Sweet Girl

by Rachel Hollis

  “This one is a . . .” I leave it open, hoping she’ll at least give me some clue.

  Avis looks at me curiously before answering.

  “Dulce de leche cheesecake.” She nods slowly as if making up her mind. “Let’s serve it in individual portions.”

  She starts to walk away but stops suddenly and reaches inside the box. She pulls her tiny hand back out, revealing half a graham cracker, which she pops in her mouth like a squirrel.

  “I want to try it tomorrow morning,” she says, talking around her bite.

  As she walks away my mind starts to spin. Cheesecake is hard, really hard; anyone who’s ever seen a cooking show can tell you that. It takes hours to get the consistency right, and when you add in the additional flavors she wants in this one and the fact that I can’t decipher her notes—ugh!

  Why did I think this job would get easier instead of harder?

  She needs it tomorrow morning, which means I needed to start trying to make it about three hours ago. I’ll have to pull another late night, and I have no idea how many batches I’ll have to make, which means I am going to need someone else to try it. I already had sugar this morning when I worked out the galette recipe for large batches. I’ve been extremely careful with my diet lately, since working here means I have to taste some of what I make. I combat the extra sugar by eating totally clean. Vegetables, protein, water, and coffee. Not the most exciting of menus but necessary to counteract the sweets. Unfortunately I didn’t plan on testing two recipes in one day, and I am nervous about pushing my levels further.

  I send a quick text to one of the two people aware of my job, asking him if I can borrow his kitchen and his taste-testing abilities. I start to clean the workstation around me when Liam writes back, reminding me that he is in New York this week on business.

  Damn.

  He tells me to use my key to his house to borrow his kitchen, but that defeats the purpose of having someone else there who can try the recipe out. For half a minute I consider fessing up to Landon or even my parents, but I just don’t have the energy to battle either of them, especially on a night when I have so much work to do.

  The sigh I let out is as defeated as my posture. I type out a quick text to my most recent volunteer: Do you actually have a working oven?

  His response pops up a few minutes later: Is that a euphemism?

  You wish. I have to make about 49 caramel cheesecakes tonight, and I need a location and a tester. You in?

  49 cheesecakes is better than an innuendo any day. What time?

  I respond with a time, and he writes back with his address. Now I just have to transport everything I might possibly need over Laurel Canyon in rush-hour traffic. It is a total pain, but it can’t be helped. At least I won’t spend another early morning trapped in this kitchen. Whatever crappy apartment Taylor lives in has to be better than stressing out here alone.

  I check the address on my phone again and then look up at the house in front of me in confusion. I didn’t expect to be coming to this quaint little neighborhood off Ventura. I thought I was headed for a grubby apartment, not unlike mine. The Spanish-style house at the address Taylor gave me is small, but it fairly preened in the late summer twilight. Nobody would ever call it grubby. It is pristine and well kept, and the front yard suggests a gardener with a green thumb and a love of succulents. Maybe Taylor shares rent with a kindly septuagenarian or a retired gay uncle?

  I pull my reusable shopping bag higher on my shoulder and grab the other two off the ground at my feet. The pans in the bag clank together with every step. I sound like a wandering tinker. Where is the Renaissance faire now when I actually have a period-appropriate descriptor?

  I ring the doorbell.

  When no one answers I set my bags down and try the knocker.

  Still nothing.

  I pull out my phone and send Taylor a text: Are you here? Or is this some elaborate ruse?

  He writes right back: Sorry! Just finishing up. Come around back to the shop and I’ll let you in.

  I slip my phone into my bag and follow the little flagstone path around to the side of the house. Once I make it through a gate, the pathway opens up, revealing a backyard as manicured as the front. The door to the single-car garage is wide open, revealing a workshop filled with every kind of tool imaginable. The walls themselves are lined with plywood so that everything in the space is accented by raw wood grain. In the center of the back wall hangs a large framed portrait of an old man rendered in colorful chalk. It is either worth a lot of money or something you buy at a garage sale for a dollar; I can’t tell which. Shelves and tall workbenches edge up against the walls, and hand tools hang above them in straight lines of descending size. In the midst of it all, Taylor is working on a huge square piece of timber that looks like it was ripped off the broad side of a barn.

  “Give me two seconds,” he calls over the sound of Guns N’ Roses coming from an iPod dock behind him.

  I nod stupidly and he goes back to work. I should look away or occupy myself somehow, but my attention is totally skewered on the scene before me.

  Since he’s been doing physical work in the heat of the summer, Taylor must have removed his shirt to cool off. But now he is covered with a fine sheen that does everything to highlight his hard torso, which is covered completely in tattoos.

  He doesn’t have just sleeves like I originally thought. His chest, abs, arms, and shoulders are all inked. There isn’t a single area above his waistline or below his collarbone not covered with words, pictures, and symbols.

  How many years must that have taken him?

  How many hours over the course of his life did he sit in a chair and let someone carve the images into his body?

  It is a mess of color with no discernable order.

  It is utterly beautiful.

  It is staggering in its effect on me. I want to reach out and trace the lines with my fingers.

  Mortification hits me, followed swiftly by anger. I know better.

  “OK, all done,” he calls, totally unaware of the trip I’ve just gone on.

  The sound of the music dies and is replaced by shuffling and scraping as he puts some tools away. I pretend to be extremely interested in the papyrus lining the back fence.

  “Here, let me take those.” He grabs my bags, and I am too overwhelmed to do anything but let him. When I finally look his way, I discover that he has, thankfully, found his shirt again.

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t finished working when you got here,” he calls over his shoulder while nudging the back door to the house open with his hip. “That piece has ended up being a lot more difficult than I anticipated, and I lost track of time.”

  I follow him through a back bedroom and down a hallway to a kitchen. Like the front of the house, the inside is small but perfectly maintained and shockingly clean for a man’s home. The floors are dark hardwood, the walls are a bright white, and everything I see, from carved niches to exposed wooden beams, speaks to a celebration of the historical aspects of the home.

  “This house is beautiful,” I say, because it is true, and also because I can’t stop thinking about the tattoos on his abs, and I want my brain to focus on something else.

  “Thanks,” he says as he sets the bags down on the marble countertop. “You should have seen it when I first bought the place. It was a disaster, and the only reason I got it so cheap was that nobody else was willing to take it on.” He looks around the little kitchen, pride evident on his face. “But I knew there was something special hidden underneath all the mess.”

  I am flabbergasted.

  “You own this house?” I ask stupidly.

  “Well, it’d be mighty awkward if I didn’t, since I just knocked a wall out in the back bedroom yesterday.” He grins and runs a hand through his sweaty hair absentmindedly. “Let me take a quick shower and I’ll give you the nickel tour, OK?”

  “OK?” I don’t know why it comes out as a question.

  Except that I am totally confused b
y this version of him. I don’t know him at all, I now realize.

  “You need anything before I leave you here?” he asks, grabbing two bottles of water from the fridge. He sets a Perrier down on the counter in front of me before starting on the other, a Fiji, himself. I’m not sure when he noticed I like sparkling water.

  “I have everything I need,” I tell him, twisting the cap of my water bottle just to give myself something to do with my hands.

  “Ahh, I doubt that’s true, Jennings,” he says with a wink before leaving the kitchen.

  I squeeze the cap between my fingers until my knuckles turn white.

  A kitchen towel flies across my field of vision before landing on the other side of me. I pull out a single earbud and turn to look at the culprit.

  “I said,” Taylor announces, holding a frying pan in one hand and several brown eggs in the other, “would you like some eggs?”

  His hair is still wet from the shower. He is wearing long gym shorts, a faded blue T-shirt so thin from a lifetime of use that it is nearly transparent, and flip-flops in a similar state of distress.

  “No, thank you,” I answer, and turn back to my batter. I don’t put the earbud back in, so I hear him when he starts talking again.

  “So this isn’t what you expected, huh?” he asks.

  His back is to me as he starts to crack the eggs against the countertop. I turn to answer him.

  “I didn’t expect anything,” I say, though truthfully I am dying to know how someone who works in event production can afford his own home in Los Angeles.

  Landon, Miko, and Taylor met while working for Selah Smith Events, and even though Taylor played an important role, I knew the owner, Selah (the aforementioned soul-sucking nightmare), wasn’t overly generous with her employees. A tiny bungalow like this, even if he’d purchased it in crappy shape, would have still been well over half a million dollars. LA is not a cheap place to own property.

  I crack an egg and use a whisk to beat it against the side of the mixing bowl.

  “Come on; admit it,” he says. “You think I’m a degenerate, and you were looking for further proof.” I can hear the smile in his voice.

  “Honestly,” I say with a practiced shrug, “I don’t give you much thought at all.”

  I pour the latest version of the batter into the pan holding the graham cracker and walnut crust. I am making four mini versions at once, each with a different variation on the recipe. The mini cheesecakes go into a water bath and into the oven. It will take almost an hour to bake them, so I have nothing to do but talk to him while he makes his eggs.

  “I am surprised by the carpentry, though. Did you restore the house by yourself?”

  “What I could.” He opens the refrigerator and returns to douse his eggs liberally with Tabasco sauce. “The woodwork I can handle. Managed a lot of the plumbing and the tile too. The electrical, though, seemed like a dangerous thing to attempt myself. Luckily the wiring wasn’t as bad as it could have been.” He reaches up to open a cabinet for a plate and then dumps the contents of the pan onto it in one heaping pile. He grabs a fork from a drawer and leans up against the countertop behind him before taking a big bite.

  “How long have you lived here?”

  His chewing slows while he considers the question.

  “Three years, I think. It was back when it was a buyer’s market, and I could still swing a 4.2 interest rate.”

  “Kind of young to take on so much responsibility, aren’t you?” I can’t help but ask.

  He shakes his head and spears a last bite of egg. I am shocked to realize he devoured the whole plate in under four minutes.

  “Honestly, it’s been a long time since I felt young,” he answers.

  “I totally understand the sentiment,” I agree.

  “How long for those to bake?” He points at the oven, where the cheesecakes are baking away.

  I look at the timer on my phone.

  “About forty more minutes,” I answer.

  “Well then, follow me.”

  He leaves the room, and then I have no choice but to do what he says or stand there awkwardly in the empty kitchen.

  His big living room is dominated by overstuffed couches in taupe, and the only color in the room comes from an oversize framed Warhol print of a large smoking gun. My dad would approve; he loves Warhol. Across from the print is a flat-panel TV nearly as big as the picture, held aloft by a giant vintage-looking easel. Beyond the living room is a dining room totally dominated by a gorgeous lacquered table. I reach out a hand to run along the top when I realize what it is.

  “Is this a door?” I ask, surprised.

  The lacquer makes it shine, and the metal base makes it feel industrial and so cool, but beneath the varnish you can clearly see the weathered effect of years spent outdoors.

  “It used to be,” he answers, looking down at the table along with me.

  “It’s gorgeous,” I whisper, because it is.

  It must take incredible skills to preserve the patina of the wood, not to mention a design aesthetic that would imagine juxtaposing a modern-looking base that shouldn’t complement it so well.

  “Where did you find this?” I ask, running my fingertips along a groove.

  “My granddad’s barn,” he answers sheepishly.

  I look up in surprise at his tone. The piles of wood in the garage make sense.

  “You made this,” I say in wonder.

  “I did.” His mouth quirks up to one side.

  “You should sell your work,” I tell him sincerely.

  A piece like this would go for thousands of dollars. With the right exposure he could make a fortune.

  The other side of his mouth joins the party, and soon there is a massive grin splitting his face in two.

  “Jennings, not to put too fine a point on this, but how do you think I bought the house in the first place?”

  “You do sell your work.”

  He nods.

  “A lot of it?” I ask.

  I know it is just barely not rude, but I have a thousand questions about him now. He is totally different than what I’d first expected, and I can’t help but wonder. Before he can open his mouth to answer, a gray ball of fur lands on the table in front of me with a hiss.

  I jump backwards a full two feet to escape a wild claw swung in my direction.

  “What is that?” I demand as the thing curls a giant tail around its front paws like visiting royalty.

  “This,” Taylor says, reaching out to rub a hand affectionately over the thing’s head, “is Holden, and he’s far more interesting than my work.”

  A single golden eye blinks at me in disdain—single because there is only a puckered scar where his other eye should be.

  “He’s basically the greatest cat on the planet,” Taylor says, giving his ears a good scratch.

  I scrunch up my nose, meeting the cat’s dislike with a gaze of my own.

  “If you say so,” I tell them both.

  “It’s perfect,” Avis says in utter surprise.

  The tension of the last eighteen hours leaves my body in a rush. I’d never made cheesecake before last night, and it took eleven tries before I found a recipe I thought was good enough. Taylor, to his credit, never complained once but sat at the small table in his breakfast nook working on a laptop and dutifully sampling each option I brought to him. He pronounced each one better than the one before, but when I added an extra ingredient to the last batch, he nearly melted to the floor in a puddle after the first bite.

  Even with that response, though, I still hadn’t known if I could get Avis’s recipe right a second time, and I’d been sick with nerves. Hearing the word “perfect” makes me feel incredible.

  “Really?” I squeak.

  “Why, weren’t you sure about my recipe?” she demands.

  “I . . . uh . . . no. I just wasn’t . . .” I decide for a little honesty. “. . . totally sure about the chili powder. I didn’t know if I was reading that ingredient right.”
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  “Chili powder,” she says, and I can’t place her tone.

  “Yes, it was surprising to me, but then I don’t have your palate. It ended up making all the difference.”

  A small smile plays around the edge of her lips.

  “It sure did.” She smiles grandly before leaving me there with a half-eaten mini cheesecake. I pick up a clean fork and take a bite from the untouched half. Last night I only let myself have the tiniest taste to make sure the flavors were right, but now the full impact hits me in a riot of creamy decadence. Caramel and chocolate mix with the filling and play off the crunch the walnuts add to the crust. The barest hint of heat from the chili powder is incredible.

  Avis is utterly full of herself, but I guess when you are a creative genius, you earn that right.

  Chapter Twelve

  “B-17!” a drag queen dressed like Miley Cyrus in her famous VMA costume calls from the front of the bar.

  I take another sip of my drink, and Miko reaches between us to stamp the spot on my card.

  “Honestly, why would you come and not even play the game?” she asks in a huff.

  She’s been filling in my card for me for the last half an hour.

  At a table nearby a couple is apparently having some kind of fight. It becomes very audible as the girl slur-screams something unintelligible, slams her drink on the table, and dramatically huffs her way to the door. The Miley impersonator watches her under lashes that are longer than a standard-size ruler. Miley can’t seem to resist commenting as the woman stumbles by.

  “Oh, honey,” he calls after her, “emotions are for ugly people.”

  I snort before taking a sip of my drink.

  “I came for the booze, obviously,” I tell Miko without taking my eyes off the drag queen.

  The face of the teddy bear on his one-piece bathing suit distorts each time he rolls the bingo ball around in the cage, and when he sticks out his tongue in exaggeration after each pronouncement, you can see his dental work. It is grotesque and therefore mesmerizing.

  “I-32!” he hollers again.

  “Y’all are no fun. At least get into the spirit of it!” Landon calls across the high bar table at me.