The Icing on the Cake (Otter Bluff)

by Linda Seed

  “Where?”

  “To see my mother.” He was looking at the ceiling instead of at her, because he didn’t want to be lured into staying here with her forever, until the polar ice caps melted and the sun burned itself out, until mankind’s decline and the rise of something newer and possibly better. It was tempting to ride out eternity right here in this bed.

  Cassie rolled onto her side to face him. “Okay.”

  “It’s just … I didn’t like the way she looked when I saw her last. She wasn’t herself.”

  “Yeah. I don’t know her very well, but it seemed that way to me, too. Something was going on.”

  “Something having to do with that Lorenzo asshole.”

  “Are you sure that’s it?” Cassie laid her hand on his chest in a way he found immensely soothing.

  “No, I’m not sure. But it seems likely, doesn’t it?”

  “Maybe it’s got something to do with her work. Maybe her painting isn’t going well.”

  “Yeah, maybe.” But he doubted it was that simple. Lisa Barlow faced the world with a level of bluster and ego that might seem absurd to someone who didn’t know her. It might seem, to an outsider, like an affectation. But Brian knew it was just her. It was how she was, how she lived. To see her looking older and somehow deflated had scared him.

  “Do you think she’s in some kind of trouble?” Cassie asked.

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. But I think I have to find out what’s going on.”

  Cassie had mixed feelings about Brian’s announcement that he was going to Los Angeles to see his mother.

  On one hand, she did agree that something seemed off with Lisa. And she wholeheartedly supported a son doing what he needed to do to take care of his mother.

  On the other, some selfish part of her worried about what would happen if he went down there and spent time alone with Lisa. Brian’s mother had made it clear that she’d only approved of his relationship with Cassie if it meant Lisa could use Cassie to her advantage. Now that she couldn’t do that, she had no reason to support the relationship at all.

  What would she say to him about Cassie while he was there? What further manipulations might she try now that her first gambit had failed?

  Privately, Cassie was terrified that Lisa might come up with some winning combination of argument, emotion, and scheming that would convince Brian to end the relationship.

  All because Lisa thought Cassie wasn’t good enough.

  And she wasn’t entirely wrong, was she? After all, Brian had built a successful business out of nothing, and what had Cassie done? She’d dreamed, that was all. Until now, all she’d done was hope and plan. Yes, she was taking action on it, finally, but it had taken her this long. She really was earning minimum wage and living in her parents’ backyard, just as Lisa had said.

  For God’s sake, Brian was an entrepreneur who earned enough that he’d easily and casually offered to invest in Cassie’s business. What made her think she was his equal?

  Of course, she couldn’t say anything to him about her worries. She didn’t want to be that woman who was so insecure she thought she needed to compete with a man’s mother for his love.

  She had to keep her insecurities to herself. She’d air them to Lacy, no doubt, and she’d worry herself sick about it while he was gone. But she couldn’t utter a word of it to Brian.

  “When are you planning to go?” She kept her tone neutral, even supportive.

  “Next week, probably. If Thor’s sitter can take him.”

  “I can do it.”

  “Really?” He raised up a little to look at her.

  “Sure. He and I already know each other. It’ll be fine.”

  “That’s great. Thank you. So, next week, then.”

  “Okay.” She put her head on his chest and listened to his heartbeat, trying not to play out worst-case scenarios in her head.

  Chapter 32

  Brian headed out the following week after the last work on his house was finished and he’d wrapped up his latest YouTube video—this one a man-on-the-street taste test of breakfast cereal with various non-milk liquids, including orange juice, Mountain Dew, lemonade, sports drinks, and Red Bull.

  He’d offered to have Cassie stay at his house with Thor while he was gone, reasoning that it would make things easier if Thor could have his own familiar space.

  But Cassie opted to take the dog back to her place. Yes, it was cramped, but she had a lot to do in Cambria, so being there would make things easier.

  She’d gotten the funding for the bakery—she’d gotten the funding!—and now she was ready to begin work in earnest.

  The morning Brian left, she took Thor for a long walk and let him run around at the dog park. Then she put him in the trailer with his dog bed, a chew toy, some kibble, and a fresh bowl of water, and went to work at Central Coast Escapes.

  Elliot didn’t take it well when Cassie gave him her two-week notice.

  “Well, Cassie, this really puts me in a bind,” he fussed, his eyebrows drawn together in consternation.

  “I’m sorry, Elliot, but this is good news for me. I’m ready to move on. Be happy for me.”

  “I suppose.” He sat at his desk in the office. He picked up a pencil, fidgeted with it between his fingers, and put it down again. “But how am I supposed to find someone else on such short notice?”

  “It’s not short notice. It’s the standard two weeks.”

  “Yes, but I don’t just have to find someone in that time. I have to train them, and—”

  “You’ll manage, Elliot.”

  He never did congratulate her. Instead, he assigned her a crushing list of to-dos on an array of houses—so many things that she suspected he’d invented some of them just to punish her.

  She didn’t mind, though—at least, not much. As she changed light bulbs, applied caulking, cleaned under refrigerators—a task she’d never been asked to do before—and repainted things that didn’t need repainting, she thought happily about her business.

  On her lunch break, she called the leasing agent about the Moonstone Mocha property.

  “Nobody else has asked about it, have they?” she asked the agent, fretting about whether she might be too late.

  “A few people have inquired, but not seriously. I hear you’ve got the Delaneys backing you.”

  “You heard that?” Cassie puzzled over how that might be, though she knew Cambria was a small town with the corresponding small-town gossip.

  “I did. So, are you ready to sign the lease?”

  She signed late that afternoon after she got off work, exhausted and dirty from all Elliot had put her through.

  She didn’t even feel the fatigue, though, as she met in the Realtor’s office to sign the paperwork.

  “Oh, my God. I’m so excited. I love this property. I can’t wait to get started.” Cassie was barely able to contain her glee.

  “We’d normally put you through a lengthy application process, a credit check, references and all that, but with the Delaneys on board …”

  Clearly, going to Gen and Ryan had been the right thing.

  At home that night, after she’d walked Thor, Cassie called Brian on his cell phone to share the news with him.

  “I signed. I have the Moonstone Mocha property. I guess I can stop thinking of it that way. It’s Cassie’s Cakery now. Can you believe it?”

  “I can. I really can. Congratulations, Cass. That’s awesome. I just wish I could be there to celebrate with you.”

  “I wish you could, too. How are things with your mom?”

  He was silent for a long beat, and that told her more than anything he could have said.

  Brian told himself to keep things positive for Cassie, since he didn’t want to ruin her triumphant moment.

  “Things are okay.” Okay was the best thing he could say at the moment without lying. And, by some standards, things were, in fact, okay. Nobody was bleeding. Nobody was on fire.

  But Lisa was definitely not okay by mo
st people’s interpretation of the word.

  He chatted with Cassie a while longer about her plans, then he told her he loved her and hung up.

  Then he went back to the shit show that was his mother’s life.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked Lisa again when he’d tucked his phone back into his pocket and had gone back into the sitting area of her loft, where she was slumped on the sofa looking at a blank brick wall.

  “Tell you? What was I supposed to tell you? That I lost the Art Basel show to some pretentious fake and Lorenzo left me the moment I wasn’t the big, happening thing anymore?”

  “Well … yes.” He sat down next to her, peering at her with concern. She looked tired and sad. And too thin, as though she hadn’t been eating. He was pretty sure she wasn’t sleeping, either, based on the dark circles under her eyes.

  “You know, Mom, that Lorenzo guy … you’re probably better off. I don’t think—”

  “Oh, for God’s sake.” Lisa rubbed her eyes with her fingertips and leaned forward over her knees as though she might retch. He was grateful when she didn’t. “I’m not better off in any conceivable way. Am I better off now that I’m a nobody? Am I, Brian? Am I better off now that Lorenzo … now that’s he’s …” She let out a heaving sob, which alarmed Brian. He’d assumed that Lorenzo was just someone Lisa was using for pleasure, which was worrisome enough. But now, he wondered if maybe she’d really felt something for him.

  “He just left!” Lisa threw her hands into the air as tears streamed down her face. “I got the call that Ernest Hedley was given the show instead of me the day before you and Cassie visited. Then, as soon as you were gone, Lorenzo said some happy shit about how I was going to be okay, how I was going to bounce back, and then he started packing.”

  “I knew he was an asshole,” Brian said. Right now, if he could have found the asshole in question, he’d have pummeled him into a pile of quivering, bleeding pulp. Too bad that was unlikely.

  “He didn’t even care! There I was, at the lowest point in my life, and he didn’t even pretend that he’d been with me for anything other than my connections, my fame. Good God, how could I have been that stupid?”

  Brian might have thought that the lowest time in Lisa’s life was the day she’d decided to leave him and his father, but apparently not.

  “But … how did you lose the Art Basel show? I thought that was a done deal.”

  Lisa waved a hand in dismissal. “Oh, grow up, Brian. This kind of thing happens all the time. Ernest Hedley is in the news right now after that ridiculous stunt in Venice. Now, they think he’ll pull in more collectors, more wealthy patrons, than I would. It’s the way of the world, I suppose.”

  Brian had no idea what the ridiculous stunt in Venice had been, and he thought it imprudent to ask—especially because he didn’t care.

  “Lorenzo didn’t want to let us see you. He didn’t want to let us talk to you.”

  “Well, that was my doing.” Lisa sighed. “I didn’t want you to see me in that state. I was devastated. I asked him to hold you off because I couldn’t face you. I couldn’t face anyone. He knew that! He knew I needed him, but apparently, he didn’t care.”

  “Mom? What did he say when he left?”

  “He said, ‘Ciao, darling.’ For fuck’s sake, he was born in Iowa.”

  Lisa dissolved into tears, her head buried in the crook of her arm. Brian had no idea what to say to her, what to do to make any of this better.

  “Did you … Mom? Did you really care about him?”

  “Of course I did!” Lisa plucked some tissues out of a box on the table next to her and blew her nose, then wiped her eyes. “What did you think, that I was with him because he looked good on my arm?”

  “Well …” It was exactly what he’d thought, but again, not prudent to say it out loud.

  “I’m not nearly as shallow as you think, it seems.” She got up, began to walk to her bedroom, then paused, bracing herself on the edge of the sofa, one hand pressed to her forehead.

  “Are you all right?”

  She looked like she might faint, but Brian supposed that might be because she hadn’t eaten anything in a while.

  “You didn’t eat lunch,” he said. “Can I make you something?”

  “I’m a little dizzy, that’s all. I’m just … my head. I have a splitting headache. And I couldn’t possibly eat anything.”

  “I’ll bring you some Tylenol. And let me get you some tea, at least.”

  “Fine. Thank you, dear.”

  He went to get the medication and the tea, worrying that there was more going on here than heartbreak over Lorenzo.

  Cassie got the keys to the Moonstone Mocha building—now Cassie’s Cakery—and spent all of her time when she wasn’t at Central Coast Escapes working on the place and making her plan for her grand opening.

  For the most part, the building had everything she needed. But she was going to have to make a few changes. She needed to have a refrigerated display case built for her baked goods, for one thing. And she also had to do something about the Moonstone Mocha sign out front.

  She called around to find a contractor to build the case, and she was near despair when she had a hard time getting any of them to call her back. It was building season, apparently, and demand was high. When she did get through to someone, she was told that he had a three-month waiting list.

  She couldn’t wait that long.

  She called Ryan Delaney, since that had worked so well before.

  “Ryan? I’m having a hard time getting a contractor, and I wondered …”

  “My brother-in-law’s a contractor,” Ryan said. “Let me call him.”

  The same day, Jake Travis, who was married to Ryan’s sister, Breanna, called her and said he could come out to look at the space and give her an estimate that afternoon.

  “Really? That soon?”

  “I had to push some things, but you know how family is. If I don’t do this, I’m never gonna hear the end of it,” he said.

  With that problem out of the way, she Googled sign makers to find out what it would cost to have a Cassie’s Cakery sign made and put up on her building.

  The price for what she had in mind made her gasp.

  Still, she needed that visibility so drivers and pedestrians on Main Street would see her business at a glance. She compared options and designs, then chose a sign maker on the Central Coast and called to inquire about seeing samples and placing an order.

  The wait for the completed sign was going to be longer than she wanted, so she looked into window painters as a stopgap. Maybe someone could paint the name of the bakery in decorative script on her front window while she was waiting for her permanent sign to be completed.

  In the meantime, the place needed cleaning. After her time at Central Coast Escapes, that was hardly a new job for her.

  She scoured the floors, the windows, the tiny bathroom, and every surface of the kitchen. She put her head inside the oven, rubber gloves on her hands and a scrubber clutched in her fingers, going over every inch until the surfaces gleamed. She polished stainless steel, sanitized countertops, wiped down the shelves in the storage spaces, and gave attention to the walk-in refrigerator.

  She was going to need furniture, of course, so she looked online at cafe tables and chairs, light fixtures, and a desk and chair for the little room off the kitchen that would be her office.

  Her office. At her business.

  Lacy came over to see the place a couple of days later while Jake was measuring and taking notes.

  “I was in this place a few times when it was Moonstone Mocha,” Lacy said, looking over the front room, then the kitchen. “It’s a great space. I love the fireplace.”

  “Me too. And the garden is so pretty. Which reminds me, I’ll need a gardener, because I won’t have time to keep up with that myself once things get going. And I have to buy outdoor furniture! Jeez. There’s so much to think about.”

  “You’ll do it,” Lacy said. �
��You’ve come this far, you can do the rest.”

  “I can. I really can.”

  She and Lacy walked through the building, their shoes making the aged wooden floors squeak as they moved.

  “I don’t suppose you’d consider working here,” Cassie said. She’d been thinking it for a while, but she’d hesitated to bring it up. Now seemed like as good a time as any. “I’ll need a barista for the coffee bar, and you’ve got experience. Plus, it would be so much fun.”

  “Oh. Wow. Trevor’s still little, and the other kids …”

  “I know. I know. There are a thousand reasons you shouldn’t. But still, will you consider it?”

  Lacy grinned. “It really would be fun.”

  Cassie was so happy and so busy that she almost didn’t have time to think about Brian.

  Almost.

  “You miss him, too, don’t you?” She rubbed Thor’s fur that night in her trailer as they both lay on her bed, her exhausted from a day managing both her jobs, him tired out after a long run at the dog park.

  “Let’s call him. What do you think? Should we call him?” Cassie had lapsed into the kind of sing-song talk one used with small children.

  When she found herself actually waiting for Thor’s answer, she told herself to pull it together, and she called.

  “When are you coming home?” She hadn’t meant to lead with that, as it seemed both pushy and needy, but that’s what had come out. She covered it up by pretending it was about Thor. “Your dog misses you. I think he’s sad.” Cassie was the one who was sad about Brian’s absence, but it seemed too girly to say so.

  “I’m not sure.”

  She didn’t like that answer—or the grim tone of his voice.

  “Why? What’s going on?”

  She listened while he told her about Lisa’s despair, her dizziness, her headaches. Lisa had also been complaining of stomach pain, and he was starting to worry that something was really wrong with her. “I can’t leave until I know she’s okay.”