by Noir, Roxie
I stand there, perfectly still. As the only thing standing in the way of a complete and total cake disaster, I can’t move, so I close my eyes and try to go to my happy place.
Eli behind the brewery —
Nope. Wrong happy place.
Janice keeps talking into the radio, saying, “Yes, literally an emergency!” and “A TREE!” The cake is soft and pliable, surprisingly warm with my body heat.
Cake makes a good blanket, I think. Who knew?
If I ever get stuck at work overnight and the power goes out, I can just sleep in a wedding cake.
I wonder if strippers who jump out of cakes like it because of this.
“Okay,” Janice says. She still sounds panicked, but at least she’s making progress. “Yes. NOW. Like, now now! Thanks.”
She clears her throat.
“Okay, he’s coming,” she says.
“Cool,” I answer, because there’s not a whole lot more that I can say, and we wait. I still have my eyes closed, the cake very slowly slumping against me more and more as I pretend that I’m actually doing something really fun that involves being covered in a warm, sticky, thick substance.
I admit that I’m having trouble coming up with something that fits the bill. A mud bath at a spa, maybe, but a pretty gross mud bath.
“Jesus tapdancing Christ,” Eli’s voice says, and my eyes jolt open. I didn’t even hear him coming. “What the fuck happened? Did that tree fall on the cake? Give me that and take the other one to the other side,” he says, not waiting for any answers.
He stands there with a huge round pizza spatula, his eyes drifting over the cake, a look of total concentration on his hot face.
Thank God, I think.
It might be the first time I’ve ever been relieved to see him, but I am. Eli is a lot of things, and God knows we’ve got issues, but I know one thing for sure.
He’s gonna do his damndest to save our butts, and his damndest is a lot.
“Zane, get on the stepladder and lift the top two layers. Brandon, you get the next two and I’ll move this bottom one so it’s centered again. On three.”
I can’t even turn my head without coating my face completely in frosting, but I hear the sound of a stepladder being unfolded and deployed, feet climbing up, Eli giving further instructions.
“You got it?”
“Think so.”
“Okay. One. Two. Three!”
The weight of the cake lifts off me. It feels like a miracle, because it turns out cake is pretty heavy. I step back, freed, and watch as Eli carefully moves a cake layer back to where it belongs, depositing it and sliding the pizza peel from underneath it as gently as possible.
“Okay, next,” he says, his voice tense. “Careful.”
He guides the rest of the layers into place. I watch, still holding my breath, cake-covered. At any second the whole creation could go off-balance, topple over, and then we’d be well and truly fucked.
“Careful,” Janice whispers, mostly to herself. She stands off to one side, wringing her hands, still clearly wigging out.
Zane and Brandon balance the cake. They pull pizza peels back, slowly, carefully.
The cake stands on its own. It looks like an absolute wreck — frosting smeared to hell and back, gouges of exposed sponge where the frosting stuck to me instead — but it’s standing on its own, and that’s step one.
I glob frosting off of my face and look around. Then I just wipe it on my pants, because they’re covered in frosting anyway.
“Any chance someone from the bakery is still here?” Eli asked.
“They were gone before noon,” I say.
He nods, very serious. There’s already frosting in his hair and a light smattering on his arms and down the front of his jacket, but he doesn’t pay it any mind as he considers the cake, eyes crawling over every square inch.
“What happens if we don’t have a cake?” he asks.
My stomach flips. I think my vision narrows.
“Not an option,” I say.
“I’m just asking —"
“There needs to be a cake,” I say, the urgency rising in my voice. “This thing cost twenty thousand dollars, and I’m sure we could get sued for much more than that for ruining a five-hundred-thousand dollar wedding.”
“Twenty thousand?”
“At least.”
“Do they know there are children starving in —”
“Eli, for fuck’s sake!” I say, panic spiking through my veins again.
“Okay,” he says, holding up his hands, his voice surprisingly soft.
He looks at the cake. I look at the cake. Brandon, Zane, and Janice all look at the cake, all totally silent, contemplating the confectionary disaster in front of us.
I sidle around to the other side of the cake. There are pine needles embedded in the frosting.
I hate trees.
“Janice,” he finally says, still studying the thing. “Go get me all the frosting you can find or make. Buttercream, ganache, fondant, I don’t care. Anything decorative that can go on a cake, bring that too. If it’s pretty and edible, I want it. And every single spatula we have.”
“We need to move it to the side of the barn so the guests can’t see it,” I say, pointing at Brandon and Zane, both college students working in the kitchen for the summer. “Do you have the dolly?”
All three of them nod and hurry off, looking rattled and shell shocked. Now it’s just me and Eli and the cake.
“How are you at decorating a cake?” Eli asks me.
“Bad,” I say.
“How are you at picking pine needles out of frosting?”
“As good as the next guy, I guess.”
“And when are they supposed to cut the cake?”
I look at my watch.
“Now,” I said.
Brandon and Zane come back, pushing a dolly in front of them.
“Push it back half an hour,” Eli says.
For once, I didn’t question him or argue.
I just pick up my frosting-covered radio, call Lydia, and get it done.
* * *
I pipe the last of the frosting into the massive cake rift. My arms are sore and shaking, because I’ve been doing this for twenty minutes now and it takes way more strength than I’d thought.
Bakers must be ripped, I think.
I’m sweating. I’m even more covered in frosting than before. I look like terrifying lovechild of an ent and a yeti, because after picking tree debris out of wedding cake, I’m covered in both.
I’m halfway up a ten-foot ladder, staring at my wedding cake repair job.
It’s bad.
I wasn’t lying when I said I was bad at cake decorating. Things get ugly when I try to decorate cupcakes, let alone a beautiful, twenty-thousand-dollar wedding cake.
It had been my job to smash whatever chunks of cake I could back into the rift, then patch it together with buttercream, filling in any gaps with gobs and gobs of the sticky, heavy stuff. While standing on a ladder. And panicking.
Now the cake looks like it has some sort of tumor situation, but it’s probably better than what it looked like before.
I take a deep breath and lean against the ladder, dropping the icing bag to my side. Frosting blobs out of it onto the ground, but right now I couldn’t care less.
Eli’s head pops around the cake.
“That done?”
“It looks awful.”
A smile flickers around his eyes. It doesn’t last, and I barely catch it, but it’s there.
“Don’t worry, that’s the back,” he says. “Here.”
He takes the icing bag and replaces it wordlessly with an offset spatula, then goes back to work on the front of the cake. I get back to smoothing out the blobs.
We work. We don’t talk much. Every so often he hands me a tool, I give him a report, or say something into my radio, but for the most part, we labor in a frenzied, stress-filled silence.
I smooth. He decorates, coaching m
y unsteady hands even while he works, his voice surprisingly soothing, calm, and above all, nice.
I don’t have time to think about the fact that Eli is being nice. I don’t have time to think about the kiss or the maid of honor, and in that way, this disaster is pure bliss.
I only have time to fix frosting.
Finally, Eli steps back a few feet. He considers the cake, crumbs and frosting everywhere: on his clothes, streaked on his face, spiking his hair. My radio crackles again, Lydia’s voice punctuating the ambient quiet.
“What’s the cake status?” she asks, her voice even higher-pitched than usual.
I look at Eli, covered to the elbow in white, blue, and purple frosting.
“I’ll let you judge,” he says.
I get off the ladder and come around the front of the cake, silently praying to the cake gods that it’s not a complete and utter disaster.
Please look okay. Please look okay.
I hold my breath and turn, looking up at twelve feet of wedding cake.
It’s okay.
It’s not good. Before the tree incident, the cake was a master craft of baking design. Now it’s a perfectly adequate wedding cake. Not fancy. Not art. Definitely not worth twenty thousand dollars.
But it’s fine, not a total disaster, and that’s more than good enough.
The air leaves my lungs in a rush, and I try to run a hand through my hair. It sticks halfway through, because both my hair and my hand are coated with frosting.
“Thank fuck,” I say.
“I’ve seen worse,” Eli says behind me as I grab the radio from my belt, smearing it with frosting.
Before I can speak into it, it squawks.
“Violet?” Lydia’s voice says. “How’s the cake? It’s nearly nine-fifteen and I can’t hold the groom’s grandmother back for much longer.”
Her voice lowers, like she’s telling me something in confidence.
“She is feisty, Violet,” she says, her voice tinged with panic. She’s completely serious.
For a long second, I stare at the radio. Any rational response flies out of my brain, and I’m totally speechless.
My arms are so tired they’re floppy. I’m covered in frosting and totally wrung out from the adrenaline of our emergency wedding cake surgery.
I start giggling. I don’t mean to. I know giggling isn’t helping anything right now, but it’s coming from somewhere deep inside me that’s not obeying my brain, and I can’t stop.
“Violet?” Lydia hisses.
“I’m sorry,” I gasp, trying to control myself. I bite my lip, trying to stop the laughter.
Then I make the mistake of glancing over at Eli. A grin spreads across his frosting-streaked face.
I snort, dissolving into giggles again so hard that I have to sit down, on the grass.
“Violet,” Lydia says, the radio crackling. “Are you okay? Are you hysterical?”
I inhale with another snort, eyes closed so I can’t see Eli also laughing, and I finally get a hold of myself.
“The cake is go,” I tell her, taking a deep breath. “I repeat, the cake is go!”
“Thanks,” she says, then pulls the radio away from her mouth. I can still hear her as she speaks to someone else. “Okay, she’s lost her mind but…”
A tear runs down my cheek, flowing over more frosting as I look at Eli again. He’s laughing too, his arms clasped over his chest, and that only makes me laugh more.
Which makes him laugh harder, which makes me laugh harder until my ribs hurt and I’m lightheaded. We laugh until we’re both borderline hysterical, standing in front of this perfectly fine enormous wedding cake.
“You’re a damn mess,” he finally says, still laughing.
“So are you,” I point out.
He holds out his hand. I take it, and he locks his strong, firm grip around my wrist, both of us slippery with frosting, then pulls me up.
“I’m always a mess,” he says, slowly letting my hand go. “You, on the other hand…”
He half-smiles, and even though we’re right outside a four-hundred person wedding and there are plenty of people around, I feel like we’re alone.
Then he reaches out with his thumb, swipes a glob of frosting from my cheek, and licks his thumb.
I hold my breath for a beat too long. I watch his thumb disappear into his mouth, his lips closing around it, his mouth working as he sucks the sugar off. I look back into his eyes, mossy in the low light and teasing as always.
“Delicious,” he says, just as Lydia comes out of the barn.
“Oh, thank God,” she says.
Chapter Thirteen
Violet
I lean forward into the sink, bending in half at the waist until my head is fully under the faucet as I rake my fingers through my hair.
Slowly, the globs of frosting start to come loose. They’ve hardened on the outside, so I massage them until the sugar melts and the fat softens between my fingers, then work them through the strands and down the drain.
It’s not my favorite thing to have in my hair, but at least I’m washing it.
“I think that’s a health code violation,” Eli’s voice says behind me, the door to the kitchen closing.
“You gonna narc on me?” I ask, working another frosting chunk out.
He comes in, tossing something onto the counter behind us. There are still people in the kitchen, washing dishes and stacking plates, wrapping leftovers in plastic wrap, but they’re across the kitchen from where I’m standing over an industrial sink, rinsing sugar out of my hair.
I can see him out of the corner of my eye, standing off to the side, hip leaning against the counter, upside down and perfectly casual. He’s still wearing his black pants but he’s taken off his chef’s jacket, wearing nothing but a black t-shirt that has a few frosting streaks on it.
It’s not a bad look. Eli seems incapable of bad looks. I may be rinsing my hair under the running water for longer than strictly necessary, just getting an eyeful of him where he won’t catch me.
After a minute of that, he saunters over, standing next to me.
My heartbeat picks up, despite my brain asking it not to do that.
“You need soap?” he offers, holding up a bottle of Dawn.
It’s tempting. My hair still feels gross, but I can’t imagine that dish soap is great for my hair either.
“I’ll use shampoo when I get home,” I say, still rinsing and scrubbing. “I’m just getting the chunks out so I don’t get frosting all over my car.”
“It’s all the same stuff,” he says.
I just laugh.
“Not at all,” I tell him, still upside-down, combing my fingers through my hair, making sure I’ve gotten as much sugar out as I can. “I doubt dish soap will give me the bounce and volume I require.”
“You know that’s all marketing,” he goes on. “Make it smell nice and promise manageability and they can charge you twice as much for soap.”
I reach up and turn the water off, wringing my hair out into the sink. When I stand right-side-up again, Eli hands me a kitchen towel.
“Thanks,” I say, scrunching my hair in it.
For a moment, I study him. He studies me, something oddly unguarded between us.
“But you can’t convince me that you don’t shampoo and condition,” I say.
Eli has nice hair. It isn’t showy or dramatic, but it’s a brown so intense and deep it’s nearly black, framing his face and flopping over his forehead in exactly the right way. There’s no way he doesn’t spend some time on it.
“And why would you say that?”
Because you look too good.
“Come on. You’re coiffed. There’s probably even hair gel or something in it,” I say, rubbing the towel vigorously against my head. “Mousse, maybe?”
“Why would I put an ungulate in my hair?”
“Moose aren’t ungulates,” I say.
I have no idea whether moose are ungulates, but disagreeing with Eli is a knee
-jerk response.
“I think they are.”
“Because you’re a moose expert.”
“At least I’ve seen one,” he counters.
“Did it tell you it was an ungulate?”
“It didn’t have to,” he says. “It was just so obvious.”
I drape the towel around my neck, dragging my fingers through my hair again. It’s wet and probably looks like a rat’s nest, but at least it isn’t sticky any more.
Don’t ask, I think. Don’t give him the satisfaction.
“It was in North Dakota,” he says, then nods at me. “You need another towel?”
“I’m all right,” I say, squeezing it around the ends of my hair. “What were you doing in North Dakota?”
“Bartending,” he says, then holds out a hand. “I’ll take that back.”
I toss Eli the towel. He catches it and walks off, heading through a doorway to some other part of the kitchen as I look down at myself.
Even if my hair is …not clean, but better, the rest of me is still a disaster. Sighing, I head back to the sink, scrubbing frosting from my elbows and upper arms. More than anything, I need a shower, but I don’t want to get frosting all over the inside of my car on the way home.
“Here,” Eli’s voice says from behind me, and I turn.
Fabric hits me right in the face. I grab at it with wet hands.
“You did that on purpose.”
He grins, his face easy and relaxed as he tosses something onto the counter next to himself. It’s not how I’m used to seeing him.
It’s weird. It’s unfamiliar.
Strangest of all, it’s nice.
“Prove it,” he says, and pulls his shirt off over his head.
I wasn’t prepared.
Eli’s gorgeous. He’s tall and broad-shouldered, his muscles thick and ropy. Even in the ugly fluorescent light of the industrial kitchen, watching them move under his skin as he takes one shirt off and puts another on is mesmerizing.
My face is hot. I want to touch him so bad my hand twitches and I think about it all again, that thirty seconds outside the brewery, about what could have happened if Daniel hadn’t found us.
I want. I want.