by Tracey Ward
“Bottle or can?” Taylor asks listlessly.
“Whatever you got.”
“I got both.”
“Bottle then.”
He grunts before reaching under the bar for a glass.
I lift a toothpick from next to the olives and pop it in the corner of my mouth. “How’s business?”
Taylor pauses to look at me severely. “How the fuck does it look?”
“Dead.”
“You’re smart, pretty boy.”
“At least you have us, right?”
More grunts.
I scan the other end of the bar. It’s dark and deserted, a small stage with a pole in the middle standing silently in the corner like it’s on time out. Like it’s been naughty. “You still got karaoke on the weekends?”
“Kind of. The monitor broke.”
“How’d that happen?”
“Drunk jackass broke it,” he answers dryly.
I smile around the pick in my mouth. “I love our talks, Taylor. They’re my favorite part of coming here.”
“Hallelujah for that.” He lands all four of my drinks down on the bar without a spill and a heavy thud. “Twenty even.”
I pull out my wallet, sliding a fifty across the bar. “Keep the change.”
“I’ll retire on it,” he grumbles.
Then he slides four golden Pesos across the bar.
I swipe them up eagerly before I wrangle the necks of the bottles between my fingers, lump the two glasses together, and carefully make my way to our table.
“Nah, he couldn’t make it,” Trey is telling Tyus. “He’s still on lockdown.”
“Poor bastard. That shit is why I’m never getting married.”
I set the drinks down in the center of the table. “Are you talking about Dre?”
“Yeah. Sloane said she invited him to come out with us but he wouldn’t.”
“Couldn’t,” she clarifies. I watch with a lot of love and respect as she takes up the glass of whiskey, bringing it to her lips without flinching. Girl’s a baller.
“I saw him outside smoking when I got to the party.” I sit down heavily, immediately stretching my legs out next to Sloane’s. “He looked rough.”
“Really? I thought he looked nice.”
“Yeah, his clothes and shit, but he’s a mess.”
“How can you tell?”
I think about it, taking a hit off my bottle. “He’s dark.”
“Yeah, he is,” Tyus agrees deeply. “I told him he should quit with the cigarettes and he asked me, ‘What’s the point?’ What the fuck do you say to that?”
“There’s nothing to say. His wife’s a bitch. She ruined him.”
Trey frowns. “He’s not ruined. He’s in a bad place. He’ll come out of it.”
Tyus shakes his head. “I don’t know. You weren’t here when he was getting ready for that kid. He was excited. He couldn’t shut up about it, and then one day he just stopped talking. About everything.”
“He’s better now, but he’s not good,” I add.
“Has she had the baby yet?” Sloane asks curiously.
“Not yet. She’s due soon, though.”
“Maybe he’ll be better after it’s born.”
“Or he could be worse.”
“That’s depressing.”
I shrug, not sure what she wants from me. It’s true.
Trey spins his bottle between his hands. “He shouldn’t have come to the shower today. It probably made everything worse.”
“Not a shower,” I remind him. “Gender reveal. We’ll be called back for the shower in a few weeks.”
He looks pleadingly at Sloane. “Can you get me out of it?”
“Nope, not your agent.” She points a manicured hand at my face. “Him I can get out of it.”
I throw a triumphant hand in the air. “Yes!”
“But I won’t.”
I drop my hand morosely. “No!”
“Andreas will probably go to it, no matter how bad an idea it is, and he’ll need you guys there. You’re all going.”
“Who are you bossing around?” Tyus demands. “You’re not my girl and you’re not my agent. You got nothin’ on me.”
Sloane smiles coyly. It’s the same expression I’ve seen her give other agents, coaches, and players. Basically any man who looks at her like they got her number. Like she’s a little girl in a man’s world and they’ll tolerate her because she’s fun to look at. I love that smile because it always means the same thing; she’s got you right where she wants you.
“Outtakes.”
That’s all she says. I have no idea what it means, and from the look on Trey’s face he doesn’t know either, but Tyus does.
His lips pull tight over his teeth. “I guess we’re going to a baby shower, boys.”
“What just happened?” I ask, completely confused.
Tyus doesn’t negotiate. He doesn’t back down, and he sure as shit doesn’t do anything he doesn’t want to do. And topping the list of things Tyus Anthony does not want to do is go to a baby shower, I’m sure of it.
“I think your agent just bullied a bully,” Trey tells me, equally thrown.
“I’m not a bully,” Tyus barks.
“I am,” Sloane sings.
I laugh as I dig inside my pocket, pulling out a bulging white napkin. I lay it on the table and slip a cookie out of the pile. It’s an Oreo stuffed with pink, dipped in white chocolate. It smells like sugar. Like Lilly.
Tyus leans back to take me in. “What the fuck? Did you just pull food out of your pocket?”
“Oreo.” I hold it up for him to see clearly. “I swiped a shit ton of them from the party.”
“And you put them in your pockets?”
“Just like my grandma,” Sloane laments sadly.
“Like a genius.” I take a bite, chewing happily. “They’re delifous.”
Trey’s nose wrinkles in disgust. He swipes at the table, wiping away crumbs I sprayed out of my mouth. “Come on, man. Close your mouth. You eat like a rabid dog.”
“I’m starving.”
“How are you always hungry?”
I shrug, looking around the room as I pop the other half of the Oreo in my mouth. I’m eyeing that jukebox, idly jingling the coins in my pocket.
“Is it true you were fucking the waitress in a closet?” Sloane suddenly asks.
I snort, shaking my head sharply. “It was the baker in the pantry, and no. I didn’t fuck her.”
“Why not? Was she ugly?”
“Nope. She was hot.” I look Sloane over slowly. “Maybe hotter than you.”
“Now I know you’re lying.”
“So what were you doing in the pantry with her?” Tyus digs, lifting his beer to his lips. He’s watching me intently.
“Nothin’. Just hanging out.”
“Just hanging out? With a hot woman? You?”
“Yep. Just hanging out.”
He smiles across the table at Trey and Sloane. “You guys know what happened, right? Our boy here got shut down.”
Trey laughs. “That’s a first.”
“I didn’t get shut down,” I counter.
“Did you like her?” Sloane asks.
“Yeah, she was cool.”
“And she was hot.”
“And he didn’t close the deal,” Tyus adds. He sits back in his seat, looking comfortable and happy, like he’s savoring the moment. “This is big.”
“It’s not big,” I inform him. “I knew her for twenty minutes. I wasn’t going to fuck her after knowing her for twenty minutes.”
“Never stopped you before.”
Sloane puts her hand over her heart dramatically. “You counted the minutes. That’s so adorable.”
I roll my eyes. “I didn’t count the minutes. It’s called telling time.”
“Something I’m not so sure you know how to do considering you’re late to literally everything.”
“I’m not late to literally everything.”
&nbs
p; “Please. You’re so chronically late you were probably born late.”
I cram another Oreo in my mouth, refusing to respond.
Sloane laughs. “I’m right, aren’t I? You were late?”
I chew slowly, mouth closed.
“How many days?”
I shrug.
“I’m going to say… six.”
I stare at her in amazement. “What the fuck? Are you a witch? How could you guess that?”
“I was right?” she exclaims excitedly. “Yes! I win. Pay up, mothef—oh shit, I didn’t bet with anyone, did I?”
Tyus and Trey shake their heads.
Sloane slams her palm down on the table in disgust. “First I don’t get to enter the baby pool and now this. You guys suck.”
Tyus reaches for an Oreo. I slowly pull them out of range.
He glares at me. “It’s gonna be like that, huh?”
“You talked shit, you can eat shit. You definitely don’t get to eat my delicious cookies.”
“Why do you gotta be a prick?”
“I don’t know,” I sigh, pocketing my napkin now half-full of contraband. I swap it out for one dinged up, gold coin. “I guess that’s just the cowboy in me.”
The group groans angrily as one while I head for the jukebox. I deposit my coin, flick the round, black buttons that will call up Tim McGraw, and put my anthem into motion.
Cowboy In Me.
It’s not a happy song. It’s not fun like most of my favorites, but there’s something in it that tugs at me. The same tug that I feel when I look at Trey and Sloane. A hollow feeling in my gut. A mild ache that sits painfully sweet on my tongue like white chocolate and pink frosting.
CHAPTER SIX
LILLY
November 10th
Mad Batter Bakery
Los Angeles, CA
The Mad Batter used to be called Alexander’s. It was dark back then. Dated. The owners hadn’t updated it since nineteen seventy-two and it showed. The product was what mattered, though. No one came for the décor. They came for the goodies. For the sugar and the bread. The basics that never changed because they didn’t need to. They were good. Had been for years.
When we took it over we had to change the name. That was part of the deal Owen and Claire cut us when they sold us the place. They brought the asking price into our range, but we had to rename it. We couldn’t live off their legacy, and that was fine with us. We wanted to make our own mark, use our own recipes, and take chances in ways they never would have let us under the Alexander name. We went organic on a lot of our ingredients and cut out most of the fat. Sweets with half the sin, that’s our moto, and it’s paid off. So has the total overhaul in the look of the place. We’re playing to a younger crowd than the Alexanders ever bothered with and twenty somethings in Los Angeles don’t want to shop for trans fats in their grandma’s basement. The biggest and smartest change we made was simply color. Two small, purple tables sit by the windows, mirroring a second set outside basking in the sunshine. Green paint coats the walls and counters, the same shade as our logo, and every time I see it I remember the night we picked it. I remember thirty shades of green slashed haphazardly on the wall behind the register, the acrid scent thick in the air. They ranged from a deep grass green all the way up to a yellowish hue that looked like the inside of a poop filled diaper. Not the kind of color you want in a bakery. Or anywhere.
Rona and I argued for hours over which one to pick. We narrowed it down to three, then broadened it to five, before finally bringing it down to two, but that’s the problem with a partnership; there’s no majority. We were at a stalemate. Luckily we had Michael. We called him at three in the morning in the thick of our debate and somehow talked him into coming down to the store to help us decide. He was groggy and disheveled, but he stood between the two of us with an arm over each of our shoulders and made the final decision.
Diaper shit green.
Rona immediately dragged her paintbrush down his shirt in retaliation for messing with us. The color was a vibrant lime green.
“That one,” Michael said immediately, looking down at his ruined shirt. “That’s the color.”
“Be serious. This is important!” I exclaimed irritably.
Late nights did not then, and do not now, agree with me. I get grumpy. Well, I guess I get grumpier.
“I am serious. This is the color. What’s it called?”
I spun the sample can around amid the chaos on the counter. “Lucky Lime.”
“That’s it. It’s perfect.”
Rona and I stood back to admire his shirt.
“That wasn’t one of the finalists,” I complained, though I didn’t know why. The more I looked at it away from the other colors, the more I liked it.
“But it is bright,” Rona argued. “And we wanted bright.”
“That’s true.”
Michael sighed. “Are you ladies going to make a decision or are you going to stand there staring at my chest all night?”
Rona shushed him. “You’re a wall. Walls don’t talk.”
“This wall does and it says it’s got a girlfriend leaving for London in four hours so it’d like to go home to bed.”
“I think this is it,” I told Rona quietly.
She smiled. “I think you’re right.”
“You mean I’m right,” Michael reminded us.
“Shhh.”
Michael lunged at Rona, pulling her into a tight bear hug that lifted her off her feet and smeared still wet paint onto her chest. She laughed, a high, trilling sound that made Michael smile. It was the first time I’d seen him smile in a week. It was the last time I’d see it for over a month.
But that’s what the color reminds me of now; my brother and my best friend laughing late at night.
“You’re the girl who won’t sign the release?”
The host of Tastetastic has appeared on the other side of the counter from where I stand daydreaming. He’s a round old guy with big green eyes and a shiny bald dome. An entourage follows him everywhere he goes, even when he says he’s going to the can, and I think how freaking stupid fame is. How ridiculous it makes people.
This guy, though, I can’t figure out if I’m supposed to know who he is or not. If he was a celebrity before he started hosting this show. Cooking shows have started using stars from sitcoms that were on when I was a kid, like they’re aware that we all grew up and have responsibilities now. Like they think because we enjoyed watching these people pretend to go to high school and have it better than we did we’ll want to watch them now in better kitchens than ours eating better food.
I put on a patient smile that sinks no deeper than my lip gloss. “That’d be me.”
“Why not? Are you camera shy?”
“Sort of.”
The truth is I don’t care for celebrities or cameras. It’s a shit deal when you live next door to Hollywood, but it’s the city’s fault I feel this way. It made the monster that burned me and I’ll never forgive it for that. The city or the monster.
“You’re a beautiful girl,” baldy insists. “The camera will love you.”
“Thanks, but that’s not what I’m worried about.”
“What are you worried about?”
I pull my smile tighter, feeling it grow thinner. “I’m worried I’ll look fat,” I lie, looking for an easy exit from this conversation. “I have to check on things in the back, excuse me.”
“Alright, but you look great, honey! Phenomenal! I’ll look fat enough for the both of us!” he laughs wetly.
I chuckle politely before pushing through the swinging double doors leading to the kitchen. It’s a little quieter back here. No cameras or boom mics. No crowds. Just a producer with an overworked clipboard, Rona, and a makeup artist painting her face. Her palette is spread over the stainless steel island where I paint our cakes.
Rona looks afraid. She’s not even trying to hide it. She smiles through it, though, giving me a genuine grin when she sees me, bright and happy as a
lways.
I envy her that.
“How’s it going out there?” she asks.
“Crowded, but good.”
“We’ll be setting up most of our shots back here,” the producer informs me. She’s an older woman with proudly gray hair, warm, brown eyes, and a name I can’t remember. “After the establishing shots of the interior, the display cases, and the outside of the building, we’ll focus mainly on your process. We’ll be out of your hair soon.”
“Take your time.”
“She doesn’t mean that,” Rona teases.
I smile. “I’m trying to.”
“Lilly does most of the bookkeeping. Having our doors closed makes her nervous.”
“Trust me, you’ll have a boost after the episode airs,” the producer assures me, checking her cell phone.
“That’s what I keep telling her. That and I wish you guys could have been here yesterday.”
“I heard you had a big job.”
“We did.” Rona’s eyes sparkle playfully. “Plus, Lilly met a guy.”
“Here we go,” I groan.
The makeup artist turns her darkly shadowed eyes to me with a curious grin. “Ooh. Is he hot?”
“Smoking,” Rona confirms.
“He’s not that hot,” I protest feebly.
“Seriously? You’re gonna try to downplay Colt Avery?”
“Colt Avery?!” the makeup girl exclaims. She whips her phone out of her back pocket, her short, black lacquered nails flying over its surface. She turns it to Rona. “This Colt Avery, from the Los Angeles Kodiaks?”
“That’s him. I mean, I think he was wearing a shirt when she met him, but—oh no hold on. Still looking,” she objects when the makeup girl goes to take her phone away. “Aaaaaaaand I’m good. Thanks. I get why you keep him as your screensaver.”
“I’d have him as my breakfast if I could.” She stows her phone, giving me a wicked grin. “Did you sleep with him?”
“Three times in thirty minutes,” I deadpan. “It was epic.”
“Are you for real?”
“Are you? No, I didn’t sleep with him. I talked to him. That’s all.”
“You’re crazy! You don’t talk to a guy like that. You hop on and go for the ride of your life.” She picks up a brush, giving me a cursory look. “You’re cute. I bet he would have banged you if you asked.”
