by Matayo, Amy
I frown at her. “Are you sure you can manage by yourself?”
She sighs and turns to the crowd of people. “Listen up! You all have ten minutes to gather your things and go. Leave money on the table, and if you need a to-go box, they’re up here on the counter.” Three people stand up and reach for boxes, then shuffle back to their seats, pulling cash out of their pockets as they go. A few first-timers look unsettled at the abrupt announcement, but they quickly gather their things and walk out the front door. “We’ll be open again on Monday, so make sure you tell your friends.” She looks pointedly at me. “I’m pretty sure I can manage.”
I roll my eyes, but I can’t keep the smile off my face. “I don’t know why I ever bother questioning you.”
“I don’t either,” she says. “Now pack up and get out of here. Be careful with that cake. One wrong turn in this snow and it’ll be a smashed-up mess.”
My biggest fear verbalized.
I head into the kitchen to box up the cake.
* * *
Chad
The winter storm stretches farther than Memphis, but I don’t tell Riley. She has enough on her mind—leaving the bakery, leaving her grandmother, transporting the cake she decorated through the night last night—without having to worry about the weather too. But I just hung up with Liam. Nashville is turning into a winter wonderland for the first time in a decade, nothing to worry about if we lived in say, Maine or the Pacific northwest. But we live in the south. In our region of the country, we don’t invest in things like snowplows or tire chains. My car is a front-wheel drive; Riley’s is rear-wheel. I’m no longer worried about how long it will take us to get there.
I’m worried we won’t make it at all.
Riley walks into the kitchen, untying her apron as she goes. She hangs it on a hook on the back wall, then closes the cake boxes one by one. I would help, but what’s new to me is routine for her. Offering to help with cake storage for something as intricate as Liam and Dillon’s wedding cake seems like the worst kind of idea.
So I watch as she tapes one box closed, then another and another. When she’s finished, that’s when I offer my assistance.
“I’ll help you carry these to the car.” I reach for a box, but stop when she shakes her head. I back off a few feet in case her look comes with built-in darts. Riley is never more ferocious than when she’s working. The first time I met her, she told me to get out of her store. Literally, “get out.” I stayed; the best decision of my life. But I also learned to let the woman do her own heavy lifting, so to speak. And to only step in to help when she’s issued an invitation. If you try uninvited, you might wind up with egg on your face, and that isn’t a metaphor.
“I’ve got them. They have to be loaded a certain way, but thanks for the offer.” She lifts a box onto her hip, and I open the back door. “There is one thing you can do, though,” she says, pausing to look at me. “The next time your brother asks for a favor, will you remind me of the time I boxed up a four-layer cake and drove it three hundred miles away while trying to navigate a blizzard? My memory isn’t always the best, so that’d be helpful.”
Despite myself, I laugh. The only thing sharper than Riley’s work ethic is her sense of humor. When the two work together, magic happens, and I’m reminded once again that I’m the luckiest man alive. Teddy and Liam might argue that point, but they don’t get a vote.
“I’ll remind you, but for purely selfish reasons. It seems that every time you’re asked to bake in a disaster situation, I wind up somehow getting involved.” There was the tornado-affected wedding, the tornado-relief concert, and now this wedding, weddings being the common theme here. You know what they say, three times a bridesmaid…
It might be time for me to make sure that saying doesn’t come to fruition where Riley is concerned.
She laughs. “Getting sick of baking, already?”
I wink at her over the box lid. “Never. I’m too attached to the chef.”
She rolls her eyes, but she can’t hide the way her cheeks color. “Good answer. Now…” she taps the Mae-ke Me A Cake label on the top of the box. “…as soon as I load these boxes, I’ll be ready to go.”
I glance out the back window and try not to frown. Snow is everywhere and isn’t stopping anytime soon. “I’ll grab my coat.”
“I just need a second to say goodbye to my grandmother.”
She does—we both do—and five minutes later, we pull the car onto Main Street.
* * *
The first time I saw downtown Springfield, the roads were lined with tired and wounded bodies, mangled vehicles, and partially-collapsed buildings. Now tired bodies have been replaced with active individuals, vehicles no longer crowd the roads, and the city is busy rebuilding. That’s a normal day, at least.
Today isn’t normal.
Cars are everywhere, and none of them are moving. Including ours. In ten minutes, we’ve inched forward as many yards. Things aren’t looking up anytime soon.
“I can still see the parking lot,” Riley announces for the dozenth time, looking over her shoulder before turning around to face the front again. She lets out a long and weary sigh. I do too, but I try to keep it quiet. This trip is a bad idea, worse than agreeing to make the cake, especially since both things now seem connected in their pointlessness. Someone honks a horn behind me. I clench my hand in a fist to avoid flipping the guy off, proud of my restraint. But then Riley rolls her window down, and I remember who I’m dating.
She all but lunges out the window.
“Stop honking at us! Where would you like him to drive, over the hood of your car?” She shouts at everyone and no one and then rolls her window back up. She sinks into her seat, satisfied and unruffled even when a couple other cars honk in protest. This time she ignores them and looks over at me. “We’re going to be stuck here awhile, aren’t we?”
“I’m afraid so,” I say, marveling at her. She has no problem defending those she loves, even if it sometimes involves putting people in their place. And then she quickly lets it go, handling herself without an ounce of rudeness or bitterness. I hang on to things, but Riley lets them slip through her fingers gracefully with a smile. Even now, she’s humming to herself and flipping through the radio, trying to find a song she likes. Mission accomplished, she settles back with a contented sigh as the worst song in the history of songs plays in the background.
“Really, this one again?” I groan, and she sings louder, breaking stride in bits and pieces to give me a lecture.
“Only negative people hate this song.” The song shoots up an octave, and so does Riley. I cringe.
“And people with taste. Let what go?”
“Let it go, Chad. You really need to move past your hatred of this song.” Can’t hold it back anymore …
“Every man in America hates this song and has for years now.”
She looks at me without breaking the lyrics. “I don’t care what you’re going to say…”
I groan again but press my lips together. Every time I complain, she gets louder. And let’s be real…Riley can’t sing.
“I saw that look you just gave me.” Let the storm rage on…
“What look?”
“The one that tells me you don’t like my singing.”
I try to look innocent, but I’m not convincing even myself. “What? I love your sing—”
“Oh, turn here!” Riley points out the window. “I think if we cut through this way, we’ll finally get out of all this traffic.”
I make a slow turn to the right, and she bounces a little in place, then continues to sing. I can’t help but smile because do you see what I mean? She moves on quickly, is rarely offended, and doesn’t let the criticism of others stop her. Plus she’s right. We’re finally moving.
Maybe this trip won’t be so bad after all.
* * *
This trip is terrible. My worst driving experience to date. We’ve been in this car for one hour, and we’ve made it ten miles.
Ten miles.
Technically, we haven’t even left Springfield. I’m staring at the sign for the last exit out of town, and we’re moving at a pace covered wagons could have outrun. We’ve passed three wrecks and ten times as many cars in ditches, each vehicle meeting the end of their road in one way or another. Riley turned off the radio a long time ago, likely sensing that if one more Disney tune played, I would start stabbing the speakers with the pocket knife I keep in the glove box. No one wants to hear a song about snow when they’re getting buried in piles of it.
“What should we do?” Riley asks again. I might be annoyed if she didn’t sound so worried. We both are. The highway isn’t unpassable yet, but at this rate it’s only a matter of time. Conditions are worsening, and we live where snowplows are purchased at the rate of one per town on a just-in-case basis—a New Year’s Resolution made for the sole purpose of having something mildly interesting to talk about at parties.
Unsurprisingly, there are no snowplows on the road. We’ve seen a few salt trucks out and about, but salt won’t help our current situation unless it’s dumped from the sky like manna from heaven. Unlikely, given it’s been a few dozen centuries since that last happened.
So here we are, Riley worriedly looking out the window and me having no reply to her question except the same thing I’ve said every other time she’s asked. I keep hoping she’ll mix it up a little.
“Have you looked at the weather map recently?” I ask. “Is there any break in this at all?”
She picks up her phone and scrolls through a couple pages, then straightens in her seat a bit. Something about that tiny action gives me a surge of hope.
“It shows the sun shining in Dexter! That’s something, at least.”
That tiny spark of hope fizzles into a pile of molten ash. Dexter is two hours from here at normal speed. At the rate we’re driving, we’ll be there sometime after the wedding.
“What is it showing in Ava or Cabool?”
Riley sinks in her seat. “Snow. Nothing but snow and more snow.” She glances back at the boxes of cake tucked safely in the back seat. “At least the cake should hold up. Hey, there’s a bright side. If we get stranded in this mess, we won’t starve to death. And if we get thirsty, we can melt snow. I can’t believe this wretched weather.”
“You love snow.”
“Normally, yes. Not when I’m facing a lifetime of living underneath it.” She shifts to face me. “Hey, I know. You should ask Liam to call off the wedding.”
I send her a look. “I’m not asking him to call off the wedding.”
“Postpone it, then?”
I try to laugh, but even I wondered if they might possibly do this. But then I realized if it were me marrying Riley, I wouldn’t postpone it for anything. Not a sudden bout of the flu or an acne outbreak or even an unexpected heart transplant. Nothing. I plant a kiss on the back of her hand and try to ignore the way my pulse trips at the thought of marrying the girl next to me.
The day is coming. Mark your calendar.
“Nope, not that either,” I say, my throat tight. “But I should probably call my brother and give him a heads-up on our progress. Maybe he’ll have some good news about the roads in Tennessee.”
I feel her questioning eyes on me. “You okay?” she asks.
“I’m perfect, despite the weather.” And I smile.
It’s the truth.
Chapter Six
(Nashville)
Jane
Home is a weird word; mobile and with moving parts, almost as if that stupid home is where the heart is saying is…actually true. My heart and home are here now, as is my job. A job that—up until a few minutes ago—I loved, but am now inwardly cursing with all the powers of Maleficent seeking vengeance on decades-old enemies. Those poor dragons of hers were nothing but tools.
In Seattle, I never once had to do this.
“Set up cones along the left lane for a quarter-mile and let’s get traffic diverted around this mess before someone else gets hurt,” I say into my walkie, wondering why no one thought to do this before I got here. There’s an eight-car pile-up on Hwy 75, and traffic is at a standstill for as far as the eye can see, which isn’t far because this snow has not once let up. Cars are lined haphazardly on the shoulder, in ditches, facing the wrong direction inside the wrong lanes. There’s no order to anything, which is why today’s job has me directing traffic. I’m in training to be a full-on police officer; this isn’t normal training procedure, but under the circumstances all available persons were sent here.
It’s freezing outside, the roads are awful, and Teddy is waiting for me to help finish unpacking my apartment. He has the whole week off tour, and I’m supposed to be spending the time with him, but now I’m required to help with the snowstorm. Accidents are happening everywhere, inside Nashville city limits and out. No one has heard from Chad and Riley all morning, a worry in itself. Last we heard they had only made it to Ava, which is almost no progress at all. To put it mildly, chaos reigns around us.
Chaos has been a recurring theme this year.
“It’s done,” Matt says into the walkie, jolting me from my thoughts. “An ambulance is getting ready to pull away so I’ve cleared a path for it. Let’s hope people cooperate.”
“They better cooperate. I’m supposed to be decorating my new apartment right now, not freezing my butt off in a Nashville blizzard. If anyone gives me a hard time, I’ll give it right back.” I raise my arm to direct people to the left, and to my surprise, everyone cooperates. One guy shouts an obscenity at me as he passes, but I ignore him and simply flip him off inside my mind. Some things don’t need to be on display to be real.
“He give you a hard time?” Matt asks through the walkie.
“Only a small one. There’s a jerk in every situation, and I’m used to it.”
“Write down the license plate of the next person who does that, and I’ll call him up the line just to be safe.”
“Okay, I will.” I keep directing traffic, tucking my chin inside the neck of my coat, and wishing to be anywhere but here. I’ve never been so cold before. When you’ve spent your entire life in Washington state, that’s saying a lot.
* * *
Teddy
“What do you mean, they canceled?” I say into the phone, trying to remain calm through Dillon’s hysteria while at the same time trying to come up with a solution. It seems to be my job in this family: listen to the problem and solve it, and please do both in five minutes or less. I try not to let it bother me—it’s the price of money and fame, I suppose. Normally it doesn’t, but when things are out of my control, it takes a little more work. This…this is definitely something I can’t fix, though it won’t stop me from trying. Dillon is practically my sister. Like it or not, she needs my help.
“Like, canceled canceled, or just postponed?”
“Canceled. Like, they say we can’t have it there at all because the power is out, and the roof is beginning to cave in on one side. What are we going to do?”
“The wedding’s still two days away. Why would they cancel it already?”
“Because it’s still snowing, and there’s no sign of it letting up. Have you looked outside lately? It’s awful. The news is calling it Snowmageddon. In Nashville. Why is God doing this to me?”
A better question: why does everyone go straight to blaming God when inconvenient things happen? I keep that observation to myself and dodge the question. Sort of.
“I don’t think He’s doing anything to you on purpose, but let’s put that aside and see if we can think of a solution.”
“There is no solution,” she says, sniffing in between each word. “I guess we just have to cancel the wedding.”
“That might be a little extreme.”
“What other choice do we have?”
“Um…about a hundred other choices. And just FYI, I won’t be the one to call Chad and Riley and tell them they’re driving here for no reason. Especially not after they spent all night<
br />
making a cake. Have you heard from them lately?”
“Not since last night. They had made it halfway and were checked into a hotel for the night. Liam said he didn’t sound happy. I guess the hotel wasn’t exactly up to standard.”
“Meaning?”
“There was a quarter machine by the bed and a mirror on the ceiling.”
At this, I laugh loud and fast. Chad isn’t exactly an easygoing, roll-with-it kind of guy. Where I would have seen the quarter machine and slipped three inside, he probably apologized to Riley twelve times and turned three shades of red.
“Yeah yeah, it’s funny,” Dillon giggles. “Now, what am I going to do about the church?”
I sigh. Between bakeries being destroyed by tornados and weddings getting ruined by snow, it seems like all I’ve done lately is fix bad situations. This year owes me big time.
“Just stay there. When Jane gets off work, we’ll come over and think of a plan.”
“She’s working in this?”
“She’s working because of this, directing traffic on the highway. Wrecks are happening everywhere, so she got called in. She’s not real happy about it.”
Dillon pauses on the line before I hear her sigh. “I guess some people have it worse than me.”
“Some people do. Try not to lose perspective. We’ll figure this out.”
“If I put my mother on the phone, will you tell her that?”
“If you put your mother on the phone, I’ll never speak to you again.” I love Dillon’s mom—she’s my aunt after all—but she’s undoubtedly taking this snow situation as a personal attack on her wedding-planner skills. No thanks. I don’t have the mental capacity to deal with more than one emotionally fragile woman at a time.
“Fair enough,” Dillon says. “Come over when you can.”
