The Awkward Path to Getting Lucky

by Summer Heacock

  “Thanks, Rachel.”

  “I don’t think Don is going to be able to pull these off,” Sandra says with a laugh.

  We all chuckle. The banter laughter is strenuous. I should have stretched first. “Oh, I don’t know. I think Don is probably better equipped than he thinks!”

  Don looks worried. “Can I just place my order with you now?” Everyone laughs again. He picks up the zebra cuppie. “Also, can I eat this? It looks amazing!”

  “Nope!” I say, pulling it from his hands just as it reaches his mouth. “You’ve got work to do, fella. You can eat the cakes you decorate.”

  “She runs a tight ship!” Rachel says approvingly as she moves over to the spot with her cakes and frosting. “Okay, Kat. Walk us through it.”

  Sandra goes to stand beside Rachel and picks up a bag, surreptitiously nibbling on a few sprinkles. Don stands next to me.

  “I’m going to show you guys how to do some elephants. Who doesn’t love a good elephant? Plus, they are relatively foolproof.” I raise an eyebrow at Don, and he gives an exaggerated sheepish look.

  Picking up a bag of gray frosting, I indicate that everyone should follow me. “All right, so, don’t worry if you don’t get it right at first—the best part of baking is when you mess up and get to eat the evidence.

  “First we are going to pipe out two big ears.” I bend down and squeeze out two globs. “Then we will come down the middle, and that will work as the face and the trunk. Then we can add the fine details of the face. You guys try.”

  The hosts get started, and it’s as hilarious as you might expect. Don puts a little too much force into it and a giant sploosh of icing covers his first cupcake. “I get to eat that one, right?” he asks.

  “Yep,” I say, patting him on the shoulder. “Let’s try again.”

  They set to work and roll back into their usual cheerful chatter, and I stand here piping elephant after elephant. Ear, ear, trunk. In a moment, I’ll show them where to put the eyes and extra flairs.

  This is going okay. This is fine. We’ve got maybe a minute and a half left, I think.

  The hosts are getting a little carried away with their frosting rivalry and are poking at each other like children with sticky fingers. I shake my head and take in a breath to scold them, but I look up and see one of the screens behind the stage manager that’s got an up close shot of my undetailed elephants.

  Just as I see it, the stage manager spots it, too, and his face registers a level of shock that will haunt me for the rest of my days. He starts hissing into his microphone. The hosts must hear it in their earpieces, because they all look down at the countertops at the same time. Sandra’s eyes go wide. Rachel coughs. Don starts to giggle. An actual man-giggle.

  I look down at the cupcakes. I’ve got at least a dozen in front of me. The two ears and long trunk have taken an unfortunately Freudian turn, and now it’s all I can see. I didn’t so much draw elephants as I drew a bunch of gray frosting penises.

  Frosting penises on parade.

  My jaw flops open, and a little squeak escapes me.

  “We can’t go to commercial yet,” the stage manager whisper-shouts off camera. “Get them out of the shot!”

  I can see the screen behind the cameras flashing, trying to find an angle in which the hosts are visible but the elephant penises are not, but they are just everywhere. Oh, Jesus.

  In a panic, I reach down, grab a bowl of sprinkles, and dump them all over the cakes, hoping to hide the very visible mistake.

  Now we have fancy sprinkled penises. Outstanding.

  Don’s giggles are getting louder, the station manager is flailing wildly off camera and the lights above the stage are melting away what little sanity I have left. In a surge of frantic desperation, I lift my arms up high and slam them down on the cupcakes.

  Chocolate cake, gray frosting and sprinkles splatter in every direction, including all over me. I have dessert carnage stuck up to my elbows.

  I drop my head down into my boobs.

  “Shit.” I say a split second before I remember I have a microphone clipped to my apron. Yanking my head up away from the mic, I reflexively clap my hand over my mouth, successfully covering half my face with icing, cake and sprinkles.

  “Wrap it up!” the stage manager moans into his microphone.

  Don has completely devolved into laughter and steps off to the side, covering his mouth. Rachel is trying her best not to giggle and is turning her head away from the camera. Sandra steps up beside me and says, “Thank you so much for the demonstration, Kat. It was...surprisingly educational.”

  I’m going to shrivel up and die right here on television.

  “Once again, check out Cup My Cakes, located at the corner of Eighth and Central.” Sandra turns to me and smiles her most professional smile. “Thanks for coming in, Miss Carmichael.”

  The stage manager waves his hand, throws his clipboard down on the chair beside him and shakes his head as I attempt to nonchalantly lick smooshed cake off the side of my mouth.

  We’re off the air.

  36

  I’ve done a few walks of shame in my life. The worst was with a guy I’d been casually seeing right before I met Ryan. He had a puppy that had a real taste for anything that had been worn on a human body. In the heat of the moment at his place, he forgot to mention that clothes absolutely could not be left on the floor or they would meet an edible fate.

  The jerk never even offered to pay for his puppy’s feast. Dude obviously didn’t understand how expensive a good bra actually is.

  He also didn’t have a car, so I took a cab home wearing nothing but one of his button-up shirts and one and a half Chuck Taylors. Literally nothing else.

  Even that was less humiliating than this.

  Betsy the makeup guru did the best she could to help me clean off before I headed out of the studio. I washed bits of elephant penis cake out of my hair in the bathroom sink, but there are still tiny streaks of buttercream up in there. She gave me a Channel 7 T-shirt to change into and wear out. My poor mischievous fox apron is tucked away in my supply bags, hiding from my shame. There are giant swaths of gray frosting smudged all over my pants.

  I open the back door of the shop and slowly trudge inside.

  Liz is at her station, closest to the door, working on a giant Harry Potter–themed birthday cake. She is drawing details on the Sorting Hat topper when she sees me, stands straight up and stares, jaw open.

  Butter sets down her piping bag, suddenly ignoring the large batch of lavender cuppies in front of her. I can’t read her expression. Maybe it’s pity? Maybe she’s about to burst out laughing? It’s a hard one to call.

  I hear Shannon close the cash drawer on the register, and seconds later, she appears in the doorway from the front of the shop.

  No one says a word. I don’t know what else to do, so after many awkward seconds of unbearable silence, I shuffle over to my station and drop my prep bag on the floor before sitting down on the rickety old stool—the stool I always thought was good luck. We bought it from a thrift shop when we first started the business out of Shannon’s garage years ago. Even though I will likely fall to my death one day when the wood finally gives out, I love this stool.

  Though I kind of feel like even it’s judging me right now.

  I place my hands on my station, waiting for the shouting to start, but there’s nothing. They stare. That’s it.

  I notice there’s still gray frosting caked underneath some of my fingernails.

  How long we stay here like this, I don’t know. Minutes. Months. Millennia?

  I do know the silence is genuinely harshing my will to live.

  “Oh my god!” I shout. “Someone say something!”

  The phone rings, and Shannon disappears to answer it. My stomach is currently loca
ted somewhere around my ankles.

  Finally, it’s Butter who breaks the silence.

  “Girl.”

  I slam my head down onto the station. “Oh my damn.”

  Liz pipes up. “What happened?”

  Lifting my head just enough so I can see them, I whine, “How bad is it?”

  Butter looks up at the ceiling. “Well, the clip of the show has already hit YouTube, and last I checked, it had over seventy thousand views.”

  “Ninety thousand,” Liz corrects her, staring at her phone.

  Butter shrugs. “Hey,” she says in a chipper voice, “you’ve gone viral! That’s pretty cool, right?”

  “Oh, sweet Jesus.” I drop my head back onto my station. “How is that even possible!? It’s only been, like, two hours!”

  Shannon pokes her head in through the door. “Guys. The Horwitz order, they called to say they don’t want any art. Just go with plain buttercream. Did we start those yet?”

  “Fuck,” I moan into my hands.

  “Nope,” Butter says, looking at the racks. “They’re out, but we haven’t put anything on them yet.”

  “They’re wanting a more, erm, classic look, they said,” Shannon clarifies. “They’ll be here at five.” Her head disappears.

  “Everyone saw it,” I groan. “I drew penises on kid cupcakes on television and then smashed them. I smashed elephant penises.”

  Shannon starts to appear in the doorway again, but the phone rings and she heads back up to the counter.

  “The phone has been ringing nonstop,” Liz says quietly as she goes back to painting on the fine details of the Sorting Hat.

  I groan louder. “Okay, seriously, how bad is it?”

  Butter shrugs and resumes piping out lavender frosting. The smell is delightful and would be soothing were it not for the horrors of the day prancing around in my head.

  “It’s not the worst thing,” she offers. “We’ve had three orders cancel, but that’s not that bad.”

  I choke on a panicked, nervous laugh. “I can’t believe this.”

  Shannon reappears and quickly reaches for her coffee mug. I wonder if that is regular coffee, or whether my antics this morning have caused her to drink something slightly more flammable.

  “So,” she says to me before taking another sip. “I may have some notes about the show, Pumpkin.”

  I stand up and can’t physically decide whether I should throw myself at Shannon’s feet and beg for forgiveness, or run away and lock myself in the supply closet so she can’t murder me.

  Instead I just start pacing in front of my station.

  “I am so, so sorry,” I blurt out. “To all of you. I can’t believe how badly I screwed this up.”

  “Look, I saw you practicing those elephants for a week,” Butter says. She takes a tray of cuppies out of the oven and puts them on the cooling rack. “I never saw that until it was on-screen. I would have told you. That was a freak accident, hon, it could have happened to anyone.”

  I groan. “No. No, it really could have only happened to me.”

  Shannon considers this. “You’re right. Only you.”

  The phone, now tucked in her apron pocket, rings again. Her head drops with a sigh, and she sets down her mug before taking the phone back into the front room.

  The day doesn’t improve from there.

  We stop talking about the morning show altogether, but its presence hangs in the air, making it hard to breathe without choking on the stench of my incredible fuckup.

  Shannon has to field calls all day, alternating between accepting canceled orders or trying to assure a customer I won’t be the one decorating the cupcakes for their gram’s eightieth lest I somehow cause the buttercream swirls to become indelicate. Even worse, she isn’t discussing it with any of us. I’m not sure if she’s trying to spare my feelings or if she’s just that pissed about the situation. I know she’s trying to stay on task on today, but the guilt is eating me alive.

  What should have been a boost to our good reputation became a pornographic display of incompetence, and I know I let everyone down.

  My viral humiliation notwithstanding, I still have to get my shit together for Coopertown. In addition to the handful of orders I currently have from people who either haven’t seen the video or maybe don’t care if I penis up their cuppies, I have to focus on every intricate detail of the presentation.

  I might be banned from attempting anything related to zoo animals ever again, but I will not mess up this raven.

  The awkward silence in the back room while we work is forcing me to stay inside my head, which is not a great place right now.

  Ben.

  What did I do?

  I hurt him. My brain can’t shake the image of his pained expression, the anger in his voice, the weight in my stomach as he left. Those things and more are trapped inside my mind, ricocheting off the edges of my concentration, tangoing with the flashes of disgrace from the studio.

  This should have been a day of absolute triumph. I mean, I successfully slept with Ben last night. I planned to flounce in here after the morning show with the confidence of someone who kicked the ass of my TV debut, promoted the hell out of the shop and got to announce the miraculous night of special success. There should have been celebration. Fireworks. Songs written about these magical accomplishments.

  Instead, I’m drowning in shame.

  Ben hasn’t responded to a single text I’ve sent. I even tried calling after I left the studio, and no answer.

  I can’t even talk to the girls about what happened last night. I don’t want Shannon breaking off and stabbing me with a palette knife.

  In retrospect, she might have had a point when she banned us from giving it a go last night.

  This feels like a new personal low.

  Coopertown is tomorrow. I refuse to go into that with this horrible anti-mojo hanging over me. The cakes I prepare have to be in top form. There is exactly no room for error here.

  I need to find a way to turn things around. I need the strut I was sure I would have after I beat my deadline.

  And then I remember.

  Ryan.

  That was the whole point, wasn’t it? Going through all these dramatics and toils with Ben so I could get back to Ryan? So we could restart what was good and get to where we definitely should be now.

  I look down at my worktop and realize I’ve made a huge mess on the cupcake I was stenciling. A practice cake for Coopertown. Instead of an intricate design, I’ve got a shapeless blob of edible glitter.

  Oh, how I miss the fantastic aspects of edible glitter.

  Ack. No. I definitely should not be thinking about that right now.

  I’m so crazed with all of the everything, I have no focus.

  I look up at my industrious coworkers, and all I see are successful endeavors. How is no one else cracking under the pressure like I am?

  I can’t carry this into Coopertown. I just can’t. I won’t cost my friends, my family, this contract. I refuse to screw that up the way I’ve completely messed up every other little thing over the last twenty-four hours. I have to find a way to turn this all around. My trajectory for failure here can’t continue.

  No. I need a win.

  I need the win.

  37

  Standing at a door I’ve stood in front of hundreds of times before, I’m struck motionless. Do I knock?

  I’ve never had to knock on this door before. I have my own key to this door. Are you ever supposed to knock on a door you have a key to?

  It’s all different now. This is Ryan’s place. Not Ryan-who-has-a-steady-girlfriend-with-a-key’s place.

  Tonight that uncertainty is going to change, by god.

  I reach up and knock. There’s a shuffling sound on
the other side, and a moment later, Ryan opens the door.

  “Kat, hey!” he says, and my shoulders relax a little when I see his expression reads as glad to see me. “What’s up?”

  He motions for me to come in, and I do, hands wringing. I’m a solid step above high-strung, and it’s not just the weight of the task that brought me here that’s got me on edge.

  Stepping into his living room, I look around. His place looks exactly as it did the last time I was here. Lots of light, but in that way that feels like he bought bulbs with a higher wattage than the room calls for. He likes to keep a bright room. I tend to prefer more natural light.

  I feel completely out of place. I realize that this is the first time in weeks we’ve seen each other. It’s an unsettling thought.

  However, as uncomfortable as I am, he seems to be totally calm. There’s no air of awkwardness. There are no jittery vibes. He’s laid-back Ryan, as always.

  “I have some news,” I say, turning back to face him as he shuts his door.

  He has a pleasant look about him. He’s recently buzzed his hair down even shorter than normal, and he’s dressed in a pale green button-up shirt and chocolate-colored slacks. This is far beyond his usual work attire. I can only assume he had a manager meeting today. “Oh, yeah?”

  I had myself all pumped up on my way over to cut the proverbial ribbon, here. To bring him into the loop. My junk is no longer fritzing, and the time has come to put all of this insanity behind us. It’s time to move forward.

  But now that I’m here, I’m finding it difficult to get those words out.

  “I’ve been here all of thirty seconds, and you haven’t brought up the newscast,” I say with a pathetic chuckle, chickening out of the subject at hand. “You’ve got more self-restraint than I do.”

  He tilts his head. “What newscast?”

  “The newscast I was on.”

  “You were on a newscast?”

  I blink at him, feeling like I’ve been sucked into an Abbott and Costello act, but then I remember. “Oh yeah. We haven’t talked in four weeks.”