“Hi, planet!” Mercedes’s voice echoed out over the dining room.
“Listen, Sweet Pea and I are starving, and I wouldn’t normally do this to you, but seeing as we’re in your house, and we’re kind of busy right now, do you think you could whip up a little something for us in the kitchen?”
“What are you doing?” Porsche said in pretend horror. “That’s my mother, not a pizza delivery man!”
He winked at her.
The journalist looked captivated.
Now—still holding the phone, Mercedes stepped out into the dining room and into the interview itself. She was dressed to the nines in a sleek white Chloe sheath, with an old-fashioned apron tied over it. Holding up an oversize wooden spoon.
Whitey doubled over laughing. Porsche looked confused and embarrassed. “Mother!”
“Whip up a little something? Sure, Whitey. No problem. Easy peasy.” Mercedes winked back at him. “Piece of cake.”
“What is going on, Tomas?!” Porsche’s face was turning pink now, and her eyes were bright. Surprised! Excited! Confused! Shocked! Embarrassed! This was like the comprehensive final exam for every emotion she’d ever learned how to do. She was acting so hard, she looked like she was in danger of popping something.
“Come here,” he said to her. “Closer.”
Porsche leaned forward.
“What’s that on your nose?”
She touched her face, mortified. The interviewer laughed.
Whitey tweaked her nose, pretending to examine it. “Oh, that’s nothing. Just a little frosting . . . Sweet Thing.”
“Frosting?”
“Sweet Thing?” The interviewer beamed, as if she’d just trapped them in a world exclusive through plucky journalistic skill, instead of through millions of dollars.
Porsche blushed madly. “He knows I love it when he calls me that.”
“WAIT A MINUTE! DID YOU SAY . . . LOVE?”
Mercedes waved the spoon over her head. “Bring it out, guys!”
Out in the hallway, Bent and Bach looked at each other. “That’s our cue.”
Pam tapped her headset. “And we’re bringing out the cake. . . .”
Bach grabbed one handle of the massive rolling base, Bentley the other. “Holy crap,” Bach coughed. It was like trying to push a VW Bug.
“Push harder,” Bent whispered. Bach nodded, and they stared up at the cake, straining as they moved it slowly forward.
It had been molded and baked and frosted to resemble a towering stack of six Tiffany’s boxes, all in pale blue buttercream, with the classic white buttercream ribbon. The whole stack was probably bigger than the Royces’ Sub-Zero. The center box was made to look like it was open, and on a white chocolate disk in the very middle of that was a black velvet ring box—also open—to display what would forever be known as Porsche Royce’s Engagement Ring.
In a matter of seconds, at least half the population of the planet (if Lifespan’s nice numbers held) would be looking at the same seven-karat (that was the number Bent had heard from Mercedes), emerald-cut, platinum-set solitaire ROCK of a ring that looked to Bentley to be the size of a golf ball.64
“HOLY CRAP!” Bentley said, again, under her breath. “You could probably kill someone with that thing.”
Bach nodded. “Like brass knuckles, only harder, right?”
“How will she be able to move her arm?” Bent stared.
“I don’t know. Maybe she won’t.”
“Go, go, go,” Pam said, holding her headset with one hand.
Bent and Bach went back to rolling the cake forward. The crew—Mac and Ted and JoJo—shoved the table from behind so they could pick up speed.
“Remember,” Pam said, looking at Bentley, “I want joy.”
“Joy.” Bent nodded.
“Don’t forget.” Pam was dead serious, as always. “Give me some freaking joy.”
Ted and Mac ran ahead to open the French doors. JoJo flipped on the hall light. Suddenly Bent could see the writing on the cake—bold silver and gold letters carved into the thick white curls of the largest piece of white frosting ribbon.
Will You
Marry Me
Porsh?
Bentley froze. She gasped.
“ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Bach, look!” She pointed with one hand, desperately trying to slow the rolling cart with the other.
But the cake only picked up speed toward the stage, where it would be caught on camera and broadcasted to the entire world.
“Her name! Look at the name—”
All Bentley could hear was Mercedes’s voice echoing through her head, just as it had echoed through the kitchen itself a few hours before.
I JUST HOPE YOU GET THE RIGHT NAME ON THE CAKE.
“Porsh? Man.” Bach was wide-eyed. “Someone’s going to be so fired.”
Bentley could hear Porsche’s screams in her head already. She could imagine the headlines. She could see the people laughing, in front of their streaming video and their televisions and their cell phones—
“No. No. No.” Bent looked at her brother, desperate. “We have to stop this. We can’t take it out there. PORSH? That’s, like, I don’t know, PORN meets HORSE—it’s like Horse Porn. Is that even a thing?”65
Bach made a face. “How would I know? I’m gay, I’m not a farmer.”
“Bach! This is serious!” It was. But it was also too late.
The cake cart was rolling—
The French doors flinging open—
Spotlights hitting the cake—
Iconic Pop Star Slash Actress Treysi Sweet—a close personal friend of Razz Jazzy—began to sing an original song, “Sweet Thing,” in the background. She’d written it just for tonight (and for an undisclosed sum that Bentley could only imagine would pay for more cat toys and matching friend-group nightgowns and cookie batter than a girl could ever dream of).
I JUST HOPE YOU GET THE RIGHT NAME ON THE CAKE.
The cart rolled onward.
Bentley could now see them all, clustered at the far end of the dining room, where it joined the foyer.
Treysi Sweet leaning down from the main stairwell (beatifically crooning)
Mercedes standing a few stairs beneath her (angry tooth-smiling)
Porsche at the very foot of the stairs (softly crying)
Whitey on one knee in front of her (always grinning)
I JUST HOPE YOU GET THE RIGHT NAME ON THE CAKE.
I JUST HOPE YOU GET THE RIGHT NAME ON THE CAKE.
I JUST HOPE YOU GET THE RIGHT NAME ON THE CAKE.
In that split second, Bentley knew what she had to do, and she knew she wasn’t the one who could do it.
Only one person she knew could.
Bad Bentley dove toward the rolling cart.
She pushed off against the polished bamboo floor, hurling herself into the air, tumbling up and into the cart full of cake—
WILL
Reached for the frosted PORSH ribbon, fingers outstretched, as if the horrific word itself was her own personal Golden Snitch—
YOU
Caught the look of horror on her sister’s face—the flash of anger in her mother’s eyes—the eight feet of buttercream as it flew toward a kneeling T. Wilson White—
MARRY
(Treysi just kept singing. She was the consummate professional.)
Bent’s hands made contact.
ME
Her hands clutched at the cake, exploding one cake box after another as she spun out into the tower.
PORSH?
The rest was slow-motion chaos. Bright lights flashing. Porsche reeling. Bentley shouting. Whitey lunging out of the path of the cart.
BAM!
The cake hit the stairs and went off like a bomb.
Bentley went tumbling, spread-eagled, into the full length of the most expensive cake ever to be produced by the illustrious Rosebud Cakes of Beverly Hills.
Everyone in the room—camerapeople and gaffers and producers and editors and makeup artists and hairstylist
s—were sprayed with sugar and buttercream and raspberries, but only Bad Bentley was maimed by it.
(And only Treysi Sweet remained immaculate.)
The cart toppled over on the marble foyer floor.
The room fell silent.
Bent lay back in a soft layer of jettisoned sponge cake, like a halo-shaped pillow, trying to catch her breath.
“What the hell just happened?” She opened her eyes to see Whitey standing over her with his cake-splattered face.
Bentley held up her hand and opened it.
Inside was a diamond ring the size of a golf ball.
He took it from her, a strange look on his face. Then he threw back his head and began to laugh.
Whitey turned to Porsche, who was pulling herself up on the bottom step of the cake-covered stairs. He tried to help her, but one high-top slipped in a puddle of frosting, and he wound up on the floor next to her.
Now he was laughing so hard, he was howling. Then the gaffers started laughing. Then the second grip, and the first AD, and the sound technician. Then the social media person, camera three, a producer, two assistants, and an assistant to those assistants.
Whitey was laughing so fiercely now, he looked like he was crying. Porsche giggled, and cake got into her nose, and she began to snort-laugh harder.
Whitey fell back into a pile of cake on the floor, rolling from side to side. Porsche wiped a flap of cake from over her left ear and tasted it. “Cake? Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve had cake?”
The room was convulsing now. (Even Treysi Sweet smiled. She was full of compassion.)
Whitey reached up and pulled Porsche down into the cake puddle with him, slipping the golf ball of a ring onto her finger.
“You never answered my question,” Whitey said.
“Oh, I’ll answer your question.” Porsche smiled, pulling him back down into the cake. And the cameras rolled and the crew laughed and the champagne flowed and even the lifestyle journalist was found under the dining room table with Dred Ted—
It was generally thought to be the cutest proposal ever. More than twenty-eight million people in fifty countries and seven continents said so. (Even Treysi Sweet took a selfie with the golf ball rock.) They also said that Bentley was an idiot, except in many more colorful languages and idioms than that.
Only Bach knew the truth, and he’d never say a word, except to hand a cake-covered Bent a bathroom towel when it was all over. “You’re a really good sister, Bent. Even if you don’t have much of a future in horse porn.”
She took the towel and rested her head on his shoulder.
YOU’RE INVITED TO THE ROCK-AND-ROLL,
CELEBRITY, FASHIONISTA, HOLLYWOOD
WEDDING OF THE CENTURY!
PORSCHE ROYCE &
T. WILSON WHITE
STAR IN A LIFESPAN SPECIAL PRESENTATION
“ROLLING WITH THE ROYCES:
YOU MAY NOW KISS THE BRIDE.”
COMING TO A TELEVISION NEAR YOU.
EIGHT WEEKS AND COUNTING.
DON’T FORGET TO WATCH EVERY WEEK AS ROLLING WITH THE ROYCES’ FAVE BRIDE
GETS CLOSER AND CLOSER TO WALKING DOWN THE AISLE.
GUEST STARRING:
BENTLEY ROYCE AS BRIDESMAID
BACH ROYCE AS BEST MAN
MERCEDES ROYCE AS
THE MOTHER OF THE BRIDE
AND YOU AT HOME AS OUR SPECIAL GUESTS!
ENGAGED?! LIFESPAN DROPS A BOMBSHELL: PORSCHE ROYCE HEADS TO THE ALTAR—EXCLUSIVE! BENTLEY BOTCHES BIG MOMENT FOR BIG SIS
AP: Beverly Hills, California
Via Celebcity.com
Surprise! Porsche Royce, reality television celebrity, will be heading to the altar with music label heir and unlikely love T. Wilson White. It’s a sudden development for a duo that flew so low under the radar they were thought to be collaborating on an album, rather than on coupledom.
White surprised his now fiancé with a tender television proposal during tonight’s exclusive live interview with Entertainment Tomorrow. The very Royce proposal included tears, kisses, family and of course, little sister Bentley screwing it all up—sending a six-foot cake flying. Footage of White’s proposal is now appearing on every major media outlet in the world.
“I was blown away,” Porsche Royce said on her Tumblr page earlier this evening. “Too happy to speak. Also too covered in cake! Love you Bentley! Hope you get the frosting out of your ears! #blessed.” The groom confirmed the news in a single tweet from his newly verified @Whiteboy account. “Boom. Engaged.”
“It’s every mother’s dream. I’m just so thrilled that Porsche and Whitey have found each other,” Mercedes Royce said in a post on the official #RWTR fan site. “My children are the most important thing in the world to me, and anything that makes them happy makes me happy.”
Bentley Royce tweeted “LET THEM EAT CAKE! ALSO: WEAR CAKE #KLUTZ” via her @GetBent account.
Bach Royce (@BachRoyce) tweeted only “IT’S TRUE!” No other details of the engagement were made available.
The internet was ablaze with reactions to tonight’s episode.
“@RoycerFan um omg was that the big 1 cuz i’m dying here didn’t c that 1 coming! #RWTR6 #OTPorscheWhitey”
“@PorschePeople crying who even is this guy #rwtr6”
“@Royatics speechless #rwtr6 #truelove #porscheboy”
(Disclosure: Celebcity is a fully owned subsidiary of the Lifespan Network, which is itself a fully owned subsidiary of DiosGlobale.)
Follow @celebcity for breaking details, or www.celebcity.
* * *
63 Per JG: Could we swap “hard driving journalism” for “talkie fluff?” Pls. revisit! —D
64 Per Consumer Products: We’ve run into a snag with the “Porsche Royce Engagement Ring Pops” promotion—standard Ring Pops aren’t large enough so we’re going to have to special order Jumbo Ring Pops—ups the per unit price. Stay tuned! —D
65 Standards has still not approved “Horse Porn.” They’re asking if “horse corn” could evoke the same basic feel? Better yet: “Horse Popcorn”? Potential snack foods tie-in? —D
Twelve
BLOWN
January 2018
TryCycle, Beverly Hills
(Wilshire east of Santa Monica)
“That’s ridiculous.” Bentley glared at her phone from the passenger seat of Mercedes’s car.
“What is?” Her mother flipped on her blinker.
“Porsche’s engagement is still the lead story on People and InTouch and Us Weekly—but I didn’t even get a mention from Perez. Not a word!” Bad Bentley had been working overtime, and she was more than a little annoyed.
“You? Since when do you care about Perez Hilton?”
“I let some One Direction clone give me a ride on a freaking Harley down Sunset Boulevard. We practically ran over half the TMZ crew. I mean, we gunned an engine in Perez’s face. There are Snaps of it, Mercedes. Snaps.”
Mercedes raised an eyebrow as she pulled her car into the parking lot. “I’m not sure I want to hear about that.”
“Too late,” Bent said. She tossed her phone into her bag. “All they want to write about is either the future Mrs. Whitey White—or the Duck Daughter baking up Donald Duckcakes. Joelynne Wabash is skyrocketing straight into Miley Cyrus territory.”
Mercedes looked at her daughter strangely. “You know what they say. Maybe you just need to leave it on the wheel.”
“I need to leave it somewhere, all right.”
“I can’t believe Shandi is late,” Mercedes griped.
“Don’t worry. I reserved our bikes. And besides, the later she is, the less we’ll have to sweat,” Bentley replied.
Saturday was off to a bad start. Any Saturday that started off at TryCycle was off to a bad start in Bentley’s opinion. But the holidays had whizzed by at record speed (yes, with Whitey over for Christmas Eve, and yes, with a camera crew) and it was time to get rid of the holiday love handles. So: spin class.
But Shandi was
a no-show so far, and the beloved Tomme had quit the Beverly Hills TryStudio months ago, so there was no one to cover Shandi’s slot. Rumor had it that Tomme (who didn’t overwhelm you with choreography but whose arm repetitions were deadly) had gotten a small speaking part in a Blake Lively movie. Since Blake Lively was herself a TryCyclist, it was entirely possible—but either way, the fact remained that Tomme was gone and the Beverly Hills location had yet to recover.
Mercedes dropped her glasses into the locker.
Bentley narrowed her eyes. “Are your contacts in?”
“No. I didn’t have time.”
“Then you have to wear your glasses. You won’t be able to see a thing.”
“I sweat too much. They’ll slide off my nose.” Mercedes slammed the locker door. She was actually just too vain to wear her glasses when anyone could see them, even in a dark room during a workout class. So vain, in fact, that she barred the crew from all her workout sessions as well. She didn’t want anyone catching any sort of jiggling on camera.
Bent shook her head. “Shandi’s hard. You need to see for her choreography.” TryCyclists were always talking about choreography, which usually just meant swirling your butt around in the air over your seat.
“I’ll be fine. Shandi’s no Tomme.” Mercedes sighed as she grabbed her complimentary water.
“How would you know? You never even went to Tomme,” Bentley groused, examining the water. It was plastered with custom For Your Consideration signs advertising Blown, a Lifespan show that one of the Lifespan producers who came to this TryCycle had up for some kind of Emmy.
“Of course not. He was the one with the arms, right?”
Bent nodded, holding up her water. “Blown? Wasn’t that canceled?”
“Maybe too late to get it off the water bottles.” Mercedes shrugged, checking them in on the seat chart at the counter. “You put us behind each other? How do you feel about staring at my butt for an hour?”
“Not all that great.”
“Would you rather I stared at yours?”
Bentley grabbed a towel. “This day is only getting better and better.”
“Shandi just called. She’ll be here in five,” said the perky, buff twentysomething behind the counter.
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