Cupcake

by Mariah Jones

  The phone rang, and instinctually I knew before I ever picked it up that I shouldn’t answer it. After all, I had lost ten pounds; I couldn’t expect more than one miracle in a single day. “Hi mom,” I said without even checking the caller id.

  “Oh Darcy, good, I’m glad you’re home.”

  “Yep. I’m home,” I said drearily.

  “I just called to tell you that I ran into someone the other day and I thought you might want to see him,” she said, extra innocently.

  I could feel the bile rising in my throat. “You wouldn’t be talking about Andrew, would you mother?”

  There was a brief silence. I think my mom was restructuring her attack plan. “Oh, yes dear. I wasn’t sure if he had contacted you yet.”

  What to do, what to do. “Yes mom. We went out to dinner last night. He is leaving for New Hampshire tomorrow evening,” I said pleasantly.

  “I was hoping you would get the chance to catch up. You two were always such a perfect fit,” she said, still sounding hopeful.

  “He’s leaving,” I repeated.

  Not the slightest bit discouraged, my mother continued on in her same ultra-cheerful tone. “I was under the impression that he might want to give you two another shot. Your father and I were so upset when you parted ways…” she said, allowing her voice to trail off.

  “Look mom,” I know how much you and dad liked Andrew, and I’m sorry to disappoint you, but it isn’t going to happen.” My next thought scared the hell out of me. There was going to come a point when Thorne inevitably would have to be introduced to my mother.

  “I know you haven’t seen each other for a while,” she continued on, undaunted. “He seemed so excited to see you again, I really had no choice but to tell him how to get a hold of you honey. I hope you aren’t mad. You know I would never intentionally do anything to upset you.”

  She had no choice. Ha! I was the one who had no choice. I had to tell her the truth. “I’ve met someone else,” I finally said.

  I could hear the confusion in my mother’s voice before she formed so much as a word. “Oh,” was all she managed.

  My phone beeped indicating that there was another call coming through and I blessed all the saints and virgins and even Gods from other countries I couldn’t pronounce the names of, simultaneously. A reprieve sent from heaven. “I’ve got another call mom, I’ll call you back.” Note to self, I thought as I pressed the button to click over to the other call, unplug phone immediately after this call and turn off cell phone as well.

  It was Thorne. “Hi beautiful,” he said.

  The sound of his voice had already melted away the conversation with my mother.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “I wanted to let you know I managed to get on the flight I was trying for. I’ll be home tonight. I have a surprise for you.”

  I fell back onto my sofa and stretched my legs out in front of me. “I can’t wait to see you,” I told him, which was true, in spite of my worries.

  “I can’t wait to hold you,” he said before telling me goodbye.

  I couldn’t wait for that either.

  Chapter seventeen

  Fairytales are Crap

  Just before ten o’clock as I was getting ready to meet Thorne at the airport, Katie called me frantic and crying so hard it was difficult to understand her. Daniel had fallen from the ladder of his tree house and broken his left arm. He was rushed to the emergency room via ambulance and Katie had ridden with him.

  In her state of panic over his injuries, she had neglected to think about how she was going to get home when he was released, and asked if I could meet them there.

  He was sleeping off the first round of painkillers when I got there and we carefully loaded him into the car, trying not to move his arm, which was in a cast and a sling. He looked like a little blonde angel. Katie looked like she had been tossed into the middle of a tornado.

  I realized there was no way I was going to make it to meet Thorne at the airport at the time we had agreed upon. I tried to call him, but his phone went straight to voicemail.

  “How did it happen? What was he doing trying to get into the tree house by himself at that hour anyway?” I realized I was grilling my sister and looked at her apologetically.

  Katie sobbed openly, both hands covering her face. “He thought he could see daddy from up there,” she said, bursting out into an even more heart-wrenching round of tears.

  “Oh no,” I said.

  My sister’s shoulders shook with grief and I felt helpless and stupid. Here I was convinced that my problems were so big. I felt like a complete fool.

  I rubbed her shoulder reassuringly. “He doesn’t understand that his dad is on the other side of the world,” I said, more to myself than to her.

  Katie looked up at me and it broke my heart to see her tear-streaked face. “I tried to tell him before that we can’t see daddy from here but he is in our hearts. All he wants is for him to come home. Jake always took him up there. It was their special place. I guess he felt closer to him there.”

  I nodded. “You have been doing an amazing job with him.”

  Katie shrugged. “I try, but things like these…things like this make me wonder if I can really do this on my own. I mean, I know there are plenty of single moms out there who do a great job, but I never wanted to be one of them.”

  I could hear the hopelessness in Katie’s voice beginning to turn into something else. It sounded like anger. “I know he’s serving his country and doing the right thing, but what about us. What about what’s right for us and our family?” She demanded, staring past me and out the window into the parking lot of the hospital.

  I knew she must need to vent after her awful night, so I chose to stay quiet and let her finish.

  “I have been thinking of filing for divorce,” she said with a frightening sort of calm.

  “Divorce?” I parroted her. I think I was in shock.

  “It’s what he wants to do with his life,” she said sadly. “I can’t take it away from him, I could never ask him to give up on what he believes in. I’m just not sure anymore if this is the life I want Daniel and I to live. Every moment he’s away I spend worrying. I keep waiting for the day when I have to tell Daniel that daddy isn’t going to come back. Every time the phone rings or there is a knock at the door I fear the worst. I just don’t know how much longer I can keep living like this.”

  I leaned over and gathered Katie into my arms. So much for fairytales, I thought.

  ***

  I made sure Katie had Daniel settled in and she didn’t need anything else before I left her house. I glanced over at the photo of my sister and her husband on their wedding day and a sharp pain stabbed me in the chest. I didn’t know whether she had meant any of what she had said to me in the car or if she was just blowing off steam, but either way, it cut me to the core. I couldn’t have imagined two people who were better for each other than Katie and Jacob if I had tried. To think that it might be over for them was a true test of my faith in relationships.

  When I reached my car, I pulled out my cell and tried to call Thorne again. Still it went straight to voicemail. I looked at the clock and noted that he should have landed by now. I hoped he would understand why I hadn’t been there as I promised him I would.

  It was close enough to the time his plane was supposed to land that I thought I would try the airport first. I realized on the way there that I had looked at the clock wrong and he would have already been home for more than an hour. I turned the car around and headed for the next logical place I thought he would go.

  I parked in front of cupcake and tried to swallow the mixture of tension and excitement that was building in me. I had no idea what I was going to say to him when I saw him. I didn’t have any great plan of how to approach what had happened with Andrew. All I knew was that in spite of the disheartening conversation with my sister, I was in love and the man I loved had been away from me for too long. I couldn’t wait to see his face and smell h
is scent and be in his arms. I almost ran as I approached the door to his shop. The lights were on, although I couldn’t see into the building well because the top half of the door had been covered with an art reprint announcing the hours of operation.

  I took a deep breath, wondering if the door was locked and if I should just walk in if it wasn’t, when I looked down and saw something that literally stopped me in my tracks.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Bad Taste in Footwear

  A pair of leopard skin high heels sat just on the other side of the door, one of them on its side, facing away from its mate, as though it had been discarded carelessly, as though someone had been in a particular hurry to get out of that shoe.

  The image of Nancy grinding the toe of her leopard skin pump outside of Ivy’s burned into my mind. “Oh no,” I said, suddenly feeling sick to my stomach. “Oh you little bitch,” I said a bit louder. I tried the door and found it was, as I expected it to be, locked.

  I tried to reason with myself. I told myself there must be a perfectly good reason for those shoes to be there. Like, when I figured out how to get the door open they would be an acceptable weapon to kill Nancy with. I had almost convinced myself I was being ridiculous when I heard the sound of a woman’s laughter, followed by words that I couldn’t hear clearly.

  I stood there frozen, unsure of my next move, straining to hear what the voices on the other side of the door were saying. “Is it good right there or should I move it a little?” I heard Thorne’s voice ask.

  “A little lower,” I heard the woman’s voice say.

  I had all the information I needed. Feeling like I was going to puke and scream at the same time, I ran for my car, tripping off the curb and painfully banging my shin on the bumper.

  I was crying so hard I could barely see the road, but somehow I managed to make it home. I guess my car knew the way. I stumbled into the house and made my way down the hall to my room where I hurled myself face first onto the bed. I cried and cried and continued to cry until I felt I had nothing left, and then I cried again. After three hours of alternating sobbing and swearing, I went to the kitchen and grabbed a pint of rocky road. I didn’t even bother to walk far enough to reach a piece of furniture. I grabbed a spoon and sunk down in front of the refrigerator to polish off the whole pint.

  This is exactly the behavior one would expect from “Someone like me,” I said to no one. How could he do this to me? I wondered. How could he tell me he loved me and treat me so well and make me believe he didn’t care that I was fat and then sleep with that tramp the first opportunity he had?

  I thought about the conversation I’d had with my mother. “Oh crap,” I said out loud. The same day I told my mother I had met someone and now I would have to admit to her it was over. I then thought of my sister saying she was considering getting divorced. “I don’t blame you Katie. Men are worthless pigs,” I yelled to my empty kitchen. Mr. Muffins wandered in, took one look at me and retreated the way he had come. I think he figured out quickly it was a bad time to be a male in my house.

  ***

  The next morning I woke by banging my head against the refrigerator. I had fallen asleep with a nearly empty carton of ice cream in my lap, and awakened with a sticky mess of chocolate sludge on my thigh. Once my disorientation vanished, I forced myself to go take a shower. The message light on my phone was blinking. It was probably my mom, who was possibly the last person I wanted to talk to right then, next to that cheating, lying bastard Thorne. He was definitely first on my hit-list.

  I ignored the rhythmic flashing and stepped into the shower to wash away the chocolate and hopefully some of the pain. It worked on the chocolate.

  I called Katie and tried to sound as normal as I could while asking her about Daniel’s condition and her own. She sounded much more cheerful than she had the night before. I thought I had done a decent job of covering up how I really felt, but my sister was amazingly shrewd about some things.

  “Tell me what happened,” she said calmly.

  I thought about lying, knowing she had enough to deal with, but I knew she wouldn’t buy it. The whole messy story went tumbling out of my mouth before I even realized I was talking.

  “Oh Darcy,” she said. “If I could come over right now I would. Let me call mom and see if she can come stay with Daniel.”

  I tried to tell her that calling our mother was the worst idea since the miracle bra but she had already hung up. She called me back less than a minute later. “I’m on my way. Be there in twenty minutes or so.”

  “Okay,” I agreed, knowing full well it would do me no good to argue.

  I thought over the entire situation again as I waited for my sister. I noticed the flashing light on my machine again and decided it couldn’t get any worse so I might as well listen to the message.

  “Hi pretty lady,” came Thorne’s voice. I scoffed. “I’m sorry I missed you last night. Things didn’t exactly go as I planned and I got tied up at the studio; hope to catch you later today. I love you.”

  “I’ll bet you got tied up. Knowing Nancy she probably keeps a pair of pink, fuzzy handcuffs in her purse. Bastard!” I screamed. How could anyone have that much nerve? For him to call and say he loved me, like nothing had ever happened the night before! I could have killed him.

  The next message was from Andrew, telling me goodbye. I felt instant regret as I wondered if I had pushed away the only man who had ever truly cared for me. And to think, I considered angrily, I had been so worried about what Thorne would think of that kiss. I should have ripped off Andrew’s clothes in that parking lot and really given Nancy a show. The thought of the horrified look on Nancy’s face that would have created made me smile momentarily before another stab of loneliness replaced it.

  The knock at the front door startled me from my reverie. I wondered why on earth Katie was knocking. Perhaps I had locked the door last night and forgotten to unlock it. “Hold on, I’ll be right there,” I called out to Katie.

  When I opened the door, it wasn’t my sister standing there.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Oops…

  “Hi beautiful,” Thorne said, leaning toward me as though he expected me to embrace him.

  I was taken aback for a second as I had expected to see Katie standing there. As soon as I realized it was Thorne I could feel the anger overflowing. “How dare you show up here!” I spat at him.

  He took a step back and a look of confusion crossed his face. “What?” he said. He was doing an awfully convincing job of looking innocent. I wanted to punch him.

  “I know what you were doing last night!” I said. My voice was low and quavering and it sounded unnatural even to me.

  “You do?” he asked. “How did you find out?”

  I closed my eyes for a moment, but then felt like I was going to pass out. I planted my hands firmly on my hips and glared at him. “You don’t even sound surprised! I don’t just know what you were doing last night. I know who you were doing it with!” I could feel my voice rising in octaves and didn’t seem to be able to control it.

  “Okay, but I’m not sure why you are so upset. I really wanted you to join us, but it seemed you weren’t available,” he said, still managing to be handsome and sound reasonable even while he uttered those ridiculous words. I hated him more than I thought.

  I gasped in utter horror. “You wanted me to JOIN you? Have you lost your mind?”