Make Me Beg, Daddy

Vivian Dorsey has added three new videos to the Dorsey Sisters shared album. The notification pops up on the screen of my phone. It’s propped against the flour bin where I always keep it while I work so I can see the timer. It’s 1:04 in the morning on December 23rd. The first big day of the Christmas rush, and I’m the only one here. I wipe my hands on my apron and swipe the notification away without opening it. Viv posts stuff to that album all the time. It’s like my younger sister thinks it’s her i********: feed. I’m not sure if she is unaware that she has some kind of auto-sync thing going, or if she just likes reminding me that her life is infinitely more glamorous than mine. In the last few months alone, I’ve seen: Photos of her long, tanned, Pilates-toned legs glistening with bronzer on a Caribbean beach. Her hand—nails freshly manicured, of course—delicately clutching the stem of a champagne glass as it dangles over the rail of somebody’s yacht. The purebred Maltese she bought on a whim in October wearing a handknit Louis Vuitton sweater. A Four Seasons bathtub with rose petals floating in it. Her and her equally skinny, equally glammed-up friends dancing behind the DJ booth at Marquee with their arms up. Clips of her spinning around a sunlit villa on her recent Tulum trip, dress flaring wide around her impossibly snatched waist, asking whoever’s watching if she looks like a hippie with her hair down. She’s twenty-nine. She doesn’t work. Dad’s money pays for her entire existence, and she’s never once pretended otherwise. Nor does she feel an ounce of shame. I kinda think she’s allergic to it. I set the phone back against the flour bin and sigh. I don’t even want to know what she’s doing tonight, because it’s going to make me feel even worse about my current predicament. I have four hundred and twelve sugar cookies to get through today, plus two wedding cakes for a Saturday I don’t want to think about yet, in addition to the regular case. The croissant dough came out of the walk-in forty-five minutes ago and it’s still too cold to do anything with. I press it with my thumb to check, and⁠— Yep. Hard as a rock. Well, that’s okay. There’s tons of other stuff I can do in the meantime. It’s one of me versus many, many pastries that need to be conquered. That comes with the territory. Opening a bakery is not for the faint of heart. But it was my lifelong dream, and now that I’ve finally dragged it into reality—kicking and screaming, but real—I couldn’t be happier. I could have help here if I wanted it. I have four employees and I love them dearly, but I’ve already asked a lot from them this holiday season. Let them sleep in with their families today. Do-It-All Delilah, goes the sing-song chant in my head. That’s Viv’s voice, of course. She’s always called me that. Mostly because I do, in fact, do it all. When we were growing up, who did Mom order to vacuum and mop the floors? Me. Who cooked breakfast and packed lunches and pulled weeds in the garden? I did. Who drove Vivian to dance practice and proms, to friends’ houses and first dates? Who brushed her hair and painted her nails? Who did everything for a sister who didn’t know that “thank” and “you” were two words that can sometimes go together? Me. I did. I did it all. Even at the ripe old age of thirty-one, old habits are hard to shake. Priya, my head baker, fought me about my self-imposed martyrdom at closing time yesterday. “Text me if it gets bad,” she ordered. She had her coat half on, one shoulder against the doorframe. “I’ll be here in fifteen minutes.” “Go home, girl,” I told her with a smile. “Pinch that little cutie’s cheeks for me. Boink your husband. Sleep in. You deserve it.” She’d laughed and blushed. “Well, alright. Don’t threaten me with a good time. But don’t overdo it, okay? And maybe carve out some time to go home and boink your husband, too.” I’d promised her I would. But the second she left, my smile fell right off my face like a deflated soufflé. The boinking in my household hasn’t been so frequent lately. Connor, my husband, has been distant. I’m not sure why, and I bet a lot of it is my fault. I’ve been working hard to get the bakery up and running. He’s probably just fed up with coming in second place. I make myself a deal: When I get home, I’ll make him his favorite breakfast, and then we’ll go to bed. Just the two of us, wrapped up in each other, like it used to be when we first started dating. Yeah. That sounds nice. Satisfied and a little less daunted by the work in front of me, I get back to it. To set the mood, I put on the radio. The oven’s already up to temp and the whole front of the bakery smells like the leftover cinnamon from yesterday. Showtime, baby. First up is the shortbread bases. I pull the sheet pans off the speed rack and start scoring while the dough is still cold enough to behave. Then the gingerbread gets rolled between guides so nobody’s snowman comes out thicker on one side than the other. Batch two of royal icing goes in the KitchenAid. I add the Americolor a drop at a time with a toothpick, because anyone who squeezes the bottle directly into the bowl should be reported to federal authorities. Super Red for the ornaments. Electric Green, cut way down with white, for the wreaths. I’m even dancing a little bit while I work. Who doesn’t love some Christmas-time Mariah Carey to loosen up the hips? By 2:15 A.M., I have twelve dozen shortbread bases cooling and my croissant dough has finally softened into something that isn’t a construction material. I give it a lock-in fold, quarter turn, back to the walk-in. Set the timer. Wipe the bench. Sweep the flour off the floor because I’ve done a full-on slip-and-split once already this month. My hamstrings are still recovering. The Rat Pack comes on. I’m in such a good groove that I find myself hip-checking the walk-in door shut on the downbeat, like I’m a romcom heroine in the Happy Times montage before everything turns to s**t. Grinning, I do a slow spin with a half sheet of gingerbread held above my head like it’s a cocktail tray and I’m the most sought-after waitress at some 1962 supper club. It’s wild to say, but I really do love this. Standing alone in a kitchen at three in the morning with my hands in butter is the closest I get to a religious experience. My mother always thought it was a phase. Sweets are for children. You’ll grow out of it. Vivian, of course, accused me of picking the one career where I get to eat icing straight out of the tub for a living. But they’re both wrong. It’s love that keeps me here. Love for the process, for the joy of creation, and also for the joy of sharing. Every single “Yum!” and happy smile on my customers’ faces makes my own heart light up. When four o’clock strikes, I survey my progress. The wedding cake layers are wrapped, the case items are proofing, and the first four dozen sugar cookies are flooded and drying under the fan. I stop to eat a broken snowman over the trash can because I’m starving and I need some blood sugar, STAT, before I face-plant into the meringue. And that’s when it hits me. The lull. That weird, hollow ten minutes where everything is either in the oven or in the fridge and there’s nothing to do but wait. I lean back against the bench and roll my neck. My eyes fall on my phone, still propped against the flour bin. I tap it and the notification I missed earlier reappears on the lock screen. Vivian Dorsey has added three new videos to the Dorsey Sisters shared album. I use a rag to clean the flour off my hands and pick it up. I don’t know why I open it. Boredom, I guess. Either that or morbid curiosity. Whose Parisian chateau is Vivian staying at now? Which exclusive dinner club is serving her caviar? Is she dating a pop star? A hedge fund bro? Some hotshot podcaster with deeply misogynistic takes on relations between the sexes? The album loads. I skim past the last deluge of stuff to the three new tiles at the bottom, all with the little play triangle in the middle. I tap the first one. It’s dark and shaky for a second. A lamp just out of frame is casting warm yellow light across the scene. I see a shoulder. A broad back. A man’s broad back, with a mole under the left shoulder blade. Then I hear a moan. I sit up straight. My first thought is that it’s a mistake. That’s a video Viv took at a party, or a video off the internet she meant to send to somebody, or one of those things where an app grabs the wrong file. I think, She’s drunk, she’s always getting wasted when she goes out on weeknights, she must’ve hit the wrong button.