Between Yesterday and Tomorrow

Prologue

Before

A white cake box sits in the middle of the fridge. I pull it out and dump it on the worktop, surprised no one has thrown it away. That members of my family have busied themselves cooking and cleaning, yet allowed a cake to sit here, rotting in my fridge, for over a week.

When I flip open the lid, the cake is unspoiled.

The cream cheese icing appears freshly levelled, the crumbled red edges still bright.

I’d left the top plain, with enough space for thirty candles and the Michael B.

Jordan cake topper I’d ordered from Etsy.

Kasie had made me promise the cake would be ‘tasteful’, because her worst fear was me entering the restaurant with a giant penis cake.

As if I would have done that. Well, I might have, but not in front of her friends from work and church, who were already under the misguided notion I was some sort of liability.

I wanted everything to be perfect.

I’d found a Tuscan-style trattoria, where we were going to load up on prosciutto-filled doughballs, get loose on ￡5 Negronis and collectively tease Kasie about how she found black pepper too spicy.

Then we were going to walk through the streets of Farringdon, talking and laughing in our newly gelled friendship group, before arriving at the neo-soul themed sip and paint.

There, we’d half commit ourselves to painting a self-portrait, waterfall or bowl of fruit, while debating whether the playlist was actually neo-soul.

It would have been the perfect night, because it had taken me weeks to plan it.

Weeks to plan yet minutes to cancel.

I see now why no one has thrown the cake away because I can’t either. I close the lid, put the box back in the fridge and return to bed.