Beefcakes

by Katana Collins

  I smiled and shrugged. “This is supposed to be our wedding cake. And I would want a wedding cake that my mom could have a piece of, guilt free, at my own wedding.”

  Our wedding cake. The thought sent a single spike of pain into the center of my breast bone. Would we ever get to that point? Would we ever have a wedding cake of our own? The weight of the engagement ring in my pocket was suddenly far heavier than the one carat weight.

  Elaina grinned, and although it wobbled a little, it was still breathtaking. Seeing that smile aimed directly at me? It felt good. Like maybe, just maybe, we were going to be okay after all. She linked her fingers in mine and gave them a squeeze. “I think that’s a great idea.”

  “Any requests of your own?” I asked.

  She scrunched her nose in thought. “I guess it should be grain-free as well for your mom, too. And…I think we should have a tier of cupcakes. Maybe alternate between sheet cake and cupcakes? Since you are the beefcake and all.”

  I laughed and rolled my eyes. “Whatever my bride wants.”

  Even though it wasn’t real, I had to admit, there was a flutter in my stomach as I said the words.

  “Thirty seconds!” Savannah shouted over the roar of bakers. Okay, maybe it was only a roar in my head, but the kitchen sounded pretty damn loud.

  “Oh, God,” Lainey cried as I piped rosettes along the edge of the German chocolate cake with cocoa frosting. “We’re not going to make it!”

  “Yes, we are! Grab the candied fennel and put it around the bride and groom statue!”

  The cake was still a little warm, making the frosting not quite as stiff as I would have liked, but all in all, most of my frosting roses were staying in place.

  Chocolate for a wedding cake wasn’t exactly the most traditional aesthetic, but I think it worked… at least for a rustic-chic sort of wedding. The bottom tier was covered in fondant and I painted it to look like a birch stump. The next two layers were stacked in decreasing sizes with the cocoa frosting and rosettes with crushed pecans on the sides of the cake. And with the top tier, I created a rustic looking scene for the bride and groom statue, like they were in the midst of a forest or field of wheat. The candied fennel was on every layer and surrounding the bride and groom and the sauerkraut was finely chopped, mixed with coconut and folded into the cake batter.

  “Time! Bakers, please step away from your cakes.” Savannah said as I piped the final rose on the top.

  I exhaled a heavy breath, and Lainey let out a loud nervous laugh, swiping her forearm across her head. A big smear of chocolate was left where her arm had touched her head, and I pursed my lips together to keep from laughing.

  Her eyes went wide. “What?” she asked. “Neil, what is it?”

  I poked her forehead gently, catching a bit of frosting on my fingertip and held it up for her to see. “It looks like you have baby shit on your forehead,” I said, laughing, then pushed my fingertip between my lips and sucked the chocolate clean. Huh. I had to admit, that frosting was pretty damn good, considering it had sauerkraut and fennel in it.

  She laughed and ducked to peer at herself in the reflection of one of the pots. “Ugh! Freaking figures, right?” She wiped her forehead with a towel, and when I laughed harder, her eyes widened, a mischievous expression turning her lips into a smile. “Oh, you think that’s funny?” Before I could realize what was happening, she dipped her hand into the mixing bowl where the frosting was and smeared it down my cheek and neck.

  I gasped, my smile lifting. “Oh, you are going down, Dyker!” I laughed and dove at her, digging my fingers into her sides, tickling her.

  She squealed with laughter and did a back bend over my arm. “Okay, okay—Uncle!”

  When I tugged her upright, we were still laughing, and all eyes were on us. Shit. I had forgotten the cameras were still rolling. I cleared my throat, and Lainey wiped her hands on her apron, straightening it.

  “Glad to see that, despite the stressful situation, some of you still had fun,” The older judge, Millie, said and flicked her eyes over to the couple from Brooklyn, who were barely looking at each other. The man had his arms crossed, and her mouth was set into a hard scowl. Geez. I wonder what happened while we were baking? I basically had tunnel vision for the last two and a half hours. Admittedly, their cake looked pretty damn rough.

  “Cut!” Elliott called and crossed forward as one of the other crew members rolled out this weird looking apparatus that seemed like something out of a sci-fi movie. Elliott glanced at his phone. “Okay, guys. You have a bit of a break while we edit the footage we’ve got. At eight o’clock, we will roll the footage of the baking challenge up until this moment. Then we go live with the voter results and the lie detector test. We’ll have a dinner menu sent to your dressing rooms, but until then, relax. Or… try to.”

  I looked up to find Ash and Jude staring back at me from behind the camera. Ash gave me a thumb’s up and Jude, ever the more subtle friend, merely twitched his lips into what I’ve come to know as a smile.

  “I think we did well,” I whispered to Elaina.

  She exhaled audibly. “Thank God. I thought I’d be relieved being finished with the challenges, but I think this is even worse. Having to wait for four hours until we go live for the results?”

  “It’s actually closer to five hours because they’ll have to air the first half of the episode before we get to this point.”

  Elaina groaned and dropped her head back. “It’s torture.”

  She wasn’t wrong… this was worse. The waiting. The anticipation. The fact that it was almost over, but not quite.

  I placed my hand to the small of her back. “Come on. Let’s wait it out in the dressing room.”

  She nodded as one of the assistants handed us each back our personal belongings—phones, purses, wallets, etc. We weren’t allowed to have any of these things on hand during the challenges for fear of cheating.

  “Oh, God,” Elaina said, looking at her phone.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I missed like eight calls from my sister,” she said, her brows creasing. “Do you mind if I call her back?”

  I nodded. “Go ahead. Take the dressing room for privacy. I’ll chat with Jude and Ash. Just open the door when you’re done.”

  Pushing onto her toes, she gave me a quick kiss on the cheek, before rushing for the dressing room, her phone already pressed to her ear, calling as I crossed to Jude and Ash.

  Ash gave me a sad, knowing smile. “Sorry about earlier,” he said. “I didn’t mean to cause any trouble. I just… I figured she knew.”

  I sighed and rubbed at my forehead. “It’s okay. It’s my fault for not telling her.”

  Jude’s eyes shifted to our dressing room as Lainey closed the door behind her. “But… she’s okay, right? You two are both okay?”

  Unease took hold of my body. “Are you asking as my friends… or as my producers?”

  “Friends,” they answered in unison.

  “We’re okay,” I said. “But… I have to back out of the Budapest film.”

  “What?” Ash hissed. “Why?”

  I glanced back at the dressing room and sighed. “She doesn’t want me to go. And I get it… with our history, me leaving for three months is too painful.”

  “This is bull—”

  Jude put his hand on Ash’s shoulder. “How do you feel?”

  I swallowed. “I want to do the movie. There are probably going to be fewer and fewer of these opportunities, and I know that. I’m aging out of stunt work. But I miss it. That being said, I think Elaina’s also right. It’s got to be hard to raise a family while also working in film and constantly being on location—that’s not how she envisioned her life. And honestly, now that she brought it up, I don’t want to be absent from my wife and kids that much, either.”

  “Wife and kids?” Jude’s eyes flicked to the door. “Is there something you’re not telling us?”

  “No.” I chuckled and shook my head, reaching into my pocket, p
ulling out the engagement ring. “At least, not yet.”

  Jude’s eyes widened. “Wow, that’s… fast. Right?”

  “You two have only been dating a few weeks,” Ash added.

  I smacked Ash on the chest, laughing. “Just ‘cause it took you two assholes a long time to propose, doesn’t mean that’s the timeline we all follow.”

  “But… she doesn’t want you working in film anymore?” Jude asked again.

  I sighed. “She didn’t picture a marriage with a husband who traveled all the time.”

  “That’s the whole fucking point,” Ash said, crossing his arms. “Sometimes life doesn’t work out how you envision it, but if you love someone, you choose them over some arbitrary picture you painted in your head when you were ten—”

  “Easy,” Jude scolded Ash, then turned back to me. “I understand Elaina’s point. But also, I think… more importantly, if you miss film work and stunt work, you can’t just quit cold turkey and let opportunities you want pass you by. You’ll eventually end up resenting her. It’s not fair to either of you.”

  I winced because I knew it was true. I loved moving back to Maple Grove. I loved being near my family and I loved running a bakery. But I craved more of the action-loving side of myself that I’d put on hold since I blew out my shoulder and since Mom’s diagnosis. It didn’t mean I wanted a crazy filming schedule and to constantly be on the road, but I also didn’t want to lose that part of myself, either.

  “I know,” I whispered. “But I can’t risk losing her again.”

  “I know you love her,” Jude said. “But if the love is real, no job or time apart should matter. Marly and I are both actors… there are going to be months at a time that we’re apart for our various film schedules.”

  “Hell,” Ash said, “Lucy leaves in a few weeks for two months to Paris for some fashion masterclass thing. Do I want to be apart from her? Of course not. But she loves design and it would be pretty shitty of me to make her feel guilty for embracing an opportunity.”

  I knew they were right… but I also knew in my soul that the three of us came from a world where people dealt with this distance in their relationships because they had no choice. Acting, film—travel and periods of separation came with the territory. Lainey hadn’t signed up for any of that. And I couldn’t blame her for not wanting a partner who wasn’t home half the year.

  “There will be other opportunities for me,” I said, even though I wasn’t quite sure I believed that myself. “I just need to prove to Lainey that I’ll come back. That I’ll always come back to her. And that kind of trust takes time… especially considering how I had betrayed that trust in the past.”

  “You were eighteen when that happened. It was a decade ago and you were both barely adults. She seriously hasn’t forgiven you for that yet?”

  “She’s forgiven me,” I said. “But I haven’t forgiven me.”

  “Well,” Jude said. “That’s a tricky thing. We can’t really expect others to forgive and forget if we don’t do that ourselves, huh?”

  I rolled my eyes and grunted. “Don’t you ever get tired of being right, Jude?”

  Ash snorted. “It’s infuriating, isn’t it?”

  Jude shrugged, his smile lifting a fraction of an inch higher. “It’s a gift and a curse, my friends.”

  “He’s been cheating on me,” Chloe cried. “You were right. You called it. All those late nights working, the conferences… all of it. With some fucking poetry grad student. Could he be any more a cliché?”

  “Breathe,” I whispered into the phone, and my heart broke into a million pieces for my sister. I knew the level of this betrayal… and it wasn’t something she’d be able to get over easily. At least not if she was anything like her big sister.

  “He said… he said she doesn’t suffocate him. Raina. That’s her fucking name… Raina. Like she braids flowers into her hair and her shoes made out of hemp.”

  “I bet she doesn’t shave either,” I added.

  “Exactly! I mean, what the fuck? He said she lets him be free to find himself… be his true self. Not work twenty-four seven to maintain—and I quote—‘my country club lifestyle.’ Since when did I get engaged to Jack fucking Kerouac?”

  My stomach squeezed at her words. They were just a tad too familiar… a little too close to home. This call wasn’t about Neil and me… it was about Chloe. And I needed to be there for her right now, even in the face of doubt within my own relationship. I closed my eyes, hating to be the one to bring this up… but it needed to be done. “Have you gotten tested, Chloe? Who knows how safe he was—”

  “It was the first thing I did,” she said. “I walked right into Urgent Care and requested the gamut of tests.”

  “Good girl,” I whispered.

  “And can you believe he had the balls to call the wedding off—he would rather marry her than me. Oh my God, this is humiliating.”

  “Would you even want to marry him after this?”

  “Of course not! But he could have the decency to at least let me be the one who calls off the wedding! I should have dumped him over this. I should be the one to cancel my wedding because he’s the pig. He doesn’t get to cheat on me and be the one to leave me at the altar!”

  It was ironic… in both of our cases, it was the man who cheated, and the man who dumped us. I felt her fury. I felt it in my bones. “Well, keep things in perspective… he’s not leaving you at the altar. There’s three months until your wedding and we are still before the cutoff to get our deposits back, so that’s the silver lining—”

  “Elaina,” Chloe whispered, and even though her voice was soft, it was enough to cut me off mid-sentence. “Am I a total idiot?”

  I swallowed, tears building up in my eyes. “No,” I said. “You’re not an idiot, Chloe. You were in love.”

  Chloe sniffled. “Yeah. I guess.” She paused for a long moment before adding, “But maybe I was more in love with the wedding than him.”

  It was profound. Introspective. And way more mature than I would be this soon after a betrayal. I’d still be in the stage of throwing darts at a photo of his face.

  Chloe paused, growing silent for a long moment, and I let her. I stayed on the phone, waiting for her to compose herself. Her voice cracked when she finally spoke again “I wish you were here. I could really use a sister night.”

  I smiled, cradling the receiver to my ear. “I’ll be home tomorrow. I promise. Win or lose… I’ll be back and we’ll do a girls night.”

  “And bring Oreos,” Chloe added. “I ran out an hour ago. This is the worst day ever. Cheated on, dumped, and now out of junk food.”

  An idea sprung to mind, and I smiled. “Now, that I can help you with. Keep your chin up. Watch some bad reality television—”

  “Yeah, I had plans to watch this horrible show tonight about exes getting back together and baking—”

  I laughed loudly and crossed to open the dressing room door. “You should probably skip the big family viewing party tonight. Everyone will understand.” Across the set, I saw Neil standing with Jude and Ash, arms crossed, eyes cast to the ground.

  As Ash looked over Neil’s shoulder and made eye contact with me, a shiver rocked down my spine. There was something in his scowl—anger. At me?

  “Yeah, I guess. We really know how to pick ‘em, don’t we? First, our boyfriends in high school—Jack, who sold Adderall out of his locker, and Neil, who left you on graduation day. And now, Brad and Dan, the men we intended to spend the rest of our lives with, cheated on both of us. God.” There was another pause. “At least Neil has changed. Maybe he can restore our faith in men a little. Just make sure he doesn’t have any fucking dreams of being a world-famous poet first!”

  A laugh cracked like a whip at the back of my throat. “Yeah,” I said. “Right.” I knew she meant it as a dark joke, but her words slammed into me in the wake of the conversation Neil and I had only a few hours ago. A chill washed down my spine, and I shivered despite the balmy temperature of
the dressing room.

  Neil saw me from across the room and smiled. With a wave at the guys, he crossed toward me… toward our dressing room. “I’ve, um, I’ve gotta go, Chloe. Don’t worry, I’m sending reinforcements your way.”

  “Reinforcements?”

  “Trust your big sister. I love you.”

  “Love you, too.”

  I hung up and punched a quick text to Liam.

  Can you bring some cupcakes to my sister at her apartment? She needs sugar and junk food.

  And preferably some company that wasn’t our parents or her fair-weather friends. But I didn’t add that.

  “What’s going on?” Neil asked as he came into the room and plopped down onto the couch, looking at the dinner menu the assistant slid under our door.

  “Dan broke up with Chloe.”

  Neil uncrossed his legs and sat forward. “What?”

  “Yep. He was cheating on her.”

  “Shit, I’m so sorry.”

  “Better she finds out now than after the wedding, I guess.” If I was being honest, I suspected something was up, even though I hoped I was wrong. It was weird for a fiancé to be so absent at events and family functions like he had been for months.

  Neil stood and wrapped me in a hug that felt so warm, so loving, I wanted to cry. “It still sucks, though.”

  “Yeah,” I whispered, nuzzling into the nook of his shoulder.

  I pushed back from the hug, looking up at Neil. “What do you miss most about stunt work?”

  He tilted his head, inspecting me closely, confusion marring his face. “That was out of left field.”

  “Not really. We didn’t finish our conversation earlier.”

  “We didn’t?”

  I sighed. “I’m just curious. What is it you like so much about it?”

  “Well…I guess it’s that I get to work within fitness and athletics without solely relying on my looks. I don’t just stand around flexing like a mannequin. I learn new techniques, new skills… it’s challenging. And fun. I feel so alive when I’m in the middle of a hard jump or a fight scene. I get this rush from it like I’ve never gotten from anything else in my life" I watched his expression closely. The way his eyes lit up in a way I hadn't seen in weeks. The way his smile beamed. A spark ignited in him simply by talking about it—which only made my stomach drop more. “And … I’m really good at it.” He finished with a shrug. Bending at the knees to meet where my gaze had landed on his hurt shoulder, he tucked his index finger below my chin, pulling my gaze back to his. “But… you mean more to me than any of that.”