The Awkward Path to Getting Lucky
Page 27
Butter looks up at me, the glazed-over look of focus in her eyes disappearing in a blink, replaced by a fervent sparkle.
“You had sex!” she yelps.
Shannon’s head snaps up at once, and Liz peeks in from the front, looking shocked.
“What?” I gasp, sounding as though I’m being strangled.
Butter points at me. “You had sex!”
“How could you possibly know that!?”
“Oh my god!” Shannon says. “Are you serious? I don’t know whether to be happy for you or kill you! Boy, am I gonna have a word with Ben.”
I turn back to my station and pick up a bag of frosting. “Yeah, well, maybe you’ll have better luck getting him to talk to you than I’m having.”
Liz jumps into the conversation. “Wait, you slept together, but you’re not talking now?”
Squeezing out a perfect topper onto the cuppie, I say, “Basically.”
“What the hell happened?” Shannon demands.
I slam the bag down on the counter so hard we all jump. Even me. “Well, let’s see. I went against your decree and dragged Ben home and we had therapy sex. It went amazingly well, actually. Then I kissed him. Why? Couldn’t fucking say. Then he got pissed at me for it and stormed off and I haven’t heard from him since.
“And,” I continue, laying all my matzo balls out in the open, “last night, after I completely fucked up the newscast and any hope for good shop promotion, I went over to Ryan’s because, hey, my special is off the bench, and tried to sleep with him, too, but that didn’t happen because he told me he had a date with that Alice chick, who he’s been seeing for the last month, by the by, and felt weird about rescheduling on the fly like that, and it kind of killed my hard-on, if I’m being honest.
“Which is fine, because apparently I’m dating Ben Cleary.” I throw my hands in the air and slam them down on the metal station top. The sound echoes through the kitchen. “At least, I was, because I demonstrably messed that up real nice.”
Jaws are on the floor. I’ve never seen these women in a state of frozen silence for this long.
“Look,” I huff, picking the frosting back up. “It doesn’t matter. None of that matters today, because we have to get Shannon ready.”
“But—” Butter interjects.
“No,” I say, putting my proverbial foot down as hard as I can. “This isn’t the time. We need to get back to work.”
Shannon, sensing my tone and knowing how right I am about the tasks at hand, nods. “She’s right. We can talk about this later. And we will talk about it.” She gives me her best mom stare, and as much as I usually consider myself immune to those motherly wiles, I feel myself shrink down a solid inch.
I bend over my station to finish the cupcakes and push every thought I’m having about Ryan and Ben and the Vagina that Ruins Lives as far into the back of my head as I can cram them for now.
At seven forty-five, an alarm goes off on Shannon’s phone, and her face goes into serious mode. It’s time to load the shiny new van. I stick my head out front and let Butter and Liz know I’ll be back, then start packing everything up.
“Okay, everything is separated by box,” I remind her. She knows this, I know this, but I’m nervous and it helps calm me. “You’ve got three extra boxes of each, but drive really carefully anyway. No Shannon-on-her-way-to-Little-League road-rage stop-and-go, promise?” I give her a wink. She smiles.
“Got it.” We carefully put the boxes in the cargo area of the van. All afternoon yesterday, she rambled in tangents about refusing to use the new van to make this trip, but eventually saw reason in the fact that we own the damn thing, so we might as well use it.
“You’re going to do great,” I say, stepping away. “You look professional, you know your shit and you’ve got this.”
She nods. And suddenly she’s nodding a little too fast. “Yes.” Then her head starts to shake, and her lip trembles. “No. No, I don’t. Kat, I can’t do this.”
“I’m sorry?”
“I can’t do this!” She doubles over, a swirl of curly blond hair whooshing past my face, and she begins to hyperventilate. “I’m going to fuck it up! I’m not ready! Mr. Peterson scares the crap out of me! You saw what happened when he was here the other day! I panicked! I completely froze up. We can’t afford for me to do that here. What if I cost us this contract, Kat? What if I walk in and drop all the cupcakes on the floor? What if I forget all of the ingredients? Or the pricing margins? Or the bid numbers? I can’t do this!”
I put my hand on her back and pat. “Honey, you aren’t going to screw anything up. You’re awesome. You can totally do this.”
She whips up so fast that if I’d been standing a few inches closer, she’d have knocked me out. “You have to come with me. You have to be The Mouth.”
My eyes go big. “You’re not serious.”
“I’m deadly serious. Kat, you’re better at this. And I need you there. We’ll be a united front. A team. We always do better as a team.”
I splutter, “Are you freaking kidding me? Did you not see the morning show? It’s up to three hundred and fifty thousand views, if you’re curious. Have you been watching my life? If you want a guaranteed fuckup, you’ll bring me.”
“Oh, come on. That was a freak accident. We all know that!” she insists. “And, well, we can sort out that life stuff later. Come on! I need you! You’ll do great!”
“But I—”
“Butter!” Shannon yelps. Butter comes running into the kitchen from the front room. “I’m taking Kat with me for the presentation. You and Liz can watch the shop until we get back, right?”
Butter looks stricken. “Sure? Of course. Is everything okay?”
“No!” I say desperately. “Shannon is freaking out and thinks she can’t handle the presentation on her own, which she absolutely can.” I turn back to my hysterical friend. “Look, I have every confidence in you, sweetie. You’re a pro. But if you truly feel like you need me to go with you, I will.”
“I need you to go with me,” she says without missing a beat.
I throw my hands in the air. “Jesus.” Hissing, I turn to Butter. “We have to be on the road in about three minutes. Do we have any clean shirts around? I’ve got to make myself at least sort of presentable.”
“I’ll look,” Butter says, scurrying around to the storage closet.
Shannon is standing by the back door, looking at the stock in the van, making sure we’ve got everything we need while pulling at her fingernails and chewing on her lip. It’s very unnerving to see her this far from chill.
I scamper into the bathroom and whimper. I’ve got flour in my hair, which I’m pretty sure I forgot to brush this morning; my apron is covered with smears of fudge; and I don’t have a drop of makeup on.
I wipe the residue out of my hair as best I can, splash some water on my face, and pledge to steal some mascara out of Shannon’s purse in the car.
I meet Butter back in the kitchen and she’s holding out a clean black Cup My Cakes T-shirt. With no time to spare, I tug my apron off, then my shirt, and pull the new one on as fast as humanly possible.
“Well, thankfully Ben didn’t walk back here for this one,” I mutter, searching for a clean apron.
“We have to go,” Shannon says, looking at the time on her phone. Her eyes look manic. “We’ve got everything we need, and we can go over the presentation in the car to practice.”
Butter runs up and throws her arms around us both as tightly as she can, and I cling to her a second longer than I mean to.
“All the luck, ladies,” she says as we climb into the van.
Shannon turns the key, the engine roars to life, and while balancing her presentation notes on my lap, I start digging in her purse for any goddamn makeup I can find.
39
Shannon is compulsively repeating facts about our shop, our sales, and our cakes to herself and appears to have forgotten I’m with her, other than the occasional glance at me in which she alternates between uninhibited gratefulness and abject terror.
My stomach is in my throat, but I’m here for support, so I manage to keep it all calm and collected on the outside.
“Brings back memories, yeah?” I say as we unload boxes from the van. “College days? Maybe we can party-crash a kegger after the presentation and blow off some steam. I’m sure we could pass for some Alpha Something-or-Other girls.”
Shannon almost laughs, but her gaze is caught by another van about thirty yards away. The Cakery. With their posh company van. Stupid official decal.
Joe told Shannon he had planned to get the van decorated with our shop’s logo, but she put the kibosh on any plans until her rage subsided. At this moment, I am officially on Team Joe. We need a decal.
And not that I would have been embarrassed to pull up in Shannon’s mommy-mobile or anything, but I do feel a little grateful to be climbing out of our shiny, new and pretty sky blue ride as opposed to a decade-old beige minivan with a family of stick figure stickers on the back window.
The Cakery staff do look very sleek in their black clothes and matching red aprons. Although we occasionally wear black T-shirts, I don’t see the point of a black uniform at a bakery. I mean, honestly. With the amount of flour we wield, it doesn’t make good sense.
Naturally, The Cakery crew don’t appear to have a speck of flour anywhere on them. I have to assume gluten-free flour is invisible.
I try to smooth my hair back and hope I got all the visible caking evidence out.
Loaded up with our bounty, we head into the stadium. Shannon seems to know where we’re meant to be, so I quietly follow her lead, occasionally throwing her a reassuring smile or silly face, hoping to lighten her mood.
After passing through an absolute labyrinth of corridors, we are led by a staff member to a large meeting room. There’s a large mahogany conference table surrounded by fancy, squishy chairs. There are already several bakeries set up at the table, eyeing us as we come in and find a spot. The Cakery hits the room a few minutes behind us.
Shannon is side-eyeing the competition just as much as they are us, but I’m trying to keep her focused.
“Okay,” I say quietly, hoping no one can hear us over the quiet sounds of chatter. “Which cake are we presenting first?”
She seems to have a hard time prying her gaze away from the other boxes at the table, even though none of them are opened yet. “I think we should save the dark chocolate for last. It’s the prettiest.”
“Agreed,” I say, making a little note on the papers in front of me.
“Oh my god,” Shannon whispers as her eyes narrow. “That blonde woman from Odessa? She came into the shop a few weeks ago and bought a cuppie sampler. They were freaking spying on us!”
I look up at the blonde woman and definitely recognize her. “Well, that just shows how little confidence they have in their own shit.”
“We should have let Butter go Olga on their asses.”
“Shannon, stop paying attention to them. It doesn’t matter what they’ve brought. We have our best work in these boxes. They have theirs. Nothing is going to change what we’ve made. Let’s focus.”
We decide to open with the red velvet, move to the butter cake with liquid dark chocolate and end with the glitter ravens for an impressive visual finish. No one else in the room is daring to show a hint of their work until the last minute. Who knew cupcakes could be so cutthroat?
After what feels like half of my life, but in reality is about eight minutes, the Coopertown committee makes their way in, taking seats at the head of the conference table.
“Good morning, everyone!” Mr. Peterson says jovially. This man really does get jazzed about cupcakes. “We are very excited to see what you’ve all brought for us today, so let’s go ahead and get started.”
He introduces the three other members of the committee, and I’m sure I should be listening, but I’m not. I’m watching each person, checking to see how they react to what’s happening in the room around them. The woman in her forties on the far left seems to be very serious, or maybe just not a morning person. Possibly she doesn’t give two fucks about cupcakes, and this just happens to be a part of her job she doesn’t care about. I’m guessing the whole audition is something born out of Peterson’s enthusiasm more than an actual concessionary need.
Next to her is Mr. Peterson, who we know is all about the cuppies.
Then there’s a man I’m guessing to be in his fifties who looks friendly enough and seems to genuinely want to greet all of us.
The final member is another woman, who appears to be more interested in her coffee than anything happening in the room, until she looks up and spots me and Shannon. Her java focus shifts into what I’m reading as a snarky smirk, and my stomach clenches.
“Shannon,” I whisper out of the corner of my mouth. “Why is that lady giving us the eye daggers of death?”
Shannon pretends to be studying the papers in front of her and replies so quietly I almost can’t hear her. “I have no idea, but she doesn’t look happy to see us at all. Do we know her?”
“I don’t think so?” I say uncertainly, just as Mr. Peterson launches into a very enthusiastic description of the audition process. Tuning him out, I try to nonchalantly place the dagger woman who is still very much hate-staring at us.
She’s a well-put-together woman and certainly has a higher level of dignity about her than I do. I’d love to blame this on my minivan makeover, but my guess is this gal hasn’t ever found fudge in her hair at midnight, a full six hours after she got off work.
Her blazer looks perfectly pressed and tailored, and just as she taps the screen of her phone with a perfectly polished finger, it hits me. The Burberry phone case.
“Oh my god,” I quietly yelp to Shannon as Mr. Peterson carries on with his introduction. “It’s the horrid sprinkle lady, Shannon. The chick who counted sprinkles at her son’s birthday party. The one I got sassy with.”
Shannon’s eyes uncomfortably bulge as the memory hits her. “You’ve got to be fucking joking.”
Our terror must be readily apparent, because Sprinkle Lady raises an eyebrow and sits back in her seat, looking satisfied. A tiny whimper escapes Shannon as she fidgets with the folder on the table.
“This is fine,” I mutter. “This is still super fine.”
“Oh, shut up,” she hisses. “I’m going to have a stroke.”
Before my partner can spontaneously combust, Mr. Peterson goes around the table and calls each group up to present one at a time. I can’t tell if our placement is good or bad. If he keeps going in order, we will be next to last, right before The Cakery.
I recognize the first shop from the wedding cake circuit. Jan’s. They tend to do a lot with edible flowers. Their cakes are simple, possibly too simple. Though they run a shop out of a remodeled garage attached to Jan’s house, so their cost of production is far lower than the rest of ours, I assume.
Odessa goes next. Odessa is actually a great shop located on the far side of town. They were featured on the Food Network for one of those architectural cake-decorating shows a few years back. Visually, their items are always impressive, but their flavors and textures aren’t anywhere near as good. The three cupcakes they present look amazing, but when the committee members bite into them, no one seems ready to fall off their seats from flavor explosions, so I’m crossing my fingers. I’m also sending violent thought-vibes to the blonde one for her shoddy spy work.
&nb
sp; Tarts is a fine shop that I think would have more going for it were it not located next to a Laundromat. Their cakes look nice enough, and their flavors sound good, but when they walk past us, I get a strong whiff of dryer sheets, and I can’t help but wonder if that saturates the cakes, as well.
Finally it’s our turn.
Shannon and I walk up together, smiling even at Sprinkles Lady, who is giving us the sneer to end all sneers, and we present plates with three cakes on them to each committee member. Shannon launches into the business side of things, doing what she does best. She’s performing very well, but her nerves are visible to me. Maybe it’s just because I know her so well. I’m hoping no one else is picking up on the gentle shaking of her hands.
When it’s time to present the cakes, she turns to me, and I take over. I’m calm, I’m collected, I’m on point.
I’ve studied these cakes inside and out, I’ve put everything I have into them, and I sell the hell out of our products. I watch the faces of all the committee members as they taste, and even Sprinkles Lady on the end seems to loosen up when she gets to the liquid dark chocolate. So far, just visually, our cakes are the clear front-runners. Odessa is close, but ours are even more impressive in a boardroom than they were in our kitchen.
I say that in a completely unbiased way, of course.
Shannon looks ten pounds lighter as we retake our seats. Just as my ass hits the leather, I hear a light scoffing sound. I look up and see one of the guys from The Cakery smirking at me as he unboxes their cupcakes.
“Holy shit,” Shannon breathes in my ear.
I’m not proud of the expression on my face. I’m really not. But I can’t help it. One of their cupcakes is topped with fresh strawberries that have been brûléed. Which looks outlandishly impressive, and will likely taste even more so, but is completely absurd for a wintertime cupcake. Strawberries will be out of season, and even worse, who the hell is going to brûlée strawberries for over one thousand cupcakes per game?
One of their other cupcakes is even worse. I know Shannon sees it, because she makes a quiet choking sound and her hand jumps out into a death grip on my knee.