by Kim Barnouin
Almost there.
Sunday morning Ty and I hit up the cafés on his list. First stop: Babe’s, one of my favorite coffee lounges on the Third Street Promenade. On the counter were samples of blondies, and the display case was full of every imaginable baked dessert from scones to pies to cakes to brownies.
Bree, the owner, kissed Ty on both cheeks, shook my hand, then invited us behind the cashier’s table, where Ty helped me unpack my samples and place them on the counter along the brick wall.
“Mmm, that chocolate cake looks amazing,” she said, sniffing the air above it. “Agave nectar and coconut milk,” she added appreciatively.
This was looking promising. I glanced around—the place was crowded with people with huge coffee mugs. Two women held up a scone and were taking simultaneous bites at either end. Later today that would be my scone that a couple’s tongues would eventually meet over.
Bree tasted a sample of a peanut butter chocolate chip cookie and oohed and ahhed over that, too, then she tasted my tropical fruit scone.
“Fantastic,” she said. “Amazing. And I love your labels. But to be honest, I really can’t take on new vendors right now. I’m barely moving half the baked goods as it is. I really just took the appointment as a favor to Ty.”
Well, shit.
“But, really, your stuff is great,” Bree said. “You’ll get in all over, no worries.”
I forced out a “thanks,” packed up, and got out of there. What the hell? All that buildup for . . . nothing.
“It’s just one of seven stops,” Ty said before I could say anything. He pulled out his iPhone and checked something, then pointed diagonally across the street. “Julia’s is next. She’ll love you.”
“Bree supposedly loved me.”
“Yeah, but Julia will love you and take your stuff. Trust me.”
“Bree would have taken me on if my stuff was that good, Ty.”
“Not necessarily. Did you see the whole cakes and pies in her display? If she can’t move them, she really can’t take on new vendors. She probably didn’t want to admit that business is slow right now or something.”
Okay. Maybe. But all the time I spent on the samples had better have been worth it.
Julia’s was less crowded than Babe’s. Another bad sign.
Ty introduced me to owner Julia, a very tall woman with long red hair. I realized I was kind of holding my breath as she tried the cherry pie. Then the scone. Then the vanilla chai cupcake. Then the peanut butter chocolate chip cookie.
“Mmm,” she said around a bite of cookie. “This is orgasmic. Compliments to the baker.”
I broke out into a full-watt beam. Orgasmic was better than good. “Thanks!”
She took another bite of a coconut shortbread cookie. “Just amazing. So light and fresh. It’s almost hard to believe this is gluten-free.”
“Yeah, because it’s probably not,” shouted a familiar voice. “That’s the vegan chef who put butter in a dish to impress O. Ellery Rice, the food critic. If Clementine Cooper”—she enunciated loudly—“says a cookie is gluten-free and it’s really good, I’d be wary if I were you. Your customers will demand their money back and sue you for their kids’ doctors bills.”
That raving bitch. I strained my neck past a huge guy to see Rain Welch sitting in a leather club chair, a teapot and bagel on the table in front of her. She had two friends with her. And she was staring right at me.
So was everyone standing around the counter.
“Clementine Cooper has been my best friend for years,” Ty said to Julia. “A jealous freak, who happens to be sitting right there,” he added, pointing at Rain, “was pissed that Clem got the promotion she thought she was owed because she was fucking the owner. Rain is the one who sabotaged Clem by putting butter in that dish. I know because I was there. Everyone knows.”
The owner of the café seemed unsure. “Um, Ty, are you vouching? I totally trust you, so if you’re telling me this is a non-issue, I’ll believe you.”
“It’s a non-issue,” he said, sending Rain a death stare. “O. Ellery Rice didn’t even write up a review of Fresh that night because she’d heard the chef—Clem—was sabotaged. It’s really pathetic when people have to try to tear down others because their lives aren’t going well.”
“It smells in here,” Rain said to her friends. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Loser,” Ty said as Rain and her entourage passed us.
“Will you excuse me for just a minute?” I said to her. “I’ll be right back.”
I went outside. Rain and her friends were walking up the block. “Hey, Rain,” I shouted.
She turned around. “I’ve got nothing to say to you.”
I walked up to her. “I’ve got something to say to you. I know you put the butter in my ravioli. Everyone knows it. And one day, you’ll get what you deserve.”
She rolled her eyes and walked away.
I went back inside. “Sorry about that,” I said to Julia. “I feel like I cost you a customer, even if it is Rain.”
“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “That chick and the blonde she was with got into a screaming match with someone sitting at the next table last weekend because he was supposedly slurping his coffee and his kid was making car engine sounds.” She finished the shortbread cookie. “Anyway, your samples are amazing,” she said to me. “And any friend of Ty’s has the seal of approval. I’ll take a dozen each of the coconut shortbread cookies, the peanut butter chocolate chip cookies, the tropical fruit scones and vanilla chai cupcakes, and a cherry pie, all for Thursday morning.”
Shit, yeah!
Over the next three hours we visited five more shops and I had a huge list of orders for the following week. At Cali Bakes, a café, a woman settling her bill overheard the owner having an orgasm over my Chocolate Espresso Raspberry cake and asked if I could do a rush birthday cake with a sand castle on top for her six-year-old daughter’s birthday party the next day—it had to be ready at five. She’d pay me two hundred bucks. Hell, yeah, I could.
One other café couldn’t take on new vendors, but like the first, the display was full of whole cakes and pies and this time I believed Ty that business was probably slow. On the way out he assured me that like the birthday cake lady, once people started having my stuff and saw my Skinny Bitch Bakes labels, I’d get calls and emails for private orders, and soon word-of-mouth would win me the shops that had turned me down.
“You’re an empire, Clem,” Ty said, slinging his arm around me as we headed toward Montana Avenue.
Which made me remember something.
Ty always puts his arm around you when you’re out walking, I heard Sara telling me the night we saw Zach and the redhead.
Yeah, but Ty doesn’t fuck ex-girlfriends in his bedroom while she’s downstairs slaving over a hot stove auditioning her mushroom burgers for him, Eva had added. The man has shown his true colors. He’s a player. A carnivore player.
And didn’t I get burned badly enough by Ben?
Every time I tried to give Zach some credit, I heard Eva setting me straight. Not that Eva could be counted on for anything resembling sound advice.
“Let’s celebrate Skinny Bitch taking over the world,” Ty said. “I’m off tonight. Got plans with the billionaire?”
I filled Ty in on Zach, and he was somewhere between Sara and Eva. A you-never-know. But didn’t you really? Idiots never knew. Rationalizers never knew. People who were smart enough not to get burned knew. But, maybe if Zach called again, I’d tell him, quite casually, that I saw him the other night on Ocean Avenue. And see what he said.
“Remember the time Seamus dumped me because he thought I was cheating on him with the guy I hired to surprise paint our bedroom? I’m telling you, Seamus has zero gaydar. That guy was so straight. You really never know, Clem,” he said, squeezing my chin and trying to turn the frown upside down.
Okay, fine. You never knew. Sometimes.
Sara had called Duncan the night we’d gotten th
e scoop from his ex-girlfriend to break the news that she’d moved on with an ex. Almost a week later, at our next cooking class on Tuesday night, he was still down in the dumps.
“I still don’t get why she just didn’t tell me she hated my shirts,” he said, slamming down leeks on his chopping board. “I don’t have to wear bowling shirts. There are a million shirts I could wear.” He unbuttoned his shirt and flung it off, then stomped on it and threw it in our trash can. “Gone. That easy.”
“Honey, it’s not the shirt,” Sara said. “It’s bigger than the shirt.”
“And fuck her if she doesn’t like your style,” I added, turning on the burner for the canola oil. Tonight we were making steamed and fried dumplings with a miso-ginger dipping sauce and sesame broccoli. “You’re supposed to dress all L.A. or skater or whatever because she doesn’t like the geek-nerd look?”
“Yes, actually,” Eva said, doing a pretty good job mincing the ginger. “Do what you have to do to keep the person.”
Sara made a face. “So he was supposed to wear leather pants or whatever and Dita sunglasses?”
Eva slid her ginger into a bowl. “If he wanted to keep her, yeah.”
“You changed your style for your husband?” Sara asked.
“Yeah, I did. Big whoop. He didn’t like me in T-shirts and jeans. So I amped it up.”
“Well, it didn’t—” Sara clamped her mouth shut. “We’re talking about Duncan anyway.”
“No, it didn’t what?” Eva asked, staring at Sara. “He cheated on me anyway and hooked up with some skank in his Pilates class, so it didn’t matter anyway?”
“Something like that, yeah,” Sara said.
Eva looked as though she was about to fling the bowl of ginger at Sara, so I stepped between them. “Okay, moving on, guys. We’re cooking here. Duncan, the tofu is mashed enough—good work,” I added, even though he’d been taking out his frustration on it. “Sara, the radishes need to be more finely chopped. More chopping, less chatting.”
“Yeah, mind your fucking business,” Eva said to Sara.
Sara rolled her eyes.
“I’m gonna mind mine,” Duncan said. “I’m giving up. Moving on and all that. She doesn’t love me, doesn’t want me. I’m sick of being pathetic about it.”
Eva put her knife down. “I’m not.” She looked like she was going to cry. “I miss my husband so much. Why did he have to cheat? I really thought we would grow old and gray together. Two of us, against the world.”
“How long were you married?” I asked. I turned to Duncan for a sec. “Let’s get the leeks and radishes sautéing.”
“Almost five years. You know how long it took me to get married? Forever. I finally find the guy, think he’s forever, think I’ve got everything that I always dreamed of when I was like seventeen and never had a boyfriend because I was chubby and had bad hair. And it felt great. Having a ring on my finger. The word fiancé. Someone chose me, you know? A wedding. A wedding ring. I loved everything about being married.”
“So what went wrong? He just suddenly started cheating?”
“Well, I admit I was like twenty-five pounds skinnier when we met. And I dressed how he liked. And pretended to be into the As and trips to Vegas. But then I relaxed a little bit. It was so exhausting pretending to be what he wanted.”
“So the real Eva came out and he started cheating?” I asked. That sucked.
Her eyes teared up—unless that was the ginger. “I have to change. I have to get skinny and dress cuter and be interested in buying investment businesses, which I could give two shits about.”
“Eva, you don’t have to be anyone but you,” Duncan said, giving the vegetables a stir. “You’re great the way you are.”
“Yeah, Eva,” Sara said. “Even I like you. And I’m not just saying that because you scare me.”
“Same here,” I said. “You’re great the way you are.” I glanced in the sauté pan, then told everyone to combine all the other ingredients in a separate bowl.
“Right, that’s why I have men beating down my door,” Eva said. “You know how many responses I got to my Match profile? Four. Out of gazillions. And all four only wanted to know what position I like best.”
“Eva, they don’t represent all men,” Duncan said, mixing the sautéed leeks and radishes into the tofu mixture. “Some of us appreciate real women with curves and minds of their own.”
Sara shot Duncan a moony smile. “Yeah, Eva. You’ll find your guy. Maybe you just have to rethink what you’re looking for. Maybe you’re looking for guys who remind you of your husband.”
Eva brightened. “You might be right. Huh.”
It was time to fill the wonton wrappers, so everyone got busy on that. Eva seemed to feel better.
We were working on the sesame sauce for the broccoli when the intercom buzzer rang.
“Yeah?” That was my new way of saying the whole Skinny Bitch spiel.
“It’s Zach.”
I froze for a second. Zach. Was not expecting him to just show up, though he’d certainly done it before. I jabbed the UNLOCK button and opened the door.
He appeared on the steps. God, he was fucking gorgeous. “I knew I’d find you here for your class. You don’t return calls or texts.”
Sara, Duncan, and Eva had stopped their chopping and slicing and were staring at me to see what I’d say.
I stepped out into the hall and shut the door. The four-year-old kid from 2C was riding his tricycle up and down the hall. He got perilously close to my foot.
“I was out last Wednesday night on Ocean Avenue.” I watched his face for dawning awareness that I was onto him. Nothing. “I saw you with your arm around some chick. A redhead in a shiny weird dress, if you can’t remember which of your women I might be referring to. I’m not doing this, Zach. I appreciate that you drove me to the hospital. I appreciate that you paid for my family’s hotel rooms. I appreciate a few other things, too. But I’m not doing this.”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “Not doing what exactly?”
“Not getting involved with you.”
“I see. So you’re not getting involved with me because you saw me out on Ocean Avenue Wednesday night with my arm around Avery, who by the way, is my fraternal twin sister.”
“Right. Your fraternal twin sister.”
He pulled out his iPhone and typed something, then held it out to me. An article in L.A. Magazine about Zach and his sister Avery Jeffries who raised a quarter of a million dollars for the renovation at Montague Park. There was a photo, too. Avery Jeffries looked amazingly like the redhead in the weird dress. Fuck.
In a good way, a weight lifted off me, even if I felt like an idiot.
“Oh, hell. Sorry. You guys don’t look alike at all. You must hear that a lot.”
“Actually, we look a lot alike, except for her red hair. And the weird dresses.” He stared at me for a second. “You know, Clementine, maybe I’m the one who’s not going to do this. Get involved with someone who keeps jumping to all kinds of wild conclusions about me. And then doesn’t even give me a chance to explain.” The kid on the trike chose that moment to ride into Zach’s shin, but he shot the kid something of a half smile and then was gone.
Shit.
“Well, he could have mentioned he had a fraternal twin sister,” Sara said when I came back inside.
“Not that we were listening,” Duncan added.
“I say he’s full of shit,” Eva said, rinsing the broccoli. “Anyone can pull a fraternal twin sister out of their ass.”
I explained about the photographic proof. Sara went to my laptop on the coffee table in the living room, typed something, and read, “Zach Jeffries comes from a large northern California family, including his Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist brother, Gareth, and his fraternal twin sister, socialite philanthropist Avery.”
“Whatevs,” Eva said. “I still say he’s lying about something.”
Sara laughed. “He’s not evil just because he’s rich and hot.
”
“So I suppose you have to make amends,” Duncan said, adding the sesame seeds to the pan of oil on the stove.
“If I’m going there,” I pointed out. “Am I going there?”
Sara nodded. “You’re already there.”
My text: Sorry. I owe you an apology. Now it’s my turn to ask for a do-over.
His text, which took a good hour: Dinner at my place tomorrow night. See you at 7. P.S. Remind me to tell you I have news to share if I forget while you’re groveling.
I woke up at 2 a.m. after having a dream that Zach and I were in bed when three women, all with the same face and long blond hair, barged in and stood there, arms over their chests.
“Who are they?” I dream asked.
“Who’s who?” he asked, running his hands up and down my naked body.
“Those women. Right there,” I said, pointing. The three of them were just standing there, as though they were waiting for him to be done with me.
“I don’t see anyone,” he said and then kissed me so hard that everything went black.
Which was when I woke up.
This had to be one of those classic anxiety dreams. He’s-cheating-on-you dreams. He’ll-never-really-be-yours dreams.
I tried to go back to sleep, but I kept staring at my alarm clock. 2:12. 2:13. 2:14. I finally got up at 2:15. I needed one of my peanut butter chocolate chip cookies and a mug of strong black tea. Or maybe just a shot of Jack Daniel’s.
So as not to wake Sara, lightest sleeper on earth, I tiptoed around the partition into the living room and down the hall, but her bedroom door opened and unless Sara had grown six inches, a guy was coming out of her room.
“One more kiss before you go,” I heard Sara say in a sexy voice, and the guy was pulled back in.
Okay, who the hell was this?
I stepped back into the bathroom, hoping whoever it was didn’t need to pee or something.
A few seconds later, Duncan appeared in the hall, and I stepped farther back into the bathroom.
Duncan? What?
Sara, in her silky kimono, flashing serious cleavage, walked him to the front door. They whispered something, then made out for an interminable minute. The second Sara locked the door behind him I blurted out, “Okay, what?”