by R. J. Scott
Rita took candid photos. What did that mean? Familiar confusion and doubt flooded me about people’s motives around me. I pushed through into the foyer with such a bang on the door that they had to restart Clare’s sound bite filming.
“Quiet on set,” Rita admonished me as she sailed past, followed by Justin, who looked like a cat who’d not only licked the cream but gone through the entire tub. He smiled at me, but I was too flustered and upside down to return the smile. I spotted Justin on his phone, smiling like an idiot, cropping photos and posting, and my embarrassment grew. What was he posting? My cell vibrated with the post notification, but I didn’t check it immediately, waiting at least ten minutes before casually looking at what he’d posted, which was about making templates for shapes in icing.
Weird, but certainly not posts hinting at a relationship that could earn him votes.
Filming was done for the day, and we could leave, but we had to be back on set the next morning at 8 a.m. for our final challenge of what would form week one of the show. This was the gingerbread house challenge, which had to include at least nine gingerbread sides, plus an assortment of gingerbread people, trees, parcels, or anything else that told a story. I’d done okay with the cupcakes and came in third in the blind bake. If I pulled off the gingerbread house, then I’d be going through to next week, but it would be by the skin of my teeth. My idea was a good one. I was convinced of it, now all I had to do was create a Victorian toy shop complete with toys, trees, and a rainbow gingerbread awning. I hadn’t practiced it, too caught up in working on Christmas orders before this mini vacation and trying to help Lacey with her side of the business. But I knew gingerbread, and I wouldn’t make the same mistakes I made with the cake. A restful night’s sleep, no more thinking about Justin, and it would all be good.
The six of us walked back over to the Fairmont, but Clare strode away from us, obviously still pissed that she’d not won the wreath challenge. I don’t know why she was worried because it was Shauna, walking at my side and chatting about fondant icing, that was in the most danger of leaving. Last in the blind challenge, she’d not done brilliantly in the cupcake challenge either. I didn’t want to lose Shauna. I remember her on season two, and the way she shyly caught the hearts of everyone watching. I liked her in the show, but I didn’t like the way she was so quiet and was close to tears. I held onto her as she slipped on the cold path. In the front of the group, Kristen was clinging to Ivan, which left Justin walking to my left and slightly in front. His hands were in his jacket pockets. The collar popped to protect his neck and his beanie hiding all that blond hair.
Was I being stupid? Was he really that manipulative that he would pretend affection for another contestant? Did he think it was right to queer-bait the audience for ratings? And why the hell was I flailing from one moment liking the dude to the next distrusting him because he reminded me of another master manipulator—my ex.
“Can we stop and get a selfie?” Justin asked as we reached the hotel, which was spectacularly pretty, all lit up in the falling snow. I bet it was a gorgeous place at Christmas, with a tree and decorations and families meeting up. We’d be long gone by Christmas. Even though episode five would be shown on Christmas Eve, filming on the show would be finished by Halloween. We posed, although I mostly hid behind Ivan, still disgruntled at myself over what I should be thinking about Justin, and why it even mattered what I thought at all.
Justin posted it immediately and of course, my cell vibrated, but I refused to acknowledge I followed him in front of the others. Kristen didn’t hold back though, pulling out her cell and opening Instagram, oohing and aahing over the photo and adding it to her story.
“Hashtag where is Clare? I love that.” She took a photo of a snowy hedge and posted it. “I’m using that. A gorgeous scene. Hashtag where is Clare?” She pocketed her cell, and I imagined that I should really go and follow her, and in fact, I should follow all my fellow bakers. Connect with the world more than I do.
If I’d been more connected to what was happening outside 3B, then maybe I would have realized what Marc had been doing behind my back.
Nope, not going there.
We made plans to meet for dinner, and I took the stairs to my room rather than the elevator. Too much tasting of the buttercream and I genuinely needed exercise, only I wasn’t alone. Justin followed me and caught up with me halfway between flights and then tugged me to stop.
“Are you okay?” he asked in all seriousness, and I stared at him not entirely understanding the question.
“Sorry?”
“I thought we were talking okay.” He took a step closer, and I backed up against the wall. “Then when Rita was talking, your face went all weird.” He waved a hand in front of his eyes, indicating what I don’t know. “Then you stormed off.”
I could have waved it off then, but after Marc, life was too damn short to trust anyone. “You tell me what’s wrong. Was Rita filming everything? The way you gave me help? That moment in the hallway? Are you lying to me about the whole flirting thing? Do you even really want to get coffee with me?” My face heated with embarrassment, and I dropped my voice. “Are you using me to get more follows and likes?”
Justin blinked at me then one eyebrow lifted, which was either his confused expression or his ‘I’ve just been found out’ face.
“You want me to be honest?” he finally asked.
“Absolutely, completely honest.”
“I admit we could have used each other for promo if you’d agreed.”
“But I said no—”
“You said no, and I was wrong to even think it, and I backed off.”
He seemed as if he meant what he said but suspicion still poked at me. “You didn’t ask Rita to film those things?”
“I promise you I didn’t.” He was so earnest and I wanted to trust him, but I’d been shown the dark side of a man before, and what did I even know about Justin Mallory? Was he any better than Marc? Would he lie and manipulate and leave me messed up? I didn’t want to give any man the power to hurt me again, and my fears were beginning to outweigh the excitement of meeting Justin. “If she took photos, then I’ll delete them.”
“I won’t let you use me just to get ratings for your channels.”
He winced, and said, “I’m not… I might have thought, but I wouldn’t—”
“Good.”
“What about coffee—”
“I’ll see you at dinner,” I interrupted then turned on my heel and took the remaining ten steps two at a time, only relaxing when my room door shut behind me.
My cell vibrated, and I answered it without looking, thinking it was Adam picking up on my anger and stress, but the voice on the other end wasn’t my twin, but someone I hoped not to talk to again for a very long time.
Marc.
“I didn’t think you’d pick up,” he said immediately.
“I thought you were Adam.”
“Oh.”
There was enough of a pause for my irritation levels to rise. “What do you want, Marc?”
“I just wondered if you’d rethought us—”
“I signed the damn papers, so there’s no need to call me.”
“That wasn’t—”
“I can’t wait for us to be done.” I snapped cruelly and ended the call, feeling the immediate guilt at being rude that wasn’t part of my psyche. My former husband had lied to me, stole from me and then to add insult to injury, he’d slept around behind my back. I had every right to be angry with him, but there was that guilt, and I fired off a text. I signed them. Sorry.
What is it with me that I can’t even be rude to an asshole who ruined my damn life?
I scrolled to the list of people whom I trusted. Five. That was all that was left. My mom, dad, and my three siblings. I’d fired the hopelessly useless management team that Marc had hired to manage 3B. Then the two bakers that had worked with me, both of whom it turned out had slept with Marc, not that I imagine much sleeping had been done. Next
I dismissed my idiot of a bookkeeper, and lastly, I’d changed banks. I did my own bookkeeping. I managed 3B and as she was my sister, I trusted Lacey to manage the coffee shop attached to 3B. There was no way in hell I would let anyone else in.
I had a circle of trust, and there was only a handful of people inside it. And right now, there was only one person I wanted to talk to. I hoped to hell Adam was available, or that he had felt my stress through the twin connection because I needed to tell him about things.
About what exactly? About my stupid head and its inability to form trusting relationships? Or the fact that months of therapy hadn’t made me feel any less stupid about what I’d allowed to happen. Anyway, even if I did tell him, what could he do all the way from Corning? Breathe. Just breathe.
After a few moments, I sent a message to the family group.
“Good first day, blind bake rescued from disaster, more later.”
Just as usual, the phone rang immediately, and I connected the call as soon as I saw Adam’s name.
“Hey, little brother,” he said, and I could hear he was in the car. He was only older by five minutes, but just like every set of twins I’ve met, the oldest always made it clear they had been first. I had a standard reply about him reaching thirty before me, but nothing came out of my mouth apart from a strangled hi. After a pause he sighed. “Okay, tell me everything.”
“Everything? The bake was—”
“No, tell me the stuff you’re not putting in the family chat. I’ve been feeling wired all day, so you’re clearly stressing.”
I didn’t even attempt to lie. “It’s hard being back. I messed up a couple of times. I can’t stop thinking that Marc will be out there watching this when it’s aired and laughing at me fucking up, and I asked Justin for a coffee, and then he was laughing at me I think, and I don’t know who to trust. Then Marc just phoned, and I told him that I couldn’t wait for us to be over, and I was cruel, and I’m fucked up.” I said all that in one breath. I sat on the edge of my bed, realizing too late that it was in front of the closet mirror, and I got an eyeful of me in a padded coat, my head appearing tiny as it poked out of the extra hood space.
“Okay then,” Adam said.
“Worst of all, what if I still love Marc? What if the hate I have for him and wanting to be successful where he can see me is still some kind of love?”
Adam cursed loudly, then I heard the click of the indicator and the road noise lessened. He’d clearly pulled over.
“First, Marc was an asshole. He stole from you, slept around on you, made you feel like shit, and horrifically broke your heart. You do not still love him.”
“How can you tell? I married him, there must be—”
“He’s not worth your time. Are you listening to me, Brody?”
“I am, but then there was the thing with the coffee.” I had to be honest because Adam would know. I told him everything about Justin. The fake-flirting, the advice, and the camera footage. I even explained about Jeremy our frosty snowman. He made all the appropriate sounds. Only when I stopped did he talk.
“Okay so, cute and sexy Justin, whom you haven’t shut up about since you signed up for this charity show, is going with you to coffee?”
“He said he was, and I was pathetically happy but then there were the photos, and now I just feel wrong.”
“Back up a minute, you said you were happy, and that’s a positive. You haven’t dated for two years.”
I placed the phone on the bed and put it on speaker, taking off my coat as Adam kept talking.
“You’re worried about what Marc will think when this airs so what better way to get back at him than have this showmance-bromance-fakemance thing that Justin suggested?”
“I’m not doing that.” Although the sudden thought of proving to Marc that I’d come out of our relationship unscathed was a nice one.
“Not even a couple of innuendo—”
“No,” I was decisive. “I’m here to bake.”
Adam was quiet for a moment. “Marc didn’t just break your heart, Brody. He took your self-confidence, and you can’t let him keep it. You’re going to have to trust someone sometime, and if you think that Justin is being honest with you now, then go for a coffee, ignore the show and fake anything, and see what happens. You could have a fling, just enjoy being you, have sex and—”
“I’m not talking to you about sex!” I stood up and turned sideways, pressing my shirt against my belly where it was softly rounded. Marc had gone elsewhere because he said I was slowly becoming old, married, and boring.
Adam chuckled. “Okay, no sex talk, but you need to not have every decision you make be colored by Marc and what he did to you. He was an asshole of epic proportions, and if I ever saw him again I’d push him into a lake.”
We finished with our usual exchange of brotherly insults, and then I sent love to Christie, his wife, and to their twin daughters. When the call ended I felt better for talking to him, even if I felt lonely as soon as I finished the call. I’d been leaning too much on my siblings, asking them to put up with my moods, and worse, my seeming inability to work my way through everything. Justin said he wasn’t going to share the wrong things, and that we weren’t doing the flirting thing for the cameras. Maybe I should listen to Adam and give Justin the benefit of the doubt and assume he was a good guy instead of another Marc, who was all about the lies and deception. I’d become nothing to Marc but a name to drop at parties and a way to meet celebrities, plus it turned out, also an endless money well for him to steal from.
I headed for the shower. Dinner first and then bed.
I was exhausted.
Chapter Eleven
You’ve left your nuts quite big. I must admit I was worried about your unfeasibly large nuts.
Justin
The water was hot on my back, and I lost myself in those kinds of thoughts that I could only have in the shower. Erotic images of what I would love to be doing with Brody warred with the fact I wasn’t the kind of person that people trusted. Maybe Brody was one of those who could see through the fancy covering to the person below. I had no intention of betraying his trust after I said I wouldn’t, but how would he know that?
“He sees the crap I endorse. He knows I’m a liar.”
The shower gel didn’t answer me back, and I was glad about that because I knew what it would say. Something about how I was a fake person who did fake shit and should expect mistrust in return.
“What the fuck kind of man are you?” I said to the mirror, startling the shit out of myself, so I left the bathroom in a hurry before my reflection became even more chatty than my shower gel and decided to tell me exactly what kind of person I was.
Erin called me when I was dressed and ready to leave, and for a brief moment, I considered not answering the call, but she’d only keep calling. My time with Erin was coming to an end. I was a commodity selling products, and it was wearing me down and making me rich all at the same time. How did I balance that?
“Justin, KlecksoCream isn’t happy with their ROI. I need at least two more sound bites mentioning their name.”
She didn’t even bother with a hello, just jumped straight in there with the criticism that I wasn’t doing my job right. I cringed as she carried on, giving me numbers on comments, likes, and a new analysis on my Instagram profile, which had dramatically dipped to the sixteen to eighteen demographics, which wasn’t our target market at all.
“It’s not good, Justin.”
“Why would sixteen-year-olds want to follow me?”
“It’s the baking thing,” she dismissed what I loved doing with those casual words. “Everyone is doing it now, but sixteen-year-olds don’t have the expendable income to pay you in order for you to pay the team so that demographic is a no-go.”
And there we had it. The team. Six people relied on me, took salaries from my income, and they worked tirelessly to promote Brand Justin.
“What if we introduce a line of something that would reach sixteen-
year-olds.”
She snorted a laugh. “Do you want to lose your biggest sponsors? Genryn Whiskey for a start? Or Totallin Vodka?”
“Maybe I should rethink my brand?” Shit. Had I really said that out loud? Why would I even tell Erin what had been spiraling around in my thoughts for the past few weeks?
Erin sighed. “Seriously, Justin, I’m cool with that. If you genuinely want to change your focus, then as soon as the competition is over, we’ll sit down and strategize.”
“Really?” Hope flared in my chest. Could I really do other things and still earn the kinds of money I was pulling in right now?
“If that’s what you want, then that is what we’ll provide. Although I can’t imagine my team is the right one for you should you want to refocus your market… ” She left the words dangling as if it was a warning. I was twenty-five, so why did I suddenly feel like a kid who’d been told that he couldn’t be a firefighter, or a teacher, or any one of a million things kids are told they can’t do.
“Okay.”
“But you’d be okay on your own, Justin. I’m sure.” Her voice took on that tone I’d grown to hate, the one that implied I didn’t know best at all. The one a mom might use as her son stood on a garage roof with cardboard wings saying he wanted to fly. At least, a mom might try to catch their child, but Erin wasn’t a mom. She only cared about the bottom line because that is what I paid her for.
What is wrong with my head tonight? I’m lost in analogy hell. I don’t have a mom. I was never going to be a firefighter or a teacher, and I certainly never tried to fly.
“… and we’re good at it, okay?”
I had no idea what she’d been saying, so I just replied with an “okay.”
“Now, in summary, I need more sex, would it hurt to take a shirt off?” she asked.
“It’s eight below here right now, and it’s snowing,” I countered.
“It’s not snowing in your room, Justin,” she explained patiently, with her familiar punctuation of using my name as a kind of warning. She kept me in line. I needed that, otherwise I wouldn’t be where I am today. “Think product placement, and for the love of all that’s holy, can you please send me something for KlecksoCream.”
