Make a Scene

by Mimi Grace

“Perfect,” he said. “I’ll take care of the food.”

  Retta nodded. “I’d lick—like that.”

  Dammit.

  His chuckle let her know he’d caught her Freudian slip, but buried under the heat of her embarrassment was relief he didn’t hold the moment in the Uber against her.

  Their conversation wound down, and they said goodbye.

  She drove home lighter and happier, that was until she remembered their interactions were a means to an end. An end that would arrive in six weeks.

  “Good morning,” Duncan said, walking into the staff room for the monthly meeting with the other trainers.

  He received a general rumbling response from the people already seated, and Anthony looked up from where he was fixing his morning shake.

  Duncan smacked his friend on the back while he opened the fridge to place his lunch inside.

  “We should get a bigger table,” he said to Anthony as they leaned against the kitchenette counter, waiting for the rest of the team to arrive so they could begin the meeting. “Everyone should be able to sit at the table.”

  Anthony studied the furniture that already took up a lot of space. “Not in the budget.”

  “What’s this?” a trainer they’d recently hired spoke loudly into the room.

  She was studying the notice board where the team had placed Retta’s Post-it notes. The ones where she in no uncertain terms told them to move their cars. They’d started collecting and displaying them on the board. Of course, it hadn’t been added to in a while, and Duncan had forgotten all about it.

  “Oh, man, for like a month some weirdo was leaving those notes on our cars,” one trainer said. “We’re keeping them as evidence in case one of us disappears.”

  Everyone laughed.

  Without even a second thought, Duncan strode to the board and deftly removed the bright colored squares.

  “Hey, what’re you doing, boss?” someone asked.

  He turned around to find his entire team watching him, including Anthony.

  “Decluttering,” he said as he transferred the paper to the waste bin.

  They had all found the humor in the impassioned Post-it notes pleas, but it was ridiculous to make fun of them now. No one gave him a hard time. It was possible it was too early to give a shit about the end of a stale joke.

  Returning to the counter where Anthony stood, Duncan ignored his friend’s pointed stare.

  “There’s no need to mock people,” Duncan explained.

  “Right,” Anthony replied. “We didn’t really talk about your date.”

  Duncan took a drink of water from his bottle. “Fake date. And it was good. Informative.”

  If circumstances were different he’d probably be more effusive, but his friend was already skeptical about this setup. So, it wouldn’t inspire confidence if Duncan went on about how he found Retta a surprising mix of awkward and bold.

  At any given moment, he could see the gears turning in her head, but she did everything with gusto. He definitely didn’t mention the superfluous second date. It was undoubtedly going against the hypothetical fake-dating manual he now felt compelled to write.

  Anthony continued to study him. “You think you two are comfortable enough with each other now to make it believable?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Duncan said, shrugging. She was definitely more comfortable with him. She licked his face, dammit.

  “Why are you smiling?” Anthony asked.

  “What? I can’t smile now?”

  His friend squinted.

  “She’s cool.” Duncan could feel the eye-roll without even looking at his friend. He knew what he was thinking. “And no, I didn’t sleep with her.”

  Not that he hadn’t thought about it. It wasn’t hard for him to envision Retta advancing upward from the foot of a bed where he lay. She wouldn’t touch him until she got to his face where she’d lick him and whisper in his ear about wanting to taste more of him.

  He blamed his unplanned months-long celibacy on all the dreams and thoughts. Another consequence of trying to get this business up and running. It was just his luck, however, that he'd start seeing someone who he had no intention of sleeping with. There were too many complicating factors for the possibility of an easy, no-strings-attached hook up.

  That being said, he was operating under the understanding that getting involved with someone else right now would be some sort of a violation. So, jacking off in the shower would have to suffice for now.

  Chapter Ten

  Retta had woken up early and managed to run a few errands, clean her apartment, and start removing anything in her place that seemed even remotely romantic. For instance, the candles in her living room migrated to her bedroom, she didn’t purchase flowers as she customarily did every other week, and she removed her doormat that read: “Love you, bye!”

  Despite all the extra steps she was doing for Duncan’s arrival, she’d insisted they do the movie watching at her place. This would allow her at least a bit of control. She needed a definitive end to this date seeing that during the last one, time had slipped by so quickly. There wouldn’t be a midnight bedtime today. To ensure that even more, she’d scheduled this date on a night she was babysitting her brother’s kids. Duncan had to be out of her apartment by four p.m.

  At around noon, Retta was in the middle of making donuts she’d promised her niece and nephew when Duncan showed up to her apartment with a six-pack of beer, two different kinds of pizzas, and Rocky on DVD.

  As he entered her home, a clean laundry smell accompanied him. The white t-shirt he wore looked great against his dark skin and seemed to accommodate his large frame so long as he didn’t flex or stretch too much.

  “I hope you’re not loyal to a certain brand,” he said, placing the beer on her counter.

  “No,” Retta said, averting her gaze from his arms.

  “You making something?” he asked, pointing over her shoulder to the spot where her oil was heating.

  “Yeah, I’m babysitting my niece and nephew in the evening. They both love chocolate donuts. I’m almost done here, then we can start the movie.”

  She resettled herself in front of the stove and proceeded to drop dough into the hot oil. The color darkened and a distinctive aroma bloomed.

  “How can I help?” Duncan asked as he came to stand right behind her.

  “You can wash your hands and chop the chocolate for the ganache,” Retta said, gesturing toward the counter behind her.

  “Knife?” he asked.

  Retta turned and removed a knife from her butcher's block and handed it to him. She thought since he asked no further questions that he knew at least what he was doing, but then he started chopping the chocolate like you might a carrot.

  After fishing her last donut from the oil, she turned to where he stood and gently pushed him to the side to demonstrate what she wanted him to do. Regaining control of the knife, he imitated her rough movements and completed the task.

  “Okay, what next?” he asked, after popping a shard of chocolate into his mouth.

  “Now, you have to heat the cream on the stove,” she said, hauling out a pot from a low cupboard.

  He opened her fridge and stepped back. “What the hell?”

  “What?” she asked as she joined him to look inside her fridge. She expected to find her Jenga-like packed interior disrupted or something, but everything was perfectly in place.

  “How can you find anything in here?” he asked.

  Sure, there was a lot going on (stacked deli quart containers completely blocked the fridge’s light), but there was intention behind the chaos.

  “Where’s the cream?” he asked.

  “Okay, relax,” Retta said as she started to move several of the perfectly labeled and dated containers onto the tiny counter beside them.

  “There could be a live possum in there and you wouldn’t know,” Duncan said.

  “His name is Terrance.”

  “What?” Duncan asked.

  “
The live possum in my refrigerator? His name is Terrance.”

  Duncan threw his head back and laughed. He didn’t stop until Retta, after running out of counter space, started handing him jars and bottles to hold.

  After finding the carton and returning the other items, they got the ganache going.

  “You have to watch it. Don’t look away for anything,” Retta said of the cream in the pot. “You want to take it off just before it’s about to boil.”

  Duncan folded his arms and while staring at the cream asked, “What’s the weirdest event you’ve catered for?”

  Retta paused with the dishes she was cleaning, pondering the question. “I don’t think there’s been anything completely weird. I did do this wedding held at a pool with a couple that wore mermaid tails during the ceremony.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No, it was unique, and everyone was fully invested in the theme,” Retta said.

  They didn’t delve deeper into the topic of weird and wonderful events because she pointed to the scalded cream and said, “It’s done, remove it and pour it over the chocolate in the bowl.”

  After a minute, she had him whisk the ingredients together as she got two cooled donuts from the rack.

  “This doesn’t look right,” Duncan said of the clumpy mess of cream and chocolate.

  “It’ll come together. Keep going.”

  He whisked and whisked, and eventually a silky ganache appeared.

  “See, told you,” she said, dipping their donuts in and holding them up for Duncan to inspect.

  Taking one from her hand, he bit into more than half of it.

  “This is incredible,” he said.

  She beamed. “If I was making it only for us, I would’ve used a little more dark chocolate and maybe some espresso, but kids aren’t usually fans of the bitter note.”

  “Okay, I need to step away from these,” Duncan said, finishing off his donut. “I thought after the cake eating contest I was done with sweets for at least a month, but here I am.” He moved out of the kitchen into the living room. “You want to start the movie?”

  “Yeah,” she said as she caught her reflection in a small mirror above the table where she kept her keys and mail. She looked exactly like you might expect someone who’d spent all morning doing work and running errands.

  “You can start the movie, I’ll be right back,” Retta said as she sped walked to her bedroom.

  She quickly fixed her hair, blotted her face, and threw her apron into the clothes hamper before leaving her bedroom. As she approached the living area she said, “I have this amazing blood orange caramel sauce that would also go well with the donu—”

  Retta stopped short of entering the room. She found Duncan studying the paused TV screen. There couldn’t have been a worse thing for her to forget in the DVD player. The video was frozen on an image of her from a few years ago. Happy tears streamed down her face as she held a recognizable trophy in her hands.

  He turned to her. “You won Winner Bakes All?”

  There were several ways she usually answered this question. The goal was to get out of the conversation as fast as possible, but she’d been caught off guard today.

  “Yeah,” Retta finally replied, moving to the DVD player to remove the disc and add the Rocky one.

  Every once in a while, when she was alone and wanted to wallow in self-pity, and was definitely on her period, she’d watch herself win one of the biggest baking competition shows.

  “That’s amazing,” Duncan said. “I once spent a whole weekend binge-watching it.”

  Maybe he gained a little bit more respect for her and her work. But like many times before, she’d have to watch the awe morph into some version of pity.

  “Except nobody has any idea I won,” she said.

  Duncan frowned. “That show is huge though.”

  Retta grabbed a beer and a couple slices of pizza and settled into her armchair. “You know Pierre Gustov?”

  “The judge with the little…” Duncan waved his hand above his head to demonstrate Gustov’s signature hairstyle.

  “Yeah, well, he was indicted for fraud a month before the premiere of my season.”

  Retta, bright-eyed and new to the professional baking world, had submitted her casting video on a whim. She’d put it out of her mind and hadn’t told anyone she’d applied. So, when she’d received a call from the producers of the show telling her they wanted her to move ahead in the audition process, she was absolutely shocked.

  “But wait, how did his crime affect you?” he asked.

  “Oh, they pulled the entire season.”

  There was silence as Duncan’s face moved in all sorts of directions. “What do you mean they pulled the entire season?”

  “Just that. They stopped running ads for it, and the episodes never aired on TV. My win was mentioned on their website, and they uploaded a ninety-second clip of me actually winning the season on their Facebook page.”

  “Retta—”

  “Meanwhile, I’d been promoting the fact I was a contestant for weeks. There were viewing parties already scheduled.”

  She forced herself to stop talking. He didn’t need to know all the details. But looking up at Duncan for the first time since she’d started rambling, she was taken aback by how upset he looked.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said.

  “Thanks.” She got up from her spot to grab the remote and draw the blinds to eliminate the glare on the television. “Enough about that. Let’s get ready to rumble.”

  Duncan finally cracked a smile, and Retta returned to her seat and spent the first five minutes of the movie replaying the previous moments. The story eventually drew her in, but somewhere along the way she fell asleep.

  Duncan, for the first time in the dozenth viewing of this film, was distracted and not at all interested in Rocky Balboa’s journey.

  He’d spent a lot of the time on his phone, looking for remnants of Retta’s win on the internet. This deep dive was possible because she’d fallen asleep thirty minutes into the movie.

  There were a few articles here, a write up there, but nothing like he could find on previous winners. There was a clear trajectory for all champions of Winner Bakes All. Tiffany Fletcher was a bestselling cookbook author. Michael Aayomi had his own network TV show. Sara Cleaver was a personal pastry chef to the freakin Prime Minister.

  After he’d finished reading all he could read about her win, he stewed over the unfairness of the whole situation. When the movie end credits rolled, the room was left in darkness. He remained seated and made no move to wake up Retta, but she did anyway minutes later. Her hair was in its natural curly state fastened into a puff, and it had shifted off-center while she’d slept.

  “How long have I been out?” she asked, unfolding her body from the armchair.

  “The movie is done,” he said, watching her silhouette as she leisurely raised her hands above her head.

  She snorted. “Well, damn. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s fine,” he said before coughing to clear the gruffness from his voice.

  “I didn't fall asleep because I thought it was boring. The fifteen minutes I saw? Perfection,” she said, picking up the dirty plates from the coffee table.

  As she walked into the kitchen, he was still so caught up in his thoughts that he didn’t hear Retta’s question until she asked it for the second time. “Do you want a donut to go—”

  “Did you get the prize money?”

  She paused and studied him. “Are you still thinking about that?”

  “You deserved that money. You deserved that moment in the sun.”

  “I don’t know,” she said, laughing a bit. “I’ve always really enjoyed rainy days.”

  Duncan didn’t react to her attempt at a joke, and she pushed up her glasses with her knuckles and sighed.

  “I got my prize money and paid off a bunch of debt from school and opened Dutch.”

  The tension around his neck and shoulders eased a bi
t. “Good.” He still wished that she could’ve seen more success.

  “Do you want that donut now?” she asked, moving through the kitchen. She opened a cabinet and even with her height failed to reach the Tupperware stored on the top shelf. Before he could offer to get it for her, she hoisted herself up on her counter.

  Automatically, he was behind her posed to catch her if she made the wrong move. “Careful.”

  “I’m fine,” she said, twisting to grab the containers she desired.

  When she returned to the ground, they were standing close to each other. So much so, he caught the subtle fragrance she wore. He wondered where she applied it. Her wrists? The back of her neck? Maybe between her breasts.

  Her eyes widened as she looked at him in his face. “A-also, you can take the rest of the pizza. You saw my fridge. I have no space.”

  “You should get a step stool,” he said.

  “I know.”

  This was the moment she’d make a move to the counter with the donuts or he’d step out of her way, but they both remained planted in their spots. The longer they stood there, the more details he took note of—like the rise and fall of her chest and the way she stared at his mouth.

  Duncan took a shallow breath. “If you keep looking at me like that, we’re gonna be in trouble, and we don’t want that.”

  There was a beat of silence before she looked in his eyes and asked, “No?”

  And that was it.

  He descended on her lips like they were his source of life. They were warm and soft and perfectly fit against his. Dropping the containers in her hands, she wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling him further into her body. Her tongue, delicate and polite at first, stoked a fire in him, and he cupped either side of her face, trying to preserve the tenderness that wanted to fade in favor of an urgent forcefulness. But his efforts proved futile the second she moaned into his mouth.

  Everything in Retta’s body was operating in service of Duncan’s touch. She hadn’t meant for this date to unfold this way, but while she was here, maybe she could indulge a little. His lips were demanding and hot.