The Ingredients of You and Me Read online

  The tears that I had hoped wouldn’t come plopped on my hands. “That’s a valid point, and that was the first thing I considered. You know I’ve been taking a few weekends off here and there since the summer. And it’s helped. I thought about not selling and just taking a step back instead, turning over the reins just enough that I could seek out other avenues—like going back to teaching classes or even just trying my hand at baking for restaurants part-time—while still being involved with the bakery. But in the end, I needed a solid break. You know I’m not a half-in kind of person. It’s all or nothing for me. And if I leaned on you guys more, I didn’t want you to feel the exhaustion that I’ve been feeling. Or worse, for D and V to suffer. This is about keeping D and V the best possible bakery that I can while maintaining my own mental health and yours. All of you guys are the best and will do a fantastic job taking over when I’m gone.”

  My lead baker held on to one line from my speech. “You wanted to teach again? I thought you hated it?”

  I laughed. “I’m sure it seemed that way. Believe me, working on opening the business and getting it off the ground, plus teaching classes on the side on the perfect piecrust, was not ideal, but I needed the cash while I was starting D and V. But remember a couple months back when that bridal party came in wanting to learn how to make a crème brûlée? It sparked something. I forgot just how much I loved instructing. I didn’t really consider it as an option because I was always here. If they hadn’t asked…”

  “None of this would have happened.”

  I shook my head. “No, I think it still would have. This wasn’t just a spur-of-the-moment decision. I’ve been feeling the changes coming on for a while. It’s sort of been the perfect storm of reasons all leading toward this moment.”

  “You’ll have more time with your new man.”

  I smiled. “No comment.”

  I hadn’t explicitly told them that I was seeing someone, but when asked why I was so cheery, I didn’t deny it, especially when I’d take time off. We’d had some tense moments where my being busy with D&V caused some waves. But I was sure my newly established free time would remove any barriers from us moving forward in our burgeoning relationship. He didn’t know about the sale yet, but I was eager to tell him and see where things led.

  My team was quiet for a moment, glancing worriedly at each other before one of them finally broke the silence with the question that I knew would be coming next.

  “What about us?”

  I smiled, which seemed to put them slightly at ease. “You’re all remaining on, with raises—if you want to, of course. The Confectionary has big plans for this place. Contractually, everything operationally stays as-is, which, of course, includes all of you.”

  “Except the face of D and V will be gone,” my lead baker said, wiping away her own tears.

  Yes, I had become the face of D&V. And now I couldn’t wait to get me back.

  Two Months Later

  You’ve made these nine hundred times, and yet here you are forgetting ingredients, measurements, and— Shit, I forgot to wash out the mixing bowl.”

  It wasn’t just that my KitchenAid mixer held a suspect-looking substance, but the same goop was dripping from the bottom of my white cabinet. When I’d plugged the mixer in, I didn’t realize I’d left the switch in the on position. Needless to say, everything went flying up and out of the bowl.

  Now chocolate, or something formerly resembling chocolate, was oozing down the side of the cabinet, plopping onto the counter and right onto the paper where I was desperately trying to write down the recipe I’d been creating.

  It had been like this all morning; nothing was going right. First, I’d tried to open a bag of chocolate chips with one hand. They skyrocketed out of the top with such force, I was surprised any of them landed in the double boiler. I’d be finding those in all corners of my apartment for the next month.

  Then, I forgot to turn on the oven. I didn’t have any pie weights for the pie crust I had attempted earlier, not that it looked much like a crust, so I tried to use cans and ended up boiling a can of corn.

  My poor oven would never be the same.

  I needed to try something else, something foolproof that I knew I would knock out of the park.

  “These brownies are one of the easiest things I make and yet, here I am.” Frustrated, I paced the small kitchen. Maybe some movement would help the synapses fire on all cylinders. Hell, I’d be happy with just one cylinder working at this point. I shook out my arms, rolled out my neck.

  The joys of being unemployed.

  Logically, I knew I could do this. Rote memory wasn’t supposed to fail.

  It didn’t seem to matter, though, because for months my baking skills had been floundering. Even before I sold my bakery, I noticed a distinct shift in prowess. Perhaps I should have stuck to something simple right out of the gate. Like truffles, those were easy as pie. Which was ironic because I was trying to make what was once known as my signature.

  “Maybe if I take a nap, I’ll dream of the answer,” I reasoned, but deep down, I knew from the other three naps I’d taken the past week that a nap wouldn’t yield anything but a headache and a crick in my neck.

  I still took the nap.

  When I woke up an hour later, I didn’t feel any better, as predicted, so I decided to make a cappuccino to wake myself up. After I poured the ingredients into my fancy cappuccino machine—at least I could still make coffee—I watched the slow drip of the espresso plop into the mug. It was one that my old roommate Charlotte left when she moved out. It had a Temple University owl logo on it, which at one point had two fancy gold gems for eyes. Those were long gone, just like Charlotte.

  She had moved out, moved on, I liked to add. Headed to a little touristy town called Hope Lake, about two hours away from our apartment in Brooklyn in the middle of a currently snowy Pennsylvania valley.

  She was born in Hope Lake, living there until third grade or so. She only moved to the city around her tenth birthday. That’s when we met, and as dorky as it sounds, we’d been best friends and inseparable ever since.

  In the time since she’d left, we set aside Tuesdays as our day to catch up—spending an hour gossiping about her small town, her adorkable boyfriend, Henry, and the group of her childhood friends that I grew to love when I visited.

  But two months had passed since I officially sold Delicious & Vicious, and while Charlotte and I exchanged texts here and there, we still hadn’t spoken. I kept finding reasons why I couldn’t talk—I needed to run an errand or check out a new baking supply store—to actively avoid bringing up my lack of plans or direction. These last two months had been the longest, and potentially the most boring, time of my entire life. Which was saying something because I took an entire semester of linear algebra back in college.

  Sitting in the chair in my small office space off the living room, I spun around, arms falling to my sides and eyes trained on the ceiling, until I heard my cell phone buzz, skittering across the desk beside me. Siri announced Charlotte, and I debated for a moment whether or not to ignore it again. Letting voicemail pick up had been the answer for the past few weeks, so I figured I might as well let it be the thing to do today. After the phone stopped buzzing, I pushed the voicemail notification to hear what Charlotte had to say.

  Her normally cheery voice was nowhere to be found. Instead, she sounded disgruntled. Rightfully so. “Listen, you’re screening. Don’t deny it. You know that I know that you’re screening. I get that you’re in a funk and weird headspace right now, but it’s been like a hundred thousand hours since we last talked, and this is bull. I need to know that you’re okay or I’m going to drive into the city, and I still only have a permit so I’m not sure that’s allowed. That’s probably jail time or something if I get caught. Call me back or I’m going to keep calling—”

  It ended because I assumed she was calling again. But there wasn’t another call. Just a ding ding that signaled I had a text message. Then a swoosh sound
signaling an email. Charlotte was being persistently annoying, but I knew it came from a place of love.

  “Okay, okay,” I said to the empty apartment with a smile. I pushed her name to call her back. It barely rang once before she picked up.

  “This is Charlotte Bishop, how can I help you?” she said with a long, exhausted sigh.

  “Hey.”

  “Hey, yourself,” she said, followed by a long solid minute of silence.

  Charlotte might have been persistently annoying, but one thing that didn’t change was her ability to hold a grudge. She wasn’t going to make it easy, but I knew that. Hence, the reason I’d been avoiding the conversation in the first place. When you had a friend who knew all of your faults, your secrets, and your fears, it was hard to admit that you were scared, worried, and lonely without them.

  “I’m sorry I’ve been a shitty friend and haven’t called you back.”

  She sighed again.

  “It’s been a really rough couple of weeks,” I added.

  “And you didn’t think I would want to help you with that? What do best friends do, Parker?”

  “I know, I know, honestly I do.”

  There was silence for a bit and I knew that meant Charlotte was contemplating forgiving me for avoiding her and putting back on her best-friend cape.

  She sighed. “Talk to me. What is going on? It’s been a while.”

  I thought about her question for a moment and the problem was I didn’t really have an answer for her. “I thought all this free time would be amazing, and yet… I don’t know. I’ve gotten into my own head so deep that crawling out seems impossible. Have you ever been there? So twisted up over what’s next that you’re literally incapable of doing what’s next, and as a result, ignoring people in your life? I’m a shitty friend.”

  She grunted. “Stop saying that. You’re not a shitty friend. You’re going through a life transition and I get that. I just wish you’d let me help you sort it out. You don’t have to do anything alone—you know that, right?”

  What I wanted to say was but you’re not here, but that would be selfish. She was the happiest I’d seen her in ages. I wasn’t about to fill her in and have her rush to New York because I couldn’t get my shit together.

  I shifted in my seat, scratching a doodle into the scrap pad on my desk. The word I kept tracing read bored.

  “I don’t know how anyone can help. I’m just so stuck. Uninspired and worried that I won’t ever get a burst of creativity again. And the problem is I don’t even know what I want to do next. How am I supposed to find a new path if I can’t see the forest through the trees?”

  “Parker Eulalia Adams, you listen to me. You’ll never be too far into the hole to get out because you’ve got people to throw you the world’s longest rope.”

  “While I appreciate the sentiment—” I began, but Charlotte was on a roll. It’s what I knew would happen after avoiding her for weeks.

  “Maybe you’re a little lost because you’re forcing yourself to be creative. You’re not letting it happen organically. You think Da Vinci beat himself up if he had a day or two where he wasn’t feeling the Mona Lisa?”

  I laughed. “Number one, I can’t believe you used Da Vinci as your example for me, and number two, ‘feeling the Mona Lisa’?”

  “Shut up, I’m tired. All I’m saying is that I get that you’re not used to relaxing or having free time, but try and enjoy it! Buy a latte, sit in the park and read the paper. Or visit a museum, take a pottery class. You can literally do whatever you want!”

  I threw the pencil across the small room. “I’m trying!”

  She laughed. “You need a creative outlet. Something that sparks that fire in you. Something that inspires you to say holy shit and run back to the kitchen to make a masterpiece. Going back and doing what you love is the answer.”

  I snorted. “Baking is what I love; I can’t seem to do it anymore. It’s like I’m you now. I’m broken in the kitchen.”

  Charlotte switched the call from audio to FaceTime and I was greeted by her lovely, freckled, and frowning face. Her reddish hair was pulled into Princess Leia–style buns and she had a daisy sticking out of the top of one of them.

  “I resent that remark.” She laughed, and I forgot how much I missed having her around all the time. “You’ll never be as bad as me in the kitchen,” she continued. “My lack of skills is a once-in-a-lifetime gift and I’m not sharing it.

  “Look at you, you’re covered in flour. And oh, Parker, is that egg on your face? I can tell that you’re working,” she said with a pinched expression. She was trying not to judge my wayward appearance. Rolling my shoulders back, I wiped at the smudge of flour that I knew was across my cheek. “I’m digging the bandana, by the way, very farmer friendly.”

  I gave her the finger and touched my red bandana, which was holding back my long blond hair. “I ran out of hair ties. This worked, and I promise I didn’t look quite so shabby pre–baking disaster.”

  “Enough about how gorgeous you still look even with egg, literally, on your face. What have you baked that failed? I don’t believe it. I once saw you create a trifle out of leftovers and people offered to buy it.”

  The comment gave me a little pick-me-up. My ego needed that bit of a nudge. Actually, my ego needed a swift kick in the ass, but I wasn’t complaining about any amount of boost. Pushing off of the chair, I walked into the kitchen, turning the phone toward the trash so she had a bird’s-eye view. In the bag were a dozen supposed-to-be chocolate-coffee cupcakes, a dozen chocolate chip cookies, and a couple cinnamon scones that could have doubled as bricks in a fireplace if I needed them. “See those?”

  “Are you practicing for Henry’s birthday cupcakes?” she asked, trying to lighten my sour mood. “You know we’ll eat anything you bake for him, even if it requires a visit to the dentist afterward.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence, but he can’t eat these. It’s all so bad.” I reached into the trash and took out the scone that was on top. Holding it like a softball, I rapped it on the edge of the counter. It made the most glorious thud.

  “Still want to eat this? I’m not paying your bill from the oral surgeon afterward. You’ll need it.”

  As I turned the phone back toward me, my stomach dipped. Charlotte looked worried. Her gray eyes were missing their usual light and she wasn’t smiling, like she almost always was.

  “Parks, what’s up? Really? This is so unlike you?”

  I shrugged. “The last, I don’t know, dozen things I’ve made have been awful. Like, Charlotte-awful, no offense.”

  She shrugged. “None taken. You’ll remember I once burned water, and I’m not sure any of your failures beats that. The FDNY hasn’t been to the apartment yet, right?”

  I laughed. “Nope.”

  “Good, then there is still hope. Is there something I can do to help? To kick the mojo back into you? What about your idea to start the baking classes? Did you decide against it?”

  Did I?

  I shrugged. “I can’t exactly teach someone how to bake when I seem to be incapable myself.”

  “Valid point. Then what’s next?”

  I shook my head, keeping my eyes trained on the swirls in the floor. “I mean I have no idea. I’m stuck.”

  “When I get overwhelmed, which is often, you know that, I go back to basics. You’ve been doing some wild and crazy recipes for years now. Maybe you need to Betty Crocker it up. Make basic things that even I could swing. Like, I don’t know, pound cake. Is that still a thing?” We both laughed. Even the most pedestrian recipe was out of reach for her. Thank goodness Henry was a great cook, or she would survive only on Pop-Tarts and packaged crackers.

  “I’ve tried almost everything, Char, and I still can’t bake anything worth eating,” I answered with honesty.

  “Okay” was all she said. But by the look on her face I could tell she was trying not to look concerned. Crap, now I was bringing her down.

  “Speaking of Henry’s b
irthday,” I said, trying to change the subject, “any plans? Anything romantic and exciting?”

  Her face lit up. “Nothing crazy, just dinner. Maybe…” she started, chewing on her pencil. “You can come? I mean, you don’t have much going on.”

  I threw my head back, laughing. “Wow, harsh much?”

  “Am I wrong?” she deadpanned.

  “No, but you’re right, and subtlety has never been your strong suit.”

  She waved at the stack of yellow order slips beside her workstation and then at the calendar that hung on the wall. It was color coded and positively filled with scribbles. “As you can see, I don’t have much time for subtle these days.”

  “That’s why I love you.” I looked around the office she was in. “Busy tonight?”

  She wiped her forehead dramatically. “So busy, but it’s good. I’m still gathering all the paperwork that I need to get the loan, but Lucille says that everything is looking good and I should be the proud owner of Late Bloomers by summer.”

  Seeing her face light up at the mention of owning her own floral shop lit me up inside. Charlotte had been so lost for so long and she had finally found true happiness. If I didn’t love her so much, I’d be rolling in jealousy. We couldn’t be in more opposite positions.

  “C, that’s amazing. I’m so proud of you. Here you are in the process of getting your own business—your dream business—and I just sold mine.”

  Just as easily as her face lit up, all that happiness evaporated at my words. “Parks, I’m sorry, that was so insensitive of me. I—”

  I cut her off with a wave of my hand. “Stop it. You have every right to be over the moon about buying Late Bloomers. And I know selling D and V was the right decision. I was beginning to feel morally bankrupt with all the divorce and cheating cakes. I still have no idea how they’re going to franchise it, but—”

  “It isn’t your problem now, sister!” she teased, and she was right. It wasn’t my problem.