Skinny Bitch in Love

by Kim Barnouin

  “Dr. Who cupcakes. And high-maintenance Dr. Who cupcakes at that. Seriously?”

  “Seriously. Five different designs. I’d do it myself, but I have a staff meeting at Fresh this morning, and then I’m attending a science fair thing at Jesse’s school, and then we’re doing wedding party pictures before the ceremony at 4:30. I’m bloody screwed. And the Dr. Who designs are pretty elaborate.”

  “Well, you’re in luck. Because not only am I a kick-ass baker, but I’m free today. I’m all yours.”

  He was quiet for a moment, and I thought he might say, Well, not really or I wish, but he said, “Uh, the thing is, I kind of can’t pay you. In money, anyway.”

  “What time?”

  “Seriously? Clem, you’re brilliant. My only time to work on them is between one and three, so could we make it at one?”

  “I’ll be there,” I told him. Dr. Who cupcakes. I’d have to make an extra one for Sara who loved that show. And Seamus, too. And Kale. Dr. Who cupcakes would definitely cheer him up.

  Wedding cupcakes. Theme wedding cupcakes, no less. Even though the idea of love and happily ever after made me want to punch something at the moment.

  On my way to Alexander’s, Zach called and I let it go to voice mail. That was willpower. Part of me wanted to answer and tell him I saw him with that woman on Wednesday night—when he was supposedly still out of town. When he’d kissed the hell out of me in a hotel hallway and made me think there was something between us. Again.

  But how could I without sounding like an idiot? So what if he came back early? So what if he was walking down the street with his arm around some model? Avoidance was the answer.

  By the time I arrived at Alexander’s house, Zach had left another text message.

  Okay, now I’m worried. Is your dad ok? Let me know. Z

  Shit. Shit, shit, shit. He had to go there.

  I heard Alexander’s dogs, Lizzie and Brit, barking as I started up the walk. I texted back Everything’s fine. Just busy. C

  I was busy. And good thing, too. Alexander came out, the dogs jumping at my legs, and I kneeled down to pet them both. Alexander looked great, as always, fresh-scrubbed and kind of hot at the same time. Maybe that blah kiss didn’t mean that much. Maybe there was a much hotter kiss just waiting for us to get to know each other better or something. Elmer Fudd and all that. I’d keep an open mind like my sister was always telling me to.

  I loved his little house. And the kitchen was the biggest room. It was a chef’s kitchen: six-burner Viking stove, counter space galore. Racks hanging with great cookware. Score even more points for Alexander. My dream kitchen.

  “So, I’ve got everything set out and have printouts of what Sabine wants.” He pointed at a stack of paper. I took a look—lots of blue icing and hard, flat embossed faces and numbers. As Alexander started pulling things out of the fridge, including a beer for each of us, and cupboards, he told me all about the bride, his thirty-year-old cousin Sabine who’d finally said yes to her constantly proposing on-again/off-again boyfriend of three years, the long-suffering Wills.

  “Hmm, maybe it took her so long for a reason,” I said. “Does she really want to marry this guy?”

  “Cynical, Miss C,” Alexander said, handing me a large silver mixing bowl. “Sometimes shit happens. Or people need time to know. Or a lot of other stuff.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “But I always thought you just know. Pretty much right away.”

  “You can hardly know someone right away, though,” he said, adding the Earth Balance shortening sticks and sugar to his own bowl and creaming them together. “You can know if you fancy them; if there’s something there. But you can’t know you want to marry them.”

  I knew I wanted to marry Ben Frasier the second I met him. Where was he now? Marrying someone else. So maybe Alexander was on to something. Like an actual mature outlook.

  “So you think your cousin’s marriage is safe from the fifty percent divorce rate?” I asked, combining the vanilla and oil and adding it to the mixture.

  “I hope so. She took her time and made sure he’s the one. He let her take that time. So I think it’s gonna work. They love each other; they’re great together. They have everything in common. Like these Dr. Who cupcakes, for one. And they’re both in love with America and California, much to my aunt’s dismay. They’re planning to move here.”

  I raised my beer. “To good love, then.”

  He raised his back. “So I guess you’re seeing someone?” he asked as he lined five muffin pans with cupcake liners.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because you didn’t give me much of a chance. One great sort-of date and that was that.”

  The that-was-that part was more about the uninspiring kiss, but I couldn’t tell him that. “Actually, I have been sort of seeing someone. Someone completely wrong for me. I suck at dating.”

  “More like dating sucks. Well, sometimes. The part where you don’t get the girl.”

  I smiled. “I’d drive you nuts.”

  He laughed. “Maybe.”

  As he spooned the batter—which a fingertip swipe of my spoon indicated was delicious—into the liners, I found myself checking him out. Tall, lanky, but muscular. Nice shoulders. Cool T-shirt. Very clear, very kind, dark brown eyes. He brought ill grandmothers soup. Baked for cousins’ weddings. Mentored tweens. Had this amazing chef’s kitchen.

  Maybe I should give Alexander Orr that second chance. Give the tubas a chance to clank. Maybe a real relationship wasn’t about instant lust and hot sex and an inability to stop thinking about the person. Maybe it was about slow and steady and all that boring stuff. Really knowing someone. A wedding with Dr. Who cupcakes as your wedding cake.

  “So who was your last girlfriend?” I asked, wanting to know his history.

  He mock shot himself in the heart and staggered backward. “A lunatic called Maeve. You know that crap Rain pulled with the butter in your ravioli? Well, the night Maeve and I broke up, she pureed a slice of ham into the vodka smoothie she talked me into having while we were having a three-hour break-up talk.”

  “You tasted it or she told you?”

  “She told me as I was leaving with my sack of the stuff I gathered from her place—toothbrush, jacket, couple of books. She was like, ‘You suck, and by the way, I pureed a slice of day-old ham into your fucking drink. Have a nice life.’ Then she slammed the door in my face.”

  “Mature,” I said.

  “I threw up all over her welcome mat—unintentionally—so I sort of got her back.”

  “Ha. So no date for your cousin’s wedding, huh?”

  “Actually, I’m taking a new friend.”

  A new friend. Was that Britspeak for Woman I’ve Just Started Dating? The tiniest wham of jealousy hit me in the stomach, which made no sense. Maybe I just liked that he liked me since I needed the ego boost these days.

  Before I could ask about her, voices came from the hall. In seconds, there were lots of people in the kitchen commenting on the delicious smells. I figured the woman in the many-tiered floaty white strapless dress was the bride-to-be. She looked like an angel, seriously. Big blue eyes. Tiny nose. Pink bow lips. Heart-shaped face. And perfect, light, frothy blond hair down her back.

  “Oh my fucking God,” she shrieked, eyeing the Dr. Who cupcake photos. “The cupcakes are going to look amazing!”

  She jumped into Alexander’s arms, completely not caring that his apron wasn’t exactly pristine. I liked this chick. Alexander made the introductions, and she squeezed me into a hug, too, and announced that I saved her reception.

  While the wedding party—there were at least twenty of them—had beers in the living room and wrestled with the dogs, again despite their fancy duds, Alexander said he had to go get changed. And I . . . kind of missed him.

  I had nothing to do for the next twenty minutes, either. Which made thinking about Alexander a little too easy. Upstairs changing. Leaving. Coming back home after the ceremony.

  Je
sus. So now I wanted Alexander? What the hell?

  You’re screwed in the head, I told myself. Upset about Zach. And Alexander’s a very cool guy. Once the cupcakes were finally done, I’d be forced to painstakingly focus on perfect number 7s and telephone booths and rectangular faces for forty-five cupcakes, and I wouldn’t be able to think of anything else.

  Alexander appeared five minutes later in something of a tux, but with a white T-shirt instead of a button-down and Chucks instead of shiny black shoes. He looked like all the other guys in the wedding party. California-weekday-wedding-at-the-pier style.

  He smiled at me, and I told him he cleaned up well, and then after sheepishly asking if I’d mind letting his dogs out in the yard in about a half hour, he was gone. The house went from wildly noisy with happily barking dogs to dead quiet.

  I peered in the oven. Ten minutes left to bake and another thirty minutes to cool before I could even get started on my Dr. Who skills.

  I let the dogs out in the yard, then took myself on a tour of his house. I wanted to see his bedroom. I found it upstairs: smallish, with a bed dominating the room, made but mussed, and a bedside table with an oversized hardcover of The Heirloom Tomato. This made me laugh, because I actually had a book called The History of Garlic, which was a gift from my dad on my last birthday. Alexander also had a J. D. Salinger novel, a crazy-looking lamp, and a few photos in frames—one of him with five other people, four guys and one woman who looked remarkably like him. Another of him in a kayak, and one of him and Jesse, the kid he was Little Brothering. They were both on skateboards, and Jesse’s helmet was covered in different stickers.

  I picked up the picture of Alexander smiling in the kayak. He was damned cute.

  I put it back on the table and sat down on his bed and tried to imagine sex with Alexander Orr.

  I sort of could. He was good-looking, had that great, lanky body. Good guy hair. And that accent kind of swirled up on you, especially when you realized he was as great a guy as you thought, that some people didn’t go from very cool to asshole in a split second. Like other people.

  Which brought me back to Zach. Who I had feelings for in a way that I just didn’t for Alexander, no matter how hard I tried.

  The oven dinged. I went downstairs and took out the cupcakes to cool, then went out into the yard to hang out with the dogs; Lizzie was after me to throw her rubber bone for fetch.

  Back inside, I spent the next hour and a half decorating the cupcakes. I screwed up one face and had to use a reserve cupcake—every baker always makes extras for just these fuck-up moments—but my designs looked damned close to the photos in the printout. I had the cupcakes all set on the heart-shaped triple-tiered cupcake holder when the door burst open with loud, laughing voices.

  Perfect timing. I totally admit I wanted a glimpse of Alexander’s New Friend but not long enough to have to hang around finishing up the cupcakes.

  He came into the kitchen with a very thin girl with light brown hair and dark brown eyes. She was insanely pretty and didn’t have a shred of makeup on her face. They were holding hands.

  “Clementine, Shelby. Shelby, Clementine.”

  We sized each other up. She shot me a warm smile.

  What, now I was jealous of her? Just a little territorial about Alexander, maybe.

  He gave me a quick hug, thanked me profusely, and so I was done here. I boxed up the five extra cupcakes I made for my Dr. Who–loving friends, congratulated the happy couple who were making out on the couch in between telling stories about the wedding. “Oh my GOD, remember when that seagull shit on that guy’s head?” Sabine was saying as I left.

  I needed hot yoga and a long soak in a bath.

  On the way home I passed by my new dream space for Clementine’s No Crap Café. I wanted this place. Bad. Once again, nose to the glass, I peered inside. This time I could vividly see how I’d arrange the tables, the color I’d paint the walls. Me, executive chefing in the kitchen with a trusty staff around me. James, the Shakespearean student/waiter my first hire.

  I reached into my bag for my cell phone and called Ty.

  “I just baked a zillion Dr. Who cupcakes for a wedding as a favor to a friend. My hand is numb. I’m numb.”

  “Seamus loves Dr. Who!”

  “I remember. I made one for him, too.”

  “You’re totally even now for the work he did on your website,” Ty said, then shouted at someone in the background that he was over-mixing.

  “So, Ty, I’m standing in front of a perfect location for my restaurant. It’ll be available in six months, right before Christmas. How can I make a shitload of money in under six months?”

  “You could always waitress at a top place. Or bartend. Or make a thousand more of those Dr. Who cupcakes and sell them around town. I know pastry chefs who make sick money freelancing on specialty stuff like that.”

  “Really?” I loved to bake. But I always thought of baking as something I did for myself. My whole family—uptight lawyer sister included—baked. My dad taught my brother and sister and me to stir batter the minute we were strong enough, like at eighteen-months old. But being a chef—making it to sous chef at a top restaurant, then chef, then executive chef, and ultimately owning my own place—had always been my goal, so I never thought about baking for profit.

  Ty was shouting at the same person again in the background that he was still over-mixing. “Lightly, like this,” he said. “Sorry. I’m back,” he said to me. “My friend Jen did a rush Dora the Explorer cake and got paid almost five hundred dollars. L.A. moms pay big bucks for amazing birthday cakes.”

  “Who’s Dora the Explorer?”

  He shouted again at someone to use two hands on the tray. “I don’t know, some kiddie TV show. And I know someone who freelances in wedding cakes. He makes a fortune. You’re an amazing baker, Clem. You could get into that. Thousand bucks a cake, two a week. Add that up for six months. Between that and your Skinny Bitch clients, there’s your start-up costs.”

  “But I hate weddings. It’s bad enough I have to go to my sister’s wedding next year.”

  “Okay, forget wedding cakes. Skinny Bitch cakes, Clem. You could do all kinds of specialized baked goods. Vegan. Gluten-free. You could be the allergy free–cake chick. You’ll have moms calling you every minute. And I could get you appointments to show samples in coffee bars and cafés. Word-of-mouth, baby. Make me some cupcakes, cookies, scones, a cake, a pie for Sunday morning, and I’ll get you in all over L.A. You’ll rake it in.”

  Skinny Bitch Bakes. Or something like that. Yeah. “I’m in.” And now I knew what I was doing this weekend instead of thinking about Zach.

  Or Alexander.

  Chapter 10

  Ty came over on Saturday morning with a shitload of parchment paper, two bags full of ingredients from his own kitchen, and suggestions for what to make—everything from the incredible Chocolate Espresso Raspberry cake I’d once made for him when Seamus dumped him for ten minutes, to vanilla chai cupcakes and cherry pies and tropical fruit scones and lemon-glazed cookies. Everything I made would be vegan, which really just meant no eggs or real butter, but half the samples would be unbleached flour and evaporated cane juice crystals and the other half brown rice flour or spelt or garbanzo fava bean flour, sweetened with agave. The ole something for everyone. Ty told me I could see which stuff sold better, then decide to specialize if I became known for being the crap-free baker.

  He gave me lessons on making kick-ass whipped cream from coconut milk and on properly storing everything. A master class in thirty minutes. And the samples wouldn’t cost me a penny. He’d brought over enough brown rice flour and agave and coconut milk for a hundred cakes, but I already had most of the ingredients in my cupboards and fridge for everything I wanted to make.

  “And just because I love you, look what I had my boyfriend make for you,” he said, opening up his messenger bag and handing me a manila envelope.

  “What’s this?”

  “Duh, open it and see,�
� he said.

  I pulled out five sheets of different labels: Skinny Bitch Bakes. Different colors, fonts, shapes. I liked them all. One, black and white, had kind of a Japanese quality to it; I think that was my favorite. How incredibly amazing were these guys?

  He reached into another bag and pulled out many flat white bakery boxes of different sizes. “And this is from me. Once you choose your labels you can get the right-color boxes.”

  “You’re both the best,” I said, hugging him.

  “We know.”

  Then he left me to do my thing, and I cranked up the Red Hot Chili Peppers and mixed and stirred and poured and opened and closed the oven door a thousand times. By Saturday early evening, my kitchen was a glorious disaster, but it smelled amazing, and I had my samples packed and ready to take around Sunday morning to the seven cafés where Ty had gotten me appointments.

  A knock at the door came just as I was about to drop on the couch.

  It was the woman and her four-year-old from two doors down.

  “Eli keeps asking me if he could have a bite of whatever is filling the halls with that amazing smell. He wore me down. I swear, I wouldn’t have bothered you otherwise.”

  I smiled at her. “Hold on a sec.” I went into the kitchen and came back with a tropical fruit scone for her and a peanut butter chocolate chip cookie for the kid.

  He took a bite and shouted, “Mmm!” then practically shoved the entire thing in his mouth. “Can I have ten more?” he asked around a mouthful of cookie, crumbs all over his chin and shirt.

  “He means thank you,” the mother said, winking at me and leading the kid downstairs.

  I knew kids liked anything sweet, but I still took it as a good sign that Skinny Bitch Bakes was going to be a huge success.

  At 6 p.m. I left to meet a personal chef client and explained about tofu and seitan and all the good frozen not-meats. Four delicious dishes and three hundred bucks later, I again detoured past my spot for Clementine’s No Crap Café.