“Settling down,” I muttered to myself. To be completely honest, it wasn’t totally out of the realm of possibility. I had to see what kind of toothbrush management skills the woman had before I could seriously consider “settling down.” I mean, shit, what if she was one of those people who flicked little bits of toothpaste all over the mirror when she brushed? I was no Bruce, but I had some standards of cleanliness.
Worse, she could be one of those women who has a never-ending bag of hairbands and clips that gradually take up every nook, crevice, and cranny in the apartment, until they eventually form massive rolling tumbleweeds made of shedded hair. She might even get onto me for leaving the toilet seat up, but I mean, come on, maybe I don’t want to have to lift the seat up just as much as she doesn’t want to have to put it down.
It was a futile mental effort to try to convince myself I wasn’t falling for her. She could be one of those hover-pissers who, for sanitary reasons, hovers her ass a foot over the toilet and sprays everything in a sickening mist of pee. She could burp after every meal and clip her toenails at the table. It honestly wouldn’t matter. I was addicted, and at this point, she’d have to stab me in the eye or something to get rid of me.
My parents let themselves in without knocking. “We tried to find you last night,” my dad said accusingly.
“Yeah, I was at a thing.”
“Well, this won’t take long. We found out you’ve been seeing a girl who owns a… bakery. We thought it would be a good idea to look into her background a little, and guess what we found?” My dad slid an envelope across my desk as he grunted down into his chair. My mom stayed standing behind him.
I opened the envelope and flipped through a few papers quickly at first, but then slowed down when I saw the name on them. “Wait, what is this?” I asked.
“It’s proof that your little girlfriend is playing you. That,” he said, pointing to a paper in my left hand. “Is an offer from Sleiman construction group to buy your baker girl’s store for two million dollars. Somebody wants to turn the block into a high-rise apartment, and they’re buying everybody out. Your little girlfriend’s landlord told us that he left her a voicemail telling her she had to get out, unless she was going to magically cough up two-million.”
“How long has she known?” I asked, still feeling dazed.
“She has known she’s behind on rent for months. He left her a voicemail yesterday afternoon about the buyout. She went and applied for a loan but was rejected on the spot.”
I thought about how she had pushed away the idea of a date at first, but then had seemed so eager to go along with the idea by the time she showed up to my apartment. Based on what my parents were showing me, the only thing that had changed by then was her realization that she needed two million dollars to save her shop.
I leaned back in my chair. “Fuck.”
My mom gave me a sympathetic pursing of her lips. “William, it’s not easy being in your position. You’re good looking. Wealthy. Successful. You’re always going to have to keep your guard up for girls like this. It’s not fun, but it’s the truth.”
I may have blown it off with Bruce every time he brought it up, but the truth was it did hurt when Zoey Parker had tricked me into thinking she was interested in me, and not just my money. It had stung every time I’d gotten close with a woman only to realize she was using me. Hell, it was probably why I had slowly become more and more transient when it came to women. I’d only give them as much of myself as I needed, so if they turned out to be gold-diggers, I wouldn’t look like an idiot.
I got up from my desk suddenly, pushing the chair back.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m going to talk to her.”
11
Hailey
Ryan was stretching dough in the back while I worked on cleaning up after the lunch rush. It had been a thrill. I couldn’t remember the last time, yesterday excluded, when we’d had so much business. We’d turned nearly a thousand dollars of pure profit yesterday, and even without quite as insane of a rush today, I would be surprised if we weren’t at least going to make Seven hundred. At this rate, I could catch up on all my back-due rent for my apartment and the shop in a matter of months.
So when I recognized my landlord yanking open the front door, I didn’t have quite the same rush of panic I normally would. I had a plan. I had good news.
I took a deep breath and smiled. “Mr. Smith, I wasn’t expecting to—”
“I left four voicemails,” he said dryly. He was in his forties, overweight up top but with chicken legs on the bottom, and his eyebrows looked like they might come to life, snack on a few leaves, and turn into butterflies at any moment.
“Yes. Yes, you did. I got a little behind on the whole voicemail situation, but I was going to listen to them really soon.”
He shook his head. “They are buying up the block, Hailey. I’m being offered two million dollars just for this property, so I’m selling it. And guess what, I’m feeling generous, given the circumstances, so I’m not even going to drag you into court over all the money you still owe me for rent. Merry Christmas.”
My stomach lurched. “You can’t actually do that, can you?”
“What? Sell my own property? Of course I can. You’re just renting it from me month to month, and I’ll happily take the payday over the four thousand a month you never manage to pay me anyway.”
“But I’ll be able to pay really soon. I got this great deal with Galleon for advertising and we actually turned a great profit yesterday. I can even show you the numbers.” I saw the look on his face and felt my heart sink. He had never been cruel to me, but he was a businessman. It was written all over his face. No good businessman in his right mind would pass up the deal he was being offered, and I knew it. “Please?” I tried.
“Sorry, Hailey. But it’s happening. You have a week.”
I couldn’t do anything but watch as he left. Just like that, my dream was slipping through my fingers, and I didn’t see any way to fix it in sight. Without the shop, I’d lose my apartment. Without my apartment, I’d lose New York City, and without the city, I wondered how I’d manage to hold on to William.
Ryan found me with my head in my hands. “Did they cancel Brooklyn 99 again?”
“No. They canceled The Bubbly Baker.”
“Uh?”
“Somebody’s buying out the landlord. Unless you know a way to come up with two million dollars to convince him not to sell, we’re screwed.”
Ryan tilted his head to the side. “Gee. I wonder where we could find somebody with more money than God. They’d have to like you, so that’s tough. But hmmm, it’s like a name is on the tip of my tongue.”
“Not happening. This isn’t my dream because I want to be rich and famous. It’s my dream because I want to prove to myself what I can do with hard work. It wouldn’t mean anything to me if somebody else bought it for me.”
“William’s little advertising bargain didn’t count?”
I gave him a dirty look. “I didn’t think the advertising would work that well, okay? I thought he’d put out a radio commercial and get us like ten more customers a week or something.”
Ryan grinned. “I’m just fucking with you. I know what you mean, and I get it. Well shit, does this mean I don’t have to bake cookies until my piss smells like cookie dough for the contest in Sheffield this week?”
“No,” I said, even though I was making the decision as I spoke. “The Bubbly Baker might not be here for long, but it doesn’t mean we need to pass up the exposure of the contest.”
“Gotta ask the obvious question. If the shop isn’t going to be ours anymore, what exactly are we exposing?”
“The food we make? I don’t know, Ryan. But it feels right, so I’m going to be there with my freaking t-shirt on, and I’m going to be baking cookies. I’ll sell them out of the kitchen in my Grammy’s retirement home if I have to.”
“Rock on,” he said. “I’m in.”
“Y
ou are?”
“Yep.”
We both turned when the door opened again. This time, it was William, and he looked more pissed than I’d ever seen. He stormed up to the front counter. The look he gave Ryan must have clearly said he needed to talk to me alone, because Ryan practically jogged to the back.
“Is everything okay?” I asked.
“Remember how I said I was figuring you out, piece by piece? Well, I think I just figured out the best part. You desperately need money, and you were just stringing me along until the right time came to get it out of me. Here, what was it you needed to save your shop? Two million? Take two and a half, just to cover taxes and shit.”
“William, what the hell is going on?”
He ignored me as he slapped a check down on the counter and furiously scribbled in all the information. He pushed it toward me when he was done. I saw the pain in his face, and I knew he believed every word of what he was saying.
“Do you even care about hearing what I have to say?” I asked. My own voice was laced with anger. I thought he knew me better than to believe I’d really been using him, but apparently I had been wrong.
“No thanks. I’ve heard it before. For once, I’m going to walk away before I end up looking like the ass.”
“Too late,” I said, hating how thick with emotion my voice was.
He slammed the door behind him.
Ryan walked slowly out from the back with a cautious look on his face. “Sooo… I’ve got some ice cream at my place.”
“How many gallons?” I asked.
Once I had a few pounds of ice cream swirling around in my stomach, I headed home. Ryan had been good at listening to me rant about William and how hurt I was that he’d think so little of me. Some guys thought women wanted solutions when we were upset, but Ryan understood that wasn’t the point. I just needed to vent. I wanted someone to know why I was hurting. If he’d try to offer up some simple solution, it would’ve felt like he was waving away my worries as something fixable and simple.
I had a text from an unknown number when I checked my phone outside Ryan’s apartment.
555-3021 (4:47 P.M.): Hey. This is Natasha, Bruce’s wife. We heard about what happened. Can you meet at the coffee place on 5th? Our treat.”
I blew out a breath while I thought it over. Part of me was done talking. I was to the romantic comedy in bed while I wore pajamas and pounded down more sweets phase. The other part of me stupidly hoped there was some way to salvage all of this. I eventually texted that I could be there in half an hour.
Natasha and Bruce were waiting for me at a table by the window with somber expressions. They already had a cup of coffee waiting for me.
“Hey.” Natasha was watching me with concerned eyes, like I was a wounded animal.
"This feels like an intervention," I said as I sat. My eyes felt puffy, because I had admittedly cried a little bit already. Okay, maybe I cried a lot, but I'd always been one to cry easily. As much as I wanted to not care about any of this, because caring felt like it was letting William win somehow, I couldn't help it. My mind kept going back to how if I'd just waited one more day, I wouldn't have thrown away my virginity with somebody who was about to toss me aside without even listening to what I had to say about the situation. Then I'd get even more upset, because despite the way things turned out, I couldn't think of that night in the lifeboat with anything but butterflies in my stomach. It was pure magic, no matter how it ended up, and no amount of willpower seemed to be able to change that.
“It’s not,” Bruce said. “But I wanted to figure out what happened, to see if you needed help. William isn’t talking about what happened, but he broke half of his office when he got back to work, so we figured the worst.”
“He thinks I was after his money because, well, I do need money, really badly. Once he saw how much I needed and the timing of our meeting and our dates, he just went off. He assumed I was some kind of scheming gold digger, and he didn’t even wait to let me convince him otherwise.”
“Asshole…” Natasha said.
“We know William is an asshole,” Bruce agreed. “Stupid, too.”
“And he’s a douchebag,” Natasha added.
Bruce’s lips twitched into a faint smile. “Kind of the same thing, Nat. But yes. A douchebag, too.”
“Except he’s not. Not really,” I said. “He’s abrasive, but there is a nice guy once you looked past the surface. That’s why this doesn’t make any sense to me. It’s like he became a different person.”
“Well, William would never admit it, but he and I have both been burned multiple times by gold diggers. It does take a toll. I almost didn’t give Natasha a chance because I thought she was after my money, too.”
“What happened?” I asked.
He shrugged. “I realized I had to trust my instincts eventually. I couldn’t just shut the world out because I’d been screwed in the past.”
I sighed. “Mind teaching your brother that lesson?”
“You’d still give him another chance after this?” Natasha asked.
I thought about that. I knew I was about to say something that wasn’t really true, but I wasn’t ready to forgive him out loud yet, not even a little bit. “No. I guess not. I actually would rather throw a pie in his face right now.”
Bruce laughed. “Do it.”
“I wish.”
“I’m serious,” he said. “I’ll let security know you’re coming. They’ll let you straight into his office.”
I looked down at the cherry pie in my hand, feeling more than a little crazy. I was riding the elevator up to William’s floor about an hour after meeting with Bruce and Natasha, and I could hardly believe I was actually going through with this. It felt right, though. Screw him for everything. For making me trust him. For making me think he was different. For taking my virginity and then turning on me the very next day.
I marched straight past his secretary, who was watching me with an amused smile that reminded me of the kind of evil grin an Aubrey Plaza character might show. I gave her a nod, and she nodded back. I guessed Bruce or Natasha had told her the plan, and from her reaction, I’d won her respect with it.
I opened William’s door and found him sitting behind his desk with red knuckles and a cloudy expression. He looked pissed and sad at the same time. I didn’t let that slow me down, even though a very big part of me instantly wanted to reach out to him and comfort him—
I wasn't about to give in to that weakness. He should be upset. With himself. Because he was being an unforgivable ass.
He looked up at me and raised his eyebrows.
"You wanted my fucking cherry so bad? Here it is, dickweed!" I shouted, then I threw the pie as hard as I could. For some reason, I expected it to magically keep sailing pie-side-first toward him through the air, but instead it flipped end over end. There was a metallic clang as the pan collided with his face. He tipped back in his chair like it was slow motion while the pie flipped once more to land in his lap. The last thing I saw before I left was his feet flying up in the air as his chair toppled backward.
I closed the door behind me and gave his secretary a look of mixed horror and satisfaction.
“How did it feel?” she asked through clenched teeth. The look in her eyes was so hungry it was almost scary.
“Um, like I might have just accidentally murdered a man with a pie?”
“Fuck yeah,” she whispered. “Fuck yeah.”
I gave her a wide berth as I fast-walked back to the elevator and hurried out of the building as quickly as I could. Once I got outside, I heard the sound of police sirens. I broke into a sprint, heading for the nearest alley before realizing the cop was driving right past me—
of course he was. I cleared my throat, smoothed out my shirt, and tried not to make eye contact with anyone.
I might have just killed a man. William is dead. Cause of death: cherry to the face.
12
William
I stared at the ceiling whil
e my face throbbed like I’d been hit by a truck. Jesus. Hailey had missed her calling as a quarterback. I don’t know if I’d ever seen anything move as fast as that pie had moved through the air. It was still warm where it had smeared all over my lap.
I wasn’t sure how long I’d been laying there right where I’d fallen, but I didn’t feel like getting up. I knew that much. I probably deserved this.
Hailey was a risk I didn’t want to take, though. There had been too many clues pointing to gold digger, and they’d all surfaced at once, which had made it feel like she was hiding it all along. And she hadn’t complained about the check I gave her earlier, which was the final nail in the coffin. She could play innocent all she wanted, but I knew she’d probably already deposited it and started making plans for what she’d do with her haul. Normally, I wouldn’t have given a woman a dime if I found out she was using me, but I liked Hailey, gold digger or not. The thought of helping her out at least made me happy, even if I couldn’t trust her feelings for me.
The door opened quietly, but I couldn’t see who it was from where I was lying.
“You’re alive, right?” It was Hailey’s voice.
“Hailey,” I groaned.
“I’m leaving,” she said, suddenly firm. “I just needed to know I didn’t kill you. Even though you probably would’ve deserved it.”
The door slammed.
I almost grinned. It had taken her so long to come to check on me that she must've made it all the way outside before coming back to check on me. I finally sighed and moved the pie off my stomach. I stood up, feeling a little banged up, but nothing was more than bruised. When I went to brush the pie off my stomach but saw a piece of paper stuck in the cherry filling. I pulled it out carefully and then shook off as much of the food as I could.
It was a check. My check.
Fuck.
Realization hit me harder than a pie pan to the face. I’d always been a dumbass, but I had topped even my own level of dumbassery with this one. Anger and shame mixed in my stomach like hot poison. Anger towards my parents, who must have wanted things to play out exactly as they had. Shame for acting out before I even stopped to ask myself if the Hailey I knew would ever use me for my money.
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