Sugar Rush, page 5
“Here,” I replied quietly, while giving him the piece of paper. “Take it. Take it away and go.”
“No,” Samantha yelled. “Don’t give it back to him. He doesn’t deserve it. You did your work, you did what was asked of you, you can’t be blamed for what happened with the sickness. That isn’t your fault.”
“I just want this to be over.” The high that I was on only a while ago had sunk so low and now, I wanted Gary gone so I could burst in to tears without him seeing me. “I don’t want this argument to continue.”
“Smart decision,” Gary warned me. “Because otherwise you will be made to regret it.”
“Is that a threat?” Samantha growled. “You don’t dare threaten Jane. You have no right. You can’t come in here and say that when she did nothing wrong. She is not giving you back your check and you are about to leave here without saying another word before I call the cops on your ass, you piece of shit.”
Gary ran his eyes critically up and down Samantha with a sneer on his face. “Oh yeah? You think you’re going to scare me, little girl? You think I’m going to be afraid of someone like you? Not a chance, look at you.”
I could see the steam coming out of my friend’s ears. This sarcastic comment had wound her up to a point where I might not have been able to contain her any longer. As she stepped closer to Gary, every muscle in my body tensed up, including my jaw muscles, leaving me unable to say anything.
“You’re about to see.”
Those were the last words to come out of Samantha’s mouth before she pulled out one of her complicated karate moves which floored Gary before he even had a chance to wrap his head around what was happening. He might well have been a lot bigger than her and he may have looked like the obvious winner, but he couldn’t compete with my black belt friend. She was a martial arts expert for a reason.
“Fu… fuck…” Gary stammered to his feet looking scared. “Fuck you.”
“Samantha Emms,” she called after him as he ran away. “Come find me if you want round two.”
“Woah,” I laughed as he raced off, glad that he was gone even though I wished that he had taken the now tainted check with him. I mean, I wasn’t going to be able to cash it now anyway, was I? This Brandon would probably put a stop on the money coming out anyway. The dream was absolutely dead. “Now I know why guys are so scared of you. You are absolutely terrifying. The way you took him down… wow.”
“He deserved it, the piece of shit.” She shook her head hard. “I just wish that I had done more to him. A law suit would be worth it to wipe the smug smile of that little shits face.”
I was glad that didn’t happen because I didn’t want a law suit. I didn’t want to see Gary ever again.
9
Brandon
“ I
will fucking take her down,” Lara growled angrily, becoming a keyboard warrior behind her phone screen. Every nasty word that she typed brought a glowing redness to her cheeks. “She will regret everything that she has done to me. She is going to rue the day that she served me shitty ass cakes. That bitch.”
“Er, Lara… do you maybe want to take a break from that?” I asked her cautiously. “We could have some breakfast or something if you have stopped puking at last. I would like to talk to you…”
Sure, this definitely wasn’t the big romantic moment that I kept wanting, but perhaps it didn’t have to be all in public with lots of extras around us. Lara pretty much lived her life that way, so maybe the proposal could be just about us. I really did want her to be my fiancée, I was so looking forward to getting married to her, and it was making me very excited. I knew that it could cheer Lara up as well and make her forget about the cakes.
“I have too much to do to eat,” she shot back without even looking at me. “I’m not hungry anyway. I feel sick. You know that I’m sick. The fucking cakes have destroyed my insides and now everyone will know it.”
I rolled my eyes knowing that she wouldn’t even see it so I could express my annoyance. This was super problematic; she was in a mood so deep that there wasn’t any dragging her out of it. I really didn’t want this to continue but there was no stopping her. I guess all I could do was walk away from her.
I made my way in to the kitchen, gritting my teeth hard every time she cheered and made some comment about another influencer getting on the band wagon and joining in with her hate campaign. The one’s who were usually on the negative end of the scale were now throwing that at someone else. It was crazy. So ironic. The next time they complained about trolling I wasn’t going to have any comment about it either way. I wouldn’t get involved in any of it because none of them would have a leg to stand on, they would have been on both sides.
I put the coffee pot on and made me and Lara some drinks, making sure that the whole process took a long time so I could avoid her for as long as I could. I was actually looking forward to Gary coming back with some news because perhaps knowing that something had been done would quieten her mood down.
Then I could propose at long last. Perhaps if I made a nice dinner, I could make it as sweet as possible, and me and Lara could finally be where we needed to be. Especially if I made the effort and I cooked her favorite meal. That usually calmed her down and made her more receptive to me and the idea of marriage.
“Oh, Brandon!” I heard Lara calling my name which meant my presence was required at last. I took the mugs of coffee with me and made my way back in to the living room. But I didn’t get to drink either of them. Lara took one and Gary who had reappeared took the other one from me with a pair of trembling hands. “My super hero is back.” My girlfriend laughed as she stared at the man that she normally hated. “What happened, Gary?”
“That bitch is crazy,” Gary declared in a tone of voice that I hadn’t ever heard from him before. “Both those bitches are fucking insane. I don’t want anything to do with that bakery again. I did my bit. I kicked up shit and told them that the cakes made everyone sick, I even demanded the money back, but shit went down…”
“What happened?” Now I was a little freaked out. “What the hell did you do, Gary?”
“What did I do?” He held his hands to his chest as if I had insulted him to the very core. “I didn’t do anything. I went on Lara’s behalf, on your behalf as well. I did what was asked of me and it back fired.”
“But how?” Lara’s eyes shone with far too much excitement. Gone was the idea that he was her super hero, now he was just a pawn in her game. “What did she do? Please tell me that it’s something criminal…”
“Oh no, keep me out of it.” Gary shook his head hard. He slammed the coffee mug in to my hands and backed away towards the door. “Keep me out of all of it. I wash my hands of the whole situation. I came to the dumb party and it made me ill, I spoke to the cake bitch and asked for the money back, but didn’t get it…”
“You didn’t even get it?” Lara screamed. “You didn’t get the check back, so we still paid her? Oh, hell no. There is no chance in hell that I’m letting her get away with the cash. I’m taking her down. I am going to absolutely rip her apart and make sure that she never hurts anyone again. She can’t get one over on me.”
As Gary made his escape out of my house, quite frankly leaving me baffled, Lara got back on her cell phone and ignored me once more. So much for this situation being over and done with. It seemed that I was going to have to deal with it for the rest of the day. I guess the best thing for me to do was to go and make myself a coffee to drink by myself so no one else could steal it, all while stewing over the party that I never should have thrown. Perhaps if I had let Lara deal with it all herself then everything could have been different…
“Dinner is ready.” I was hoping that this would be enough to get Lara off her cell phone. She had been on it all day long and it was starting to get boring. She wasn’t even sick anymore. She had been fine all day long. The sickness dissipated earlier on, but the anger didn’t. “Are you ready? I don’t want it to get cold…”
“One minute,” Lara yelled back, clearly totally distracted. “I’ll be there. Just need to get this done a moment.”
I sat at the table, stirring the food around on my plate for far too long by myself. It was getting increasingly ruined by the second, and my girlfriend hadn’t had the decency to leave her cell phone alone just yet. Taking the bakery woman down was more important than our proposal dinner. She might not have known that it was our proposal dinner, but it was a special evening. I had tried to make that much clear and she didn’t care.
“Lara,” I called again, feeling stupid and shitty for having to be this guy, the one nagging at my girlfriend to come and eat with me like a loser. “Dinner is getting cold. Are you coming, or what?”
Eventually she came and I took the ring box in my hand, still in my pocket, and I started to get excited at long last. This hadn’t exactly gone the way that I wanted, but it was going to go some way at last. I was going to get Lara to be my fiancée at last and I couldn’t wait. I couldn’t wait to start the next chapter of our lives together.
“Ooh, this looks nice.” She took a fork full and shoved it in her mouth. “Cold though.”
I resisted the urge to inform her that I’d told her as much enough times because there was no point. I didn’t want all of this to be ruined because of an argument anyway. This was my second chance at making today special and I couldn’t wait. Instead, I let the comment fly and waited for a gap in the conversation.
“So, I have gotten all of my friends to post some bad stuff about the cakes online. My campaign against her is going really well, but I’m still annoyed that she didn’t give the check back. I don’t think that we should have to pay for any of that, but if we have to…” I guess she was ignoring the fact that I was the one who covered the cost of the whole party and I wasn’t as fussed as her. “Then I want her closed down. I don’t want to just take her down online but in real life as well. Is that something that we can make happen? With, like, health inspectors and stuff?”
“Er, I don’t know.” Why were we still talking about this? “Can I ask you something here?”
“You could sort that out, couldn’t you? Health inspectors. You must have connections…”
“I work in the marketing industry,” I reminded her. “Health inspectors don’t visit us much.”
“No, I know, but you could sort it for me, couldn’t you?” She batted her eyelashes flirtily. “You can be my hero and make sure that place gets all checked out, right? I believe in you.”
There was a look in her eyes that told me this wasn’t being dropped tonight. There was no point in proposing when her head was all over the place. It was disappointing to not get my fiancée at the end of the day but perhaps it was for the best. I could arrange something else, something better. For now, I had to focus on making my girlfriend happy and this cake nightmare was going to be a real issue if I didn’t sort it out soon. I was going to have to swallow my pride and get the hell on with it just to shut this down before it escalated rapidly.
“Okay fine, I will sort it out. I will see if I can sort out a health inspector. I might be able to use some of my contacts to find the best one around. Then if there is anything to be found, it will be found…”
“Good.” Her lips twisted up in to a smile. “Good, then my revenge will be complete.”
Revenge.
We were really on the path of revenge for some God damn cakes.
It was crazy. But men did wild things to keep the women that the loved happy and I guess that was going to include me too. I was about to dive down a path that I wasn’t too sure about, but I had to do it for her.”
10
Jane
One month later
“ F
uck,” I whispered to myself with tears balling up behind my eyes. “Fuck this is bad.”
I hated staring at my numbers, knowing that they were bad, knowing that nothing could be worse than this. A while back, before I ripped up that check, I had the possibilities flowing through my views, the future was my oyster and I couldn’t wait to get started with it… but now I was growing ever closer to losing everything and it killed me. Losing Bluebell Bakery would be worse than my relationship falling apart. Without it, I would have nothing. I wasn’t going to be myself without my career, I put all of me in to it.
But how could I pick things back up again? How could I get myself out of the red when the world was against me? Instead of being the best thing that had ever happened to me, the party for the Instagram influencer had become the worst. The comments online got so bad that I needed to delete my Instagram account, just to try and stop it, but this then spilled out on to the rest of the online world. Now, I had so many bad reviews on Google and Facebook that I couldn’t imagine anyone coming in to my bakery again.
I had even lost some of my best customers over it. I never saw the sugar addicted high school girls anymore, Mrs. Lovely was about the only one who still came to see me. Much as I was grateful for her remaining loyal to me as everything else was falling apart, her orders alone weren’t going to be enough to sustain me.
But none of that hurt me as much as the hand written letters of hate that were shoved through the bakery front door, they really stung because there was so much effort put in to them. They were really nasty to me and everything that I had worked hard for, they hated every inch of me, and it was really sad.
I jumped at the sound of the door opening because it was such a rare sound these days, but when I saw the stern face coming to greet me it made my heart sink. For the third time this month, the health inspector was here and of course as usual was going to want me to close up shop for the afternoon to check me out.
They declared that it was just a random check, but how could it be? I blamed the online nightmare.
“Hello, my name is Aimee Cole,” the woman declared with a cold tone. “I am the Health…”
“I know who you are,” I interjected wearily. “And I know what you want me to do as well.” I grabbed my keys and jangled them knowingly. “I will lock up now so you can do what needs to be done.”
As Aimee got to work, I did the one thing that Samantha kept warning me not to. I checked my reviews. It killed me every single time, but I continued to torture myself regardless. It was ridiculous, but at the same time, I needed to know what was being put out there in the world about me too. I couldn’t let everyone else see it and not me. Not that it mattered because I couldn’t do anything to change it, I couldn’t argue back because engaging with bad reviews was the worst thing to do, but I needed to see all the same. I couldn’t help it. it was like a car crash that I couldn’t stop staring at, no matter how challenging it was to see. I just needed to know how bad it was, how much I needed to worry, who hated me as well as the rest of the world today.
“Industry processed,” I whispered sadly to myself. “Nothing here is processed. That’s ridiculous. And the customer service isn’t terrible. I am nice to everyone that comes through those doors. Nor is it dirty. I fucking regret the day that BRJ marketing ever saw this store, I wish that woman never walked inside.”
I wanted to cry, but I didn’t have any tears left inside of my body, I wanted to scream but I was too emotionally drained to make any noise. All of this was too much for me. I hated it. A big corporation was taking down my small business, not caring about me at all. It was so bad that even the interns who worked on the job with me rejected my letters of recommendation because despite all of the work that they had put in, they didn’t want to be associated me at all. The online stuff was so bad, they wanted to deny being any part of it.
But I couldn’t deny it at all. It was my name out there, my company being destroyed, my life all ruined.
I kept thinking about finding a way out. The idea of shutting up shop and walking away from all of this, moving to another state where I could be anonymous all over again. The idea was so intoxicating that I almost went along with it, but I just had too much anchoring me here to go. I couldn’t leave with all this debt behind me. I also didn’t want to totally give up on my dream as well. I had put too much into it. My heart, my soul, my whole life was within this building. I couldn’t drop it at the first hurdle.
All businesses had problems anyway, didn’t they? Nothing was ever going to be smooth sailing. The people who found success stuck it out through the hard times and I could as well. Maybe once this storm cloud had burned over, I could get things back on track once more. I could get the reviews back in to the positive again and could lure my loyal customers back through those doors. This would all just be a blip in the grand scale of things.
“Jane, what are you doing?” Samantha’s snapping tone dragged my face from my phone. “You better not be looking at the online bull shit. I have warned you of that. Keep away from the cesspit of the Internet.” She snatched my phone from me and took a seat beside me. “It’s a good job that I have my own key to this place. You are closed more than open these days. I take it the health inspector is back in town?” As I nodded, she rolled her eyes. “You would think that they’d have more to do, wouldn’t you? They should be done here.”
“It’s BRJ marketing and their hate campaign against me. I’m telling you, Samantha…”
It was weird, for a friend who had been so fueled with hate on my behalf in the beginning, her eyes glazed over every single time I mentioned the company and the party these days. I guess a month was far too long for her to still care as much as I did. But then it wasn’t her life being ruined, was it?
