“You’re just being difficult,” Angie said. She crossed her arms over her chest with such a look of immovability she could have sprouted roots.
“No, I’m not,” Mel protested. “You can go with Tate. You don’t need me there.”
“Yes, I do,” Angie cried. “You’re my best friend. Besides, our whole business is successful because of you. We need to be there together to represent.”
“‘You know, even though I had to wear that stupid back brace and you were kind of fat, we were still totally cutting edge,’” Mel said.
“Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion,” Angie identified the movie quote. It was a longtime game between them as movie lovers to stump each other with movie quotes. “I have been waiting for you to bust that out since I mentioned the reunion.”
“What reunion?” Olivia Puckett, Marty’s squeeze, asked as she entered the bakery, which had finally cleared out.
“Our fifteen-year high school reunion,” Mel said.
“Fifteen?” Olivia looked them up and down. “I’d have thought you were on twenty by now.”
Angie emitted a low growl from her throat. Mel instinctively stepped in front of her to block her from Olivia.
“Why are you here?” Mel asked Olivia with narrowed eyes.
“I’m taking my honey out for a late lunch,” Olivia said. She blew a kiss at Marty and he leapt into the air, pretending to catch it. Mel hoped he didn’t slip a hip with that maneuver.
“Gagging,” Angie said. “I’m actually gagging.”
Olivia gave her a dark look. “What’s the matter, short stack? Is the bloom off your newly wedded rose?”
This time Mel wrapped an arm around Angie’s head and pulled her in close. She supposed it could technically be called a headlock, but it prevented Angie’s wildly swinging fist from connecting with Olivia’s nose, so Mel figured it was for the greater good.
“Now, Liv, be nice,” Marty said. “Mel is having issues because she’s too chicken—bock bock—to face her old classmates at her reunion.”
Mel dropped her arm and Angie careened forward. Olivia side-stepped behind a table just in time.
“I am not chicken!” Mel protested.
That brought Angie up short and she whirled around to look at Mel as if she could not be serious. “Yes, you are! Otherwise, why don’t you want to go? Brittany Nilsson is coordinating the whole thing and she says just about everyone has RSVP’d yes. She was so excited about your cupcakes.”
“Like I care what Brittany Nilsson thinks of my cupcakes,” Mel scoffed. “I have no reason to go. I don’t care about high school or any of those lame people. I kept in touch with the people who were my friends and that’s all that matters.”
“That’s me and Tate,” Angie said. She held up two fingers.
“Exactly,” Mel said. “Why do I need anyone else?”
Olivia glanced back and forth between them like she was watching a ping-pong match.
“You’re talking about turning down a job for five hundred cupcakes!” Angie raised her hands in the air as if she had hit her exasperation breaking point. “Most of these people we graduated with are local or still have family here. The potential for more business from this reunion is huge.”
“I don’t care,” Mel said. “I don’t want to do it. I don’t want to go. I don’t want to see any of those people ever again.”
“You’re just being stubborn,” Angie said.
“No, I’m not.”
“Yes, you are.”
“Well, I’m going to lunch,” Marty said. “Liv, you ready?”
Mel glanced at Olivia, who was suddenly quiet. She had her back to them and was whispering into her phone. Mel stepped closer so she could hear.
“Yes, I’m the owner of Confections bakery. I hear you need five hundred cupcakes,” Olivia whispered.
Angie’s eyes went wide. She waved her arms like she was indicating that the bridge was out. “Now see what you’ve done? Olivia is going to scoop our job.”
“Not on my watch,” Mel said. She stepped around Olivia and snatched the phone out of her hand. “Hello?”
“Hi, Ms. Puckett? Is everything all right?”
“There’s no Ms. Puckett here,” Mel said. “This is Melanie Cooper, owner of Fairy Tale Cupcakes.”
“Oh my god! Mel! Hi, this is Brittany Nilsson, remember me? Go Devils!”
Mel closed her eyes. It was impossible not to remember Brittany. She was the most school-spirited person Mel had ever known. Short, stout, and with a walk that was militarily precise, she chanted peppy slogans that sounded more like orders being barked. During spirit week, she positively ruled school-color day, crazy-hair day, and dress-like-twins day. She was in two words: too much.
“Hi, Brittany,” Mel said. “Of course I remember you.”
Olivia made to snatch her phone back but Mel turned away from her. She heard a grunt and an oomph and guessed that Angie had blocked another attempt.
“Angie tells me you’re quite the culinary wizard, so here’s what I’m thinking: five hundred cupcakes with little glittery fifteens on them,” she said. “And could you make a variety of flavors? Chocolate cake with vanilla icing is so 2010.”
Mel glanced over her shoulder. Marty and Angie had each hooked one of Olivia’s arms, holding her back. The light in her eyes was fierce, and Mel realized she could give this huge order to Olivia and walk away but, no, she couldn’t. They’d been baking rivals ever since the day Mel had opened her shop and even though Olivia was dating Marty, it hadn’t changed one bit. Mel would be frosted by her own pastry bag before she’d willingly give Olivia her business.
“That sounds great, Brittany,” Mel said. “I’ll e-mail you an invoice.”
“Fantas—”
She hit end on the call and tossed the phone back to Olivia, who yanked her arms free and caught it. Mel then glanced at Angie. “You win. We’re going and we’re making the cupcakes.”
“Yay!” Angie jumped up and down and clapped. Then she turned to Olivia and the two women exchanged a high five. “Nice work, Puckett.”
“Thank you,” Olivia said.
“What?” Mel snapped. “This was a setup? You two set me up?”
Olivia shrugged. “Sometimes you just need a hard shove to the back to do the right thing. Come on, handsome, I’m so hungry I could eat a bear.”
“Right behind you,” Marty said. He glanced at Mel. “For the record, I had no idea about any of this.”
Mel turned to Angie. “Oh, the betrayal! How could you?”
“How could I not?” Angie asked. “Mel, it’s our fifteen-year high school reunion and we’re getting paid a fortune to show up and show off. Honestly, if you hadn’t caved in under the Olivia competition maneuver, I was planning to clunk you on the head and drag you to the reunion bound and gagged if I had to.”
“You’re mental.” Mel shook her head. “This is really that important to you?”
“Yes.” Angie studied Mel’s face and added, “Cheer up, this is a huge event and we are going to rock it. I mean, it’s been fifteen years since we’ve seen any of those people—what could possibly go wrong?”
Two
“How did you get talked into this again?” Joe asked as he straightened his tie.
“Your sister manipulated me with Olivia Puckett’s help,” Mel said. They were parked in the large lot adjacent to the resort where the reunion was being held. “I’m still mad at her.”
“It’s been weeks. That’s a pretty long time to hold a grudge,” he said.
Mel gave him a dark look.
Joe raised his hands in the air in a gesture of surrender and said, “But, of course, I’m completely on your side.” He leaned over the console and kissed her quick. “Have I told you that you look beautiful tonight?”
“Thr
ee times,” Mel said. Then she smiled at him. “Thank you. But fair warning, you may have to say it a couple hundred more times to get me through this evening. I can’t believe I’m doing this.”
“Nervous?” he asked.
“Terrified,” she said. She made no move to get out of the car and Joe seemed to be waiting to follow her lead. She loved that about him. He never rushed her. She took his hand in hers and said, “There’s something I need to tell you.”
“All right,” he said. He paused with his head tipped to the side, as if he had all the time in the world for her to be ready. As the middle of Angie’s seven older brothers, Joe was the family mediator and a master at patiently guiding people where they needed to go. Oh, how she loved this man.
Mel shifted in her seat, trying to find her courage. She hated this. She didn’t want to have to tell him all of the humiliating stuff from her teen years. A flash of anger toward Angie flared up in her. She could have just gone on with her life, never admitting any of this but, no, here she was getting ready to face her old nemesis and there was no way she couldn’t prepare Joe for the drama that was likely to unfold. It would be like sending him barefoot into a snake pit.
“The thing is, I wasn’t exactly homecoming queen material back in the day,” Mel said. “In fact, I was more likely to be confused with the float that the homecoming queen rode on, or at least that’s what our homecoming queen, Cassidy, liked to say to me.”
Joe blinked. Mel knew she had just changed his perspective of her entirely. He probably didn’t remember that when she was a teenager she was on the heavy side—understatement—and that her weight had been a burden for her throughout high school and most of college, until she nearly starved herself to death. If anything, he remembered her as Angie’s chubby friend, not the most flattering image but not entirely accurate, either. She’d been more than chubby.
After a miserable stint in the corporate world, she decided to follow her bliss and quit the insanity of crazy starvation diets and went to Paris to study cooking. It was there that she learned to have a healthy relationship with food. And it was after that that she reconnected with Joe, who was four years older, and who now knew her as a grown-up and a woman who knew who she was and how to manage her emotional eating—mostly.
“Cassidy?” Joe asked. One eyebrow was lowered in what she recognized as his unhappy face.
“Havers,” Mel said. “Although Angie told me she’s Cassidy Havers-Griffin now.”
“And she was your homecoming queen?”
“Yes,” Mel said. “I know she was four years behind your class but you probably saw her at the annual homecoming football game. She was a vivacious redhead, with big bazooms and a cute little button nose, and huge blue eyes. She looked like a fairy princess.”
“Sounds like she was more the villainess in this story,” he said. “Please tell me you shoved her face-first into a bowl of pudding or stuck a kick me sign on her back.”
Mel burst out laughing. “No, I was too shy and timid back then. Mostly, I remember trying to shrink myself in all directions. I used to walk with my elbows tucked in and my head down.”
A soft look came over Joe’s face. “I wish I had been there. I would have protected you.”
Mel was horrified and shook her head. “Oh, no, that would have done me in. I could barely string together a sentence whenever I saw you at your parents’ house as it was. You were Angie’s older brother, the impossibly handsome and kind Joe DeLaura, and I was crushing on you so hard. It would have killed me if you’d witnessed any of my humiliation.”
He raised his eyebrows. Mel was not going to get into it. She waved her hand and said, “Dumb stuff. No big deal.”
“It doesn’t sound like no big deal,” he said. “Especially if it still hurts you. Do I have to punch someone into the ground tonight?”
“No, really, it doesn’t hurt me anymore,” she said. “I just want you to be prepared if we go in there and people don’t remember me or they’re not kind; it’s because I was definitely an outlier in high school, as were Angie and Tate, which is why we’re such good friends.”
“And yet Angie is very excited to attend the reunion,” Joe said. “Why is that?”
Mel glanced down at her hands in her lap. “Because Angie probably would have been popular if she hadn’t chosen me as her best friend. I was the fly in the pie there. But Angie is so loyal, she always put me first. I think she’s eager to show everyone how successful we are, whereas I—”
“You what?” Joe asked.
Mel felt her throat get tight. Damn it. She didn’t want to cry but this whole thing was much harder than she’d expected. The truth was she’d been bullied mercilessly by Cassidy and her squad and the wounds still cut deep.
“I just don’t want to get hurt,” Mel said. “I don’t want to be that sad girl who felt so ugly and unattractive all through school. It’s taken me so long to leave her behind me, and I’m afraid if I walk in there, I’ll be her again.”
Joe cupped her cheek and pulled her close. He kissed her forehead, her cheek, and then her lips. “Listen, I don’t think you should let go of that girl. She made you who you are, who, for the record, is funny, smart, kind, and a stunner of a woman. That girl needs you to embrace her and love her.”
“But she was weak,” Mel said. “You know, I realized when I got older that I wasn’t bullied because I was overweight—okay, I was—but it was more because I was sensitive. The bullies enjoyed torturing me because they knew they would get a response. They knew they could make me cry. I was such a target because my feelings were so easily hurt.”
“I’m so sorry that happened to you, and I would go back in time and save you from that if I could,” he said. “Even if you hadn’t wanted me to. But that sensitive girl, that shy young lady who was so easily hurt, she’s one of the reasons I love you.”
Mel rolled her eyes. She knew a bunch of bologna when she heard it.
“Hear me out,” Joe said. “You are a beautiful woman, and I’ve thought that for a very long time, even before you and Angie teamed up to open the bakery and I had an excuse to see you every day.”
The love in his warm brown eyes made Mel’s heart pound triple time. Only Joe had ever been able to do that. He took her hand in his and laced their fingers together.
“But it’s not the pretty package that made me fall completely, stupidly, can’t-breathe-without-you in love with you,” he said.
“Really?” Mel’s voice was high and tight and she had to clear her throat and say again, “Really?”
“Mel, I’ve watched you throw yourself in harm’s way repeatedly to help people of all sorts,” he said. “You hired Oz, a scary-looking teen, and Marty, a cranky old man, and you’ve taken on all six of my brothers when it was warranted. You give so much of yourself to everyone who meets you and you do it with humor and grace and kindness. You are one of the most amazing people I’ve ever met and no mean girl from your high school days will ever change my opinion of you. Clear?”
Mel felt a grin burst across her face. “Crystal.”
“Good, now let’s go show them who’s who and what’s what,” he said. He climbed out of the car and walked around it to get Mel’s door.
She took one moment to glance up at the sky and say, “Dad, I know you’ve been gone more than ten years and I don’t know if you have any sway with the forces above, but if you could just make sure I don’t humiliate myself tonight that would be totally rad. Love you.” She kissed the tips of her fingers and touched the roof of the car.
Charlie Cooper, her larger-than-life dad, had passed away when Mel was fresh out of college. There was not a day that went by that she didn’t feel the lack of his bear hugs and booming laugh and she knew if it was at all possible, he would keep her from falling on her face tonight. Feeling marginally better, she took Joe’s hand as he helped her out of
the car.
Mel had spent the better part of the day at the beauty salon. Her short blond hair had been poofed, fake eyelashes attached, and smoky eye applied. She was as ready as she’d ever be. She’d even splurged on a blue Shoshanna midi cocktail dress in floral guipure lace, which accentuated her figure and made her feel as if she cleaned up okay. Strappy sandals and a small black clutch completed the look. The narrow heels made walking a challenge and she was happy to have Joe’s arm to lean on.
“Come on, gorgeous, I want to go show off my girl,” he said.
Mel giggled, actually giggled—it was mortifying—but she let him lead her up the stairs and into the resort.
Tate and Angie were waiting for them. Angie raced forward, wearing a darling red cocktail dress and platform stilettos.
“Oh, thank goodness,” she said. “I was just getting ready to text you. I thought you might have decided to ghost.”
“I might still,” Mel said. She hugged her friend. “But I’m here for now. You look fantastic, by the way.”
“Me?” Angie asked. “Look at you. Wowsie wow wow.”
Mel laughed. She glanced at Tate. Like Joe, he was in a dark suit, which made him look like a grown-up, but the mischievous glint was still in his eye when he said, “‘That is so fetch!’”
“‘Gretchen, stop trying to make “fetch” happen. It’s not going to happen!’” Mel retorted.
“Mean Girls,” Angie identified the movie quotes. She looked at her husband. “How appropriate.”
Tate shrugged. “I thought so.”
Mel hugged Angie and then Tate. When she was close enough, she whispered in his ear, “Speaking of mean girls, have you seen her yet?”
“Cassidy?” he asked. He gave her a mock look of horror. “No, not yet. Maybe we’ll get lucky and she won’t be here.”
“Oh, she’ll be here,” Mel said. “She’s probably been waiting for this night since we graduated. It’s another opportunity to put on her tiara and lord it over the rest of us.”
“Who are you two whispering about?” Angie asked.
Dying for Devil's Food Page 2
