Courtship of the Cake

by Jessica Topper

  “Is she here? She told me to drop in today.”

  “She wasn’t feeling well, so I sent her home early. I guess you’re stuck with me.”

  “I thought you . . . Nash said—” I clamped my mouth shut.

  “What’s that?” He gazed up at me expectantly.

  “Nothing. I just . . . I didn’t expect to see you here.”

  He stood to full height. “Oh, it’s something. It’s always something with Nash. Let me guess.” He narrowed his eyes knowingly. “Did your fiancé use me as his alibi?”

  My face must’ve given away my shock. “Come on,” he said softly, pulling a chair close to mine. “Takes a player to know a player, right?”

  I ignored his comment and shook out my curls. “Nash said he didn’t care what kind of cake I chose,” I lied, directing my gaze toward the albums and brochures so he wouldn’t see my cheeks betray me. “What happened to that gorgeous cake you had on display the other day?”

  “It satisfied approximately eighteen to twenty people,” Mick murmured, crossing his arms and rocking back on his heels, eyes never leaving me. “Although, I saved one piece of it. For you. Care to try?”

  And be just another number to ooh and aah over his edibles? Approximately number nineteen to twenty-one? I’m sure he had given up keeping track of whom he satisfied.

  “No, thank you. I just came to look today, that’s all.”

  “Hola, Mick!” a melodic voice rang out, competing with the tinkling of the bells on the door. A smiling Latina sidled up to the counter and drummed her long fingernails on the glass expectantly.

  “No harm in just looking,” he murmured in my ear, before turning his attention to this latest customer. “Hey, Angie. Your order’s all set. Let me just go box them up.”

  “You know they won’t stay in the box for long,” she called after him in a teasing tone. Her huge doe eyes roamed the front of the bakery case while she waited. “¡Por Dios!” Flashing me a smile, she added, “It all looks so good, right?”

  “I don’t know how anyone can choose just one thing,” I agreed, gesturing toward all the brochures around me.

  “It doesn’t matter what I pick,” she groaned. “It all goes right here.” She smacked her curvaceous hips. “I wish some of it would go right here,” she gestured to her more than ample chest pushing out the ruffles on her tight black top. “Or here.” She smacked her butt, which was perfectly adorable, encased in blue jeans. “But no! Mick, he ruins me.” She grinned, and one dimple appeared on her right cheek.

  “Yeah, keep telling yourself that.” Mick was back, pushing a large white box into a plastic bag for her.

  “You rock, lover.” Her dark eyes batted long lashes in thanks. “See you next week.”

  “One of your regulars?” I asked, after the door slammed shut.

  “Yep,” he said, busying himself behind the counter and avoiding my eyes. “Standing order every week.”

  Ah, so that was why no money exchanged hands. Although I wouldn’t put it past the guy to trade favors for . . . favors.

  “Gorgeous,” I murmured, picking up yet another cake picture and studying it.

  “Angie Vega? Smoking hot, if you like that type.” He dropped down into the chair next to me again with a grin too wicked to be trusted.

  “I meant this one,” I said, smacking the picture against the back of his hand. “Not the girl.” Yeah, keep telling yourself that, my own conscience chided me.

  “Ah, yes, the chevron pattern. A very hot style right now.” He traced the bold zigzags gracing the cake in the photo with his pinky, right off the edge of the page and up my wrist. “Or maybe you want something a little more timeless,” he suggested, tracing circles on the thin skin there. A bold feeling of longing shot through me.

  “Maybe I want what Angie Vega is having. Which is . . . ?”

  The arch of his brow sent me circling down to Dante’s second level of hell, lust sweeping through me like a hot, dusty storm. I longed to be doused with kisses from that mouth, imagining the rough press of his chef’s coat against my bare skin as he delivered them.

  I had always been a sucker for a guy in any kind of uniform.

  “Polvorones.” The word rolled deliciously off his tongue. “For her parents’ restaurant. From my mother’s favorite recipe. They’re also called Mexican wedding cakes. Even though they are cookies.”

  He pushed up his sleeves, suddenly all business. “Dot patterns are very popular as well.”

  It took me a moment to recover and focus back on the picture he held up for me. He was changing the subject. Confusion swept through me, followed by shame. Flirting came so easy with him, yet his three-hundred-sixty-degree change in manner threw me.

  “I . . . I need to give this way more thought. I had no idea there were so many choices,” I said, feeling stupid.

  “Why don’t you do a little online research, print out a few pictures you like, and next time we’ll take it from there?” He was already up and out of his chair, moving behind the counter to help Nose Ring Girl with a large sheet cake for a customer.

  Suddenly I felt silly for coming in, for wasting his time. All flirting aside, the man was trying to run a business, for God’s sake. And here I was, playing dress-up and imaginary bridal games.

  • • •

  “We’d get through this little arrangement of ours better if you didn’t lie to me, Nash.”

  “Christ, Dani. I needed to get out of town for a few hours today, okay? Quinn’s got me running so many chores in her mom-wagon, I can feel my balls shrinking in daily increments. So I went to get a little girlie-action. So what? That was never verboten in our agreement. Unless you want to amend your anti-sex-with-me stance?”

  I glared at him, not appreciating his suggestion, or the fact that he used Mick as an excuse for girlie-action-getting.

  “Fine!” He held up his hands in surrender. “I went with Sindy, if you must know.”

  “To pick up girls in Atlantic City?”

  “No.” He hung his head in shame. “It was a little pony-action. She likes the horse races, okay? It’s just a little embarrassing to say I drove an old lady down there.”

  I planted my hands on my hips.

  “Okay, so she drove! I hate the traffic on the turnpike.”

  I thought about Sindy, dealing out the sick card to Mick’s sympathetic hand at the bakery today. Yet hadn’t she said specifically today would be the best day for me to visit? I wondered if Sinnamon Sin, the burlesque dancer turned Sunday churchgoer, still had some aces up her sleeve. Then again, she was an old lady, perhaps a tad forgetful?

  “You saw Mick today?”

  “That I did.”

  And it was getting harder to pretend to forget what had happened between us.

  • • •

  With nothing better to do that evening, I contemplated the bookshelves lining the wall, the well-worn spines of worlds waiting, beckoning. A small set of pastel-bound books along the top shelf caught my eye. Each had a year embossed in gold, but my fingers instantly fell upon 1998. That date clanged my memory bells; the year I’d met Jax. And Dex. Funeral crasher.

  • • •

  “Allen is gonna freak, we are so beyond late!” Laney picked at the hole in her fishnet stockings that peeked from below the hem of her black miniskirt, and used her tiny Doc Martens–clad foot to pound an imaginary pedal to the metal of the floorboard of my dad’s Volvo. “Step on it, sister!”

  “Talk to the hand, Laney Jane!” I said, although both of mine were planted firmly at ten and two. Long Island wasn’t easy to navigate under normal circumstances . . . much less in the pouring rain and only three weeks after receiving my unrestricted driver’s license. Months of driver’s ed classes and supervised driving hours had prepared me for road hazards, but nothing had prepared me for the vortex of stress riding shotgun and w
orried about missing her favorite band.

  “Maynard James Keenan!” Laney gripped the strap above the door and screeched the way some people took the Lord’s name in vain. “If I miss Tool, I’m going to kill you.”

  “They are headlining; we’ve got hours of time,” I assured, gripping the wheel tighter so I wouldn’t grab the Sailor Moon metal lunchbox she used as a purse and clock her in the face with it.

  “But you just missed the entrance for the L.I.E.”

  Shit. “That’s okay, we can take the Southern State, too.”

  “The expressway’s faster. Pull a U-ie. Flip a bitch!” Laney tugged on the Jesus strap in desperation.

  “Shut up! Shut up! There’s another chance, I just gotta get over.” Traffic was crawling in the downpour and bumper-to-bumper on my right. “Come on, people. Let a girl in, will you?”

  “Just start cutting over and they’ll have to. Be aggressive.”

  I had seen drivers do it all the time, but I didn’t want to be that kind of driver. Ugh. My blinker singsonged, Lo-ser, Lo-ser, Lo-ser, as I cut the wheel and tried to break through the centipede of slow cars, all going way under the speed limit. At least they had their hazards on; so many slowpokes on the road found it perfectly acceptable to go thirty in a forty-five with no apologies whatsoever.

  “Um, Dani—”

  “I know, I just gotta—” I had accomplished my mission, but something had raised a red flag.

  Literally.

  All the cars, both in front of me and behind, had little red flags on top of their hoods, and now that I was in their lane, I saw the whirling lights of a cop car leading the pack.

  “Holy shit. Laney . . . we’re in a funeral procession!”

  “Ugh, summer people,” Laney spat, pointing at the license plate tags emblazoned with the logo of a fancy Manhattan car dealership. “It’s bad enough they buy up all our beachfront. They have to take up prime real estate when they’re dead, too?”

  My dad’s little Volvo was now sandwiched between two limos in a long line of limos.

  I thought I’d be breezing past them once I got through the merge, but once on the highway, another police escort came cruising up alongside the line. We were being forced off at the next exit, onto the service road.

  “Flick your brights! Beep your horn!”

  “There’s a hearse in front of us. I am not beeping.”

  “You are way too polite.” Laney clicked her tongue and scrunched down in her seat, embarrassed to know me. “It’s not like you’ll wake up the body in the back of it.”

  “Let me handle this, okay? As soon as I can, I will break away.” The rain had let up a bit, at least, but the windows were fogging from the July heat. I cracked mine down and caught a whiff of that strange, clean, earthy smell that only happened when raindrops hit dry concrete after a long dry spell.

  Inhaling deeply, I suddenly felt a sense of belonging. If not in this particular procession, at least in this human race. It felt as if it were our duty to stay the solemn course, to pay respects before moving on. We could be two mourners in a long line of mourners, not just two silly girls lost on their way to a rock concert.

  Who just so happened to be wearing all black . . .

  • • •

  If I hadn’t crashed the Davenport funeral that day, would I have met Jax? I thought of him at seventeen, surrounded by family but still so utterly alone, staring at the tombstones in his family plot. An uneasy, nagging feeling nipped at my heels as I stood on my tiptoes to pull the journal off the shelf.

  He had called twice since we had arrived in New Hope, and I had ignored the blinking message lights blowing up my phone. I also hadn’t responded to his U OK? text, uncharacteristically short for the wordsmith he usually was. No doubt his brother had gotten to him before I had. Sighing, I slid onto the psychiatrist’s couch and cracked the binding of the book to break the spell of my 1998, and enter the inn’s version of the year.

  Page after page of praise, all in different handwriting, with consecutive dates gracing the corners, awaited me. People apparently loved the “homey touches,” and the “scrumptious fare,” amazed at how their hosts had “thought of everything.”

  Bill and Tina are by far the most gracious innkeepers we’ve ever met.

  Bill’s bananas Foster French toast is to die for!

  The owners went above and beyond . . .

  It’s clear to see Bill and Tina’s love for each other, their two children, and for this beautiful gem of an inn. We will certainly be back to Heaven’s Half Acre!

  I wondered if the “two children” mentioned were Bear and Quinn. And if Bill of the bananas Foster French toast fame was the same guy who scolded a young boy for being greedy.

  The books lining the shelf were evidence of a very popular and successful establishment since the year 1986. At least until the year 2002, the last book on the shelf. Curious, I pulled it down and settled back onto the couch with it.

  The dated entries were fewer and farther between, as if long spells of time went by with the room unoccupied. I wondered if the inn had fallen into hard times. The hospitality industry had been hard-hit after 9/11. The final entry of the book was the only summer entry.

  We had such a quiet, restful stay. It felt like we had the inn all to ourselves!

  Perhaps they had.

  Nash padded out of the bathroom in a cloud of steam.

  “Let’s do you on the chair,” I murmured absently, searching the shelves for more journals, but all I found were old U.S. inn directories and Bucks County history and guidebooks.

  What had happened over the last ten years? And where were Bill and Tina now?

  “I love it when you talk dirty to me.” Nash’s sarcastic quip pulled me out of my reverie. He was sitting backward in the desk chair, arms hanging over the wooden cane back. Droplets from his freshly washed hair darkened the distress marks of his designer jeans.

  “Sorry. My portable massage table is still in my van.”

  The cherry desk behind him held a small brass lamp, a paperweight shaped like an apple, and a desk blotter. And a small notebook. No date on the spine, just a pretty marbled design.

  No entries inside.

  Defeated, I rested my fingertips on his bare back.

  “Nash? Did something happen here?” I felt his shoulders tense under my hands. “When we’d arrived, you said there was a lot you hadn’t told me.”

  “Yeah.”

  I lightly placed my palms on the thickest part of the trapezius muscle, at the top of his shoulders. Closing my eyes, I listened to his breath with my hands, lightening my contact with each inhalation, and adding pressure when he exhaled. Noticing and following natural respiratory rhythms was a technique I’d learned in my training, said to build deep trust and empathy. A way for him to know, albeit unconsciously, that I was listening and paying close attention to him.

  “There was a fire.”

  I kept my own breathing full and deep, encouraging him to relax. “Was it . . . ? On the mountain that day, you—”

  “It had nothing to do with me.” He shrugged my hands off and grabbed his shirt. “Whatever you do, don’t ask Quinn about it. Or Bear. He won’t talk about it.”

  Our session was obviously over. And I was no closer to understanding what had happened.

  Nash wouldn’t tell me, and I couldn’t ask Quinn or Bear about it.

  That left a ten-year-old boy whose language I barely spoke.

  And Mick.

  Mick

  BLACK HOLES AND REVELATIONS

  “I’m in hell,” Nash said, slapping down Friday’s morning newspaper. All week long, the press had been posting snippets about him “returning to his childhood home” and “reuniting with his family,” and all week long, Bear and I had taken turns stashing the papers in the recycling bin before Quinn could blow a gasket.


  I caught a glance at what had made big news that day. KEY-BESTOWING CEREMONY POSTPONED AS SECOND-OLDEST RESIDENT FALLS ILL.

  “Second-oldest living resident?” Dani asked. “What happened to the first?”

  “Oh, she’s still around.” Sindy, who had stopped by with some of Walt’s famous shoofly pie that morning, waved her hand. “That old bat is too mean to die. But she got the award, oh . . . I don’t know, maybe five years ago? Boys, you should go pay a visit to Mr. Woolhouse. Take him some of those flowers you’ve been delivering all over town, Nash.”

  Nash shot Dani a look. Apparently part of his PR team’s “making the bad boy look good” to-do list consisted of him supplying the town park where the key ceremony was to take place with a new garden. And a new garden, according to Nash, had been hiring a lawn service to get the job done. What Sindy was suggesting was pretty old school: a house call.

  “I think that’s a great idea,” Dani said, and Nash gave a defeated sigh. It was about time he did a little more around town than put his money where his mouth, and his heart, should be.

  “I’ve got his bakery delivery to take over there anyway.” I shrugged. “How about it, hotshot?”

  Mr. Woolhouse lived in a Tudor that was built at the same time as the Half Acre, and had the same low bedrock wall placed in front to prove it. While the Half Acre sprawled, the old man’s house rose up, up, up, narrow and high. As kids, we used to scale the wall on Halloween and egg old Woolhouse’s house. We had him pegged as a child molester/serial killer, with bodies under the stairs and blood in the ice cube trays. No one ever seemed to visit, and no one ever came out.

  It turned out he was a writer and the unofficial town historian, married to a Frenchwoman he met during his service in World War II. She’d had MS, and they had had most of their groceries delivered.

  Nash knocked impatiently on the front door.

  “Who’s there?” a shaky voice called.

  “Nash Drama.”

  “Jehovahs? Not interested.”

  “Drama! Nash Dra . . .” Nash rolled his eyes. “It’s Stuart Nash.”

  Bleary eyes peeked through the half-moon window on the door. “You and Mickey come to egg my house again, Stewie?”