Pardon My Frenchie

17

Ashanti balanced her cell phone between her shoulder and ear as she piped icing around the edges of the scepter-shaped cookies—her newest design courtesy of Evie’s late-night cookie-cutter Etsy shopping spree.

She listened with half an ear as the reporter from some small town in Illinois droned on about the summer she volunteered at their local animal shelter back when she was in high school. Ashanti now understood what Ridley meant when she told her to be selective regarding the media interviews. Nothing about this story would benefit her or Barkingham Palace.

She’d thought the hoopla over the viral livestream video would have died down by now, but it had been shared by the host of a popular TV show on the Animal Planet network over the weekend, restarting the madness and kicking it up several notches. Deja had called a half hour ago, threatening to quit.

So now they forwarded incoming calls to the overnight answering service and sent texts to all clients with pets being boarded today with instructions to call Ashanti’s office line if they needed to get in touch.

Ashanti had promised to join her staff at the daycare as soon as she could, but orders for Duchess Delights had gone through the roof. She’d farmed out some work to her next-door neighbor’s son, Bernard—a six-year senior at the University of New Orleans who spent more time playing video games on his mom’s couch than in class. He was currently bagging treats and would make deliveries later today.

Thanks to Duchess Delights’ newfound fame, Ashanti’s inbox was filled with job applicants for the daycare. She felt even more confident about the decision she’d made yesterday to put a bid in on the house in the Lower Garden District. It was no longer a question that she would need the extra space.

She’d sweet-talked Leslie, Deja, and Colleen with promises of pizza and wine if they would stay late to review resumes. Ashanti trusted them to weed out candidates, but the final decision on who they hired would be hers.

If she could find time to conduct interviews.

She heard the front door open and looked up from the dining room table, expecting to see Kara walk in from the foyer. Instead, it was Kendra.

“Hey,” her sister said.

When she realized Kendra wasn’t making a mad dash up the stairs to her bedroom, Ashanti abruptly ended the interview and set the phone down.

“Hey,” she said. “No cheerleader practice today?”

Kendra shook her head. Defying all of Ashanti’s expectations, she walked farther into the dining room and poked around at the doggy treat–making paraphernalia littering the table. She picked up the scepter cookie cutter.

“Why are you making penis cookies?”

“It’s a scepter,” Ashanti said. Her chest felt uncomfortably tight as a string of awkward seconds passed with neither of them speaking.

“Do you… uh… want to talk?” Ashanti asked.

“There’s nothing to talk about, Shanti. I told you already, I’m fine.”

She was not fine, but Ashanti knew better than to push. The fact that Kendra was even speaking to her was a gift.

She still couldn’t believe she’d allowed things to get to this point, where it felt like a victory to have her sixteen-year-old sister speak more than two nonhostile words to her.

“Do you want to help me out with these?” she asked, holding up the piping bag. “I can use it.”

Ashanti held her breath. She released it, along with more of the tension she’d been holding, when Kendra dropped the backpack she’d still had hanging on her shoulder and sat down at the table.

“Those are ready to be packaged.” Ashanti nodded toward the decorated cookies on a silicon drying mat.

“It looks as if that viral video has been good for business,” Kendra said as she closed the cellophane bag with a label.

“I have so many orders that I hired Mrs. Willis’s son from next door to help package them.”

“Ugh.” Kendra scrunched up her nose. “Bernard Willis is gross. The other day he offered to let me ‘experiment on him’ to see if I’m really gay.”

“What?” Ashanti pitched the piping bag into the bowl of icing. “That little bastard! I’m gonna kill him!”

“Don’t bother,” Kendra said. “I threatened to sic Duchess on him if he comes near me. Bernard is terrified of your dog.”

He should be terrified of her. Ashanti picked up her phone and sent him a text, telling him to put the treats on his front step and to never so much as look at either of her sisters again.

“I’ll be right back,” she told Kendra.

“Shanti, don’t go there starting mess. It’s not worth it,” her sister called.

She stopped in the kitchen to wash the icing off her hands and put another batch of treats in the oven. When she opened her front door, the box of cookies, labels, and cellophane bags were waiting on her front steps.

Kendra came up behind her. “What did you tell him?”

“He was gone by the time I opened the door,” Ashanti said. She carried the box into the dining room and set it on the table. “The next time I see that son of a bitch, he’s getting an earful.”

“Oh, Bernard had better watch out because you mad mad right now.” Kendra reclaimed her seat. “I can’t remember the last time I heard you use two swear words in a single day. You just used ‘bastard’ and ‘bitch’ in less than ten minutes.”

“Kendra.” Ashanti shot her a warning look.

“Sorry,” she said, those eyes that looked so much like their mother’s glittering with amusement.

Ashanti could do nothing but laugh, but then she sobered. “Tell me if he bothers you again. I mean it.”

“I will, but he won’t,” Kendra said. “Don’t blow this out of proportion, Shanti. You know how you can get.”

It was no secret that she became the very definition of a mama bear when it came to the twins, but that was her job. Protecting her sisters was her only priority. The daycare, the house, her very life; they all came second.

Ashanti could admit that she had gone overboard when Kendra came out to her two years ago. She immediately bought a rainbow flag to hang in the front window and a WE DO NOT TOLERATE HATE sign for the yard. Kendra had asked her to pump the brakes on her allyship, which she reluctantly did.

But there was no way in hell she would allow Bernard Willis to get away with what he’d said to her baby sister. She would take care of him later.

“So how have things been going so far this school year?” she asked. “Has the Literary Club started working on the first issue of this year’s magazine?”

Kendra’s demeanor shifted. Her shoulders stiffened and her back went ramrod straight.

“It’s fine,” she muttered. She gathered the cellophane bags and the tray of cookies. “I’ll do these in my room and bring them down when I’m done.”

“Ken—” Ashanti called to her, but she’d already started up the stairs.

What was that about?

Just then, the front door opened, and Kara came bursting through.

“Don’t be mad at me,” she said.

Ashanti threw down the piping bag she’d just picked up again. “What did you do?”

“Nothing! I mean, nothing bad. This is a good thing, I promise.”

“Before you tell me what you did,” Ashanti started, then she lowered her voice to a whisper and motioned for Kara to come closer. “Did Kendra mention something happening with the Literary Club? We were having a nice conversation for once, but when I asked her about the magazine she clammed up and raced off to her room.”

“I don’t know.” Kara hunched her shoulders. “She hasn’t told me anything. I swear, I would tell you if she had.”

Ashanti wasn’t sure if she believed her, but she couldn’t force either of the girls to share what they weren’t willing to share. She’d learned at least that much over these last six years.

“Okay, so what is this good thing that I’m not supposed to be mad about?” she asked.

“It’s not just a good thing, it’s an amazing thing. And the only reason you may be a little upset is because it’ll add extra work to your plate.”

“Really, Kara? Because two hours of sleep is too much for me?”

“I know, but this is amazing, remember?” Kara said. “So I was playing around online during Life Skills one day—”

“I thought you couldn’t use your phone during class?”

“It’s an elective. It’s not even a real class,” she said. “Like I was saying, I was playing around and ran across this site for Black entrepreneurs, specifically Black women entrepreneurs. They’re all about uplifting worthy small business owners, and we all know who my favorite small business owner is.”

“Kara, come out with it.”

“You’re messing up my big build-up,” she said. “Anyway, I nominated Barkingham Palace and you were picked as a finalist!”

“Nominated it for what?”

“It’s like a scholarship or something. I didn’t read everything, but I know that the grand prize is two hundred and fifty thousand dollars and mentorship by some bigwig business person.”

Ashanti set down the cookie she had been decorating. “Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars?”

“Yes! You also get an ad in several magazines across the country and other online promotion. It is a huge deal!” She started typing on her phone. “It’s a good thing Atilla sent that email the other day. I would have missed their response. Check your phone, I just sent it to you.”

She needed to get back to this order, but it would have to wait. Ashanti opened her email app and stopped cold.

“What is…?” Kara asked.

Ashanti read over the email that had come to her inbox a half hour ago. She brought her hand up to her mouth.

“Oh. My. God,” Ashanti said.

“What?” Kara asked, running to her. She tried to grab Ashanti’s phone, but she pulled it out of her reach. “Step back, Kara.”

“What’s going on? Is it the contest?”

Ashanti read through the short email twice before looking up at her sister. “Up Early with Leah and Luke! wants Duchess and Puddin’ on their show!”

“What! Ohmigod!” Kara screamed. “Ohmigod! Ohmigod! Let me see!”

Kendra came running down the stairs. “Who died?” she asked.

“No one died,” Ashanti said. “Everybody, calm down. Let me read over the email again.” The oven timer buzzed. “Shit! Kara, go get the treats out of the oven.”

“That’s three curse words from you in less than an hour,” Kendra said.

“No shit?” Kara said.

Ashanti ignored them and escaped to her bedroom. She closed the door and sat on the bed, reading over the email for the third time. Then she sent a text to Ridley and Evie.

Get here quick.

An hour later, Ashanti, Kara, Evie, and Ridley all sat around the living room, packaging Duchess Delights dog biscuits and hammering out what Ashanti would need for her national television debut. Kendra had returned to her room, once again a passenger on the surly teen train.

Unsure what Ashanti’s admittedly vague text was about, Ridley had arrived with wine, whiskey, and chocolate—the trio to cure all that ails, in her friend’s opinion. They’d tabled the alcohol for now so they could remain focused. The chocolates, however, had proved to be the fuel Ashanti needed.

“When do they want the dogs there?” Ridley asked. She stood in front of a poster board that had been tacked to the wall, a Sharpie poised in her hand.

“Friday morning,” Ashanti said, rubbing the spot on Duchess’s head that made her dog’s right hind leg shake.

Ridley turned to Kara. “I know you’re used to running point on marketing and promo for the daycare, but this is above your skill set, sugarplum.”

Kara held up her hands. “And above my pay grade. I know when to step back.”

“Good. Now, I have a friend who works in PR who owes me a favor,” Ridley said. “I’m going to bring Dom in on this. She is kickass at this kind of stuff. She’ll have an entire media blitz set up in less than a day.”

“How much does this Dom cost?” Ashanti asked.

“Stop worrying about what things cost,” Ridley said.

“Yeah, whatever it costs, it’s worth spending,” Evie said. “You have to capitalize on this, Shanti. Strike while the iron is hot and all that good stuff.”

“What about what’s his face.” Ridley snapped her fingers. “Come on, what’s Puddin’s fine-ass owner’s name?”

“Thad,” Ashanti said. “He’s required to sign a release for Puddin’ to appear on the show, but the producer asked if I thought he would also be willing to make the trip. I told them I would ask, but he’s never going to go for this,” Ashanti said. “He hates Puddin’.”

“That’s too bad for him, because he has to be there. There is absolutely no way around it.” Ridley made a gimme motion to Ashanti. “Do you have his number in your phone?”

She considered what it would be like to unleash Ridley on an unsuspecting Thad, and decided he didn’t deserve it. Yet.

Ashanti checked the time on her phone. It was a quarter to seven, after business hours.

“I’ll ask him first thing in the morning,” she said.

“No. Tonight,” Ridley said. “I’m about to call Dom right now. By tomorrow morning you’re going to have your boarding passes for your flight to JFK.”

“The producer said they would fly me up there on Thursday.”

“That’s because the producer is thinking about his show. You have got to think of every other outlet that will allow you to keep this story going.” She counted them off on her fingers. “Radio, podcasts, other local New York affiliates. Think of this as the media junket for the Duchess and Puddin’ Show.”

“That’s what I call it too,” Kara said.

Ridley winked at her. “You’re going to give Dom a run for her money soon.” She returned her attention to Ashanti. “Call him, or I will.”

“You don’t have his number.”

“I have my ways,” Ridley said.

Ashanti scooted Duchess into Kara’s lap and pushed herself up from the sofa. “I’ll be right back.”

She walked outside, took a seat on the front step, and pulled up Thad’s number, calling him before she could talk herself out of it.

“Hello,” he answered, his voice a bit unsure, yet still capable of doing… things to her.

“Um, hi. This is Ashanti.”

“I know,” he answered. “I saved your number the last time you called.”

That bit of information should not have sent a shock of heat straight through her body, and yet here she was, burning up.

“Is everything okay?” Thad asked.

“Yes. Sort of,” Ashanti said. “This is a very strange request, but—”

“I’m sorry. One sec.” He cut her off. Then she heard, “A second pry bar was delivered with the other supplies we got today. Check out back.”

“Are you still at the house in the Bywater?” Ashanti asked. She hadn’t referred to it as her house. Kara would call that hashtag growth.

“There’s a lot of work to be done,” was Thad’s reply.

Yet another reason he wouldn’t be able to fly up to New York on a moment’s notice. He’d told her that he was working on a tight timeline to get the house renovated. He wasn’t about to miss out on several days’ work to join her on a morning television show.

Unless…

“How long will you be there?” Ashanti asked.