Cake at Midnight

by Jessie L. Star

  Theo sighed. ‘If there’s a point somewhere in this, do you think you could get to it?’

  ‘My point is that you like Giovanna and if you disappear on her now you’ll be doing the both of you a disservice.’

  Theo didn’t want to think about it like that. It wasn’t a case of the beautiful, funny, honest girl across the hall versus a proper escape of everything that had been dragging him down for years. He wasn’t going to put that on her.

  ‘I’m going to take a shower,’ he said in the end.

  A non-answer that Ari still managed to twist by remarking, ‘Better make it a cold one.’

  11

  The next morning was busy at PP&P. People queued out the door and down the street to purchase croissants for their breakfast, or for one of Céleste’s famous Gâteaux St Honoré as a weekend treat.

  I was glad of the bustle and demand and focused on the trays of goodies before me, mechanically swirling soft lemon icing one minute, fashioning an intricate lace chocolate cake collar the next.

  Unfortunately, while the constant movement suited my anxious, twitchy fingers, it did little for my anxious, twitchy brain. I couldn’t stop thinking about how the witching hour had come and gone last night and I hadn’t gone over to Theo’s. I’d wanted to, I almost did, but I’d told myself he wouldn’t want me there after the night he’d had. After he’d nearly kissed me. After I’d nearly kissed him.

  I’d spent all night and all morning replaying that moment when his lips had been so close, so close, to mine. And how he’d been the one to pull away.

  I’d become so used to cool, unruffled Theo that the on-edge version, who’d pressed me to him and then just as abruptly released me, had thrown everything off-kilter. A line had been crossed, a line between acquaintances and . . . whatever we now were. Was there a term for someone you felt you both did and didn’t know? For someone whose family you’d met, but who you’d spent more time in silence with than actually speaking to? For someone who you considered so far out of your league that you hadn’t even bothered to form a proper crush on, but who you’d nearly kissed and now couldn’t get out of your head? If there was, I didn’t know it, but that’s what we were.

  What I did know was that, last night, for the first time in two weeks, I’d been unable to sleep, not because I was thinking of Dec, but because I was thinking of Theo.

  ‘You were here bright and early this morning.’ Maya, ever on the alert for something to comment on, moved across to my station just before lunch and looked piercingly at me. Her fingers didn’t stop weaving pastry lattices for the tops of a batch of pies. ‘Does that mean your date did or didn’t go well?’

  Pulled out of the rhythm of swirling velvety smooth cream cheese icing onto the dainty, single-bite cinnamon carrot cakes before me, I blinked at her. ‘Date?’

  She heaved an amused sigh. ‘Oh, Gio. You know you can’t hide anything from me. Especially not when you snag a famous one.’

  My heart sank.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ As per usual, my lie sounded thoroughly unconvincing. I was fairly sure I did know what she was talking about, but I was desperately hoping to be wrong.

  ‘A famous date,’ she exclaimed. ‘Theodore Leventis! How did you pull that off? He’s supposed to be a recluse – how did you even meet him? And what happened to Dec? I thought he was your one and only.’

  I groaned internally. Why oh why hadn’t I kept my mouth shut about Dec?

  Icing done, I mindlessly reached for one of PP&P’s signature cream boxes with the tiny image of a peach in one corner and started carefully packing the little cakes inside.

  ‘He’s not a recluse,’ I said quietly and Maya leant back against the workbench beside me with a laugh.

  ‘Well, obviously, otherwise there wouldn’t be a picture all over the internet of the pair of you at his sister’s sculpture thing last night.’

  And there was the news I’d been hoping not to hear; the news I’d been specifically avoiding hearing, in fact, as I’d skipped my usual morning headline check on the news sites. Still, it didn’t really come as any great surprise that the ‘head in the sand’ method of dodging the fallout from the previous evening had failed.

  ‘Show me,’ I said reluctantly and, with a quick glance around to make sure Céleste was nowhere in sight, Maya pulled out her phone, already cued up to an article entitled: A Family Unveiled.

  I didn’t get the chance to read any more than that, however, as Maya was peeling off her food-preparation gloves and already scrolling down to what was clearly of more interest to her: the photos. And there he was, Theo, serious and commanding in his tailored suit next to the cultivated wildness of his sister. Lena clung to his arm, her head against his shoulder, her smile satisfied, while Theo looked every bit the uptight businessman his family accused him of being.

  And there I was, I realised as I saw the next picture, although not with anywhere near Theo’s level of prominence. I was in the background, my face blurred, the picture clearly taken just as Ari started to hustle me out of the marquee.

  Instinctively, I turned to the lockers where we were all supposed to place our phones and other possessions at the start of every shift, before I realised I couldn’t call Theo to check that he was all right as I didn’t have his number. Last night had been so vivid and intense that I’d momentarily forgotten that it’d been an exception for us, a break in our almost clandestine pattern of midnight meet-ups separate from our ‘real’ lives. For the first time, I regretted our unorthodox arrangement.

  With no way to check how Theo was doing, I took Maya’s phone and started to read the article to at least better understand exactly what he faced. It was as bad as I’d feared. The ‘journalist’, for want of a better word, labelled him a snob, a cold fish, a bad brother, and framed Helena’s speech as a plea for acceptance, a cry for him to reunite with the family. It was, in short, a complete stitch-up.

  Ignoring Maya’s frankly avaricious expression, I clicked on the links to the related articles, building myself up into a self-righteous fury as I saw more and more baseless accusations against Theo. They dredged up the photo of him as a naked child, picked over his no-show at Helena’s previous unveilings and dissected his name change; old news becoming new once more just as I’d had a horrible suspicion it would.

  I wanted to write comments on all the stories to make my displeasure known to the authors and anyone stupid enough to believe them. I wanted to use all caps and start fights with those who disagreed with me and generally behave in exactly the way I knew only complete idiots did on the internet.

  Obviously I couldn’t, though, Theo would hate that.

  With great effort, I compressed my indignation and then, trying to act like it was no big deal, passed Maya’s phone back with a poor attempt at a nonchalant shrug.

  I went to the sink, where I scrubbed my hands. I’d been wearing gloves, but there’d still be hell to pay if Céleste saw me handling a phone and then any of my work and, to be honest, the stories about Theo had made me feel kind of dirty.

  ‘So?’ Maya asked as I returned to the bench. ‘Tell me everything.’

  I resumed packing the petit fours then started garnishing each one with the tiny sugar carrots I’d fashioned earlier. ‘There’s nothing to tell.’

  ‘Don’t play coy!’ Far from being insulted by my short response, Maya seemed delighted. ‘My mum had a Philomena nude on our fridge when I was growing up. I can’t believe you know the son. What’s he like? Does he really hate the rest of them as much as everyone says he does? Did you meet Philomena? Was she actually just wearing a dressing gown?’

  My face flushed with something almost like shame. After all, these were the sorts of questions I wouldn’t have hesitated to ask if the shoe had been on the other foot. I couldn’t pretend I was above the whole thing when I’d have been just as fascinated if Maya had suddenly revealed she knew such a cult figure. Still, despite knowing that what had happened last night had been v
ery public, it’d felt private and, as understandable as it was, Maya’s prying made me feel incredibly uncomfortable.

  ‘We’re just neighbours,’ I mumbled, in my mind’s eye handing her one of the imaginary business cards that reiterated that there’d been no meaningful contact between Theo and myself. Although after the way my body had been pressed against his, was that still true?

  ‘He’s your neighbour?’ Maya started sealing the lattices across the tops of her pies, shaking her head. ‘God, the world is so unfair. My neighbours are all a hundred years old or massive bogans, and there you are scoring Theodore Leventis.’

  ‘McKillop,’ I corrected her. ‘His name is Theodore McKillop.’

  ‘A rose by any other name is just as hot,’ she said cheerfully. ‘And, anyway, who does he think he’s kidding? It’s not like changing his name is going to change who he is, is it? Calling himself Theodore McKillop doesn’t make him someone else.’

  ‘He doesn’t want to be someone else, he just wants to be himself!’

  I’d snapped, there was no two ways about it, I’d properly snapped at Maya and she was staring at me, taken aback.

  ‘Sorry,’ I muttered. ‘I didn’t get much sleep last night.’

  She rallied well, a mischievous glint entering her eyes as she said slyly, ‘I bet you didn’t.’

  Honestly, I’d been in love with my best friend for years and years and, in all that time, I don’t reckon I’d received half as much teasing as I had with Theo in only two weeks.

  ‘If he’s looking for someone to take his poor little rich boy place,’ Maya continued, ‘let him know I’d be happy to put my hand up, yeah? That’s the kind of high-class problem I could really do with.’

  My apologetic demeanour dropped and I frowned. She had no idea how hard it was for Theo to feel so out of place in his own family, no clue.

  Sure, I’d been about to say, it’s all fun and games when it’s someone else’s identity crisis, but I was saved from having a proper spat with my work colleague as my name was spoken tartly from across the room.

  I snapped my head round to see Céleste stalking across the kitchen, her white hair in its usual high, tight bun, her black trousers and crisp white shirt immaculate as always.

  Usually hearing my boss’s icy summons made me flinch in preparation for whatever criticism she was about to bestow. Right at that moment, however, her summons came as a welcome relief.

  ‘Yes?’ I scurried over, habitually checking my hair was still constrained under its hygiene cap and my apron was sitting correctly.

  Céleste gave me a thorough once over as I arrived in front of her and then looked past me to where Maya was no doubt hurriedly tucking her phone out of sight.

  ‘Take your break.’

  ‘Oh.’ I glanced up at the large clock over the door. ‘But I’m not due for another–’

  ‘Take your break,’ Céleste repeated, before swivelling on her heel and marching away.

  Scary Céleste may have been, but nothing went on in her kitchen that she didn’t know about and I knew a save when I saw one.

  I looked back at Maya, trying not to show how relieved I was as I shrugged. ‘I guess I’m taking my break.’

  And, popping the cake box on the delivery shelf and ridding myself of the hair net and apron, I hurried to grab my purse and escape before she could interrogate me further.

  It was a drizzly day, grey and heavy, a throwback to winter that felt all the grimmer because we’d had a teaser of better weather.

  It wasn’t just the temperature that was making me feel cold as I exited PP&P, though, there was a hard block of ice in my stomach; the cold weight of knowing that the coverage of Lena’s unveiling was pretty much Theo’s personal version of hell.

  On days when the weather was bad, I usually sought out somewhere warmer to spend my lunch break, but some masochistic instinct turned my feet towards The Brother.

  It was strange feeling betrayed by an inanimate object, but I did. The Brother had always been a sanctuary, a quiet spot in the busy city where I could take a break and zone out. Now, as I approached the familiar sculpture, I felt more, not less, stressed.

  The day after Lena had turned up at Theo’s and thrown the whole ‘the Nod Next-Door is a Leventis’ bombshell into my life, I’d virtually run to The Brother at lunch to see the wad of cash that Theo had informed me turned the sculpture into an insult. And there it’d been, obvious once I knew what it was, metal worked into the shape of folded fifty-dollar notes, wedged between the books and the sphere, tilting the whole thing off balance.

  Seeing it again, I felt an overwhelming urge to pluck the money out and right the sculpture, to turn it back into what I thought it’d been previously, just a sculpture celebrating the achievements that came from learning.

  Honestly, where did Lena get off calling her brother materialistic? She’d seen his flat, she must’ve known he only had about three possessions and one of them was a slightly battered trophy he was hiding at the back of a shelf.

  My hair was fast turning frizzy as I stood out in the cold and the damp glaring at the sculpture, but I didn’t turn away. It almost felt like I was holding vigil, determined to show my solidarity with Theo, even if he didn’t know I was . . . And if that didn’t tell me all I needed to know about my feelings for him, I didn’t know what did.

  My stomach performed a yo-yo manoeuvre, plummeting as I acknowledged that I’d most likely just lurched from one unattainable crush to another, but flying up again as I allowed myself for the first time to properly give in to the warm, tingly feelings that had, sneakily, become so intrinsic to thoughts about my neighbour.

  It was almost a relief to stop second-guessing myself on the topic. I was into Theo. Fine. It didn’t have to change anything. I was hardly going to make any grand confessions of attraction. On the contrary, considering how well my last declaration had gone down, with Dec and I now on our thirty-day break, conceding that I fancied Theo actually felt like a good reason to leave him the hell alone.

  Yes, I decided. I wasn’t going to trot around after Theo like I had for so many years with Dec. Been there, done that. Theo obviously had a lot on his plate and probably hadn’t spared a second thought to our almost-kiss, but if he had, it was up to him to do something about it. For once in my life, I was going to play it cool.

  *

  ‘Oh my god, Gio, he’s here!’

  The problem, of course, with my decision to play it cool, was that I wasn’t cool, something that was made abundantly clear as I heard Maya’s hiss towards the very end of my shift that same day and almost chopped my left index finger off.

  Whipping the endangered digit out of the way of my knife in the nick of time, I firmly told myself to get a grip, not everything was about Theo. In fact, I almost succeeded in sounding casual as I asked, ‘Who?’

  ‘Theodore bloody Leventis!’

  So apparently everything was about Theo, although I couldn’t fathom what he was doing at my workplace.

  I looked up and saw that everyone on the last shift with me was pressed up against the two small windows set into the double doors leading to the shop. Every other second or so, one or more of them would flick me a quick look and then look out into the shop. Clearly I wasn’t the only one Maya had been showing the articles to.

  ‘Stop it!’ I hissed, gesturing for them to get back. ‘That’s not one-way glass, he’s going to see you!’

  ‘How could he?’ Maya laughed. ‘When he only has eyes for you?’

  There was a smattering of laughter and groans in response to her witticism and she lapped both up before adding, ‘Besides, everyone deserves a good perve every now and again and Theodore Leventis is top-quality perve material.’

  ‘McKillop,’ I pointed out automatically, although I’d barely got the word out before each of Theo’s observers suddenly drew in a sharp breath.

  ‘What?’ I asked, nearly running over to see what had caused such a collective reaction.

  ‘He’s
talking to Céleste,’ Maya reported. ‘And she’s smiling!’

  Muscling a space for myself at the window, I peeked through and saw that my traditionally stony-faced boss was, if not smiling, then at least not frowning as much as usual.

  As fascinating a sight as this was, however, my eyes were reluctant to linger on Céleste when Theo was on offer. He was as dapper as always in an expensive-looking navy overcoat beaded with rain, but the wave in his hair was more pronounced than I’d ever seen it, as if he’d spent all day running his fingers through it, and he looked tired.

  ‘Whoops, here she comes!’

  As Céleste turned towards the kitchen, we scattered back to our places, resuming cleaning and tidying our workspaces, our last duties of the day.

  The soft whoosh of the doors heralded Céleste’s return, although even without the noise, each of us would’ve known our boss was in the room – you could always feel her beady gaze on your back as if it had the heat of an actual laser.

  One by one, as our workstations became as squeaky clean as it was possible for them to be, we turned to stand with our backs to the benches, ready to receive our shift messages – feedback on both individual and team work. As per usual, I was one of the last to turn around, my station somehow always messier than everyone else’s, but also my concentration had been off, shot to pieces by thoughts of Theo – what had he been doing here? Was he still here? Was he here to see me?

  ‘Très bien.’ This was how Céleste always commenced shift messages, the one concession she made to positivity before she focused on the improvements she expected of us. Thankfully, the messages were short that day and I got away with no more than my usual reminders to tidy my bench as I worked. I shifted from foot to foot as she talked to the others, trying to angle myself to see through into the bakery, but it was impossible.

  ‘Gio?’

  ‘Yes?’ I stopped fidgeting and stood to attention as Céleste suddenly turned her gimlet eye back to me.