I Hate, I Bake, and I Don’t Date! by Alina Jacobs

23

Tess

“Idon’t need much,” Beck said as we went to the first shop on my list.

“You need color and pizazz in your life!” I told him, dragging him through the store.

“I think you bring enough of that already,” he said, allowing me to pull him.

Annie darted around the display tables. “Buy him a beanbag chair and this lamp. It looks like a dog.”

Beck was horrified as I jumped onto the oversized beanbag chair.

“We need a whole set of these for the living room.”

“But it’s in tie-dye colors,” Beck complained.

Enola came back over, carting several bright-pink pillows covered in sequins.

“Yes to all of it,” I said from my beanbag throne. “See if you can find your brother a matching duvet cover.”

“Do you like it, Beck?” Enola asked earnestly, holding up the pillow next to the beanbag chair. “Your bedroom will be super cool.”

Beck clamped his mouth shut. “Mm-hmm,” he managed to say. “It’s… fantastic.”

I winked at the girls. “I think we need to up the ante. Your brother needs more pink in his life.”

While he had been in the shower, I had told the girls we were going to play a prank on Beck and see how much glitter-covered unicorn pillows we could throw at him before he cracked.

In reality, I had already ordered Beck’s furniture and picked paint colors. Everything was supposed to be arriving today. Since we were at the store, I was on the lookout for some finishing touches to bring the room together. But mainly I was here to shop for myself. And the best thing? I could pay for delivery and wouldn’t have to lug a bookcase up five flights of stairs then trip and drop it and watch in horror as it bounced back down the stairs.

I also enjoyed watching Beck sweat.

Might also be nice to watch him work up a sweat in another way.Nope. We were having a wholesome shopping day.

I pulled up the Pinterest board that I had pretended was for the master suite.

“We need a big chandelier like this one,” I told the Svensson siblings, showing them a picture of an oversized pink-and-gold chandelier dripping with little Hello Kitty charms. “This will totally bring you joy, Beck!”

“Come look at this.” Enola dragged Beck to a very dramatic white fainting couch with mahogany legs and mother-of-pearl insets.

“I really don’t need one of those,” Beck said, eyes widening slightly.

“You absolutely do,” I said, stretching out on it. “Perfect to find girls!” I looked up at Beck under my eyelashes. He wasn’t even close to cracking. Time to bring out the big guns.

“How about some wallpaper?” I suggested.

“They have the glitter wallpaper!” Annie directed me to a large shelf along one wall of the store and pulled off a roll of wallpaper.

She unrolled a sheet of it. Beck sucked in a breath, and even I winced. The wallpaper was bright pink with shiny glitter that dusted the floor as Annie held it up.

“How do you like it?” Annie asked her brother. “Isn’t it great? It will be perfect for your bedroom.”

My eye twitched. The thought of all that glitter being tracked through the house, clinging to my clothes, infiltrating my laptop, was making me antsy. I looked down. Somehow, my skirt was already covered in glitter.

Surely Beck would crack.

But he took a deep breath, smiled, and said, “You know, I would like to have a pink glitter wall. How many rolls do we need?” He pulled two more off the shelf with a poof of glitter.

God, it was in my eye!

“Are you sure you’re happy with it?” I asked, blinking rapidly.

“Of course,” Beck said, frowning slightly. “I love glitter. Look, here’s a matching blue wallpaper. Maybe Tess can have that in her room. What do you think?”

“I think maybe we could pick one of these other styles,” I suggested, pulling out a floral wallpaper at random and unrolling it. Then I sneezed. It too was covered in glitter.

Beck gave me a bemused look then a knowing smile. “But the girls are decorating my room for me. If they think I need glitter wallpaper, then that’s what I’m buying. Look, girls, they have purple too. Let’s do the whole condo.”

I cracked. “We’re not decorating for your room. We are here shopping for my room, and we are not bringing all that glitter in the house,” I practically yelled.

Beck pressed a hand to his chest. “Tess, I’m offended.”

“I already ordered furniture for you,” I grumbled, grabbing the glitter wallpaper from him and the girls and sticking it back on the shelf. “I was hoping to see you break down in tears at the thought of living in a neon-rainbow-colored room, but the glitter wallpaper is just too much.”

“You have to commit, Tess,” Beck teased, nudging me with his elbow.

“I’m not committed enough to have glitter in all of my possessions for the next ten years.”

Beck grinned, the smile making him look less like my shitty boss and more like a man I would totally want to ask me out on a date.

Except I don’t date so… so there.

“What did you really choose for the master?” Beck asked me as we strolled through the store, following the girls.

“It’s going to be a surprise,” I replied, nudging him with my hip. “It’s going to be like one of those reality TV show reveals.”

Annie grabbed my hand to show me the large vase she had found. “You said you wanted one by the door,” she reminded me.

I inspected the concrete vase.

“Perfect! All right, let’s pack up all our super-duper finds. Then we have to have lunch. I’m starving.”

The girls went off with Beck while I selected a few more of the smaller vases for the master suite.

“You have such a beautiful family,” a woman gushed to me as I was carefully placing them in my basket. “A handsome husband and two beautiful girls. You’re a lucky woman.”

“Uh, yeah,” I said, feeling blindsided.

She seemed to be waiting for me to say something, and she probably didn’t want to hear the whole convoluted saga about surprise grandmothers, cults, and firings.

“I’m definitely lucky.”

“Enjoy the time while your kids are young,” the woman said, clearly gearing up for a whole speech.

“I definitely will,” I said, backing away. “It was great to talk with you.”

Ugh. I felt weird, like an imposter. And I suddenly noticed all the other young families out and about.

I rubbed at my eye and picked out a piece of glitter.

Beck had been very explicit about how he was going to get rid of me as soon as the girls were officially his. I should have been putting distance between myself and him, not playing elaborate jokes and decorating his bedroom. Honestly, what had I been thinking?

After this was over, I was going to be out of a job, and Beck was going to move on. He would probably find some well-heeled young woman who didn’t eat cake for breakfast or have enough student loan debt to drown in. She would have a real job and have gone to a good school, and she would wear a bra under her tank top.

Beck was standing next to the counter, helping his sisters pile up our purchases. He was attentive and doting as they chattered at him. I was a sucker for a man who was kind to kids. Probably stemming from unresolved daddy issues due to my mother’s terrible choices of boyfriends.

Beck looked over his shoulder at me, a warm smile on his face.

My heart did weird flip-flops.

It’s heartburn, I told myself. You should not have eaten that coaster or secretly ordered Chinese last night.

I set the pots on the counter.

“You need some plants in your life,” I told Beck.

“You know how to garden?”

“I’ll have you know I am an expert mushroom farmer.”

“Mushrooms?”

“They are shockingly easy to grow.”

“We have you all rung up,” the saleswoman said and tapped the cash register. The number for the payment appeared on the little screen.

I felt sick. “Uh, it was really just a joke,” I said, grimacing as Beck pulled out his wallet.

“I thought you said you were decorating your room.” Beck pulled out his credit card.

“Yeah, but I can just go to the thrift store…” I said, reaching out to try and block his hand.

“I don’t want any more of your thrift store finds in my condo,” he retorted, swiping his card.

The saleswoman winked at me as she handed me the bags of the smaller items that weren’t going to be delivered. “I wish my boyfriend was as laid-back as yours!”

I laughed nervously then blurted, “He’s a keeper!”

Beck was slightly smug as we headed out into the spring day. “I’m going to remind you about that the next time you call me uptight.”

“Just because you bought a beanbag chair doesn’t negate all of your freakishly uptight ways,” I retorted.

“Maybe you just need to get to know me a little better,” Beck countered, leaning in close to me, his chest resting lightly on my shoulder for a moment.

I gulped.

“Lunch?” I squawked, picking up my pace.

I was feeling out of sorts. Today had felt a bit too close to a date for my comfort. Actually, no, it felt like a family outing.

Which was even worse.