Chapter 1-5
1333 Words
“Ouch.” Troy grimaced. “He said that?”
“He did.” I was breathing kind of hard from the memory, the arousal, the anxiety, the frustration, or maybe one too many Holiday Brothers’ goodies.
“Even after you put the comedy in rom com with your comment about the bunny and the lushness of plushness?”
“Well, the plushness thing was only in my head, but, yeah. The kiss never happened, and in all the days between then and now, from fall leaves to boughs of holly, neither has the lunch invitation. The ball’s in my court, I figure. After holding Angel again, I’ve finally decided to run with it. There’s a chance he’s still mad at me.” I told Troy about my one visit up to Harvard. “It was the best night of my life…and then the worst. I hope he’s forgiven me.”
“You haven’t even seen him at the law firm since?”
“Nope. He never comes out when I’m there. But he felt something, Troy. That’s how well I know him. It could be a vulnerability thing. He might be thinking, ‘What if we’re not on the same page? What if Noah’s in the same place?’”
I was feeling vulnerable, too, as I wondered if a fifth cookie was one too many. Or was I up to six? “I hope to get the opportunity to prove I’m not. First, to get my foot in the door, we need a grand gesture, something outrageous, like in all those movies you watch. Once I bring him back to how we started, then hopefully I can convince him where we can go.”
“Outrageous? Being outrageous has already bitten you in nards, Snowman. Several times I know about.” Troy took his cupcakes over to the display case. Like before, I followed.
“A long time ago, sure. We’re grown-ass men now.” Then I went back for an unfrosted reject. “They can’t expel us or take us in as minors and try to scare us straight.”
“So to speak.” Troy shot me a look.
“You weren’t gonna eat that, were you?”
He smiled, “All yours, buddy,” then headed over to set up the hot chocolate urn. Indian summer was long gone now, and there would no doubt be a rush on the stuff. “They can try you as adults, you know, which is even worse. I’d keep that in mind if I were you.”
“I’m not talking about committing a felony. Not even a misdemeanor, this time. Though if something comes up, Angel Ramos, esquire can get me off.”
“Again…so to speak. And I’m teasing, because I know how hard you’ve worked.”
“Yeah. Cake is part of our love story, Troy—mine and Angel’s.”
“An erotic one?”
A cupcake crumb flew across the room when I couldn’t tame my amusement. “Sort of. I won’t lie. I popped a woody from licking Angel’s beaters once in Life Skills class.”
Troy was even louder. He had the same goofy laugh he’d had since middle school. “Mrs. Byrd never gave me a woody,” he said. “Miss Mahon, that’s a whole ‘nother story. I had her in sixth grade. She switched schools.”
“Yup.” I was aware.
“Puberty and Miss Mahon were a deadly combination. I still stammer whenever she comes in.”
Miss Mahon had only grown more beautiful in the twenty-some years since she’d been my teacher. The spitting image of Christina Hendricks, she was also quite sweet, always taking time to reminisce with me if she was home when I brought her packages.
“I thought you were finally done with puberty,” I joked.
“I’ll always be an overgrown adolescent, according to Izzy.”
Isabelle was Troy’s fiancée.
I smiled. “Well, I wasn’t hot for teacher. It wasn’t even about double fudge cake batter. There’s a good possibility it was that moment—as Angel and I went wild on each other’s mixer whisks—I first discovered the correlation between liking someone in your heart and also in a Health Class, use protection, erections are a natural bodily function kind of way.”
I took another moment to reminisce. By the time I came back to 2017, Troy was on the move again, to put paper placemats on the wood-topped round tables with the black iron bases.
“It’s always been Angel, Troy. And it always will be.” I made a vow by raising my hand, which had another cookie in it. “Becca, at the front desk, she’s going to help with the secret Santa stuff. Then I’ll show up at Angel’s hotel room with the cake on Christmas Day. He’s staying at the Forsythe instead of at his parents’. By the time December twenty-fifth is over, hopefully we’ll—”
“Bring your disgusting, dirty s*x cake to life?”
“If I’m lucky.” I took some placemats from Troy to lend a hand. “I’ve dated my fair share of men, bro, and I assume Angel has, too. In my heart, no one else has even come close to giving me the kinds of feels I get from him.”
“So…” Troy turned with a smirk. “If I’m going to make this perverted pastry, I’m going to need you to describe your idea in great detail.” He was having a good time. “That’s a cool name for a side business, by the way. I might just expand.” He pulled a pen from his apron pocket and sat down at the table way in back, ready to draw on one of the placemats he’d put down. “Perverted Pastries,” he wrote. “Troy Holiday proprietor. Let ‘er rip.”
“I don’t…exactly know what I want.” I couldn’t look at him again.
“Yes, you do.”
I did. I’d been in the shop a few days earlier and had noticed Hank, Holiday Brothers’ Bakery’s annual snowman cake. Hank Holiday was their winter mascot of sorts. Every year he showed up right after Thanksgiving in a different pose. This year he was bent over, admiring his reflection in a patch of shimmery ice made from Isomalt sugar. It was an adorable cake I immediately turned into something filthy in my mind. “It all starts with…” I pointed to it.
“Hank? Hmm. He does have booty.”
That he did. It was round, full, and as white as mine beneath my UPS uniform, only without all the hair. I wondered if Troy might agree to add some yellow food-dyed coconut, perhaps.
“And he is on all fours,” Troy said. “We’re halfway there already.”
“Yeah. I kind of thought Hank and…and Cupid, maybe. Your Cupid cake from last Valentine’s Day?”
“Hold up.” Troy grabbed his phone. “This one?” He stuck it in front of my face, with a picture of Cupid on the screen.
“Yeah.”
“Spenny made him, but I can probably come close.”
“Hank and a cherub,” I said. “Snowman and…”
“Angel…Ong-hel.”
“Yeah.” I finally sat across from Troy and faced him head on. “I mean, it wouldn’t hurt to make Cupid more…grown-up looking.”
“Cupid’s, like, thousands of years old. He is a grown-up.”
“I guess. It’d be better if he looked it, though, right? Maybe we could add some…some facial hair or something. Just use Cupid as a jumping off point.”
“Gotcha. A manlier, more adult cherub. Angel did have that wispy thing above his lip.” Troy colored something similar on his sketch of Cupid’s face. He was an excellent artist, but still, the thing looked ridiculous. “Like this?”
“Sort of.” I smiled. “Angel’s is fuller now, though.”
Troy nearly tore the paper, wildly coloring in the space under Cupid’s nose.
“He’s not Groucho Marx!”
“Got it. Not Groucho Marx,” Troy wrote. Then we laughed way too long. “I think I can come up with something hot and dirty for you.” Troy went to stand.
“Hold up. One more thing.”
“Yes…?” His pen was poised, waiting for my next request.
“See Cupid’s arrow…?” I pointed to Troy’s phone, the picture still up. “How it…? Where it’s…hanging?”
“Hanging?”
“Erect…actually. Erect might be a better word. Doesn’t it kind of look like a…?”
Troy turned the phone sideways. “Perv.”
“You see it, too!”
“You saw it first,” he said. “I should point it out to Spenny.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t. If we line it up with Frosty’s…”
“Hanks’s.”
“Yeah. Hank’s. If we line it up with his ass…and maybe make the arrow thicker…change the shape some…” I was using my hands to mold an imaginary arrow into a make-believe mythical cherub’s b***r. “Since they face the same direction, Cupid’s front to Hank’s…back…”
“Wow.”
“Don’t make fun of me. You said you’d do this.”
“I will. I’m happy to.” When Troy drew an enormous p***s, I nearly tipped the chair as I leaned back to laugh.
“Looks about right, from what I recall.”
“Dude,” he said. “Good for you.”
“Are they molds or sculpted?” I asked. “The cakes, I mean.”
“Molds we decorate by hand.”
“Just stick half an éclair on, then.”
“Half? Don’t sell Ong-hel short, now.”
“A couple of cannolis, then.”
Troy barked out another laugh. “Ha! I love it. And the plural of cannoli is cannoli, by the way.”
“Gotcha. So, you’ll do it?”
“For you and Angel? You bet. You provide the romance, I’ll provide the smut.”
“You’re the best.” I got up to go. “Now hide that drawing before your brother comes out of the kitchen.”
“Maybe I’ll make one for him and Getty. Christmastime is my bro and his beau’s anniversary, after all.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“I helped make that happen, too. Troy Holiday’s Perverted Pastries and Christmas Matchmaking Services…” He held up his hands and even I could picture the marquee. “Christmas and romance, the two go together.”
“I hope so,” I said, as I readied myself for another brutal workday. “I truly hope so.”
- Writer
