Page 51 of All's Fair in Love and Blackmail
Do you want your carrot cake to taste good?
Yes?
Then be patient!!
Me
You’re mean about baking.
Dancing Queen Jules
Deliciousness cannot be rushed!!
Me
You said you were going to be fifteen minutes. It has been thirty.
And I’m just sitting here staring around Mom and Dad’s kitchen, missing them. Hurry up.
Dancing Queen Jules
You could come help, you know!!
Me
YOU TOLD ME TO HEAD ON OVER AND GET THE KITCHEN READY
Because Mom and Dad’s oven takes a million years to preheat!
Dancing Queen Jules
Boo. I was hoping you forgot.
Me
Stop texting and do whatever it’s taking you so long to do.
Dancing Queen Jules
I’ll be there in ten!!
I set my phone down on my parents’ kitchen counter, glancing at the oven. It’s a super nice one, fancy and expensive, because my mom loves to bake and they figured they were retired and settled here permanently so why not?
Juliet wanted to come over here and do our baking rather than overexert our poor little kitchen again, and I kind of don’t blame her. So here I am, several days after visiting Crow Point, missing my parents and trying not to think about Felix Caine.
Carrot cake! I should think about carrot cake instead.
It’s my favorite. My mom makes it for me every year on my birthday, and I always eat a corner piece with more of the cream cheese frosting than my arteries probably approve of. But I’ve never actually made one of these cakes myself, and I’d like to. Life is too short to eat your favorite dessert only on your birthday or on special occasions.
Iama special occasion. We all are. Our days should be as joyful as we can make them—and sometimes that means baking cake on a random weekend in August. I’m going to have to make myself one next year when my birthday rolls around anyway, because my parents will still be gone. Why not practice?
Thinking about cake is all well and good, but wouldn’t you rather worry about your brother’s best friend?my traitorous brain whispers, and I sigh.
It’s not that I’m worried, but…I’m notnotworried, either. I’m starting to actively look forward to hanging out with Felix. And now he knows I liked him. He also knows that I interned at the Gazette. He’s been totally cool about all that, but what if he finds the article I wrote? He’ll know it was about him.
My own version ofHow to Lose a Guy in Ten Days—an article titled “How to Get Over a Playboy (After You’ve Already Wasted Too Much Time).” He might laugh if he reads it, but he also might be hurt, because I was not as kind as I should have been.
I regret writing it. I regret it big time. And even though he already knows I had a crush on him, I don’t want him to see what I said.
