Tasty

by Bella Cruise

  cupcakecasanova@gmail.com:

  Talk to me. I’m here for you.

  I take another swallow of wine. I’m nervous. I don’t want to be too specific. He’s still a stranger. But for some reason I feel like I can open up to him. My thumb moves rapidly over the screen.

  thenagainmaybefondant@gmail.com:

  We haven’t been getting much foot traffic lately. A competitor opened up in the neighborhood and I’m feeling the heat, I guess.

  cupcakecasanova@gmail.com:

  Competition can be healthy. You don’t want to stagnate.

  thenagainmaybefondant@gmail.com:

  That’s what I keep telling myself, but no matter what I do, I just keep coming up short. There’s no competing with this guy. He’s bigger and better than me in pretty much every way. Even my regulars know it.

  I think of the look on Mrs. O’Gilligan’s face and feel my stomach squeeze in embarrassment. I hadn’t really faced the fact that all of my customers have now pledged their dollars and their bellies to Mecca Cakes.

  cupcakecasanova@gmail.com:

  That’s gotta be rough.

  thenagainmaybefondant@gmail.com:

  Yeah. I used to dream about expanding—maybe opening a second store in Miami or something. But I don’t see how that’s ever going to happen if I can’t even keep this ship afloat.

  cupcakecasanova@gmail.com:

  I know the feeling. I built my business from the ground up, too. My dad didn’t even want me to be a chef. He wanted me to work in a factory, like him. He thought only gay men cook. Believe me, I’ve struggled.

  thenagainmaybefondant@gmail.com:

  You did?

  cupcakecasanova@gmail.com:

  Yeah, it’s been ten years of scrambling. The first couple years I thought I was drowning. I’d wake up at night thinking I was having a heart attack at 25.

  thenagainmaybefondant@gmail.com:

  OMG. Have definitely had those nights . . .

  cupcakecasanova@gmail.com:

  Let me guess: tonight is one of them?

  thenagainmaybefondant@gmail.com:

  How’d you know?

  cupcakecasanova@gmail.com:

  It’s 3:34 a.m. and you haven’t cracked a single dirty joke.

  On my roof, I’m smiling. He knows me way too well for a guy whose name I don’t even know. And he’s a chef. Usually, it would terrify me. Maybe it’s the night. Maybe it’s the wine. Maybe it’s the thousand miles between us. But I feel so at ease around him . . .

  cupcakecasanova@gmail.com:

  Tell me something.

  thenagainmaybefondant@gmail.com:

  Anything.

  cupcakecasanova@gmail.com:

  Tell me why you became a baker.

  Now, I’m really grinning. A warm breeze, pure Florida in spring, moves over me. There’s salt in the air, the taste of summer approaching. The stars seem to dance overhead. I know the answer to this question. This one is easy.

  thenagainmaybefondant@gmail.com:

  I used to love making cupcakes and cookies and stuff for people in high school. My boyfriend, the debate team, that sort of thing. It was amazing to me, how a few simple ingredients could make other people so happy. You mix the flavors right, and nothing else matters. It’s like magic.

  cupcakecasanova@gmail.com:

  Alchemy.

  I blink back surprise at his answer. I didn’t expect we’d be on quite the same page about this. After all, Cal McKenzie was all-too-eager to argue with my romantic notions of cooking. But cupcakecasanova is not Cal McKenzie anywhere but in my perverted fantasies. He’s someone else entirely, and he understands.

  thenagainmaybefondant@gmail.com:

  Exactly. :)

  cupcakecasanova@gmail.com:

  Hold on to that. Your sense of wonder about food makes you different from other chefs. It’s what distinguishes you. It’s what matters. The competition doesn’t have that. Keep that in mind, and you’re bound to overcome whatever difficulty comes your way.

  thenagainmaybefondant@gmail.com:

  You really think that?

  cupcakecasanova@gmail.com:

  I really, really do.

  thenagainmaybefondant@gmail.com:

  Awww, thanks CCC.

  cupcakecasanova@gmail.com:

  Any time.

  There’s a long pause. I drink what’s left of the wine, feeling the heat of it slide down my throat. Maybe it’s the alcohol, but the night feels young still. I start typing again.

  thenagainmaybefondant@gmail.com:

  Are you up for a virtual roll in the hay?

  But when I hit “send,” I notice he’s already signed off. Damn. Well, makes sense. Most bakers are up at dawn to start cooking.

  I gaze out toward the ocean. Sometimes, when I’m talking to cupcakecasanova, I forget that he’s not a flesh and blood friend—or lover. It’s uncanny, how quickly we found our rhythm with each other. All these years in Key West, I’ve gotten used to blind dates that fizzle. Otherwise, I’m alone. Happy about it, too. But for once, it feels nice to share my feelings with a guy. It feels easy.

  I’m filled with a sudden, strange impulse. I pick up my phone again, and start typing out an email.

  To: cupcakecasanova@gmail.com

  From: thenagainmaybefondant@gmail.com

  Subject line: We should meet . . .

  Things are getting a little too real for me. Are they feeling real for you, too? I don’t know if you’re ever in Florida. I can’t tell you the last time I went to New York. But I’d love to find a way to meet you. We’re like two cookies made from the same dough . . .

  I wince at my own metaphor. Too cheesy. I cut out that line, and, cringing, try again. We’re two sourdoughs from the same starter, or We’re two cupcakes from the same batter, but that’s not right either. Maybe it’s a sign, I think, staring at the unsent email. If I can’t even find a way to explain the way that I’m feeling, maybe it’s not worth saying. Maybe this is a mistake. After all, cupcakecasanova is a stranger. He could be someone’s grandmother, for all I know. I’ve never even seen his picture. He doesn’t even know my name.

  I delete the email without sending it, stand, empty bottle in hand, and head back toward my apartment.

  Chapter Eleven

  I wake up late, the sun already coming in golden-yellow through my shabby curtains. And though the day’s heat is already rising, I feel refreshed. Cupcakecasanova is right. No matter what happens with the store, no matter what happens with Cal McKenzie and Mecca Cakes, I’ll always have the magic of cooking. It hasn’t left me, even if my business is struggling.

  I rise from bed and send Summer a text:

  Closing the shop for the day. Won’t need you again today. Hopefully soon. xo.

  Then I go to my kitchen. I boil water for the Chemex and start paging through my grandmother’s cookbooks. Of course, I don’t really need them to cook. I have thousands of recipes stored in my head. But with the pages under my fingers, it’s almost like I’m with her again. I can remember what it felt like to be a little girl, standing on a backwards chair in her kitchen, her papery skin feeling thin and delicate next to my cheek. We usually made something simple: chocolate chip cookies, a pie for Grandpa. Or cupcakes, which were always my favorite. I find the recipe for the ones we always made together, sour-cream vanilla with a white sugar frosting and a cherry on top. Over the recipe text, there are ancient splashes of maraschino syrup. Funny, how that outlasted even Grandma. I gather up the ingredients and start baking.

  An hour later, two dozen cupcakes are stacked carefully on a rack. While they’re cooling, I dress quickly, in a simple sundress and a pair of comfy flats. Then I frost and box up the cakes. I know exactly where I need to go today to reconnect with the magical, alchemical side of myself. I take the box and grab my keys, leaving my apartment sweetly perfumed by vanilla and sugar and cream as I head for Miami.

  #

  Miami’s only three hours north of Key West, but sometimes it fee
ls like it’s on a different planet. For one thing, the people are all aliens. Tanned, tattooed, beautiful, with overbleached highlights in their hair and too much make-up. The beaches are packed with sculpted hunks and women in teeny weenie bikinis. Back when I was in culinary school, I had a bit of a complex about it. And I don’t even look that bad in a two-piece! But my tits are small and real, my thighs just a tiny bit fleshy, and it was enough to make me want to run back to Pelican Key Cove sometimes, where my biggest insecurity was whether I might run into some guy I’d made out with during Seven Minutes in Heaven in middle school.

  I spent three grueling, exhausting years here in culinary school, and then two more as I trained in various kitchens around the city. I never quite adapted to the speed of life or the perfect line of everybody’s teeth. But not everyone in Key West is a Malibu Barbie. I could always count on one person being real.

  I make it to the Cuban deli a little after noon, and my stomach is already growling. The space inside is just as I left it: cramped booths, packed with customers; busy counter with a bored teenager behind it. I hesitate for a moment near the door. Back when I lived here, I used to spend hours at the counter, chowing down on ropa viejas and trying to press the owner for her pastelitos recipe. But she’s nowhere in sight right now. Hmm, maybe I should have called first. I clutch the box of cupcakes to my chest, shuffling forward in line. It’s not until I get to the front and order one guava pastry, one pineapple, one coconut, and an espresso that I hear a familiar voice come booming from the back kitchen.

  “Juliette Rockwell? I’d know your order anywhere! You get back here right now, girl!”

  “Hermosa!” I cry, relieved that my trip wasn’t for nothing. I slip past the cashier, ignoring the dirty looks the customers waiting on line shoot me, and head into the kitchen. There’s my old friend, Hermosa Ramos, standing in back with a dirty apron on. She gives me a quick squeeze.

  “Jules, you are a sight for sore eyes!”

  “Hermosa, it’s been too long!” I reply appreciatively. Then I hand over the box. “These are for you. Thought it might make a little dent in the debt I owe you.”

  “Debt?” Hermosa frowns, but takes the cupcake box anyway. “What debt? You know I don’t lend money to anybody, Jules. Not even you!”

  “I know, and that’s a good policy. I meant they’re payback for all the free pastries you gave me in culinary school.”

  Hermosa’s skeptical, but she pops open the box anyway. When she sees it contains cupcakes, her eyes light up. “Oh, you know me way too well, Juliette. These look delicious.”

  I blush. “It’s nothing compared to your baked goods. You know, your cooking taught me more than almost any professor in culinary school.”

  “You flatter me! You should tell that to the boys at Le Cordon Bleu. Maybe they can put me on the payroll,” she says, giving me a wink. She takes my hand in hers, leaving an employee to finish up the orders for the lunch rush. “Come, sit with me. You’ll eat my pastelitos, I’ll eat your cupcakes. We’ll have a little cross cultural exchange and catch up.”

  “I’d like that,” I say, laughing as she leads me to a booth.

  Soon, I’ve drained my espresso and told Hermosa the whole story about my new Key West rival. She dismisses it with a wave of her hand.

  “I’ve owned this place for thirty years, Jules,” she begins. I lift my eyebrows.

  “You don’t look a day over forty.”

  “Puh-lease. I’m fifty-seven. But I was once a young, hot woman like you. Full of life, tits out to here before I had my babies. Now they’re down to my ankles.”

  I roll my eyes. They’re not. Hermosa is as fit as any Miami mami. But she just laughs at my expression and goes on.

  “You have to work it while you got it, Jules. Have fun. With men, and food, and dancing, and wine. Don’t worry about this—what did you call it?”

  “Pop-up shop.”

  “Pshaw.” Hermosa flashes a hand through the air. “Pop-up shit is more like it. You know the restaurant next door used to be a Cuban bakery. Then a laundrette. Then a pawn shop. Can you imagine if I’d buckled as soon as they opened, if I peed in my pants and cried into my boots? You just gotta be strong and not let any of this get you down.”

  “Okay, okay,” I concede, plucking a crumb from Hermosa’s plate. She’s inhaled almost half the cupcakes. “I’ll do my best.”

  “You better. Because you know, the other guy won’t be just ‘good enough.’ You have to let yourself be really, genuinely great. I know you have it in you.”

  “Thanks, Hermosa,” I say, and she puts her hand on top of mine to squeeze.

  “Anytime, mama.”

  I go to bus our table for Hermosa, making room for the customers who continue to trail through the door. Lunch hour is almost over, but business hasn’t slowed at all. I guess that’s perseverance for you.

  I’m feeling pretty good about our talk. I might not have a plan, not yet, but after chatting with Hermosa and cupcakecasanova, I feel like I have the attitude. And that’s half the battle to taking out Mecca Cakes—and Cal with it.

  But then I drop off my tray and turn from the garbage can, and I run smack dab into a man’s enormous, white-cotton clad chest. When I look up, I almost choke in surprise. There in front of me is Cal McKenzie, looking even better than he does in my fantasies.

  “What are you doing here?” I demand. He smiles, smoothly, serenely.

  “I could ask you the same thing,” he says.

  #

  It turns out that Cal is here for the same reason I am: because Hermosa makes the best damn pastelitos this side of Havana. He tells me he fell in love with them while touring for his TV show. His excuses don’t stop me from eying him suspiciously. But then Hermosa rushes from her table and envelops him in a hug. It looks a little bit like a small child hugging a St. Bernard. He even ruffles her hair fondly when the embrace is over.

  “Jules!” she says happily, “do you know Callum McKenzie? He’s on television.”

  “I’ve heard,” I say dryly.

  “You two should talk,” she says, putting a hand on each of our backs and shoving us together. “You’d make cute babies.”

  With that, she disappears behind the kitchen door. Damn that Hermosa. Not subtle at all, but I guess when you’ve lived through the shit that she has, you lose your tolerance for social niceties. Now I’m all alone with Cal, and standing so close to him that I can practically feel his chest rising and falling besides mine. I take a careful step backwards.

  God, I hate that his very presence makes me feel this way—hot and bothered, full of goosebumps. It was easier when he was only my rival. But the way he touched me in that alleyway unmoored me, knocked me off center. I never knew I could enjoy hate-fucking so much. Or hate-non-fucking. There’s a big part of me that still wants to take him up on that rain check. But is that a good idea? I need time to reflect on what exactly I want from Cal, if anything. Hard to do that when he’s staring intently at me.

  “She’s got a way with words,” I mutter to Cal. He lets out a laugh.

  “No argument here. Hermosa’s brilliant.”

  “She is. Don’t you love this place? It’s small, but it’s so cozy. I’ve never seen it less than completely packed.”

  “Nice use of space,” he says with a shrug, and it makes me hate him all over again. Because he doesn’t really seem that impressed, and why should he be? His store is like twelve times the size of this one.

  “It’s important to have gathering places like this,” I go on, the passion rising in my voice. “It’s what I always dreamed for Rock N Roll Cakes, that it would become a place where people come together. Hot pastries, cold drinks, good conversation.”

  “You don’t have to sell me on it,” he says, leaning in even closer. It doesn’t seem to bother him that we’re practically touching, not one bit. It seems like heat is rising up off his body, or maybe I’m only imagining it. “I could see that working well for your store.”

 
; “You can?” I say with surprise. It doesn’t sound like an insult. He seems to mean it genuinely.

  But I’m not sure I can trust him. I suck in my cheeks, trying my best not to smile. He’s a chef. A creep. And he hasn’t shown himself to be exactly trustworthy in the past.

  “Anyway,” I say quickly, before he can answer, “I’m sure it’s no big deal to you. Your managers determine the way your shop looks, right? You probably have nothing to do with it, Cake Master.”

  There’s fire in my voice, and anger, too. Cal winches. He reaches up with a broad hand and pinches the bridge of his nose.

  “You know, Jules, I like you,” he begins. “I know you’re upset about the store, but things will calm down soon enough. I promise.”

  “You can’t promise me that. I hardly know you. Why do you think I should believe you?”

  He looks at me for a long time. Something hidden behind those burning green eyes seems to tremble.

  “I get it,” he says. “You’ve been hurt before. I have, too. But I would never do that to you.”

  The way his lips part softly while he waits for my response goes straight to my heart and cracks it in two. Damn. I’m a sucker for a guy who is strong, but vulnerable. I hate the way I can feel myself opening to him.

  But I kind of love it, too.

  Cal’s still waiting for my answer. At last, his expression lightens. He claps his hand against my shoulder with the kind of reassuring strength that can only come from a man.

  “You and I, we didn’t get off on the right foot, Jules. How about we call a truce and start fresh?”

  I exhale, hard. He’s really selling it. And honestly? I’m buying every word.

  “Fiiine,” I say, “a truce. But I don’t have to like it.”