When that was finished, it was time to face the foe that had been intimidating me for years. I was going to bake bread.
Several minutes of careful measuring, re-measuring, and measuring for a third time later, I mixed the flour, yeast, salt, sugar, and water together into what looked like the perfect dough. I dropped it down into a mixing bowl coated with oil and draped a kitchen towel over it. I had even stolen the trick of one of the TV chefs and warmed the towel in the microwave before I put it over the bowl.
Now all I had to do was wait. The bread had to rise for an hour before I could punch and knead it. I looked down at myself and realized I was completely covered with all manners of kitchen residue. Flour, chocolate, sugar, oil, and eggs coated my apron and stuck to my skin. I needed a shower.
An idea occurred to me, and I smiled. What I really needed was a bath.
There was a small bathroom off my bedroom, but it only had a walk-in shower. A quick peek into Greg’s bathroom confirmed he had a nice bathtub. He wouldn’t mind if I borrowed it for just a little bit while he was gone.
I sank into steaming hot water and a thick layer of bubbles. I slid down against the back wall of the tub until the bubbles covered me up to my chin. They smelled like the sweet vanilla honey body wash I’d bought at the store along with my groceries. Greg teased me when I picked it up, pointing out I was even choosing food-themed soap now.
The truth was, it used to be my favorite body wash before I started dating Marshall. Then he told me he didn’t like how sweet it smelled. That it reminded him of a bakery. Somehow that was a bad thing coming from him, and I agreed to stop using it. As soon as I saw it in the store with Greg, I had to buy it. Using it again made me feel like me.
I had a timer set on my phone to stop me from just staying in the tub for the rest of the day. It allowed me a long, luxurious soak. And when I got out, I felt relaxed and calm. So relaxed and calm, in fact, I decided I was emotionally prepared to do something I had been adamantly avoiding since driving away from Shelby.
After getting dressed in a pair of leggings and a lightweight long-sleeve T-shirt, I grabbed my phone and curled up on one of the overstuffed chairs in the living room to scroll through social media. I only had a few minutes left before it was time to tend to the bread. Just that short, little bit of time couldn’t hurt.
Boy, was I wrong. I had been totally boycotting all forms of social media since the breakup with Marshall, so I hadn’t had a chance to erase him from my platforms.
The effort of algorithms still brought him up first as soon as I signed on. I had tried to prepare myself for that. I told myself he was probably out living it up now that I was gone. I just hadn’t realized he would be living it up in quite that way.
Of course, I knew he had started dating somebody new. The migration of his clothes from the apartment in the days before he kicked me out told me as much. I hadn’t noticed it, but as soon as I did, everything clicked into place. He had been working late hours and then going over to his parents’ house. A couple of times, he had gone out with the guys, then told me that one person or another had a birthday or was going through something hard and needed a friendly ear.
Whatever the excuse, he figured out a way to stay away from the apartment several times in the weeks before I left. I knew that had to mean he hadn’t waited to start up with somebody else.
But actually seeing it made my blood boil. What bothered me wasn’t looking at a picture of him with another woman. I mean looking at a picture of him kissing another woman wouldn’t be the worst either. It wasn’t exactly the most comfortable thing I had ever seen in my life, but I had a feeling I would have been able to handle it far better if it hadn’t been her.
But there she was. Ashley Pride, a woman I once considered a friend. One of the only friends I had, in fact. I thought we were fairly close, and now I was staring at a picture of her wrapped around my ex-boyfriend in shorts so short they could have been a bikini bottom and her mouth open so far it was difficult to tell whether she was kissing him or trying to consume him whole.
I also couldn’t help but notice the set of keys dangling conspicuously in her hand. The caption of the picture spoke volumes.
“Moving Day!”
I didn’t know how to react. I didn’t know if I should cry or throw up. Or maybe throw up and cry. Or throw things, then cry, then throw up. I ended up taking it all out on the bread. Dumping the dough out onto the flour-dusted counter, I pounded and kneaded it into oblivion. Then I started up another batch. I would have to wait for it to rise, but I had a feeling the anger wasn’t going to go away within the next hour.
By the time I went to bed around two in the morning, I had a lot of bread, but only a little less anger.
10
Greg
After the race on Thursday, we all went out like we usually did. When we were close to home, we went to Lindsey’s bar. This time we were just far enough out that by the time we were all packed up and would have gotten back to the bar, it would have been way too late. Instead, we found a little local bar and went there for a couple of rounds of celebratory drinks. I called Maya, but she didn’t answer. It was pretty late, so I figured she had already gone to bed.
The celebration ended up going well into the night, and one-too-many celebratory rounds meant no one wanted me driving home by myself. Instead, Vince, the ever-responsible Freeman, took over driving the truck and brought me to his house for the night. I texted Maya to let her know I wouldn’t be home, and she sent back a simple “okay.”
I felt guilty for ditching her, but at the same time, she was settling in well, and it was probably good for her to have a chance to just enjoy some time to herself. By the next morning, I still hadn’t heard from her, so I figured she was coping just fine on her own. Usually the compound was closed the day after a race, but we hadn’t gotten around to unloading all of the equipment the night before.
Vince and I headed over to the garage to get unpacked, and I sent Maya a couple of text messages just keeping her updated on what was going on. She seemed perfectly fine when she messaged me back, telling me I didn’t need to rush home.
We had gotten a late start to the day, and it took several hours to get everything unloaded and back in place at the compound. From there, I got wrapped up in checking over my bike and seeing how it had fared during the race. I went to work cleaning and touching it up. That led me to noticing a few things that needed adjustments, and soon I had the entire thing dismantled and spread out in the garage.
The guys insisted we break for the day when it was too dark to see clearly. They suggested we go for dinner, and I texted Maya to see if she wanted to join us. She didn’t respond, so I let her know I’d be back later and headed to Lindsey’s. While I was there, I made it a point to take her aside privately and thank her for giving Maya the opportunity.
“It’s not much,” Lindsey said. “I wish I could do more, but I’m fully staffed right now. I’ve been looking for somebody to help out in the kitchen, so it’s a good fit. I just feel bad it’s nothing more substantial for her.”
“You don’t need to apologize at all,” I told her. “If it wasn’t for you, she wouldn’t have a job. She’s a hard worker, and she’s not the type to see anything as being beneath her. She’ll do well for you.”
“I look forward to working with her,” Lindsey said.
By the time I got home, the apartment was quiet, and I realized Maya must have fallen asleep. I was still tired, so I took a quick shower and dropped into bed. That didn’t last for long. I was blasted out of sleep just a few minutes later by the sound of Queen blaring from the kitchen.
I stumbled out of the bedroom and to the kitchen where I found Maya dancing around with a bowl under her arm. She stirred to the rhythm and wiggled her hips around, occasionally flipping her hair and singing out a jumbled line or two.
I stood there and watched her for a few seconds, and it hit me just how gorgeous she was. It wasn’t a new thought either. In fact,
it was one I had harbored for a long time. I just never let myself have it for long, and I definitely never said it out loud. I’d never wanted to jeopardize our friendship by making a move that might not have been reciprocated.
I knocked on the doorframe to the kitchen, and she whipped around to face me. A grin crossed her face.
“Where were you?” I asked. “I got home a little bit ago, and I thought you were asleep.”
“Heyyyyyyyyy,” she said, the word drawn-out long and the tone sloppy.
Oh, Lord. She was drunk.
“Hey,” I said, laughing. “You and Queen having a good time here all by yourselves? I leave you unattended for less than two days and you turn the apartment into a rave?”
She took a step toward me, and I glanced into the mixing bowl. She was still stirring some sort of batter, but at least it looked like she had actually followed some sort of recipe and wasn’t just tossing in anything she could get her hands on.
“I was in my room,” she said with a slight slur. “I splashed a lot of water on myself, and so I decided to change. Maybe I could have just taken my shirt off and baked topless. That,” she said emphatically, flipping her spoon to underline the word and flinging a bit of batter in the process, “would be a popular cooking show.”
The longer I looked at her, the more I noticed her face didn’t look exactly right. It was a little puffy, and her eyes were red. It looked like she had tried to put makeup on, but a lot of it had just melted off again. She had been crying. I knew something was wrong.
“What happened?” I asked. Tears welled up in her eyes again, and her chin started to wobble. “Okay, let me just take this from you.”
I grabbed onto the glass mixing bowl, but she latched on tighter, clinging it to her chest. I tugged on it again, finally managing to wrestle it free from her grasp. I’d dunked my finger in it during the scuffle, and I licked the batter off. It was loose, but it tasted like sugar cookies.
“Okay, let’s try again. What happened?” I asked.
“Marshall is a pile of sweaty ball sacks is what happened,” she said, her voice getting louder and higher. “And so is Ashley!”
She grabbed the bowl again, and we ended up in a brief tug-of-war. The bowl slipped from our hands, flipped upside down, and landed on the floor. She immediately burst into tears, and I wrapped an arm around her.
“It’s alright,” I said. “Don’t worry about it. Everything’s okay. Come on. Let’s go into the living room for a minute.”
I turned off the music and bundled Maya in my arms to help her into the living room. I sat her down and perched close beside her. She clung to me and cried hard for a few seconds. When it seemed like she was done with the worst of the breakdown, she lifted her head from my shoulder and looked at me.
“I’m a mess,” she said. “And I think I’m a little drunk.”
I nodded, moving hair away from her face. “I think so, too.”
“That I’m a mess, or that I’m drunk?” she asked.
I considered my answer carefully for a few seconds. “Both.”
She should have laughed, but instead she just gave a resigned nod and looked down at her hands where they were folded between her knees.
“Yeah.”
“Alright, why don’t you tell me why Marshall is a big pile of sweaty ball sacks?” I asked. “And Ashley. Is this Ashley Pride?”
“Yes,” Maya said venomously. “Ashley Pride-in-herself-for-being-a-slut.”
It came out like she was positive. It was both witty and scathing, so I went with it. Rubbing her back, I nodded.
“So, would it be safe for me to wager a guess that Ashley and Marshall are seeing each other now?” I asked.
“Seeing each other all over the place,” Maya said. “Including in the apartment that I just moved out of. Correction, that I was just kicked out of.”
“She moved in with him?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “Today. Can you believe that? There’s probably still food in the refrigerator that I bought, and there’s already another woman living in the apartment.”
“How did you find out?” I asked.
“I was having so much fun baking and I took a bubble bath, and everything seemed great, so I went on social media,” she said.
“And you saw a picture?”
“It’s just that I hadn’t checked anything at all since I moved out. Nothing. So, I decided I would go on and just kind of poke around a little bit and catch up on what was going on in Shelby. Maybe while I was in there, I could unfriend him and make sure I didn’t have to deal with seeing his stupid face anymore. But as soon as I opened it up, there it was,” she said.
“That bad, eh?” I asked.
“They’re all over each other, standing in front of his apartment. The apartment I lived in. Granted, I only lived there for three weeks, but still. I lived there.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“But it was like none of that even mattered. The two of them were standing there in front of the building, sucking face and holding the keys. And then the caption. It just said, ‘moving day.’ That’s it. ‘Moving day.’ With an exclamation point, mind you. They were all excited to spread it out to the world. Do you think I got an exclamation point when I moved in?”
“I’m going to go out on a limb here and say no,” I said.
“No,” Maya said firmly. “I didn’t. I didn’t even get a caption. I didn’t even get a picture to put a caption on. I just moved in, but she gets a whole damn celebration.” She suddenly sagged forward, dropping her face into her hands. “I’m such an idiot. He was cheating on me. There I was, trying to make the apartment perfect for the two of us and thinking things were going so well between us, and he was sleeping with somebody I considered a friend.”
I didn’t know what to say to her. All I could do was scoop Maya up and help her to bed, then go into the kitchen and start cleaning up the aftermath of her culinary therapy. I swore to myself if I ever saw Marshall again, I was going to kill him.
11
Maya
I didn’t so much wake up on Sunday morning as get ejected out of sleep by my head pounding so hard, I could probably do a fairly convincing Stomp revival to the cadence. My eyes felt like the lids had taken on a sandpaper lining and my mouth was dry as a bone.
I wanted to just keep my eyes closed and bury myself in sleep again. But that wasn’t an option. I was fairly certain my head might actually explode if I didn’t take something soon.
I needed to drag myself out of bed with whatever tiny bit of energy I could possibly muster and go on a noble hunt for aspirin. And probably some water. The longer I was awake, the more aware I became of my sticky, sour mouth and tight, dry throat.
Sitting up did not improve matters at all. It only made my already suffering head swirl around and brought my awareness to the rest of my body aching. What the hell was wrong with me?
Then it hit me. Oh yeah. I had been drunk since Thursday. Considering it was now sometime Saturday morning or possibly early afternoon, I very well might have pickled myself. This was definitely not the best idea. I was far from a hard drinker, and I could probably count on one hand the number of times in my life I had been truly hangover-inducing drunk. This time, however, might count for at least three fingers.
This was not good planning. I should have stopped well before I got to my fourth batch of cupcakes. I thought the three beers I drank the other day at Lindsey’s bar was a misdirected choice. This blew that right out of the water. All I wanted to do was fall over backward, roll up in my blankets like a burrito, and pray for either death or Monday.
Just thinking about my ex-asshole-boyfriend and ex-friend had gotten me so mad I finally decided to drink him out of my system. It felt like a good plan at the time. Blasting music and working my way through my recipe list, I felt like the basis for the next big breakup anthem. But this was where it got me now.
It took a few minutes to finally get myself on my feet and feel like
I was stable enough to walk into the bathroom. I turned on the shower and while the water was warming, I searched through the medicine cabinet for a pain reliever. Brazenly going against the label’s recommendation, I poured four of the tablets into my palm and popped them in my mouth.
Though I had been impressed by Greg’s apartment not seeming completely like it was inhabited only by a bachelor, it was in that moment when I realized he still had room for growth. Starting with including cups in the bathroom. Without even a masculine polka-dotted or plaid Dixie in sight, I resorted to filling my cupped hands with water from the faucet and drank it down.
It perked me up just enough for me to be able to take my clothes off and climb into the shower. I stood there hoping for reconstitution and a clearer mind. The painkiller was just starting to kick in and take the worst of the edge off the throbbing headache when I figured I couldn’t stay in there any longer.
I got out, put on the most comfortable clothes I could without just straight-up getting back in pajamas, and went to face the music. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I vaguely remembered Greg coming home the night before. But honestly, my memories were still floating around somewhere in a vat of vodka.
I followed the smell of something cooking and made it to the kitchen. Leaned against the doorframe, I watched Greg make scrambled eggs and a stack of French toast. It took him a few seconds to notice I was there, but when he did, he gave me a grin.
“Morning, drunky. I figured I could return the favor and make you some breakfast. Come eat. You’re going to want to get over the worst of this quickly. We’ve got places to go,” he said.
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