Testing Recipes for Disaster (Emberwood #2)

Chapter 20- Jeremy

I wanted to believe that Lauren was genuinely busy when I went over there to bake. It had been more than three weeks, and I’d seen her all of twice at her house. The progress I was making was great, but I felt more like a tenant than a friend using her space. She’d still been showing up to happy hour, but she always seemed to need to leave after about thirty minutes. Just long enough that I couldn’t quite call her on avoiding me. Every single interaction was more of almost ordinary, and then taking two steps back into awkward and stilted. I’d hoped after some time, things would feel normal again, but I knew, at least on my end, I still thought about what she tasted like when I kissed her. I was wrecked.

I’d finally gotten together all the samples for Sam to try and was headed to Books and Broomsticks to do the tasting there since I didn’t exactly have a shop front. I still had everything plated on long white ceramic dishes, so it looked somewhat professional. This whole experience was showing me how much work I needed to do if I wanted to do this for a living, even part-time. Every time I turned around, there was something else I needed.

I had to admit that my ears perked up when Sam said Jesse was leaving the cake up to her so we could do the tasting around her schedule. I wasn’t planning to ask about Lauren to see if she’d said anything about me, but that plan got a little murkier when it was only Sam. Not only because she was a psychic and asked really specific questions, but she was easy to overshare with.

If Lauren didn’t tell her, you sure as fuck can’t tell her.

I’d have to feel her out once I was there.

I parked, carefully got the cooler out of the back seat, and made my way into the shop. I had only been there a couple of times, the last being Sam and Jesse’s engagement, but it was kind of a cool place to be.

“Be right there!” Sam’s voice called from behind a shelf.

She bounded around the corner, her eyes lit up to see me. Well, more likely my cooler, but it was my cooler.

“Hey, Sam. You ready to try some cake?”

“There has never been a time in my life where the answer to that question was no.”

She smiled and gestured to a table she had cleared. I pulled out the sampling dish and discarded the plastic wrap; thankful everything seemed to be as it should. I’d taken photos before I’d left, to be safe, but I wanted a couple more with the shop as a backdrop. Sam indulged me before we got into it.

“Okay, so, as requested, I’ve got vanilla, chocolate, and lemon, two of each—one with buttercream and the others with either a raspberry, chocolate, or lemon filling. And you didn’t ask for these, but I have a spice cake with a cream cheese filling, because it will be the beginning of fall, and, I don’t know, that sounded fall-ish, and a caramel cake, which is a recipe of my grandma’s.”

Sam’s eyes got wider the longer I talked, and I thought maybe I should write this stuff out for clients so they didn’t feel like they should be taking notes. Another thing to remember on a seemingly endless list. All of it was kind of exciting, though. I felt like I was doing what I wanted, and people were interested.

“Can I eat now?” she asked.

“Yes. Tell me what you think after each one so I can write it down.”

She nodded eagerly and sunk her fork into the vanilla cake with buttercream.

“Stooooooop,” she said after chewing. “Ten out of ten. I think we’re done here.”

“You’re going to make me blush. Continue,” I insisted, making her laugh.

She judged every sample on a scale of ten, but the list of those with top marks was getting a bit long.

“How am I supposed to choose? Can you choose?” she asked.

“I mean, I can , but it’s kind of your wedding.”

“Right, right. Okay. We’re good with the blue buttercream and the edible glitter and the flowers, yes?”

“Absolutely.”

“Can I pick more than one?” She shot me a hopeful smile.

“Sure thing.”

“I want the vanilla and the caramel. Just buttercream in the layers; no fruit.”

“Perfect. I’ll call my grandma and tell her that her cake convinced my first client.”

“Hmmmm. She’ll downplay it, but yes, she’ll be secretly smug about it.”

“That sounds like her, yeah.”

“Shit, I’m sorry. Sometimes, things still pop through without me meaning to listen. I wasn’t trying to read you.”

“It’s okay. I mean, I don’t get it, but it’s all good. If you’ve got any other predictions or warnings, feel free to lay them on me while I clean up.”

I shot her a grin, figuring she’d go back to working. She did not.

“Well, that last one was from your grandpa. He’s passed, right?”

“Er, um, yeah. Seven or eight years ago.”

“He might be even more proud about the cake than your grandma will be. He’s funny. I feel like he would have always had a story.”

Goosebumps broke out over my entire body, and I sat my ass back in the chair.

“Yeah. He was known to spin a tale or two.”

“He says you need to quit pussyfooting around and get yourself the girl. Something about, like, fear being part of life? Growing up?”

“Dreaming.”

“Yes. He’s very happy that you remember. Is that something he said a lot?”

“Yeah. Fear is part of dreaming, and if you’re not scared, you’re not dreaming big enough.” Tears sprang to my eyes, and I let out a slow breath. “And the girl...”

Sam almost snorted.

“Right. We can pretend she’s some random girl if you want. But your grandpa and I want you to know that you’re completely transparent. I’ll close this out now unless you have something else you want to communicate?”

“Oh, um, I miss him. And I hope, ah, I hope he’s not too disappointed.”

My voice broke on the last word. I hated the way it felt in my mouth and how the feeling settled in my chest.

Sam’s voice was softer when she spoke again.

“There’s nothing to be disappointed about. Be better tomorrow than today.”

The tears fell in earnest now. That had been another one of his favorite sayings, and, god, I missed my grandpa. I knew he would have kicked my ass when I started fucking everything up, but I didn’t ever think I’d get to hear his brand of wisdom again.

“Shit, Sam. Is this what you do all day? How is there not a line around the block?”

“Not all day, no. I also make displays for smutty romance books and pretty crystals.”

“A woman of many talents.”

“You want a hug?”

“If you’re offering, yeah.”

She leaned down and squeezed her arms around my neck.

“Thanks for letting me read for you. I don’t always get relatives when I connect with someone’s energy. I’ve never really considered myself a medium. But, it’s special when I do. That was a good reading. I hope it helped.”

“More than you can imagine. I’ll see you at happy hour Friday?”

“Of course. Have a good night, Jer.”

I nodded, repacked my cooler, and made my way back out to my car. My head was floating above my body as I walked, my limbs tingly. I wanted to call my grandma and tell her everything, but I thought maybe I should wait until my brain was connected to the rest of me again. I sat in my parked car for a good twenty minutes before I felt normal enough to drive, but I was looking forward to that conversation when I got home.

THE ENCOUNTER WITH Sam and my grandpa stuck with me. My grandma burst into tears when I relayed the whole thing, and when she calmed down, she told me not to screw up her recipe and have people thinking she couldn’t bake. I assured her I wouldn’t. She asked if I was going to share with my mother, and I decided I would, just not in a casual phone call. Conversations with my mom tended to stay surface-level, and that story was not.

The next week flew by in a mashup of petit fours, macarons, lavender cookies, oil changes, and trying to make Lauren laugh. We had moved painfully slowly along the road back to normal, and I found that I hated it a little bit. The longer we went, the easier it was to think the whole thing was a fever dream, and I didn’t want it to be. The directive to get the girl echoed in my head the moment I woke up each morning, and I was struggling between wanting to latch onto that as a little mantra and tell Lauren maybe I did have an epiphany, and worrying that, in reality, nothing had changed.

Amid imagining being with Laur and what that would feel like, my brain liked to insert scenes of me losing my temper with her or making her look at me the way Kat used to, like I’d snuffed out her joy. I tried to cut those scenes short whenever I could.

I finally caught her at home for the first time that week on the day before the shower. We’d canceled happy hour because all of us were trying to get things ready.

She was near manic when I walked in the door, running through the list of things she needed to do without taking a breath.

“Laur, whoa, whoa, everything is okay. Tell me what you need.”

“I need someone who is an actual adult to come and do these things because I clearly am not, and I am going to ruin everything by not having any forks or something ridiculous.”

She wouldn’t look at me; she was roaming from room to room, fluffing a pillow, sending a text, rinsing a cup, without finishing any tasks. I put my hands on her arms, forcing her to stop.

“Okay. Give me the list, and let’s see where we are.”

We went through every item, and it wasn’t bad. She hadn’t gotten the heaters, but we surmised that could be done tomorrow morning. I had confirmed with the caterers that they were dropping food off at two; linens and teacups were already at the house and unpacked.

“I think we’re okay. Like, everything is 90% done.”

“Maybe that’s the problem. I can’t check anything off this god-forsaken list because none of it is all the way finished.”

I guided her to sit on a bar stool and poured her a glass of wine.

“It’s two in the afternoon,” she declared as she took a sip.

“We’ll pretend it’s five. You know you can call me if you get this stressed, Laur. I can help.”

“Yeah, well. It’s hard for me to call you. Maybe it shouldn’t be, but it is. Thank you for showing up and helping anyway.”

She took another long drink of her wine and cast her gaze anywhere but at me.

“Listen. I need to put the flowers on the petit fours, but then I’m essentially done until tomorrow. Do you want to watch a movie? We can order pizza and do that, and we’ll get up early tomorrow and make sure everything gets done, and it’ll all be fine.”

She eyed me suspiciously.

“Any movie?”

“Any movie.”

“And everything is going to be fine tomorrow?”

“To be honest, I think we could probably serve frozen waffles and juice boxes, and Sam and Jesse wouldn’t care. If you haven’t noticed, they’re sort of in their own little bubble right now.”

“Well. That would have been a suggestion to make earlier , Jer. My life would have been a lot easier.”

“Next time we throw a wedding shower together, I swear, it’s all Pop-Tarts and drinks from a box.”

“Okay, good. You do what you need to do. I’ll order pizza and hop in the shower. Then we’re watching How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days .”

“Never seen it. Can’t wait.”

Her shocked face and crossed eyes made me laugh, but she seemed better, calmer. I filled my piping bags and got to work, feeling further down the road to normal than I had when I walked in, so it was progress.