I stare at her in amazement. “What the fuck? Are you a witch? How could you guess that?”
“I was right?” she exclaims excitedly. “Yes! I win. Pay up, mothef—oh shit, I didn’t bet with anyone, did I?”
Tyus and Trey shake their heads.
Sloane slams her palm down on the table in disgust. “First I don’t get to enter the baby pool and now this. You guys suck.”
Tyus reaches for an Oreo. I slowly pull them out of range.
He glares at me. “It’s gonna be like that, huh?”
“You talked shit, you can eat shit. You definitely don’t get to eat my delicious cookies.”
“Why do you gotta be a prick?”
“I don’t know,” I sigh, pocketing my napkin now half-full of contraband. I swap it out for one dinged up, gold coin. “I guess that’s just the cowboy in me.”
The group groans angrily as one while I head for the jukebox. I deposit my coin, flick the round, black buttons that will call up Tim McGraw, and put my anthem into motion.
Cowboy In Me.
It’s not a happy song. It’s not fun like most of my favorites, but there’s something in it that tugs at me. The same tug that I feel when I look at Trey and Sloane. A hollow feeling in my gut. A mild ache that sits painfully sweet on my tongue like white chocolate and pink frosting.
CHAPTER SIX
LILLY
November 10th
Mad Batter Bakery
Los Angeles, CA
The Mad Batter used to be called Alexander’s. It was dark back then. Dated. The owners hadn’t updated it since nineteen seventy-two and it showed. The product was what mattered, though. No one came for the décor. They came for the goodies. For the sugar and the bread. The basics that never changed because they didn’t need to. They were good. Had been for years.
When we took it over we had to change the name. That was part of the deal Owen and Claire cut us when they sold us the place. They brought the asking price into our range, but we had to rename it. We couldn’t live off their legacy, and that was fine with us. We wanted to make our own mark, use our own recipes, and take chances in ways they never would have let us under the Alexander name. We went organic on a lot of our ingredients and cut out most of the fat. Sweets with half the sin, that’s our moto, and it’s paid off. So has the total overhaul in the look of the place. We’re playing to a younger crowd than the Alexanders ever bothered with and twenty somethings in Los Angeles don’t want to shop for trans fats in their grandma’s basement. The biggest and smartest change we made was simply color. Two small, purple tables sit by the windows, mirroring a second set outside basking in the sunshine. Green paint coats the walls and counters, the same shade as our logo, and every time I see it I remember the night we picked it. I remember thirty shades of green slashed haphazardly on the wall behind the register, the acrid scent thick in the air. They ranged from a deep grass green all the way up to a yellowish hue that looked like the inside of a poop filled diaper. Not the kind of color you want in a bakery. Or anywhere.
Rona and I argued for hours over which one to pick. We narrowed it down to three, then broadened it to five, before finally bringing it down to two, but that’s the problem with a partnership; there’s no majority. We were at a stalemate. Luckily we had Michael. We called him at three in the morning in the thick of our debate and somehow talked him into coming down to the store to help us decide. He was groggy and disheveled, but he stood between the two of us with an arm over each of our shoulders and made the final decision.
Diaper shit green.
Rona immediately dragged her paintbrush down his shirt in retaliation for messing with us. The color was a vibrant lime green.
“That one,” Michael said immediately, looking down at his ruined shirt. “That’s the color.”
“Be serious. This is important!” I exclaimed irritably.
Late nights did not then, and do not now, agree with me. I get grumpy. Well, I guess I get grumpier.
“I am serious. This is the color. What’s it called?”
I spun the sample can around amid the chaos on the counter. “Lucky Lime.”
“That’s it. It’s perfect.”
Rona and I stood back to admire his shirt.
“That wasn’t one of the finalists,” I complained, though I didn’t know why. The more I looked at it away from the other colors, the more I liked it.
“But it is bright,” Rona argued. “And we wanted bright.”
“That’s true.”
Michael sighed. “Are you ladies going to make a decision or are you going to stand there staring at my chest all night?”
Rona shushed him. “You’re a wall. Walls don’t talk.”
“This wall does and it says it’s got a girlfriend leaving for London in four hours so it’d like to go home to bed.”
“I think this is it,” I told Rona quietly.
She smiled. “I think you’re right.”
“You mean I’m right,” Michael reminded us.