“Awww, you miss Liz, don’t you? I know what will cheer you up. I’m going to call Drew and have him come up and help you frost all those cookies for the baby shower order tomorrow. He took the night off of work tonight, but we don’t have any plans. Did I tell you his mom’s been making these amazeball cookies for his sick uncle and the guy just raves about them and keeps asking for more? I’ll have Drew bring some up so you can try them. Maybe they’ll spark a little creative genius in you. You can put us to work, kick back, relax, and enjoy someone else’s cookies for once,” Jenny rambles as she pulls out her cell phone and starts dialing. “Don’t forget you have that interview with ‘The Best of Baking’ magazine so we can go over some things for that while we’re at it.”
Even though I'm now privy to more of Jenny and Drew’s sex life than I ever wanted to be and the sound of her voice droning on is starting to give me a headache, I have to admit that hiring her to help out with all my back office stuff was a stroke of brilliance. She had secured me my own domain name instead of a website that included the words “freesite4everyone” in the address, and once I forbid Drew from sneaking in thumbnail pictures of his penis in the “about me” section, it actually looked very professional. Customers can place orders online and even print out coupons thanks to Jenny. She’s organized my schedule so I can work around Gavin’s three days of preschool a week and see Carter before he leaves for work every day, and she’s managed to get me an in-studio interview with the local news station and three write-ups in local baking magazines; the first of which is scheduled for tomorrow.
In just a few days, my best friend will be home from her honeymoon, and I’ll be able to get her advice about Carter. I am so worried about saying or doing something to scare him away that I might have taken it to the extreme. When he had asked me this morning if I wanted more cream for my coffee I replied, “Speaking of cream. Why do women wear cream to their wedding? Weddings are stupid. Married people are stupid. I think I broke my thumb.”
No, I don’t know why the fuck I told him I thought I broke my thumb. I had panicked. And now I’m pretty sure he thinks my maybe-broken-thumb is due to the late night pornography habit I just can’t quit and it’s either from A) pressing the rewind and or pause buttons too quickly or B) pressing MY buttons too quickly. Either option is not something I care for him to be wondering about me every time he looks in my general direction.
I spend the rest of the afternoon trying to think of ways to convince Carter I'm not going to pressure him into marriage while at the same time making sure I don’t look like I need thirty days in a Betty Ford Triple X Clinic. I’ve been trying to come up with new ideas for things I can cover in chocolate for the shop. The chocolate covered potato chips and crushed pretzels mixed together had been a huge hit and are one of the main attractions lately. I want something fun and new to talk about in the magazine interview the next morning, so I put all thoughts of doom aside and concentrate on what I do best. For once, I'm not dreading a visit from Drew. With his appetite, I'm sure we could come up with something spectacular.
~
“These snozzberries taste like SNOZZBERRIES!” I yell.
In the far recesses of my mind, I realize I was licking a scratch-n-sniff chocolate-covered strawberry sticker that Jenny had affixed to my shirt, but I don’t care.
It smells like it tasty smells. Like snozzberries in a mountain of sticker glue. Why don’t more people eat glue? It’s delicious. Snozzberries should be our national fruit.
“I should cover these stickers in chocolate and sell them,” I mumble as I continue swiping my tongue along the bottom hem of my shirt that I hold up by my mouth.
Drew laughs and I stop the manic sticker-licking to glance up at him. I blink really hard and try to get him to come into focus but it's not working. It's like I'm looking at him through a pair of binoculars backward. He's really small and really, really far away. I can feel my head swaying from side to side and I keep making my eyes open really wide in an effort to see more clearly. It's not working. Take your hand and make a fist then hold it up to one eye. Open your hand just enough to let some light in and that’s the view I have right now.
Maybe that’s what the problem is. There’s someone walking around next to me holding their fists in front of my eyes.
I start flailing my arms all around my head to smack the hidden fists away until I start running into things and knocking shit off of the counters. I’m seventy-four percent positive the noise I make while doing this scares those assholes with their sneaky fists away.
“This chocolate is burning my hand! HOLY FUCK IT’S BURNING! WHY IS IT BURNING?!”
If I squint I can kind of see that Drew is holding his hand out from his body and it was dripping with hot, melted chocolate.
“Your hand looks delicious,” I tell him as I absently bring my shirt back up to my mouth and began chewing on it.
“This was the best idea EVER,” Jenny states as she helps Drew hold his chocolate hand over the sink so it won’t drip on the floor. “Everyone will love chocolate-covered Drew. Make sure you tell them during the interview that this was my idea. I want street cred for it.”
I feel my head bobbing up and down in agreement and watch the room go in and out of focus and wonder why the walls are moving closer to me all of a sudden. I look down and my feet aren’t moving. I look back up and scream because the wall is right against my nose.
HOW THE FUCK DID THE WALL GET ON MY NOSE?!