I Hate, I Bake, and I Don’t Date!, page 13
“Yes, as a hobby,” she said slowly.
“People run bakeries as jobs,” I argued.
“You mean like Chloe and Holly?” Tess said in annoyance. “They are small business owners. They manage franchises. That’s marketing, finance, investing, real estate, logistics, and computer coding so they can design their own systems.” Tess ticked off on her fingers. “If the girls want to run a bakery franchise statewide or, hell, nationwide, they need to learn more than baking. And you need to provide it. You’re a CFO, and you have access to resources. You could at least spend some time with your sisters.”
“But they’re happy baking.”
“Of course they’re happy baking! Who doesn’t want to bake?” Tess railed. “I love baking. That’s literally all I’d do if I could. And it’s great that they’re passionate about it, so you need to use that as a way to teach them real skills.”
“I’m busy,” I said.
“Make time,” she countered. “Your sisters need you—not your money. They need you.”
“I just want them to be happy.” I swallowed.
“They’re not going to be happy if they don’t have the skills to build their own lives,” Tess said. “They need to be able to build their own empires. They were bored and constrained at school. You can help them reach their full potential.”
“They’re just little girls.”
“I just don’t see why you don’t care about them,” she said, frustrated.
“Don’t you fucking dare,” I said, slamming my fist on the desk. “I care about them. They’re my sisters. I know what’s best for them. Not you. You’re not their mom. I don’t know why you’re giving me a hard time. Nothing I ever do with them is good enough for you.”
“Excuse me for having high standards,” she said sharply, “and for not wanting Annie and Enola to end up in some dead-end assistant job.”
I paused. “What’s wrong with being an assistant?”
“Never mind,” Tess said, mouth a thin line.
“I thought you liked being my assistant.”
“I said never mind.” She jumped up out of her chair. “I have to go. I have work to catch up on.”
Tess didn’t like being my assistant? Did she not like me? I thought we had, well, something.
You knew that was a bad idea to begin with, I reminded myself as I scrolled through emails, not really reading any of them.
Tess is literally just doing her job. She wasn’t being nice to you because she liked you. She was being nice to you because you pay her.
Tess must have mentioned something in the car to the girls because the entire ride back to the condo, they bugged me about baking.
“Why can’t we bake all day?” Annie begged. “I love baking.”
“You need some additional skills,” Tess told them.
“No, we don’t,” Annie said, dramatically flopping back in her seat.
A headache set behind my eyes. Normally, I used car rides home to de-stress from the day. Now they just amped up the pressure.
“Are you going to teach us about finance?” Enola asked me.
I was annoyed that Tess had gone behind my back to talk to my sisters.
“I’ll see.”
“You don’t think we can do it?”
“Is that what Tess said?” I asked her sharply.
Enola refused to answer and glowered at me.
What the hell is Tess’s problem?
All three of them were angry at me when the car pulled up in front of the tower.
I wanted to escape and go for a swim or a run, especially when we walked into the tower lobby and were confronted with ear-piercing shrieking.
“This isn’t a day care,” Belle was saying to Greg, who had two wailing toddlers at his feet.
“I’m a resident. I’m allowed to use the lobby, Belle.”
“You’re disturbing the other residents,” she argued.
“No, they’re not!” Vera said. She and Hyacinth waved at me and toasted drinks that a black-clad server was handing out. “We love seeing hot guys caring for children. We’re thinking about selling tickets.”
“Or at least having this be an annual stop for our photography club,” another woman added.
Belle pursed her mouth.
“I’m trying to sell units in this building, and no one is going to buy one that is infested with screaming ill-behaved children.”
As designed, I thought.
“My sisters just came out of a very traumatic situation,” Greg argued. “I’m trying to help them adjust.”
“You’re trying to scare off buyers,” Belle argued. “Which is against the bylaws.”
I headed past them.
The girls were still mad at me for different reasons, and they ran to their rooms and slammed the doors when we arrived at the condo.
“Are you cooking anything?” I asked Tess.
She blinked at me.
“Am I what?”
Jesus.
“The kids are hungry.”
“I’m your fake girlfriend, not your fake wife. Cook your own shit.”
And with that, her door slammed too.
27
Tess
I cracked eggs into the bowl and yawned. I had resisted the urge to order late-night takeout last night. I should have just ordered food. A snack would have helped me sleep. As it was, I had tossed and turned all night.
I need to find a new job. Beck was bringing up bad memories.
Just when I thought I had gotten over my mother just handing my stepfather the life insurance, the house, and the small inheritance my grandparents had left me, the sour feeling of betrayal would come back.
She had given it all to my stepfather in her will. When I had asked her about it on her sickbed, she had stroked my face and told me it was going to be fine because he had promised to be my dad forever. That had lasted up until the last grief casserole had been dropped off. Then my stepfather had made it very clear that what was mine was no longer mine but his, and I could go jump in a lake.
I beat the eggs in anger until they were frothy. I poured them into the frying pan with the bacon, listening to the satisfying sizzle.
I probably shouldn’t have been so forward with Beck. Annie and Enola were his sisters after all, but I wanted them to have a good life. My life was a disaster. I was living in my boss’s house and counting down the days until my next firing, upon which I would take the first in a long line of temp jobs until I gave up the ghost and holed myself up in an apartment with my stacks of baking supplies, never to be seen again.
I checked the hash browns I had in the oven as Beck came into the kitchen to grab his tea.
“You can have some breakfast,” I said begrudgingly.
“I have to go into the office early,” he replied curtly.
So I guess we have reached the “rough patch” in our fake relationship.
“Oh. I guess I’ll see you there.”
“No,” he replied, fixing me with a flat gray stare.
I bristled. Was he firing me?
“I need you to stay home with the girls. You can work remotely.”
“Is this a forever thing?” I asked, annoyed I wasn’t going to see Maeve. I needed some girl gossip time.
“We need to make some changes.” My boss sipped his tea. “Annie and Enola can’t keep running around the office. I need to discuss with my brothers the best course of action. Since school isn’t working out for any of them, we’re going to have to pivot. Maybe we’ll have to look at boarding school.”
“Great, because that’s a wonderful idea and really takes into consideration what I said yesterday,” I said, practically slamming a container of orange juice on the counter.
Beck didn’t acknowledge my annoyance. He didn’t even say goodbye; he just left.
I scraped the hash browns into a serving bowl and checked the bacon.
“Where’s Beck?” Enola asked, sliding into her chair.
“Went to work.”
“Without us?”
“We’re going to stay here.”
“But I want to go work at the café!” Annie said.
“Maybe you could read a book or make art or come up with a different fun project to do.”
The girls were sullen during breakfast, and they ran to their rooms after helping me clean up.
Tess: I feel like I was not this obnoxious when I was their age.
Maeve: They’re tween girls. Compared to other ones, they’re pretty great.
Holly: I’m going to miss my little helpers today!
Maeve: When you said you were staying home, I thought you meant you and Beck.
Holly: He seriously hasn’t made any moves on you?
Tess: You mean besides the move of being a know-it-all asshole? Nope.
Holly: The man is wound super tight. It has to be killing him to have you right across the hall!
Tess: I don’t think we’re like that.
Maeve: I thought he was staring at your tits?
Tess: I don’t like guys who talk down to you and don’t take any responsibility.
Tess: My first impressions of him were in fact correct. He’s entitled and probably has some sort of mental disorder.
Maeve: It’s that cult upbringing.
Holly: He’s dangerous and unstable.
Maeve: Probably makes him good in bed.
Tess: Yes, because sex makes a volatile situation way better.
Maeve: It makes it more pleasurable.
Maeve: You need to get something out of this shit show.
Maeve: You know he’s going to fire you as soon as he adopts and the grandmother is out of the picture.
Holly: Yeah, you need to have the full billionaire experience.
Tess: Don’t worry. I plan to!
Holly: OMG! Go girl! I put condoms in your bag. *raised hands emoji*
Tess: No, not like that! No sex!
Maeve: You don’t want to use that big thing he has in his pants?
Tess: I’m using the other big thing!
I slapped the heavy black credit card Beck had given me onto the side table next to my fainting couch and opened my laptop, propping it up on my chest as I reclined on my couch.
If a firing was incoming in the next few weeks, then I was making the most of this. Screw Beck. Screw jobs. He wanted the girls to bake? Fine. I just ordered a whole set of specialty shaped princess baking pans and unicorn sprinkles. He just wants me to be the assistant? Well, this assistant needs enough tapas to feed forty people delivered to her door, complete with alcohol.
“And you know what?” I said, walking to answer the front door when the doorbell buzzed. “This is totally fine. Actually, I’m glad Beck was a dick today because it is raining outside, and who wants be in the rain when you could be at home and have food magically appear at your door?”
“You having a party?” the deliveryman asked, handing me the four huge bags of food and two bottles of wine.
“Yes,” I lied. “Yes, there are three—no, ten people here,” I said to his disbelieving look. “Ten of us will be eating all of this food.”
I shut the door in his face. “Yeesh, judge much? A girl can’t use her boss’s credit card to stuff herself like a starving person about to be dumped into the wilderness?”
Enola and Annie were blaring music when I knocked on Enola’s door. They didn’t want any food when I asked, and I decided to just leave them alone.
“It’s on the counter,” I said loudly through the door.
I took my food and lay back on my fainting couch, sipping my drink and eating tapas while I online shopped. The girls did need toys, especially if Beck was going to have us all cooped up in his condo.
I poured myself more wine and fished a piece of calamari out of the little paper take-out container.
“Umm, yes,” I said, toasting the laptop and spilling a little wine on myself. “They absolutely need this vintage nineties Polly Pocket.”
I loved Polly Pocket. I’d had a whole collection that my stepsister had co-opted when she and my stepdad moved in. My mom had been all like, “You need to share!” and that had turned into my stepsister taking my stuff. She also took my Littlest Pet Shop toy collection, which the girls also totally needed. I bought the hamsters, the one with the dogs, the gray cat with the pink carrier, the rabbit in its little basket, and also the pony because ponies were rad.
I poured myself another glass of wine and ate the last of the fried eggplant, then I navigated to the American Girl doll website.
“What?” I slurred, gesturing wildly with a forkful of ceviche. “What do you mean I can’t buy the full-accessory collection for Samantha! She needs her winter outfit! She needs her cute 1900s desk. By god, she needs her steamer trunk!”
I sprawled dramatically on my fainting couch.
“Why does American Girl not understand? Those of us who have lusted after these toys as children finally have the money or, in my case, finally have a boss with the money to buy them.”
I poured out the last few tablespoons of wine, finished it off, and held up the empty bottle blearily. Outside, it was almost dark, and the rain pattered against the window. I stared up at the sparkling chandelier in my bedroom.
“Maybe I went a little overboard on the light fixtures.” I closed my eyes, and I felt around on the ground for more food. But there was nothing but empty containers.
“Shit,” I muttered. “I should have ordered dessert. I think there’s some leftover Milky Way cupcakes.”
I didn’t move, though I did want cupcakes.
“You need chocolate. And wine. Beck has a wine fridge,” I reminded myself. More wine would definitely be needed with my cupcakes.
I dragged myself into the hallway. Loud music came from Enola’s room when I passed.
They had eaten the food I had left for them. I made a mental note to throw away the trash after I had had dessert, because you had to have dessert before you cleaned. I rummaged around in the wine fridge.
“Red or white,” I mumbled, trying to focus on the bottles. “Probably red.”
I fumbled for a corkscrew and opened it then took a swig.
“Have you lost your mind?”
“Daddy’s home!” I called, then snort laughed and took another slug of wine.
“Are you drinking a five-thousand-dollar bottle of wine like you’re a drunken sailor?” Beck asked sharply.
I looked at the bottle of very expensive wine.
“Oh shit!” I said and promptly dropped the bottle on the floor.
Crap, crap! I was too drunk for this.
“I think all the food’s gone,” I told Beck. “But I will totally order you some more after your hard day at work of firing people.”
His brow furrowed. He set his bag down on the counter then immediately snatched it back up when he noticed the stacks of empty take-out containers.
“S’not mine. My take-out containers are piled in my room.” I pointed in the general direction of my bedroom.
“I was doing a little online shopping,” I stage-whispered.
“Yes, I heard,” he said. “The credit card company called me and thought someone had stolen the card and was using it to launder money, seeing as how several thousand dollars’ worth of nineties nostalgia had been purchased from eBay.”
I took a bite of my cupcake. “Vintage Polly Pockets are surprisingly expensive. You know,” I added, “you look really hot in a suit. Did anyone tell you that?”
Drunk me had basically no filter. That was why I preferred to drink alone.
Beck clenched his jaw. “That is not professional behavior,” he said. “Though from you, that’s to be expected, I suppose.”
“I aim to fail to meet your low expectations,” I retorted.
“Annie? Enola?” Beck called.
“Good luck trying to get them out of their cave. They haven’t spoken to me all day,” I said. “I think they’re mad.” I leaned against the counter and finished my cupcake. Then I almost choked on it as Beck’s sisters walked into the kitchen.
Enola came around the counter to bang me on the back.
“Wine, wine!” I gasped.
She pulled a bottle at random out of the wine fridge. Beck didn’t say anything because he was still in shock at the fact that Enola and Annie had cut off all their hair.
“Did you allow this?” Beck spat, finally turning on me. “You were supposed to be supervising them, and you let them chop off all their hair. You didn’t even ask me.”
“Now wait a dang minute!” I said, waving the bottle at him. “It’s their hair; if they want to chop it off, that’s fine.”
“So you authorized this? You told them it was okay?” he yelled at me.
“No,” I said loudly. “I haven’t seen them all day.”
“So you were neglecting them.”
“No!” I screamed. “You are neglecting them. You’re so concerned with money and your company and being the big bad boss that you are not spending enough time with them!”
“Clearly I need to since you’re a bad influence!” he shouted at me from across the counter.
“Of course I’m a bad influence,” I raged. “I make terrible decisions. I have a terrible job. I have a terrible boss. I stress eat, and I impulsively shop, and then when I max out my credit cards, I impulsively bake to forget about how shitty and stressful my life is, and you know what? Aside from my own terrible decisions, you are the person that makes my life hell!”
“Fine,” Beck said, breathing hard. “You hate it so much with me, then you can leave. Consider yourself fired.”
28
Beck
My sisters started yelling at me right after Tess had grabbed her purse and headed out the front door, throwing her phone at me as a last parting shot.
“Why did you send her away?”
“What’s going to happen with Grandma?”
“Are we going to have to live with her?”
“I don’t want to eat coasters for dinner!”
“I’m hungry!”
