Dying for Devil's Food

by Jenn McKinlay

  “I will,” she said. She wanted to ask him what he meant. It sounded as if there was so much more to it than he was letting on, but she didn’t push it. “What’s happening in your life now? I heard you’re a local sportscaster on the news. That has to be thrilling.”

  “It is, but I’d rather be a player,” Danny said. His look was rueful but then he forced a smile and said, “Not that I’m complaining. After I blew out my knee in my fifth season with the Phoenix Suns, I thought I’d never work in sports at all, so I’m thrilled to be a part of it even if it’s from the sidelines.”

  They smiled at each other and Mel was amazed at how equal the footing felt between them now. And it wasn’t because he wasn’t the star basketball player anymore or because she had lost weight since the last time he’d seen her, but rather they were grown-­ups, doing interesting things and living their best lives. It felt . . . nice.

  “So, when is the wedding?” he asked. “The groom looks ready.”

  He tipped his head to the side and Mel saw Joe standing on the edge of the dance floor, chatting with Brittany Nilsson. Well, Brittany was chatting; Joe was sipping his drink and watching Mel. Their eyes met and he toasted her with his glass. It took everything Mel had to keep dancing with Danny and not leave him on the floor to go to her guy.

  “We haven’t pinned down the date exactly,” Mel said. “Trying to work around both of our schedules has been challenging.”

  “I know what you mean,” he said. “When Cassidy and I got married, we had to wedge it in between games and my time on the road. I swear we had fifteen minutes to pull the whole thing off.”

  “How long have you been married?” Mel asked.

  “It’ll be six years in a few months,” he said.

  “Wow.” And because she couldn’t stop herself, Mel asked, “Cassidy, huh?” She just had to know what Danny saw in her that Mel didn’t. Surely, he was beyond the curves and perky nose by now.

  “Yup,” he said. He nodded and for the briefest moment, a nanosecond really, Mel saw regret in his eyes as surely as she could see the dimple in his cheek when he pushed down whatever he was feeling and forced a smile and said, “Helluva gal, that Cassidy. You know, she stood by me when I was injured and my whole life seemed to be over. I’ll always be grateful for that.”

  It was clear that was his story and he was sticking to it. Mel would have let it go—­she should have let it go—­but she couldn’t.

  “Are you happy, Danny?” she asked. “Being married to her?”

  “Sure,” he said. “I mean I’m on the road a lot, so it’s hard on her. She gets lonely and a little . . . angry. I tried to tell her when we got married that this was my life, but I don’t think she really understood. When I got picked up to cover baseball season, too, well, I don’t think marriage to a man who was always gone was exactly the life she’d pictured for herself.”

  “So, things are complicated?” Mel asked.

  Danny looked at her and a grin split his face. “That’s it exactly. Leave it to you, Mel, to know just how to say what my life is right now. Complicated covers it.”

  Mel grinned back at him. Truly, with his Hollywood good looks, a woman would have to be in a coma not to respond.

  “Stop it!” a voice snapped. “Just stop it right now, Mel­ephant.”

  Two arms were thrust in between Danny and Mel, shoving them apart. Mel stepped back in surprise. Danny didn’t look surprised at all.

  “Cassidy, I was dancing with Mel,” he said. He looked supremely annoyed.

  “Why?” Cassidy snapped. “Why would you dance with that?” She waved her arms in the air as if she was gesturing to an enormous wooly mammoth in the middle of the dance floor. Mel crossed her arms and one eyebrow ticked up higher than the other. Enough was enough.

  “I’m not a that, I’m a who,” Mel said. Looked like her days tutoring English weren’t done.

  “No one is talking to you, Mele—­”

  “Stop,” Danny said. “Do not call her that ever again. Mel is my friend. You will not bully her. You promised me that you would behave tonight. I won’t listen to you call her or anyone else names. Honestly, that childish behavior is beneath you.”

  Cassidy’s lip curled and she mimicked Dan’s words in a high-­pitched, squeaky voice. “‘Mel is my friend.’ Listen to you. What happened to the basketball star I married? He was the most popular boy in school. Now look at you. You spend your nights reporting about others doing what you can’t anymore. My god, you’re a waste of space.”

  Four

  Mel gasped. There was a level of viciousness in Cassidy’s words that sucked all of the air out of the room like a flash of fire. Two bright red patches of color highlighted Danny’s cheekbones and he glared at his wife.

  “How much have you had to drink?” he asked. “I asked you not to do that tonight.”

  “Whatever,” she snapped. “You’re not the boss of me.” She tossed her red hair and turned back to Mel with a scowl. “You need to go sit in a corner where you belong. No one wants you here and you’d better stay away from my man. If I catch you near him again, I’ll—­”

  “Be overly dramatic and ridiculous?” Mel asked. She looked Cassidy up and down. She could see it now, the drunkenness. Cassidy wobbled on her feet. Her eyes had a glaze to them and her pink lipstick was smeared. She looked, frankly, a bit rough.

  “Why, you—­” Cassidy started toward her with her claws extended.

  Danny made a grab for Cassidy but she slipped past him. Mel dodged to the right and slammed up against a solid chest. She glanced up. Joe.

  “Hey, cupcake, I was looking for you,” he said. “Come on, let’s dance.”

  He led her into the shelter of his arms away from Cassidy, and Mel leaned against him, relieved. “Thanks.”

  “Hey, hey!” Cassidy shouted at them. She gestured wildly from herself to Mel. “This isn’t over. It’s not over until I say it’s over!”

  Mel stopped and turned around to face the woman who had made her teen years so horribly unbearable. Cassidy was a drunken, shallow, vain caricature of a person and she couldn’t harm Mel, not anymore.

  “You’re wrong, Cassidy,” Mel said. “It is over, because you can’t hurt me anymore. You simply don’t matter to me.”

  With that, she turned back into Joe’s arms and he whisked her away. They danced until the song ended. Mel could feel everyone’s eyes go from her to Cassidy and back again. She didn’t care. She tipped her chin up and focused on Joe.

  “That’s my girl,” he said. “Sorry you had to deal with that.”

  Mel shrugged. “Don’t feel sorry for me, I’m not the one who married her.” She shuddered.

  Joe nodded. “He seems like a nice guy, but his taste in women, oof, is not so good.”

  “Agreed.”

  As they left the dance floor, Angie stood on tiptoe and waved them over to the table. She and Tate were holding the real estate, as tables were hard to come by in this venue.

  “What happened?” Angie asked. “What did that viper say? Do I need to go punch her in the mouth?”

  “Nothing,” Mel said. “Nothing important, at any rate, and no. There will be no punching.”

  “I have to agree with Mel there,” Tate said. “No punching, much as I love your feisty side.”

  Angie narrowed her eyes and studied Mel’s face. “Did she make you cry? Are you going to cry? If she did, if you do, I am absolutely punching her, I don’t care what you say.”

  Mel laughed and hugged her friend hard. “No, she didn’t. In fact, I just had the most cathartic reunion moment. I looked her right in the eye and told her she couldn’t hurt me anymore because she simply didn’t matter to me.” Mel sighed. “It was glorious.”

  “And she’s got me, keeping watch,” Joe said. “Don’t worry. ‘No one puts Baby in a corner.’”

  “Ah!�
� Angie cried. “My brother did not just quote Dirty Dancing.”

  “Oh, yes, I did,” he said. He buffed his nails on his suit coat and then blew on them.

  “Not bad, newbie,” Tate said to Joe. Then he looked at Mel and added, “You have been such a good influence on him.”

  “I try,” she said. She turned to Joe. “That was beautifully executed, hon.”

  He gave her a half bow. “Just for you.”

  “All right, let’s get ’em up and get ’em down,” Tate said. He handed out the cocktails that were waiting on the table. “To old friends, best friends, and new friends.”

  “Here, here.” They clinked glasses and sipped their beverages.

  “Okay, so while you were taking on the class bully, I was gathering the scoop on our classmates,” Angie said.

  “Isn’t that what social media is for?” Mel asked.

  “Please, that’s all lies and image crafting. It should be called Fakebook. No one’s life is as good as they make it seem,” Angie said. “But here I got the dish, the dirt, the poop, the skinny, the goss—­”

  “All right, I get it,” Mel said. She took a sip of her drink. It was a fruity concoction with some kick. “Lay it on me.”

  “Okay, so, do you remember Tiffany Peterson?” Angie asked.

  “Yeah, she was in my Algebra class,” Mel said. “Really smart but super shy.”

  “Well, you won’t believe it, but she is now . . .”

  Angie’s voice faded to the background as Mel’s gaze strayed to Cassidy and Danny. They were still standing on the edge of the dance floor. Cassidy was hissing through her teeth and waving her arms wildly. Dan looked like he wanted to run far, far away. His teeth were gritted and his head hung down in defeat. It made Mel sad to see him that way.

  Cassidy leaned in close and snarled something at Danny. It must have been particularly nasty because his head shot up and there was a fierce light in his eyes. For a second, Mel was sure he was going to take her drink out of her hand and dump it on her head.

  “Can you believe it?” Angie asked. “And then how about Erin Highsmith? She is doing so well in New York . . .”

  “Wow, really?” Mel said. She nodded and gave Angie her most attentive face while she tried desperately to hear what was being said between Cassidy and Danny. Curse this DJ and his loud music. She glanced back at them to see Dan shaking his head while Cassidy wagged a finger in his face.

  “And then there’s Kristie Hill,” Angie was saying. This brought Mel’s attention back. The Kristie-­Cassidy scandal had been huge during their senior year.

  “Is she here?” Mel asked.

  “Oh, yeah,” Angie said. “Over there.”

  She pointed at a table across the room from theirs. Mel glanced that way. Sure enough, there was Kristie Hill with two of her friends. She looked the same with her long dark hair and curvy figure.

  “Have any words been exchanged?” Mel asked.

  “Not that I know of,” Angie said. She leaned close and said, “But I heard from Tami Cohen that Kristie was planning to snatch the crown right off Cassidy’s head if they invited her up on stage as the homecoming queen tonight. Apparently, Kristie is still rather bitter about the crowning debacle at homecoming our senior year.”

  “No way,” Mel said. She looked at Kristie, who was looking at Cassidy, who was still fighting with Danny.

  Kristie’s eyes were narrowed and she looked like she was ready to brawl. Mel couldn’t blame her. During homecoming their senior year, Kristie was supposed to be crowned homecoming queen but there was an envelope “mix-­up” and Cassidy was crowned instead. By the time they did a recount, the principal had decided to let Cassidy keep the title. Kristie had raged about it for the rest of the year.

  If Kristie went after Cassidy, well, Mel did not want to miss a second of that. She turned her attention back to Cassidy and Danny. It was not going well. Cassidy was red in the face and it looked as if she was ripping Danny a new one. For his part, he was staring over her head at some distant point as if he was trying to find a happy place.

  Just when it looked like Cassidy was going to throw a punch or her drink at him, Tucker Booth arrived and grabbed her arm, amazingly keeping her drink in the glass. Cassidy glared at him, but Tucker wasn’t deterred.

  Tucker was the class smarty pants and he looked the part. He had short-­cropped, tightly curled light brown hair, rectangular dark-­framed glasses, and pants that never seemed to fit him quite right even though the crease in the front looked lethally sharp. He had spent all of high school following Cassidy around like a lovesick puppy, managing all of the sticky situations she got herself into like he was her personal assistant. He didn’t look like a puppy now. Instead, he was shaking his head at her, the expression on his face clearly one of disapproval. Maybe some people did manage to grow out of their crushes.

  Mel glanced back at Tate and Joe. The sight of Joe laughing at something Tate had said made her insides flutter. Nope, she was never getting over this crush. Not ever.

  “And then here is the best gossip of all,” Angie said. “Tucker Booth, remember him?”

  Mel turned her attention back to Angie and pointed to the dance floor where Tucker was escorting Cassidy to a table on the opposite side of the room, thank god. Dan followed behind them, looking depressed.

  “That Tucker?” she asked.

  “Yes! Him! Are you ready?” Angie asked. “Tucker is a webpage designer for high-­tech companies in Palo Alto, including labs that were researching cures for cancer, and he’s dating that supermodel over there!”

  “Supermodel?” Mel’s head snapped in the direction Angie pointed. The woman was easy to spot as she stood over the crowd by four inches, easy. Naturally tall, she was wearing platform spike heels that added five inches to her height. That, plus the black leather dress she was rocking and her long waterfall of glorious raven hair made her impossible to miss. “Dang, she’s fine.”

  “Right?” Angie asked. “I’m so glad I’m married now. Can you imagine being out on the market and having to compete with women like that?”

  “Um, still not married yet,” Mel said.

  “Well, you might want to get on that, I’m just saying,” Angie said.

  “Agreed,” Mel said. She glanced back at Tucker, Danny, and Cassidy. Tucker had his hands on his hips, giving Dan the business. Cassidy wobbled behind him. It was clear from the way Tucker was defending her that he was putting the blame squarely on Danny. Mel felt bad for Tucker. Despite having the most gorgeous woman in the world on his arm, he was still following around the popular kids and managing their business.

  Mel glanced around the room. So many of her classmates seemed hung up on their glory days. She did a little self-­assessment. Maybe facing down Cassidy had been worth all of the angst of this night, because suddenly none of this mattered. She was happy, successful, and her life was full of people she loved, who loved her in return. What more could a woman want?

  She wasn’t living in the past. She was full-­on looking forward to the future, which promised more culinary adventures, opening even more franchises, and the cherry on top—­marrying Joe.

  “Hey, Cooper, I gotta say—­great cupcakes,” Dwight Pickard said through a mouthful of cupcake. He was two fisting, one in each hand, and the grin he sent her made him look like a little kid embarking on a fabulous sugar rush.

  “Thanks,” Mel said.

  She had outdone herself on the cupcakes. She knew it. The school colors were black and gold so she had made a variety of cupcake flavors and then topped them with buttercream, over which she had rolled a smooth black fondant, which was decorated with edible glittery gold fifteens. Set up in an enormous tower, they looked spec-­freaking-­tacular.

  Angie nudged her with an elbow. “Looks like you’re a hit.”

  “We’re a hit,” Mel said. “None of this would
be possible if you and Tate hadn’t jumped in when I said I was going to open a cupcake bakery.”

  “Yeah, you’re right,” she said. “You totally would have failed without us.” Then she rolled her eyes and shook her head, letting Mel know what she really thought of that.

  Mel laughed and then asked, “Do you feel like you got to strut your stuff enough?”

  Angie nodded. “Yes, I do, and it was everything I’d hoped it would be.”

  “It was, wasn’t it?” Mel asked. She glanced around the room one more time. “I don’t know about you, but I think I’m done here. I’m going home now.”

  “So soon?” Angie asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “I really don’t think this night can get any better; plus, I miss Captain Jack and Peanut.”

  “Those pets have you wrapped around their little paws,” Angie said.

  “Absolutely,” Mel said. “But Joe is even worse with them.”

  “I know.” Angie laughed. “He shows their pictures like they’re his kids. Hilarious.”

  Mel hugged her friend and said, “Thanks for making me come. See you at work tomorrow.”

  “Bright and early,” Angie said.

  Mel joined Joe and Tate, and when their conversation paused she looked at Joe and asked, “You ready to go?”

  “It’s your show,” he said. “Whatever you want is fine with me.”

  She leaned into him and gave him a smile that she hoped read like an invitation. “Let’s go home.”

  Joe dropped his drink on the table and patted Tate on the shoulder. “Good seeing you, bro. Gotta go.”

  Tate laughed. He hugged Mel while Joe hugged Angie. As they walked to the door, Joe paused by the bar to pay his tab and Mel took the opportunity to use the restroom. She wanted to freshen up, or more accurately, wash the dust of this place off.

  She pushed into the women’s room, relieved to find there was no line. The lighting was low and the restroom posh, with floor-­to-­ceiling mirrors, a sitting area that included a lounge chair, and stalls with doors that also ran from floor to ceiling, offering complete privacy. Mel would have enjoyed those back in high school. If she’d needed a cry she could have been assured that no one would peek under or over and then blab to the whole school that she was bawling her eyes out because of something Cassidy had done.