Broken Butterfly: MMF Bisexual Romance (Mundane Magic Book 1)

by Maxene Novak

  “We’ve got half of the goods right now,” Louisa said as she hopped out of the van. “Shelby and Megan are loading the second half into their cars and then heading over. Everything good over here?”

  “Yep, we’re off to a great start,” Max said proudly. It was almost hard to believe how smooth things had gone this morning. With careful and particular preparation, anything could be pulled off.

  Max helped the others unload the truck and set all of the goodies out at their proper tables. Gabby took a seat at the table full of cupcakes, smiling as she looked over all the treats. In a perfect world, she’d have been able to eat as many of these as she wanted.

  It didn’t take long for the second half of the inventory to be laid out as well. With two extra pairs of hands, they finished the task in no time. While this was great for time management, it made Max nervous. He didn’t have something else to focus on, and now he was forced to think about the outcome of the sale. What would he do if nobody else showed up? What if he’d wasted this money for no reason? The idea of using up so many peoples’ time without anything to show for it scared him more than anything else. He had to think positively, though. He had to.

  At noon, the Nannies showed up with their families. Max had never had the chance to meet the people the nannies worked for, and he hadn’t realized it until just now. As they perused the tables, Max introduced himself to a ton of people. He shook hands, thanked them for coming out, and encouraged them to stay for a while. The park was theirs for the day. There were even a few parents he pulled aside and told to let their kids run off the sugar they’d ingested.

  The sale started off great, but at one, Drew pulled Max aside, panic on his face. “What’s the problem?” he asked, sensing the panic.

  “The cake pops. The rose ones? They’re melting.”

  Max felt his stomach drop. He leaned around Drew to look at his table. There, the icing dripped off down into the cellophane bag they’d been wrapped in. “What happened?”

  “The face painters asked for our umbrella, and we completely forgot about the icing melting in the heat. Those are the money makers, aren’t they?”

  Max wracked his brain. He ignored the man’s question and hurried to his table, looking at the pops to see if there was any way they could recover pops themselves. “Okay, get to another table and help that person sell. I need Louisa and Shelby.” Max didn’t wait for Drew to take orders. He ran across the clearing and grabbed the two women, dragging them with him.

  “Major problem,” he said, picking up the foam board of melted cake pops. “These things melted. We need to get to the bakery and refrost them.”

  “I’ll drive,” Louisa said. Shelby looked off-balance but kept up with them anyways. They climbed into Max’s minivan and he handed Louisa the keys. “Don’t panic, Max. We can fix this,” she told him. He nodded, but the worry lines in his forehead didn’t smooth out. They’d made dozens of cake pops. Those were the stars of the show. There was no way they could make enough money without them.

  Louisa practically sped towards Vanessa’s bakery. Before she could turn the car off, Max was outside and running to the front door. He unlocked it and made a straight shot for the kitchen. He began tearing the cellophane off the cake pops and putting them down on parchment paper.

  “I need you guys to start scraping off the melted icing and throwing the cake pops into the freezer. When you’re done, load up an ice cooler. I’m going to make some more icing.”

  Shelby and Louisa got right to work. They pulled on gloves and began wiping away the bright red icing. Once the first batch had been cleaned, they put the pops in the freezer to keep the icing mixed in with the cake from melting. If that melted, they’d be screwed. The pops would lose their shapes and fall apart completely.

  Max whipped powdered sugar like never before. His hands visibly shook as he tried adding a few drops of red food coloring to the mixture. He tasted it and smiled to himself. At least the icing was delicious. By the time he finished mixing it all up and it was the perfect consistency, the first batch of pops were hardened and ready to be iced.

  “Here, Louisa, I’ll show you how to ice them and make them look like roses.” Max loaded up a piping bag with the proper tip attached and demonstrated how to layer each petal onto the pop. In under thirty seconds, he had a whole rose done.

  “Looks easy enough,” Louisa said. She took the bag from him and began piping on the petals just as he’d done. The first one wasn’t the prettiest, but as she continued doing more, they began looking nearly identical to Max’s.

  Shelby finished scraping off the last of the pops and put them in the freezer. Max opened his mouth to tell her to start packaging the ones that had already been iced, but she beat him to the punch, pulling out the roses in the freezer and grabbing the box of cellophane sheets. She cute pieces out and carefully wrapped up the roses, tying bows around the plastic to keep it from opening.

  By two all of the roses had been wrapped and organized into their proper batches. Max looked over everything, smiling at the others. “These look even better than the other ones. Let’s get them loaded up. Oh!” Max stopped in his tracks and went back to the storage room. He grabbed a foam chest and filled it with ice packs. Louisa and Shelby helped him load that up with foam boards of cake pops.

  “They won’t melt this time,” he smiled.

  The three of them returned just in time. Drew looked up hopefully when he saw them hurrying over to his table with ice coolers full of pops. “Thank god,” he said, helping them unload the treats onto the table. Seeing that they’d arrived with the cake pops, customers flooded the table with their money out. It took three people to hand out the treats and take their money.

  Max could see that Louisa, Drew, and Shelby had it covered at this table. He wiped his brow and looked around at the other tables. Children had their faces painted at the booth, ranging from kittens to rabbits to tigers. The t-shirt booth sold shirts like they were going out of style. The playground buzzed with sugar-high children running all over the place. Even Claudette seemed less uptight than usual, her head thrown back in laughter with the other nannies.

  Max took a deep breath. The crisis had been averted, but they weren’t in the clearing yet. They still had to make enough money to keep him in America. Max could only pray that they pulled it off.

  Twenty

  Max sat in the living room with the others, silently counting the bills in his hand. He’d taken over for the others at the cake pop stand and bore the brunt of handing those out to nearly everyone who’d attended the sale that day. He figured since everyone else had helped him keep things running smoothly, he’d take charge of the busiest booth.

  He added his last five dollar bill to his pile and sat back in disbelief. “I’ve got over six hundred dollars right here,” he said to the group. Drew choked on his drink.

  “What?”

  “Six hundred and seventy-eight dollars, more accurately.” This included both the cheaper pops as well as the bigger ones he had rushed to redecorate with Louisa and Shelby. Drew took down that number and shook his head. He wanted to say something more, but the others in the room were still counting.

  As each of them gave their total, Max’s hopes grew higher and higher. They got closer and closer to three grand. Gabby was last. “Two hundred and sixteen.”

  “Oh,” Max said softly. They’d needed for hundred dollars from that booth to get over the hill of three grand. Max’s shoulders sank, and he looked down at the ground. There was an uncomfortable silence before Gabby reached into her back pocket.

  “Like every good business woman, however, I charged the school and the painters a flat fee of one hundred and fifty dollars to put their booths there.” Gabby placed four bills on the pile and smiled wide.

  “Oh my god,” Max shuddered. He scrambled to his feet and practically dove into Gabby’s arms. Relief flooded through his body like a wave, from his head down to his toes. Hearing the news, the others in the room screamed o
ut in victory. Izzy jumped up and down and did a happy dance while Drew sank back in his chair, laughing to himself.

  Max pulled away, tears flowing from his eyes. “Thank you, Gabby. Thank you. Thank you.” It was all he could say. He had nothing else on his mind but how grateful he was for Gabby thinking ahead of the curve.

  “This was all you, Max,” she said, pulling him to her chest again. “You set this up. You did all of this. You did it.” Gabby ran her fingers through his hair, holding him as he calmed down from the swell of emotions he’d just experienced.

  “I can’t believe we did it,” Louisa said, looking at the stacks of money on the coffee table. She looked to Shelby and Megan who sat in disbelief like the rest of the group. Max swiped his eyes and stood up, sniffing hard. He looked at everyone in the living room, taking their expectant faces in.

  “I… I just wanted to say how thankful I am to have you all. I – I never thought we could have pulled this off. I was sure that I was going home. I thought that I’d be on the flight back to France crying myself to sleep. But because of you guys, I’m still here. We haven’t known each other long, but… but I feel like you guys are my family. My American family.”

  Max thought back to his father. The man had been his only family in America, and now here he was, surrounded by people who cared about him the way family did. “I wish I could show you how grateful I am to have met you all, but I don’t know how. All I can do is offer my words. I’m so, so thankful that you’re all here for me. I promise I won’t make you regret keeping me.” The tears returned. He gave each of his friends a hug. Louisa had tears in her own eyes by the time he got to her. She squeezed him tight, rubbing his back lovingly.

  “I told you, Max. You’re not going anywhere.”

  Drew deposited the money they’d earned into the bank the following Monday. He sent 75% to the school and transferred the rest of what he owed for Max’s bill. He was left with a little over two hundred, and he put that into Max’s bank account. It had been his plan to start this bake sale in the first place. He’d earned that money with his own blood, sweat, and tears.

  Before heading out to work, Gabby pulled Max aside. “I got a call from a representative of Bright White Toys. They want you to be there at the shoot next week. I told them you’re the one who gave me the idea for the commercial, and they said they want someone that smart to be there and give them pointers. Keep your schedule clear, okay?”

  “Uh… sure,” Max said. Gabby pecked him on the cheek and hurried out the door. Max stood in the foyer, stunned. The fact that an official business wanted him there to work on their commercial… It was almost too good to believe. With everything that had happened since he’d started working for the Nobles, helping direct a commercial was the last thing he’d expected to happen.

  Gathering himself after the strange morning, Max put Izzy into the car and buckled her into her seat. The drive to the school was filled with lots of happy singing and dancing to the radio. Max had heard this version of the ABC song thousands of times before, but today it sounded that much better. It was probably due to the fact that this wouldn’t be the last time he was hearing it.

  Louisa stopped Max as he headed back to his car after dropping Izzy off. “Hey,” she said, jogging to catch up with him. “I already let the Nannies know we wouldn’t be getting brunch with them.”

  “We won’t?”

  “Nope, you and I are getting pizza for lunch. Claudette says good job, by the way.”

  Max made a face and smiled. He never thought he’d hear those words come from Claudette’s mouth. The woman who’d regarded him with such disdain two months ago now seemed to tolerate him enough to see him at brunch nearly every morning. Now she was giving him compliments? Things were seriously changing around Huntington Beach.

  “I’ll see you at noon, right?” Louisa asked.

  “Sure, text me the address of the pizza shop and I’ll meet you there.” Max waved goodbye and headed back to the Nobles’ house. He parked and stepped out, breathing in the fresh air deeply. Sure, it was dramatic, but he was still here. He was still living with the family he’d come to love. He was still seeing the people he cared about every day.

  Before going out to see Louisa at the shop, he dialed his mom’s number. Renee picked up before the end of the first ring. “Hello, mon cher,” she said happily. “I’m hoping for good news.” Her voice was sing-song, full of life.

  “I’ve got such good news,” Max laughed. He explained how the sale had gone down. When Renee started screaming at the good news, Max pulled the phone away from his ear. She eventually settled down and praised him.

  “I couldn’t have done it without your recipes, Mom. Thank you so much.”

  “No, my love, you could have done it without my help. I’m so proud of you.”

  Unwilling to let himself cry again, Max told her about his pizza date and she let him off the hook this time. He promised to call later tonight and talk more. Max hopped into the van and headed to Marquis’ Pizza Shop near Henderson Park. He found Louisa inside, tapping away on her phone.

  “Hey you,” he said, sliding into the other side of the booth. She smiled and put her phone down. “You looked like you were really into that text!”

  “I was,” she said. “That was my therapist. She said that she can squeeze me in this week and that she would love to talk to me about what’s been going on since we last spoke.”

  “Therapist, huh? Everything okay?” Max hadn’t known about her therapist, and worry etched its way into his face.

  “Everything is fine,” Louisa said. “I’ve just been missing the good times with Hector, and I think it’s time I go see her. I’ll be damned if I let myself get weak enough to go back to that pendejo.”

  Max swelled with pride. He’d been worried about Louisa slipping up and calling Hector back into her life. Seeing that she was being proactive about her feelings and going to her therapist helped put his worry at ease. “You’re amazing, you know that, girl?”

  “I won’t argue with you there,” she snickered. “You’re even more amazing. What you managed to pull off last night…”

  “It was a group effort,” Max said, waving it off.

  “Nonetheless, it was pretty damn amazing,” she laughed.

  “It was, huh?” Max sighed and looked out the window. Across the street, he watched two friends struggle to keep up with one another as they jogged around the track. The older woman laughed and pushed herself forward, inching past her younger friend.

  It was hard for him to believe that his relationship with Louisa had started out at that very same park. They’d competed against one another to see who could make it around the track faster, and now here they were, talking about abusive ex-boyfriends and bake sales that would allow them to stay in the country.

  “How are you and the Nobles doing? I mean, Gabby and Drew,” Louisa said, biting into her pizza.

  Max blushed and chewed his slice of pepperoni pizza slowly. Louisa had also been the cause of that relationship as well. Things had moved so fast between the three of them. All Max had expected was a simple, physical affair that would end once his six months were up. Instead, Max had fallen for the both of them for two very different reasons.

  Gabby was someone he could truly call his friend. She was supportive and honest, and she helped him through more than she’d ever signed up for. She was forward-thinking and headstrong, controlling yet able to be soft and vulnerable when she felt safe with someone. And when she took the lead and showed Max that she was still in charge, he never felt happier.

  And Drew… Drew, the man he’d fallen for first. Though he was quiet and stuck to the background, he’d been the first person Max had met here. He’d taken him into his home, shown him how things worked and where he could fit in with their family. And when it came sex, he’d been the first to light Max’s fire. Drew was sturdy and strong. He was the backbone of the family, always there and sometimes a bit underappreciated. Not to Max, though. Max a
ppreciated everything the man did for his family. He was the kind of man Max’s father would be proud that he’d ended up with.

  Louisa looked at Max expectantly, shaking her head as if to ask, did you hear me?

  He smiled bashfully. “We’re doing… good. Very good.”

  Bonus

  The morning was as busy as it had ever been. Max woke to more of the usual, but this morning in particular, he woke with a wider smile on his face. It was his first day of his newest job. The six months with Drew and Gabby had come and went, and though he was sad, it had been time to say goodbye to his au pair gig.

  Izzy had been especially sad to hear this news. She wanted Max to continue taking her to school every morning and taking care of her when her parents weren’t around. Max knew that it would be hard, but eventually the four year old would adjust to the new changes. She had to.

  Max climbed into the shower and began washing himself off. He ran his fingers through his hair, lathering with his favorite shampoo. He spent extra time in the mirror as well. He wanted to look as good as he possibly could. He had sixty people to impress this morning. Once he was finished doting on himself, Max pulled on his nicest outfit. The gray cardigan was snug around him, and his slacks looked professional yet comfortable at the same time.

  Max headed downstairs where he found Drew waiting for him. “Sorry,” he apologized. “I wanted to look nice for all the students.”

  Drew chuckled at him and shook his head. “Got all dressed up when my students come to class in their pajamas,” he teased. In the past four months, Drew had found himself work at another college university. This one was much nicer than the one before and paid an additional ten thousand dollars a year. By all definitions, it was an improvement.

  “They say that if you look nice, the people working for you will pay more attention to you,” Max informed him haughtily.