth.

A hundred and forty thousand dollars. Seven years. A new oven.

It isn’t someday anymore. It isn’t a no either.

I laugh into my hands. Then I cry a little, which I wasn’t expecting. Then I take out my phone.

I asked her.

Tessa answers immediately. AND????

Possible. Hard but possible.

I KNEW IT. I’m screaming into a pillow. I love you. Bring me the end of something.

I sit there with the number in my head and excitement in my chest. Then I wash my face in my kitchen, go back down, and sell a dozen butter cookies to a customer buying them for his mother-in-law. He says I look happy, and I tell him I am.

At five thirty, Rosa is boxing the day-old cakes for the shelter when she says, without looking up, “Daniel stopped me on the sidewalk last week.”