Futures and Frosting

by Tara Sivec

  And besides, men run for the hills as soon as you get the tiniest inkling you might want to someday be married to them. If you so much as glance in the general direction of a bridal magazine in the store, they start hyperventilating and imagining balls and chains permanently secured to their legs for all of eternity. Really, I'm doing this for Carter. I'm saving him from a coronary or some other life threatening illness that comes from thinking about marriage. I think I read somewhere that just saying the word marriage makes a man’s balls shrink. It must have been Google.

  Before I know what was happening, both Jenny and Liz are dragging me onto the dance floor amid hordes of women who are foaming at the mouth and practically punting away young children who ran from their parents to join in on the game of catch.

  Once I'm firmly ensconced by giddy, annoying females on all sides, Liz turns and flees the scene.

  “Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh! I hope I catch the flowers! What if I catch the flowers? Could you imagine?! We should move closer to the front. Or maybe go to the back. Can Liz throw really far? I hope they don’t get stuck in one of the chandeliers.”

  I cross my arms in front of me in protest and roll my eyes as Jenny’s incessant chatter rings in my ears like an annoying cow bell.

  “These parents need to come out here and get their kids. What happens if one of them catches the bouquet? Will someone tell them to give it back? This is like, a really important thing. They’re not opposed to be out here.”

  I sighed and scan the crowd looking for Carter, hoping to get a smile of encouragement from him to brave this storm. He would feel my pain and know how miserable I am in this moment, surrounded by crazies.

  As my eyes move through the sea of people standing around watching, Liz is handed the microphone and with her back to the single women, she begins her countdown.

  “5, 4, 3, 2, 1!”

  Finally, my eyes lock on Carter standing not far from Liz. The corners of my mouth begin curling up when a sudden blur of activity around me causes my focus to wane. Heels are flying, taffeta is swirling, and women are going down like dominoes. I unfold my arms to move away from the chaos when the bouquet Liz throws drops down into my hands like a gift from the heavens.

  All movement on the floor around me stops and the pile of wrestling women stare up at me with reverence like I hold the Holy Grail in my palms. I have the strongest urge to spike it to the ground like a football and get as far away from it as possible.

  I don’t know what scared me more. The fact that the impulse to get rid of the bouquet disappears as quickly as it comes and I find myself cradling the flowers like a baby out of fear that someone will try to take them from me, or the look of sheer horror on Carter’s face when my eyes find his again.

  14. Porn and Snozzberries

  My best friend has been gone on her honeymoon for a week and I feel lost. I need someone to talk to. I’m sure I could have called her if it was an emergency, but trying to explain to her that I think Carter thinks I want to get married and I think it’s got him freaked out while she’s lying on a beach in Maui would probably be wrong.

  “Hey, Liz! How’s the honeymoon? Oh that’s wonderful! Speaking of wonderful, I think Carter is afraid I want to get married, so I’ve been trying to let him know I don’t really want to get married when secretly it’s all I can think about but it scares the holy fucking hell out of me.”

  Yeah, that makes perfect sense.

  All I’ve been able to think about for the past few days is the look on Carter’s face when I catch the bouquet. He looks like he did the day he met Gavin and got kicked in the nuts. And who knows what the hell my problem is. Suddenly I'm crying during an episode of “A Wedding Story” on TLC and thinking the bride is totally justified in refinancing her house to pay for a third wedding dress with the Swarovski crystals on “Bridezillas”.

  I had woke up the other day at four in the morning because I didn’t want Carter to know I set the DVR so I could see if the girl from New Jersey on “My Fair Wedding” let her fiancé dress up like a Yeti and sing John Denver songs at the rehearsal dinner. Carter came home from work a few minutes early and I jumped up from the couch in shock and turned off the television as fast as I could.

  “Hey, what are you doing up?” Carter asked. He set his work bag down on the floor and walked over to the middle of the living room to pick up the blanket I dumped on the floor in my haste to shut off the TV.

  “Um…uh…nothing. I wasn’t watching anything,” I stammered, looking nervously back and forth between the TV and Carter.

  He raised an eyebrow at me and looked down at the remote in my hand where my finger was still poised above the power button.

  His eyes slowly moved back up to my face that was now covered in a thin sheen of sweat from my nerves going haywire. I could feel my cheeks heating up and knew he must be wondering why they were turning red if I had nothing to hide.

  He was going to know I recorded “Say Yes to the Dress: Atlanta”. I couldn’t just be happy with Kleinfeld’s. Oh no, I had to get greedy and see what people bought from Bridals by Lori.

  Carter turned to look at the TV again and then back to me, his eyes suddenly going wide.

  “Oh my gosh. Claire, were you watching-”

  “No!” I interrupted him. “I wasn’t watching anything.”

  I laughed nervously and looked down at the remote in my hand, chucking it onto the couch so fast you would have thought it burned me.

  “Holy hell…yes you were,” he said as he stared at me in awe.

  I had no idea what was going on but if he was this happy that he caught me watching the wedding channel then maybe we didn’t have as big a problem as I thought.

  “It’s okay. You don’t have to be embarrassed. It’s actually kind of hot.”

  I looked at Carter like he was insane. And maybe he was. Maybe working all these late nights finally got to him. While I stood there half awake in my yoga pants and tank top, hair all askew, face flushed and embarrassed, he stared me up and down like he wanted to devour me. I had started to ask him what he was talking about and why he was looking at me that way when it had suddenly occurred to me. Four in the morning and I had been sitting in the living room under a blanket all alone looking like I just had a very fulfilling romp in the hay…with myself.

  “OH MY GOD! You think I was watching-”

  “Honey, really, it’s fine! You don’t have to be freaked out. Everyone watches a little porn now and then. I just wish you would have waited for me,” he said with a leer.

  So there’s that. My boyfriend thinks I’m a closet porn watcher, that I sit alone in the dark while he’s at work every night watching Skinemax and diddling myself. There’s something wrong with me if I’d rather he think I had a porn addiction than a deep seeded need to find out if David Tutera could turn a camo, guns, and ATV wedding into a masterpiece.

  To try and deter him from my fake inclination toward porn benders, alone in the dark on the couch, and to try and erase the memory in my mind of the sheer look of terror on his face at Liz and Jim’s wedding when I had caught the bouquet, I’ve decided reverse psychology is the best route to go. It works well on kids. And men are pretty much giant babies most of the time anyway, so I figure I’ve got a fighting chance at getting things back to normal between us. Ever since the wedding he’s gone back to being on edge and jittery around me. I think he’s afraid he’s going to wake up one morning strapped to the bed in a tux with me standing over him in a wedding dress, waving a sledge hammer over my head Kathy Bates-style, threatening to smash in his kneecaps if he doesn’t marry me.

  He should be more concerned with my father doing that, frankly.

  I start off slow by telling him I absolutely don’t believe that whole tradition that whoever catches the bride’s bouquet is the next to marry. I believe I might have used the words hogwash and twaddle in that conversation to bring my point home. But Carter thinks I said twat and then it turns into an afternoon of him saying, �
�Twat did you say? I cunt hear you. Let’s see if I can finger it out,” while I try to show him just how unconcerned with this custom I am by throwing the bouquet away. The beautiful gerbera daisy, orchid, and lily nosegay that looks stunning in my hand.

  Shut up. “The Wedding Planner” had been on the other night and Jennifer Lopez taught me what a nosegay is. I had also learned that Alex, the hot doctor from “Grey’s Anatomy”, isn’t so hot when he’s playing a guy a few fries short a Happy Meal with a shitty Italian accent. And also, the guy from the Magic Bullet infomercial looks a lot like Nigel from “So You Think You Can Dance”. Also, late night television should be illegal in all fifty states and maybe I really would be better off watching “Sweet Home I’ll-a-Slam-Ya” or “Driving Into Miss Daisy”.

  “Claire, what the hell is your problem? You’ve been moping around all day,” Jenny says as she comes out of the office of the shop with some invoices for me to sign in her hand.

  I jump at the sound of her voice and realize I’ve been dipping the same pretzel in chocolate for the past twenty minutes.

  Liz might not be here, but at least I have someone to bounce my thoughts off of.

  “Carter thinks I have a porn addiction,” I blurt out.

  “Ooooooh me too!” she replies with glee.

  My mouth dropped opens and I stare at her in shock.

  “Oh no! I don’t mean I think you have a porn addiction. Well, not that I know of. I mean Drew thinks I have a porn addiction too. We’re like twinsies!”

  Yeah, I don’t think so.

  “I have a membership to a porn-of-the-month club. It’s kind of like a jelly-of-the-month club except you don’t get jelly. And I can’t tell my mom about it. The porn, not the jelly. She likes jelly so I could tell her about that. I just got ‘Weapons of Ass Destruction’ and ‘Forest Hump’. Sex is like your box on my cock-o-late,” she says in her best Forest Gump voice. “We should totally watch that one together!”

  Not gonna happen.

  “Awww, you miss Liz, don’t you? I know what will cheer you up. I’m going to call Drew and have him come up and help you frost all those cookies for the baby shower order tomorrow. He took the night off of work tonight, but we don’t have any plans. Did I tell you his mom’s been making these amazeball cookies for his sick uncle and the guy just raves about them and keeps asking for more? I’ll have Drew bring some up so you can try them. Maybe they’ll spark a little creative genius in you. You can put us to work, kick back, relax, and enjoy someone else’s cookies for once,” Jenny rambles as she pulls out her cell phone and starts dialing. “Don’t forget you have that interview with ‘The Best of Baking’ magazine so we can go over some things for that while we’re at it.”

  Even though I'm now privy to more of Jenny and Drew’s sex life than I ever wanted to be and the sound of her voice droning on is starting to give me a headache, I have to admit that hiring her to help out with all my back office stuff was a stroke of brilliance. She had secured me my own domain name instead of a website that included the words “freesite4everyone” in the address, and once I forbid Drew from sneaking in thumbnail pictures of his penis in the “about me” section, it actually looked very professional. Customers can place orders online and even print out coupons thanks to Jenny. She’s organized my schedule so I can work around Gavin’s three days of preschool a week and see Carter before he leaves for work every day, and she’s managed to get me an in-studio interview with the local news station and three write-ups in local baking magazines; the first of which is scheduled for tomorrow.

  In just a few days, my best friend will be home from her honeymoon, and I’ll be able to get her advice about Carter. I am so worried about saying or doing something to scare him away that I might have taken it to the extreme. When he had asked me this morning if I wanted more cream for my coffee I replied, “Speaking of cream. Why do women wear cream to their wedding? Weddings are stupid. Married people are stupid. I think I broke my thumb.”

  No, I don’t know why the fuck I told him I thought I broke my thumb. I had panicked. And now I’m pretty sure he thinks my maybe-broken-thumb is due to the late night pornography habit I just can’t quit and it’s either from A) pressing the rewind and or pause buttons too quickly or B) pressing MY buttons too quickly. Either option is not something I care for him to be wondering about me every time he looks in my general direction.

  I spend the rest of the afternoon trying to think of ways to convince Carter I'm not going to pressure him into marriage while at the same time making sure I don’t look like I need thirty days in a Betty Ford Triple X Clinic. I’ve been trying to come up with new ideas for things I can cover in chocolate for the shop. The chocolate covered potato chips and crushed pretzels mixed together had been a huge hit and are one of the main attractions lately. I want something fun and new to talk about in the magazine interview the next morning, so I put all thoughts of doom aside and concentrate on what I do best. For once, I'm not dreading a visit from Drew. With his appetite, I'm sure we could come up with something spectacular.

  ~

  “These snozzberries taste like SNOZZBERRIES!” I yell.

  In the far recesses of my mind, I realize I was licking a scratch-n-sniff chocolate-covered strawberry sticker that Jenny had affixed to my shirt, but I don’t care.

  It smells like it tasty smells. Like snozzberries in a mountain of sticker glue. Why don’t more people eat glue? It’s delicious. Snozzberries should be our national fruit.

  “I should cover these stickers in chocolate and sell them,” I mumble as I continue swiping my tongue along the bottom hem of my shirt that I hold up by my mouth.

  Drew laughs and I stop the manic sticker-licking to glance up at him. I blink really hard and try to get him to come into focus but it's not working. It's like I'm looking at him through a pair of binoculars backward. He's really small and really, really far away. I can feel my head swaying from side to side and I keep making my eyes open really wide in an effort to see more clearly. It's not working. Take your hand and make a fist then hold it up to one eye. Open your hand just enough to let some light in and that’s the view I have right now.

  Maybe that’s what the problem is. There’s someone walking around next to me holding their fists in front of my eyes.

  I start flailing my arms all around my head to smack the hidden fists away until I start running into things and knocking shit off of the counters. I’m seventy-four percent positive the noise I make while doing this scares those assholes with their sneaky fists away.

  “This chocolate is burning my hand! HOLY FUCK IT’S BURNING! WHY IS IT BURNING?!”

  If I squint I can kind of see that Drew is holding his hand out from his body and it was dripping with hot, melted chocolate.

  “Your hand looks delicious,” I tell him as I absently bring my shirt back up to my mouth and began chewing on it.

  “This was the best idea EVER,” Jenny states as she helps Drew hold his chocolate hand over the sink so it won’t drip on the floor. “Everyone will love chocolate-covered Drew. Make sure you tell them during the interview that this was my idea. I want street cred for it.”

  I feel my head bobbing up and down in agreement and watch the room go in and out of focus and wonder why the walls are moving closer to me all of a sudden. I look down and my feet aren’t moving. I look back up and scream because the wall is right against my nose.

  HOW THE FUCK DID THE WALL GET ON MY NOSE?!

  “Claire, stop sniffing the wall. It doesn’t have any flavor left,” Jenny tells me.

  Stupid wall. It runs out of flavor too fast.

  I step away from the wall and look up at the ceiling. There are marshmallows on my ceiling.

  Marshmallows is a funny word.

  “Mmmmmmaaaaaarrrrrssssshhhhhhmmmmaaaalllloooowwwwsssss. Who invented that word? It’s a great word. I wonder if they used to be called something else. Like shmashmoos. But people couldn’t say shmashmoos and babies were crying because they really wanted shmas
hmoos but couldn’t say the word and their mothers kept giving them cookies when all they really wanted were shmashmoos. Babies were crying, parents were crying, the streets were filled with people who just wanted shmashmoos. Total anarchy, dudes. I bet that was the real reason for World War II. It’s one big shmashmoo conspiracy the government doesn’t want us to know about.”

  “Claire, you are so smart,” Jenny tells me seriously.

  “I know, right?”

  I should light a fire and make S’mores.

  “Quick, someone get me a lighter, STAT!” I yell.

  Drew jumps down off of the counter and with one hand, pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and started fiddling with the buttons while he holds his chocolate hand out from his body.

  “Are you calling the cops? Oh shit! JENNY RUN! IT’S THE FUZZ!” I yell as I run in circles around the kitchen island.

  Somewhere in the distance I hear Jenny crying. At least I think it' Jenny crying. It might have been me.

  Am I crying? My face does feel kind of weird and wet. Like a wet fish.

  “Give me that fiiiiiish. Give me that Filet-a-Fish fiiiiish, ooooh!”

  I wish McDonald’s delivered. I want some ketchup.

  Drew steps into my path and I slam into him. He shoves his phone in my hand and smiles. “You’re welcome. Now get in that kitchen and make me some S’mores, beotch!”

  I clutch the phone to my chest and look up to thank him. But he isn’t up anymore, he's down. Down, down, down like a tiny little dwarf. I squint and bend down so I can see him better. He's jumping up and down, and I’m pretty sure he's trying to bite my ankles. He's like a little chocolate covered munchkin from the Land of Oz and he's angry.