Excerpt from Love at First Write
Kelsie
You know those big epic embarrassing moments that seem to only appear in movies? Like when the intrepid, yet plucky heroine is spying on her ex behind some shrubbery, and when he looks over she happens to trip over a giant dessert cart that’s suddenly appeared. Yep, that just happened to me.
Okay, not exactly like that, but similar.
Imagine this if you will. I’m in my bakery, Sugar Bakers, that I co-own with two of my closest friends, Caroline and Gracie.
We have only been open a couple of months now, but business has really started picking up.
We started in Gracie’s home kitchen selling cakes and other baked goods for parties, but recently upgraded to brick and mortar shop just a block from downtown Saddle Creek.
Anyways, so I’m in the back, in the kitchen, taking cookies out of the oven. I hear voices out front, a man and a woman and something about a wedding cake. But there’s something about the man’s voice that is familiar. So I set the tray of cookies down and step out front to take a peek.
This, folks, is when I should have just stopped. I should have tossed my apron on the floor and gone home and gotten back into bed.
Of course, that’s not what I did. Nope, I recognize the man and walk straight over to him, ignoring the woman clutching his arm.
“Tommy? Tommy Birch?” I ask.
After years of exchanging letters with Tommy, I imagined the moment he’d return home before.
Like, on constant repeat for the past six months.
The fantasies ranged from innocuously bumping into him at Ruthie’s Diner to dramatic proposals involving declarations, engagement rings, and a choreographed dance.
Don’t judge me for my active imagination; I have a lot of free time while I’m baking.
But even I never imagined this particular scenario. In which he acts like he doesn’t know me.
He looks at me, no recognition lighting his eyes.
“Yeah, that’s me,” he says with a big smile.
I tap on my chest. “I’m Kelsie.” I wait for recognition to dawn. When it doesn’t seem to, I add, “You know, Leah’s friend?”
His head tilts and then he slow nods. “Blankenship, right?”
“Yes.” Why is he acting like this? For the first time, I let my gaze flicker to the woman at his side. She’s about my age. Gorgeous. Thin. With well-behaved, perfectly normal colored hair.
My heart rate picks up as I take in the way her fingers grip his forearm. If he was covered in black spots, I’d worry she was thinking of making a coat out of him.
I take the high road and ignore the bigger question—i.e. who is this woman and why is she touching him—and instead ask, “When did you get home?”
“Who is this, Tom?” clinging woman asks.
He kind of shrugs. “Just a friend of my sister’s. I don’t really know her,” he mumbles close to her ear.
But I hear him just fine.
Again, this would have been a good time to turn my chubby ass around and hide. Again, that is not what I did.
Nope, instead of putting two and two together and reaching the logical conclusion, I go straight from confusion to anger. I refuse to be treated like this and nobody puts Baby in a corner and all that stuff.
So, like the genius I am, I go on the offensive.
“I’m just really freaking surprised you’re acting like you don’t know me after we spent the last two years exchanging letters.” I look to the woman. “Who am I? His pen pal whom he claimed he had fallen in love with.”
Tom goes pale, and for one glorious moment I think I’ve got him.
But as I wait for guilt to cloud his features, something horrible occurs to me.
He doesn’t look guilty. Not in the least.
No. He looks confused. Then he starts shaking his head. “There’s clearly been some misunderstanding. The only person I’ve been writing since my leave is Lana.”
“And I’m his fiancé,” she says, proudly displaying her left hand to show off her ring.
He looks from her back to me, something even worse than either guilt or confusion settles on his face.
Pity.
“I don’t know who you’ve been writing to, but it hasn’t been me. Sorry, kid.”
Kid.
Oh God. He really hasn’t been writing me. He doesn’t have any idea what I’m talking about.
Kill me now.
Why can’t this be when the aliens come and invade? Or a wormhole opens to swallow me whole? Any of those options are acceptable right now. Instead, I just stand there staring at him, knowing that my face is probably a shade close to my red hair.
Thankfully Caroline comes to my rescue, making a silly quip about me not taking my meds and herding me to the kitchen.
I start pacing, something I tend to do when I’m overwhelmed. Either pace or bake.
“There’s got to be a reasonable explanation for this,” Caroline says. “We saw some of the emails and letters you shared with us. You were clearly communicating with someone.”
I stop and stare at her. “You know what this is? This is the Blankenship curse. We’ve always been unlucky in love.”
“Oh, here we go,” Gracie says from the doorway. She glances at Caroline.
“Yes, here we go. I know y’all don’t believe me. But it’s true. My family has absolutely terrible luck with relationships.”
“Except your parents who have been happily married for the last twenty plus years?” Gracie says.
“They are the exception. The only exception.” I thunk my head down on the cold marble countertop. “How could I have been such an idiot?”
An idiot who stereotypically crushed on her high school best friend’s older brother. Then asked for his address to send him a care package from home. That’s how it had all started. Two years ago, I sent Tommy a big box filled with goodies and a handwritten letter from me.
I hadn’t expected him to write me back.
But he had.
We’d kept the letters up for a few months before he suggested we switch to email since that would be easier for him when he was on a mission.
A SEAL. A real, honest-to-goodness, bad-ass hero, writing me.
That should have been my first clue that something was amuck.
Especially when he’d started talking about feelings and the future.
I hate those “F” words!
I pull my phone out of my pocket.
“What are you going to do?” Caroline asks.
“I’m going to write whoever the liar is and tell him where he can stick his emails,” I snap.
To: Just_Another_Frog_Man@
From: Kelsiethekelpie@
Subject: surprise
Guess who I just ran into in town?
Any clue?
How about I just tell you!
YOU!
Or at least the you I thought I’d been exchanging letters with for the last two years.
Apparently you didn’t re-enlist, and you’ve come home—with a fiancé—I might add. And it’s really so thoughtful that you came into MY bakery to order your wedding cake.
I don’t know what you were getting out of this little charade, but it’s done. We’re done. Not that there ever was a “we.” So, thanks for that. Thanks for lying to me and making me look like a damn fool in front of my co-workers and people in town.
Before you write back with some lengthy explanation of why you have a perfectly good reason for being a liar, I’m not interested. I’m not even going to pretend to care about whoever you are.
Goodbye.
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