Here For The Cake

Prologue

Eight yearsago

Who knew writing a story could feel this good? Like releasing a caged exotic bird, and watching it fly to freedom. All these words, inside me for days and months and years, and now here they are, on paper and tucked in my backpack.

Nobody of importance will read them, but that was never the point.

Their release was the point.

The snipping of their hold on me.

Goodbye, good riddance.

Hoisting my backpack higher, I tug down the hem of my jean shorts from where they’ve ridden up my legs and bounce up the steps to the English building. I’m not an English major, but this creative writing class is making me wonder if that’s where I’m headed.

Electricity zips through me at the mere possibility of figuring out what I want to do with my life. My dad was wrong. I won’t be crawling back to North Carolina with my tail between my legs. I’d passed on Notre Dame, his alma mater, in favor of Arizona State University. In doing so, it seems I’ve passed on being his daughter, too. He wants little to do with me, at least for the time. The feeling is mutual.

Being out from under his thumb gave me the freedom to try something new. The creative writing class in the course catalog caught my eye, and the description tugged at the strings of my curiosity. Did I dare try? The cardinal question released an exhilaration that served as my answer.

Cut to now. One month into the semester, and the verdict is in: I love it. Especially this most recent assignment.

The parameters were simple: a short fiction story, anonymously authored and anonymously critiqued by a classmate. Constructive criticism? Sign me up.

I’m proud of my work in a way I haven’t been in a long time. Years of advanced math classes and studying the metrics at my father’s hedge fund didn’t feel a fraction as good as what I extracted from my heart and crafted into a story.

I want words. Moldable, buildable, powerful. Emotion evoking.

Numbers are boring. Too precise. My father once informed me numbers tell a story, but I’m an avid reader, so I understood his idea of what constitutes a story differed from mine.

Declaring a major that has nothing to do with finance or business will make my dad’s skin melt off his face, but that’s an outcome I’m willing to shoulder. I’m already persona non grata. All those years of occupying the role of protégé, gone because I’d defied him.

Ironically, I’d never have gone against his wishes if he hadn’t done what he did. He’d made a terrible choice and asked me to lie for him. After that, well… It’s hard to look up to someone when they display low behavior.

Not all my bravado rang true. An enduring ache took up residence in my chest, soothed at last by my words, poured out on the page.

A twinge of nerves pokes at me now, this fear of letting someone else read my work. Anonymity is my saving grace. I’m safe. My story won’t leave this classroom. The author won’t be known by the reader.

Pushing my way into class, my gaze zeroes in on a lone figure. Klein. Adrenaline sparks in my limbs, rolling through me the closer I get to his seat near the front of the classroom. He’s a serious student, his ever-present notebook open like always, scribbling away like a mad scientist of words. Hair the color of wildflower honey, full eyebrows atop stunning green eyes, lower lip captured between his teeth as he concentrates. A pencil sits trapped behind his ear, and as much as I try not to, I find it endearing. Cute, even.

The guy is too good looking for words, even in a room full of creative writing students. Could any of us properly describe him? I cannot. There’s something about him, an essence, that holds him apart from the rest of us. Not only his talent with the written word, which he has in spades, but something else.

It’s not a social glow, because he’s not particularly friendly. Strangers don’t gravitate toward him, attracted by an unnamable quality.

Except for me. I’m the stranger, attracted.

Same as I was that night seven months ago, in my apartment, when he showed up with a friend of my roommate’s.

We’d talked for hours, and I’d thought here’s someone who understands me.

We’d kissed, too.

And then, nothing. Not a word from him, though I’d given him my number. The disappointment was crushing. What’s the word for a one-sided connection?

Leech?

Barnacle?

Well, I wasn’t going to be one of those.

Every time I saw him after that, I ignored him. I made ignoring him my second job. My preferred pastime.

Thanks to being placed in the same class, I’m given the chance to exercise my ignoring muscles every Tuesday and Thursday, and by now, I’m swoll.

Per usual, I keep my gaze laser-focused on the lectern as I drop off my short story. The professor accepts my paper with a curt dip of his chin.

My answering smile is perfunctory, my head lowering just in time for my hair to cover my face so a certain someone isn’t on the receiving end of my adulation.

I haven’t felt this buoyant and happy in a long time. The last thing I need is to catch Klein’s eye and risk him thinking my smile is for him.

No.

This smile is for me.

For the words I have written, and all the words I have yet to write.