Chapter 36
I’ve given up trying to understand my life or my family.
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, and I was all set to spend the day at my parents’ house.
I was maybe even looking forward to it—arriving early, hanging out with my nephew, making one magnetic block tower after another, avoiding the kitchen, and having a command of the front drive for when Adam and his girlfriend show up—but Mom has other plans.
“I need you to persuade Mrs. Miller to join us,” Mom says on speaker.
“Who?” I’m just back from my afternoon walks.
“Sarah’s mother. She just got a new kitten and is refusing to leave him. You’re the pet whisperer. Go now. Tell her you’ll stay tomorrow and take videos and make sure the cat is fine so that she can come.”
Where do I even begin? “Mom, have you considered there may be other reasons Mrs. Miller may not want to crash your Thanksgiving table?” I kick off my sneakers.
Mom sighs. “Yes, and if that is the case, I need to know what they are. Go find out.”
I drop my bag on the sofa, but it falls to the floor, and everything spills out. “Not again.”
“What again?” Mom demands.
“Nothing. I dropped my tote bag.” I reach for my lip balm that’s rolled under the couch. Instead, I pull out Mike’s set of spare keys. My cheeks flush. I’ve been carefully avoiding Mike since the morning I learned the books—and annotations—were his grandmother’s.
“I keep telling you, buy a proper bag with a zipper. Who knows what’s already spilled out of your ridiculous totes?”
I toss the keys and the rest of my personal effects back into my bag. “Why me?”
“You must have inherited your father’s fashion sense.”
“No, why send me to Mrs. Miller? Don’t you want to see me at your Thanksgiving table?”
“Of course I do. But Adam can’t do it. He’s finally bringing Sarah by for us to meet. And there’s nothing I love better than seeing my babies smitten, besotted, and—”
“Mom.”
“The internet says kittens sleep for twenty-two hours a day. You have the experience. You can go reassure Mrs. Miller you’ll know what to do to get the little furball settled, and then tomorrow once the cat’s asleep, you can just drive on up.
We won’t even be through appetizers, but even if we are, dessert is your favorite part of any meal. ”
Arguing is ludicrous. Molly McKinney is unstoppable. “I’ll go, but not tonight.”
“But—”
“Are you planning on starting the festivities before noon?”
“No, but—”
“Then I’ve got time to swing by in the morning.”
“Fine. I suppose that will give you time to make a dessert tonight.”
I change out of my FroggoDoggo attire into a strappy tent dress—maximum breathability but still pretty. “What?”
“I need you to bring a dessert tomorrow. Adam said he and Sarah had it covered, but you know how your brother is in the kitchen.”
“Yeah, okay, Mom. I’ll get right on it.”
“Bring Mike Benedick with you tomorrow.”
Not a chance. “Bye, Mom.” I hang up, slip on some flats, and head out to my patio with my tote bag in hand.
“Mike,” I yell across the fence. As nice as indefinitely avoiding Mike sounds, I honestly don’t have time at the moment to play games. Stores are going to be closing soon. “I want cake. Thick slabs of it.”
“No, you don’t,” Mike yells. “Any cake that comes in a slab isn’t worth your time.”
I beg to differ. “What are you, a cake snob?”
“No, I’m just not into garbage.”
I storm through the gate and straight into Mike. “Careful,” he says, bringing a gentle hand up to steady me.
I quickly back away and maintain a safe distance. “I’m fine.”
Mike’s brow furrows, like he’s confused or hurt.
Oh gosh, he’s still gorgeous. But I don’t think gorgeous is enough of a foundation to attempt a relationship. “I found your keys.” I toss him his spare set.
“Keep ’em.” He tosses them back. “I made other sets. Even stuck one in my medicine cabinet. You’ll never be locked out again.”
What I hear is, You’ll never sleep over again. And that’s fine, except it isn’t. Oh gosh, I need to change the subject before I burst into flames. “Well…I should wash your mouth out with soap. Cake is never garbage.”
“After you’ve had my grandma’s Swiss black forest cake, anything else that tries to call itself cake is garbage.”
“Ugh.” I can’t handle it. He might as well be his grandmother. Everything I love about Mike comes back to her, and it is weirding me out. “Adam is into that whole home-baking scene, and even when they turn out, it’s never as good as the cakes I can buy premade from the bakery aisle.”
“Oh, Bea. It explains so much. Come on.” Mike locks his back door.
“You asking me out?” I follow him down the stairs to the garage.
He laughs, and I swear there’s a nervous edge to it. “I’m curing you of the ails of your childhood and freeing you from the demons of your past.” He opens the passenger door of his truck. “Get in.”
We drive, awkwardly alternating between stilted conversation and stiff silence, to a bakery in Point Loma that looks like it invented the phrase hole-in-the-wall.
“Don’t tell me they know you by name.”
He snorts. “Right, a steady diet of cake is how I prepare for all my plays.”
I follow Mike into the bakery. It’s homely and definitely not putting on any airs. “Grandma’s baking skills were impressive, but she always bought her cakes from here. She thought it was her best joke.”
I inwardly cringe. I’m pretty sure I’m living Grandma’s best joke.
“She’d always say, ‘Oh, I stayed up all night making this cake. Secret recipe. Oh, don’t mind the pink box. That’s just how I like to keep all my cakes before I put them on a cake stand.’”
I bet she’s cackling in her grave.
Taped to the walls are handwritten thank-you cards from the nineties that appear as if they’re yellowing before my very eyes.
By the sheer volume of notes it looks like this bakery has made everyone’s wedding cake in town.
Industrial-size mixers are in the back. The individually wrapped slices of cake in the display case have handwritten price tags.
Five dollars for a slice. Twelve dollars for three.
I want them all. I will give them all a home.
No slice of cake has to spend Thanksgiving lonely and alone.
The cashier appears from the back room. “Welcome.”
“The sample plate, please,” Mike says.
The woman returns with a plate filled with rectangular slices of six different kinds of cake.
“Swiss black forest, our specialty,” the woman says before pointing to the other slices of cake.
“White chocolate Bavarian raspberry, German chocolate, carrot cake, chocolate truffle, and lemon cream.” She places the plate on the counter. “Enjoy.”
I spear a bite of the Swiss black forest but pause when I see Mike has his phone out. “What are you doing?”
“Filming,” he says. “So I can enjoy the moment that smug smile slides right off your face.”
“Whatever.” I roll my eyes and take a bite.
Oh no. It’s incredible. The frosting is creamy without being overly sweet.
The chocolate sponge tastes like chocolate while also being moist and fluffy, nothing like the cardboard cakes of my past. Chocolate shavings on the outside melt in my mouth.
A thick, creamy layer of chocolate mousse competes with the other textures, its richness contrasting the fluffiness.
“Oh my gosh.” I’m practically moaning. “This is the best cake of my life.”
“When’s the wedding?” the cashier asks.
“Never,” I say before Mike can make a polite excuse.
“She won’t forgive me my past.” He grabs a fork and fights me for the last bite of the Swiss black forest. “That’s what this is about, isn’t it?
That’s why you bolted from my room the morning after you spent the night.
It was some twisted turnabout is fair payback because I had a lapse in judgment the last time you were in cosplay. ”
“A lapse in judgment. Is that what you call tonguing that poor woman—”
“She threw herself at me!”
The cashier’s tracking our back and forth with ever widening eyes.
“And landed on your lips?”
“Yes, jeez, Bea. What do you want me to say? I’m sorry? I’ve said it a dozen times and in a dozen different ways. But I’ll say it again. I’m sorry!”
“That’s not why I ran.”
“Then tell me! Don’t shut me out.”
“There’s nothing to tell!”
“You want me to say that I took it too far? Should have known better? That I’ve been crazy about you since I met you?
That I’d stock my fridge with nothing but blackberries for the rest of my days if it meant more mornings with you?
That if you’d let me, I’d order our wedding cake right now and drive straight to the courthouse?
That if I could give you the life you deserved, we’d already be husband and wife? ”
The cashier is blinking fast, her eyes glassy.
Curse you, Mike Benedick. All he has to do is get a hitch in his voice and misty-eyed, and he’s convinced the entire world that he’s a lovesick puppy who had the misfortune of falling for an uncompromising shrew who happens to look like me.
“He’s an actor,” I say around a mouthful of cake. “He means nothing he says.”
Mike snorts. “If that makes you feel better.”
“I’m serious.” Suddenly, persuading this poor cashier to see things my way is important. Oh, who am I kidding? I’m a trained lawyer—explaining my side of things is always important. “He’s getting a master’s in theater studies.”
“Comparative literature, actually.”
“But the plays? You starred in the…” My brain is foggy—probably has something to do with the white chocolate Bavarian cream that is setting off fireworks and sparks in my head. “The tragedy and then the comedy and—”
“It turns out that literature is my preferred means of character study. A good book puts it all out there. I’m sure you’ve noticed that by now.”
“Reading all your grandmother’s books must have helped,” I say too pointedly.
I shovel more cake in my mouth. It’s so good my eyes are watering.
They’re also watering because Mike is so insufferable.
His grandmother’s books have put it all out there.
Because she was an introspective genius, with a soul so beautiful I shoved it down Mike’s throat just so I could entertain the fantasy of being attracted to a man who was as intelligent as he was sexy.
“You spend half the night in my bed, climb on top of me the next morning, beg me to read to you, and then disappear without any explanation. Just ghosted me until this afternoon when you yell, ‘I want cake.’”
“Spare me.” I slam my credit card on the counter. “An eight-inch Swiss black forest cake to go.”
“Um, excuse me, ma’am,” the cashier says.
“Don’t tell me you believe this guy.”
“I always believe in second-chance romances, but actually what I wanted to say was that we only take cash, check, or Venmo.” She taps the sign taped to the counter right next to my card.
“Oh. Oh.” I try to fish out my wallet. I doubt I have the cash on hand.
“On me,” Mike says, gallantly placing the exact change on the counter. He then adds what amounts to a twenty percent tip.
We walk back to his truck in frosty silence. “Why do you need a cake all of a sudden?” He opens the passenger door for me.
I wait until Mike is back in the truck. “My mother told me I had to bring a safety dessert to Thanksgiving.”
“Why?” He swerves the truck onto the road.
“Because Adam offered to bring dessert.”
Mike has nothing to say to that. We drive back to Neptune, and rather than taking myself and my pink-boxed cake to my cottage, I follow him into his kitchen, where I rummage in his drawer for a fork before opening the box.
“Sometimes I just want to eat cake and say screw it.” I shovel a bite of the Swiss cake into my mouth. It is heavenly. I didn’t even stop to get a plate. I opened the pink box and just dove in with a fork.
“Same,” Mike says, grabbing a fork and taking a bite.
“No. Not same.” I stab at the frosting before he can. “Because when I say ‘sometimes,’ I mean ‘all the times.’ But when you say ‘sometimes,’ you actually mean it.”
“So Bea’s ‘sometimes’ means ‘always’?”
I smile with the fork between my lips and nod.
“Then why not just say that?” Mike licks his fork.
“Because I’m worried about how it’s going to land. I grew up in a family of legal minds. I do not want to be accused of perjury. I don’t want to be tried and convicted should my ‘always’ ever have an exception.”
“So you learned to say ‘sometimes.’”
I bounce my eyebrows. “Sometimes.”
“What does ‘always’ mean, then?”
“It means someone misspoke or is too stupid to hedge their bets. ‘Always’ means someone is mad and not fighting fair. ‘Always’ is undefendable. A mistake.”
Mike snorts. “Or it could mean what it means. I always add almond extract to my vanilla frosting. You always watch Starship Cruiser after a bad day.”
“I sometimes watch Starship Cruiser after a bad day.”
“I always want to join you.”
“You sometimes want to join me.” I take another bite of cake. “I sometimes feel like an idiot. I’m sorry I ran off the other morning after you put me up for the night. It wasn’t anything you did. Friends again?”
“Always.”