The Icing on the Cake (Otter Bluff)

by Linda Seed

  The song that was playing was halfway between fast and slow—a person could reasonably go either way on the dance style. Which presented a problem. Should he hold her in his arms or assume they would be freestyling separately the way people did to a more upbeat tempo?

  He wanted to hold her in his arms, of course, but he didn’t want to assume.…

  Cassie put her arms around his neck and stepped in close, and his hands went to her waist without consulting him about it. The subtle scent of her perfume—something floral and spicy—drifted to him, making it hard to think.

  But did he really need to think right now?

  It wasn’t as though Cassie had planned to snuggle in close to Brian while they danced. They barely knew each other, and snuggling sent a message. At this point, she wasn’t sure what message she wanted to send, if any, or how she wanted to send it. FedEx? Pony Express? Carrier pigeon?

  The thing was, she felt so happy. And her happiness relaxed her, and relaxation naturally segued into snuggling.

  So, that was how she ended up with her arms around his neck and her head resting on his shoulder as she gently swayed to wedding music.

  And now that she was here, she felt very little desire to leave.

  He looked good, he smelled good, he’d been nice to her about the cake, and—oh—the hands he’d had on her waist were shifting to her back as he brought her in closer.

  She closed her eyes and let out a sigh.

  The sigh—that was what did it. That was the moment when Brian went from interested and intrigued to captivated. That wasn’t a word he would normally use, as it sounded like something from a 1940s movie. But who the hell was he kidding?

  He was captivated.

  The sigh ran straight through him like a gentle hum of electricity. And, of course, it made him wonder what kinds of sounds she might make when she was carried away by sexual pleasure.

  Not that he’d be lucky enough to experience that firsthand.

  His own eyes were slipping closed and he was lost in the moment, feeling her body tucked close against his, enjoying the rise and lull of the music, when somewhere nearby, a female teen voice said, “Ohmygod. Is that the guy from Ike and Brian?”

  He was grateful for his viewers, he really was. But right now, the timing kind of sucked.

  He pulled away from Cassie, apologized to her, and went for a round of autographs and selfies.

  Chapter 10

  “And then, before I even knew what was happening, he was off doing selfies with Deandra’s fifteen-year-old niece. Which I get. I mean, he didn’t get his show to where it is by ignoring the listeners. But damn it, I was enjoying that dance!”

  Cassie was at home in her trailer, lying on her back on the bed. She was wearing her bathrobe, her dress hung up in her tiny closet, her shoes discarded on the floor. Lacy had called to find out how it went, and Cassie was giving her sister the recap.

  “Well … what about after that, though? Did you dance again?”

  Cassie blew out a puff of air. “After that, the spell was broken. You know? We had a moment, then the moment was gone.”

  “Oh.” Lacy sounded disappointed. “How was the cake, though? Did you get to try a piece?”

  That subject, at least, helped Cassie to perk up. “The cake was perfect. Sublime. A miraculous fantasy of sugar and flour.”

  “That good, huh?”

  “Brian had two pieces, and I think he’d have had a third if he weren’t trying to be polite.”

  “What about at the end of the night?” Lacy asked.

  “Was the cake still good at the end of the night? Well, most of it was gone, so …”

  “No, you jerk. I meant, what happened between you and Brian at the end of the night? Did he kiss you? Did you kiss him? Was there any talk of a second date?”

  “I don’t even know if this qualified as a first date,” Cassie said. “And, no, he didn’t kiss me. And I didn’t kiss him.”

  “But you wanted to,” Lacy said, for clarification.

  “God, yes. I wanted to. But maybe it’s better that we didn’t.”

  “But why?” Lacy said it in a way that indicated she disagreed—strongly.

  “Because with the wedding, and the cake, and the music, and the flowers … I wasn’t in my right mind.”

  “Huh.” Lacy was quiet for a moment, considering it. “What if he were to call you when you are in your right mind? Say, tomorrow or the next day? Would you go out with him again?”

  “Oh … that’s probably not going to happen.”

  Brian had never much enjoyed dating. It wasn’t the dating itself that disagreed with him—it was more the inevitable self-doubt the next day.

  Right now, the self-doubt was kicking his ass.

  Everything had been going so well until the fan had recognized him. Then … he’d lost his mojo. He’d wanted to get it back, but it seemed like the magic spell that had enveloped him and Cassie during their dance had broken.

  Shit.

  They’d danced again, but they’d been faster dances, displaying his awkward lack of rhythm. They’d talked, but people kept interrupting them, either to compliment Cassie’s cake or to find out more about Brian, given what had happened with his teenage viewer.

  But none of that was the problem, really.

  The problem was that Cassie was way out of his league.

  He hadn’t thought so before, when she’d been frantically rushing around the kitchen at Otter Bluff trying to avert a cake disaster. At the time, he’d thought they were roughly matched in their potential appeal to the opposite sex.

  But then she’d gotten dressed up for the wedding, and that premise had been shot to hell.

  She wasn’t cute the way he’d thought she was. She was gorgeous. And she had a kind of grace, a kind of inner light, that Brian couldn’t hope to match, let alone deserve.

  She looked too good. She had too much beauty, too much … everything. Her overall magnificence had thrown his confidence.

  And that’s why he hadn’t tried to kiss her at the end of the night, which, in retrospect, he probably should have done.

  “Dude. I was kidding myself,” he said to Ike on the phone the next day, while he was rooting around in the refrigerator for a Mountain Dew. It was early still—not yet ten a.m.—and he had the living room window blinds raised so he could take in the ocean view. Waves crashed against the bluffs, throwing a spray into the air, and off in the distance, a boat passed by near the horizon. Thor, anticipating that Brian might be getting something to eat, sat at his feet and whined softly.

  “What do you mean, you were kidding yourself?” Ike asked.

  “She’s too hot. The Principle of Equivalent Hotness says it would never work.” Brian had formulated the Principle of Equivalent Hotness—which said a relationship worked best if both parties had generally the same physical appeal—back in college, and he hadn’t strayed from his rock-solid belief in its soundness.

  “I’ve told you before, that theory is bullshit. Mainly because you can’t quantify hotness. It’s all based on the perceptions of the parties involved, and you can’t know another person’s perception.” Ike, whose superior IQ often interfered with discussions of this sort, clearly didn’t agree with Brian’s own view that there were certain aspects of hotness that weren’t relative. They were laws of nature.

  Brian launched into the laws of nature argument—which Ike had heard before—when his friend stopped him.

  “So, you’re making up a crap argument to justify not kissing her. Which is fine, I guess, if you want to spend the rest of your life growing old with your dog, watching Netflix and eating frozen pizza.”

  “You know … that doesn’t sound so bad,” Brian said.

  Ike laughed as though Brian had been kidding (he wasn’t). “There’s only one thing to do now.”

  “Get another dog so at least Thor won’t be as pathetically lonely as I am?” Brian said.

  “No. Ask her out on another date, then man up and kiss
her at the end of it.”

  It was a thought. He just wasn’t sure he was ready for such a drastic step.

  The solution to Brian’s problem came the next day, when Cassie called him.

  “I have good news, and I have a problem,” she said.

  The good news, it turned out, was that she already had another gig booked. One of the guests at the wedding had her own wedding coming up, and her baker had flaked at the last minute. She was so impressed with Deandra’s cake that she wanted Cassie to do hers.

  “And she’s going to pay me extra for the rush job,” Cassie said, excitement in her voice.

  “Well, that’s great.” Brian was genuinely pleased for her. “But what’s the problem?”

  “The problem is that I still don’t have a decent kitchen.”

  To Brian, that didn’t sound like a problem at all.

  It sounded like a solution.

  “When do you want to come over?” he said.

  The wedding wasn’t for a couple of weeks yet, but Cassie wanted to do a trial run of a design before she committed to it. The idea was to do a much smaller and simpler version of the cake she had in mind just to see if it was viable. Then, if it worked, she could show it to the bride-to-be to get her final approval before Cassie started work on the real thing.

  Of course, she still had her day job to think about. She had two houses to clean in the morning, then she had to cover the office for a few hours in the afternoon. By the time she got to Brian’s house with two paper bags full of cake ingredients, it was after four p.m. She greeted Thor with a tummy rub and a vigorous scratch behind his ears, then got down to business.

  “So, here’s what I’m going to do.” She took two folded pieces of paper out of her purse and smoothed them out on the countertop to show Brian. “This is a sketch of my concept for the final cake. And this one is the miniature sample cake I want to start today.” She pointed with one finger, which, he noted, had a nail painted the color of Bazooka bubble gum.

  “Cool.” He bobbed his head a few times. “So, you got this job from the last one?”

  “Yes!” Cassie bounced on her toes in excitement. “One of the guests at Deandra’s wedding loved the cake, and her wedding is in two weeks, and her baker had a family emergency and had to cancel, so she called me.”

  Brian nodded sagely. “What other marketing have you done?”

  “None. With the last cake, I was just trying to get a portfolio started. I don’t even have a kitchen.”

  Brian had a degree in marketing, and that had always been his specialty on the Ike and Brian show—it had been the reason they’d done as well as they had. If anyone asked, he’d have said it was his chemistry with Ike, or the upbeat mood of the thing in uncertain times, or maybe Ike’s comic timing. But really, it all came down to marketing. Almost everything in business did.

  Unbidden, ideas about how to market Cassie’s business began moving around in his brain. Most of those involved social media—his particular strong point.

  “You’re on Instagram, of course,” he said.

  She blinked a few times. “Why? Should I be?”

  “God, yes. And how does your website look?”

  Her shoulders fell. “I guess I need one of those, too.”

  He wanted to roll his eyes and ask her how it was that she’d missed the advent of technology, ask her if she still used a rotary phone. But he didn’t want to make her feel bad, so he downplayed his horror.

  “You know what? I can help you with those things. I mean … if you want.”

  “Really? That would be great. That would be really great. But …”

  He raised his eyebrows, waiting.

  “Marketing isn’t even my biggest problem. I’m not licensed. This whole operation is illegal. Which is okay, I guess, as long as I stay under the radar. Do cakes for friends of friends. But as soon as I start really getting my name out there …”

  She left the rest of the thought unspoken, but Brian got it: she’d be screwed.

  “Tell me more about what you need,” he said.

  As Cassie told Brian everything she needed—starting with a commercial kitchen space that could pass a health department inspection—she began to see the impossibility of it all. And that made her earlier excitement begin to deflate like a leaky pool toy.

  “I make barely more than minimum wage.” She shook her head. “I mean, that’s okay. I get by because I don’t have to pay rent on the Airstream. But I don’t make enough money that I can save any. Where am I going to get enough to rent a space and renovate it the way I’d need to?” She sank down onto a barstool, being careful not to step on Thor, who’d barely left her side. “I don’t know why I’m kidding myself. This is never going to happen.”

  “Hmm.”

  “… And I’m boring you. You’re bored. I’ll just get to work and let you get back to … whatever it was you were doing.”

  “I’m not bored.” A vertical line appeared between Brian’s eyebrows. “I’m thinking.”

  “About what?”

  “About how you can get your kitchen space.”

  “You might as well think about how I can get to Mars. Same likelihood.” She sighed. “Okay. I’d better get this batter started.”

  Chapter 11

  The next day, Brian went down to San Luis Obispo to check on his house. He didn’t know anything about construction, so he probably wouldn’t even know what he was looking at once he got there. But he felt like he should be there anyway. It seemed right—manly, even—to peer at exposed studs while nodding thoughtfully as the contractor explained things to him.

  So he walked Thor, fed him, then left the dog at Otter Bluff while he made the forty-minute drive south.

  When he arrived, there were no studs to peer at. No contractor, either. His house stood alone and forlorn, mold and termites violating it even as he stood on the sidewalk.

  He went up the front walk, let himself in, and pulled out his phone to call the contractor.

  “Hi, Ray.” He tucked his free hand into an armpit as he talked. “I’m here at the house, and there’s nobody here. I thought work was supposed to start today.”

  Ray, whose name he’d gotten from a neighbor who’d had work done, explained about flexible schedules and an emergency roofing job, and some guy across town who’d had a kitchen fire.

  “Well, but … I can’t use my house. I would think that’s an emergency, too.”

  “You can stay there if you want to—there’s nothing stopping you. Unless you’ve got a problem with allergies.”

  He did, in fact, have a problem with allergies. Throughout elementary school, Brian had been that kid with an EpiPen in his backpack, a list of food intolerances, and a constant stuffy nose during hay fever season. He’d thought he’d had a persistent low-grade cold for the past month—symptoms that had promptly cleared up as soon as he’d vacated his house for Otter Bluff.

  He rubbed his forehead. “Look. Can you just … maybe get to it as soon as you can?”

  “You bet,” Ray said. “But it all depends on the availability of my subcontractors, so …”

  A world of potential inconvenience and expense lay in that one little so.

  Brian couldn’t stop his YouTube schedule just because he’d been put out of his house. He sat at the patio table at Otter Bluff, brainstorming ideas with a notebook and pen in his hands and Thor stretched out on the patio at his side.

  Beyond him, so close that he could feel the spray, the ocean pounded against the bluffs below the house.

  The whole thing had been a lot easier when he’d done the show with Ike.

  The height of the Ike and Brian show hadn’t been that long ago. In fact, the income from those episodes was still coming in, sustaining them both. They’d been riding high, their subscriber numbers and views at an astounding peak, when Ike had decided to leave the show.

  Ike hadn’t liked acting like a doofus on camera, it turned out, and had opted for law school instead. That was fine.
Brian had been pissed and hurt at first, but he’d gotten over it. Ike was his best friend, and he always would be. Brian wanted him to be happy.

  But Ike’s departure had hurt Brian’s viewer numbers. He still had enough to make a comfortable living, but he wanted to win those fans back—he just hadn’t figured out how to do it.

  It was the chemistry. He and Ike had chemistry that came from a lifetime of being as close as brothers. Without him, Brian’s solo videos had an entirely different dynamic. Maybe the key wasn’t to win back the old viewers. Maybe the key was to attract new ones.

  He jotted a few ideas into his notebook, but nothing jumped out at him. Brian had a kind of sixth sense that told him when a video was going to take off—when it was going to go viral—and his gut told him nothing here had that kind of potential.

  Shit.

  He took off his glasses and rubbed at his forehead, willing the inspiration to come.

  He was still thinking when his cell phone rang, and his avatar for his mother—an image of Godzilla devouring Tokyo—showed on his screen.

  As usual when she called, Brian had a momentary fight-or-flight response as he tried to decide whether to pick up or let it go to voice mail.

  If he ignored the call, he would just have to call her back later, creating the kind of anticipation one usually felt before a colonoscopy or a root canal.

  He picked up the call.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  “Brian, I expected to hear from you by now. My goodness, I thought that since you’re staying in my house, you would at least call me more often. I thought my generosity would have bought at least that.”

  He closed his eyes, feeling the headache beginning to stir behind his eyebrows.

  “Well, we’re talking now. How are you?”