by Cassie Rocca
Liberty was about to protest but her mouth remained sealed shut in a hard line.
She still remembered the flash of triumph on Zack’s face when, on her last night at Cape May, Justin had given him the perfect way to torment her, served up on a silver platter.
She needed a pastry chef and a buffet for her wedding and was lucky enough to know someone who would be just right and was actually willing to work for free. But the thought of even seeing Zack made her uncomfortable, so she had avoided contacting him. And this was just one of the many problems that had been preying on her mind since she’d returned to New York.
“Just let your friends give you a hand,” said Zoe. “With me, Clover and Zack to take care of the big jobs, you can concentrate on the little things and you won’t have to stress yourself out unnecessarily.”
“I’ll think about it,” she muttered unenthusiastically.
“Well, I for one will be much more willing to come to the party and to the wedding now that I know you’re going have a real wedding dress and that I will be able to eat Zack’s delicious cakes again,” Clover smiled. “That guy is a wizard or something!”
“It’s a shame that you left before dinner last weekend – Zack really outdid himself in the kitchen,” added Zoe. She looked at Clover and moaned with pleasure. “Do you remember that chocolate mousse? God it was so goood – I’m still dreaming about it every night!”
Clover clasped her hands to her heart. “Oh don’t!!”
“You two would think a plate of hay sprinkled with cream was exquisite if he offered it to you,” said Eric, giving the two of them an ironic look.
Zoe giggled mischievously. “Well, as Zack himself says, appearances are important!”
“If something good is presented in an inviting way, the end result is even more appetising!” concluded Clover with a mischievous smile.
Eric rolled his eyes and shook his head, making his St Patrick’s hat fall off. Zoe managed to grab it before it hit the ground and rearranged it on top of his brown hair.
“Don’t be jealous, honey! The world is full of hot guys.”
“For some reason, that doesn’t reassure me,” he snorted, giving her an annoyed look.
“Hey, think about it, how many good looking men have I been out with?”
“Yeah, that doesn’t really help either?”
She laughed. “What I mean is, despite all the hot guys I’ve dated in my life, you’re the only one I really want to be with.”
Clover nodded. “You can like how someone looks or their personality, but only one person is really able to bewitch you… Find that person and everyone else is just going to feel like a pale imitation.”
As she heard those words Liberty felt her stomach clench inexplicably, but she refused to ask herself what exactly was causing that reaction.
Fortunately, at that moment, the shop door opened with a cheerful ring. She thanked the heavens for the distraction – she was tired and irritable, yes, but work was still her best ally…
Except when fate raged against her and brought business and problems together.
“Hey girls!”
Candice’s shrill voice made everyone turn towards the entrance, but Liberty’s gaze remained fixed on Zack, who was standing immediately behind the little girl.
What the hell was he, a bloodhound?!
While Zoe and Clover went to say hello to the little girl and compliment her on her lovely green costume, Liberty took a step towards the stairs, hoping she could sneak away while Zack was busy chatting to the others.
You’re running away, you coward, said her subconscious.
I’m not running away, I just have a lot of things to do! she snapped back.
“Hey, Miss Liberty.”
She jumped at the sound of her nickname and seemed to hear her subconscious laugh out loud.
Trying to keep a serene expression on her face, she turned slowly, only to find Zack standing a short distance away from her.
“Well, hello,” she said with a polite smile. “What a surprise to see you.”
“A surprise? Why?” Zack approached her, forcing her to retreat behind the counter. Knowing him, she was sure that he would follow her to her office in order to corner her, so she preferred avoiding being alone with him in any room. If nothing else, there were her colleagues, a child and something big and solid to separate them, even if the sensations that she felt overwhelming her every time she looked at him couldn’t be stopped by a wooden counter.
She forced herself to follow their conversation. “Because I’ve never seen you in here in all these years. That’s why I’m surprised – you’re not a regular customer.”
“I didn’t know an old friend of mine worked here, but now that I do, I’ll come and see you more often.” Zack’s smile was threatening and inviting at the same time, and she couldn’t help giving a small, low sigh.
With great effort, Liberty turned her attention to the child, who was talking animatedly to Clover and Zoe. “Your daughter’s dress is so cute. Are you going to the parade?”
“Yes. I left my colleagues in charge of the bakery so I could take Candice out to have some fun… She wanted to dress up in a dumb green costume,” he joked, looking at the little girl who was approaching, holding her new friends by the hand.
“Hi Liberty!” Candice yelled, running over to hug her. “I’m so happy to see you again! I missed you!”
Liberty smiled and stroked her hair. “Well, I’m glad to see you too. You look so pretty dressed like that.”
“Thanks, it was Jessie who helped me… Look, she even painted shamrocks on my cheeks!”
“You’ll be the queen of the parade,” smiled Zoe. “I think I might put on some green wings too.”
“You look beautiful the way you are.” Candice stared at Zoe’s tight dress and the locks of green hair she’d added to her black bob, then studied Clover more closely before turning to look at Liberty, who was dressed more soberly in a green sweater and a pair of trousers in a darker shade of the same color. “Aren’t you going to put anything in your hair?”
“I hadn’t thought about that,” Liberty said, absently stroking her long blonde pony tail.
Candice took a hairgrip with rhinestones from one of her braids and handed it to her. “Here, put this on. It’s a present for you.”
With extreme seriousness, and feeling a lump in her throat, Liberty fixed it in her hair. “I will look after it carefully, thank you.”
The little girl went over to Zack, who put his hand on her hair so protectively that it made Liberty’s already over excited heart do a backflip. “It looks ok, doesn’t it, Daddy?”
“Yes, green really suits her,” he replied, studying her openly. “It brings out the color of her eyes.”
Liberty looked away and returned to the coffee machine, and for a moment an awkward silence reigned in the shop.
Confused by the tension that seemed to have appeared between Zack and her boss, Clover exchanged a look with Zoe, who also looked vaguely perplexed.
“So did you just drop in to say hello or did you want to buy something?” she asked Zack.
“Daddy has a green sweatshirt under his jacket, but you can’t see it,” answered Candice, “so I told him to buy a funny hat too. I don’t want to go to the parade with a boring daddy!”
“Seems fair to me,” said Zoe with a smile. “A St Patrick’s hat is absolutely ideal for the party.”
Eric looked at the other man and gestured to his own head. “Are you really sure you want to look like this?”
“The alternative is to paint my face green, so I don’t think I’ve really got an option,” chuckled Zack.
“We’ll choose one for you, then.” Clover held out her hand to Candice. “Come with me.”
Zack smiled at his daughter. “Hey, make sure you pick out a cool one for me, okay? I just need to have a quick word with Liberty, all right?”
The little girl nodded, took hold of Clover and Zoe’s hands and went a
way with them and Eric towards the shelves.
Realising that the tête-à-tête with Zack was unavoidable, Liberty let out a deep sigh and looked at him. “So what do you need?”
“That’s a question I should be asking you.”
She raised her eyebrows. “What do you mean?”
“I’m supposed to be taking care of the catering for your wedding, if I remember correctly, so I would like to know if you already have something in mind.”
“Oh… so you’re still determined to do it?”
“Of course – we had an agreement, didn’t we?”
“Not really,” sighed Liberty. But she was too tired to argue. “All right, you deal with it, then. I’ll need two big cakes for the pre-wedding party and a straightforward buffet. As for the details of the actual wedding, Justin’s sister will be taking care of all that. So you have carte blanche, make whatever you like.”
Zack stared at her, perplexed. “That’s it?”
Liberty shrugged. “What else do you want to know? The only important thing is that the cakes are good and that the buffet is elegant. I have no doubt at all that you’re capable of ensuring both, so… be as creative as you like.”
“Well.” Zack put his hands in his pockets. “You’re the least enthusiastic bride I’ve ever met. Maybe I was wrong about Justin – of the two of you, you seem to be the one who cares least.”
Feeling annoyed, Liberty began to tidy up the counter just to keep her hands busy. “It’s not a question of not caring about my marriage or about my husband, I just don’t want to lose sleep over pointless details… My relationship with Justin will survive any cake and, since I’m not going to eat it, I don’t really want to hear about every step of its preparation.”
“Maybe you don’t care, but the others will. As I understand it, you aren’t getting married on your own,” he replied, sounding annoyed. “The food I make will have to suit the theme of the wedding and satisfy everyone’s tastes, I don’t want my fame as a pastry chef to be compromised just because you want to be stingy over the details.”
“If you’re so worried, you’ve still got time to pull out. I didn’t want to get you involved in the first place – it was Justin’s idea and you jumped at the chance just to spite me. For me, one pastry chef is as good as another.”
The deadly silence that greeted her words convinced her to glance quickly at Zack. His jaw was clenched and his hands balled into fists, he looked furious. He stared at her with an indecipherable expression on his face and Liberty couldn’t tell whether he was hurt or angry.
A small part of her hoped that her cold, unfriendly attitude would discourage Zack’s enthusiasm and determination and keep him away from her, but when she noticed the spark of sadness in his dark eyes she felt a pang of guilt, just like when, after tasting one of Zack’s experimental dishes fifteen years ago, she had to tell him that it wasn’t that good. In spite of the fact that she had been tactful in her criticism of the combination of flavours he had chosen, she had seen the sorrow in his eyes and had felt absolutely awful.
But that little criticism had been nothing compared to what she had just told him.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured.
Zack seemed to think for a moment, then put his hands on the counter and leaned towards her. “I want to know something.”
“What?”
“Why are you so determined not to want to be my friend?”
Liberty hesitated.
“Because I will never be able to look at you without remembering how I felt about you. Because you make me hungry – in every sense – and I’m afraid of losing control again. Losing control of my weight and of my heart. Because when you are standing in front of me I cannot help but notice how empty and meaningless my life is, how devoid of emotion, and the only thing I can do is try and remove the cause of these uncomfortable thoughts,” she was tempted to say. Although it had been a long time, she had still hadn’t forgotten and wasn’t sure that she would ever be able to. Zack Sullivan had been her first love and it felt as if her heart had crystallized in that moment: he had been the standard by which she judged men for years, and she had found herself always being infatuated with guys who looked like him without ever being able to get from anyone what she really desired – just a little love.
When she had resigned herself to the fact and understood that she had to stop looking for him in the eyes of every dark haired handsome guy she met, she met Justin. He was the opposite, both physically and in terms of character, and that was the reason their relationship had lasted for so long. And up until a few days ago, she’d been convinced that she had finally found the right person for her. Or, if nothing else, a valid substitute.
But over the last week, past and present had gotten mixed up and she was no longer capable of separating her old desires from her present necessities.
Zack was observing her very carefully, clearly waiting for an answer. But Liberty didn’t know how to justify her unfriendly attitude towards him, and she was sure that he wouldn’t accept some silly excuse as an explanation.
“You were right,” she said softly. “I was in love with you.” She saw Zack’s eyes lose most of their sadness and become brighter, and a smile appeared on his beautiful lips. That made her nervous, and inflated the bubble of sentimentality she had inadvertently allowed to emerge. “I was a dumb dreamer that nobody cared about, and when you started treating me as if you did, my stupid heart started building a thousand fairy tale castles in the air. I would probably have fallen for anyone who showed me a little kindness, given how miserable being abandoned by my dad had made me. I was looking for something that would fill up that void, and until I met you, I’d thought food was the most satisfying solution. You simply had the misfortune to find yourself in the wrong place at the wrong time. You were good looking, kind, and you seemed to really care about me. And even if you were careful not to lead me on, you didn’t succeed – I was about one step away from pledging my eternal love to you. But that last night, at Brad’s party, I realized that you weren’t interested in me, that you didn’t see me as a girl but just as a guinea pig, and I felt like a nothing – I felt ugly, inadequate and rejected. Again.” She saw that he was about to protest and she raised her hand to silence him. “I don’t care about your justifications, you explained your point of view to me a few days ago and that’s fine. But at the time I didn’t know anything about that, and being disappointed yet again by a person who was so important to me made me suffer a lot. I decided that same summer that I would not go back to Chicago and I decided I was going to change radically. At the beginning it was hard, and I kept falling back into making the same mistakes, but in the end I managed it. I worked very hard to become what I am now and even though these sacrifices I’ve made might have made me a bit more uptight, I would never want to be the person I was before. And since you seem to struggle to accept that, I doubt that we will ever be able to get along.”
After confessing it all, she suddenly felt strangely weightless. Maybe it would help her to turn the page once and for all.
Zack stood there in silence for a long time. “I don’t know what to say…”
“You don’t have to say anything. Seeing you has brought back some painful memories, but now that we’ve spoken about it all and I’ve got it off my chest, I feel better already… It is all water under the bridge now,” Liberty smiled, trying to convince herself of the truth of her own words, but Zack’s superb black eyes stared into hers.
“Well then, let’s start again from scratch then. What do you say?”
Oh my God, you do not give up! thought Liberty, torn between exasperation and a hint of satisfaction. “I had forgotten how stubborn you can be when something doesn’t go exactly the way you want it to,” she sighed.
“I’m serious.” Zack said, looking at her tenderly. “Our lives have moved on and we’ve both changed, we don’t have much time to devote to ourselves and to having fun. I have a daughter who takes up most of my energy and
you are about to start a family of your own. It’s obvious that we are no longer the people we used to be and we won’t be able to spend much time together, but I would still like to have a friendly relationship with you, in the hope that one day you’ll be able to forget the unhappiness I caused you when I was really trying to do exactly the opposite. You were a special friend for me, Miss Liberty.”
Basically, what was he asking of her? A smile and a chat, if and when they were in the same room? A little collaboration on the details inherent to marriage?
Forgiveness?
Why shouldn’t she give it to him? If she wanted to prove to herself that she had grown up, she had to close the door on the past and move on.
“I should probably thank you,” she said, more to herself than to him.
“Thank me for what?”
“Your way of protecting my feelings all those years ago gave me enough determination to become what I am today – if I hadn’t felt rejected and insignificant, maybe I would still be in Chicago gorging on cakes and hoping for something that would never happen.”
Zack seemed about to object again, but then he let it go and held out his hand. “No more hostilities, then?”
Liberty hesitated for a moment, then put her hand in his. The warmth of his fingers enveloped hers, the tension faded, and the delicate strength of his grip made her want, for a moment, to be enveloped by his arms and kissed by those smiling lips.
Nice way to turn the page, she thought bitterly – getting shaken up by a simple handshake was not a great start.
“It’s absurd to want something that you really don’t even know if you might like,” she told herself. All the dreams she had about him had never been reflected in real life … even though, in her mind, those moments had far surpassed the reality of her later relationships.
She had to stop idealizing that youthful crush and start seeing Zack as a normal man, with his good points and his bad points.
And maybe he has dozens of bad points! Just think how disappointed you’d be if you ended up finding out about them!